How would sortition work to choose legislative representatives?

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Common Lot Sortitionist

“The Common Lot: Next Step for Democracy” advocates that sortition (random selection) be used to select among qualified citizens who are willing to serve in the legislature.

In order to be entered into the pool for random selection a citizen would be required to do two things.
First: register (just as one registers now to vote). Placing oneself in the lottery pool should be voluntary.
Second: pass a civics test in order to demonstrate basic understanding of the legislative process. This test should be no more difficult than the one required to obtain a driver’s license in the U.S.
Accomplishing those two requirements, the citizen’s name would be placed in the pool for random selection to serve in the legislature.

Posted in FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions | Tagged | Leave a comment

What is sortition?

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Common Lot Sortitionist

‘Sortition’ means ‘choice by lot; random selection’.

Random selection in a large population will automatically produce, with small deviations, a proportional representation of that population. This is ‘automatic’ because of probability theorem: ‘The Law of Large Numbers’.

A random selection of, say, 1,000 people from the U.S. population would produce a body that would contain approximately 492-496 men and 504-508 women (since men are 49.4% and women are 50.6% of the national population).

Unlike selection by competitive balloting, sortition is immune to the sway of political faction, economic privilege or any other factor besides citizenship.
[Note, however, that our proposal also suggests one other qualifier: a base-level understanding of the legislative process.]

Posted in FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Common Lot: Home

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Common Lot Sortitionist

For years, American citizens across the political spectrum have cried out for change in Washington, and for years nothing has really changed about the way governments have operated. Our elected officials are ever more beholden to special interests and pockets of wealth than to an American democracy of, by, and for the people.

The Common Lot, the most recent film by Common Lot Productions, is a video essay that interrogates the concept of democracy of, by, and for the people, asking the seminal question for true political reform: can elective democracy actually represent the rich diversity of the American people?

To read more about The Common Lot, click here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Mission Statement

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Common Lot Sortitionist

The Mission

The Common Lot promotes democracy around the globe by advocating the use of demarchy for electing governing representatives.

The Vision

The vision is, in some ways, the more important part of the process. It must describe in relative detail our vision of the world as it could be, define the scope of tactics that we will employ to achieve that vision, and outline the membership of the movement, including what is required of each member and what we are asking each member, on a broad scale, to do.

Can we agree that this is the purpose of the vision statement? How would you amend this first stab at a mission statement?

As for the question about what we are asking people to do, can’t we ask them to participate in the site? Perhaps there is also a donate possibility? To a large extent, I am looking for people far smarter than myself to help identify ways to move the agenda forward.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment