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We should absolutely not implement sortition without some form of filtering to ensure the pool contains only qualified individuals, but that pushes the goalpost

We should absolutely not implement sortition without some form of filtering to ensure the pool contains only qualified individuals, but that pushes the goalpost to selecting a benevolent committee which brings us back to the current situation. From the Central Limit Theorem, we would end up with mostly candidates from the middle of the pool. The fact that 'average' people are in possibly important positions a) enables malicious actors to manipulate them much easier than having more qualified (or smarter people) and b) puts potentially unqualified people in important positions. I do not suggest that the current state of affairs is better either, but considering, for example that a very large portion of people in the US are Qanons, putting them in any important position is definitely not a good idea.

krapp 6y ago
QAnons are already in positions of power throughout the American government. You can't have a democracy and not have a significant cultural and political movement be represented, even if it is crackpot lunacy and a Trojan horse for white supremacy. That's on the US and its poisonous political culture for letting QAnon get big enough to matter. Now it matters and America and the Republican party are stuck with the ramifications of QAnon having become popular enough to win elections.
ozim 6y ago
Well I imagine that it could work without ensuring anything. If sortition would be used to get people to serve in parliament. Then it works as usual because parliament consist mostly of people who don't need to be qualified at all. They vote for prime minister and then that prime minister assembles government with ministers that are qualified specialists. In the end parliament votes if they trust that selection of prime minister and done. In the end I just came to conclusion that whole voting for parliament members is useless because I can imagine it would not be much worse than random selection from pool of interested people. You also remove issue with people who are handing out places on voting cards because a lot of people just vote on the first person on the list of political party. I can imagine political parties are not going to change status qua :)

krapp 6y ago

QAnons are already in positions of power throughout the American government. You can't have a democracy and not have a significant cultural and political movement be represented, even if it is crackpot lunacy and a Trojan horse for white supremacy. That's on the US and its poisonous political culture for letting QAnon get big enough to matter. Now it matters and America and the Republican party are stuck with the ramifications of QAnon having become popular enough to win elections.

ozim 6y ago

Well I imagine that it could work without ensuring anything. If sortition would be used to get people to serve in parliament. Then it works as usual because parliament consist mostly of people who don't need to be qualified at all. They vote for prime minister and then that prime minister assembles government with ministers that are qualified specialists. In the end parliament votes if they trust that selection of prime minister and done. In the end I just came to conclusion that whole voting for parliament members is useless because I can imagine it would not be much worse than random selection from pool of interested people. You also remove issue with people who are handing out places on voting cards because a lot of people just vote on the first person on the list of political party. I can imagine political parties are not going to change status qua :)