This is a legitimate point, and there is no 100% answer. I have a couple of points to consider though. 1. Most offices do not require any kind of formal qualif

This is a legitimate point, and there is no 100% answer. I have a couple of points to consider though. 1. Most offices do not require any kind of formal qualification. Where requirements to be met the pool of candidates must be restricted obviously. 2. A benevolent clueless is probably less harmful than a dedicated competent working for their own self interest (imo there is very strong selection bias for these types of people). 3. If we are worried about certain people wielding too much power maybe no one should have it and positions with too much power should be diluted. At least I would not put that much faith in our current selection processes to act as gatekeepers. 4. I'm no American but my impression is jury duty is a real life example where mostly random people are put in charge of life and death matters at least on TV. 5. Sortition has some very nice properties for election compared to voting, such as fraud resistance. Majority voting inherently turns into a two horse race, does not favor diversity of thought and completely disregards the minority opinion culminating in what we have now, recycling the elites. All in all weighing the pros and cons I'm in favor of sortition but probably because I'm part of the plebs. As for examples: would someone who transition into politics qualify like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ronald Reagan?