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I do agree that it can be used to disenfranchise people, however it’s unavoidable to create legitimacy. If we didn’t have a minor education requirement (minor

I do agree that it can be used to disenfranchise people, however it’s unavoidable to create legitimacy. If we didn’t have a minor education requirement (minor because high school is free and is seen as the basic education that everyone has), then an age requirement can be substituted. For example, invoking the current age requirement of 35 to become president if you do not have a high school education so at least we know that you have life experience as a substitute. As for the criminal requirement, felons already can’t vote and participate in the electoral system so it’s questionable that many would accept felons being “randomly” chosen to lead the country. One could easily imagine and protest that a mafia kingpin who wins office by random chance did so by subverting the lottery. True or not, it’s believable enough to destroy legitimacy and throw the country into chaos.

shkkmo 4y ago
> felons already can’t vote and participate in the electoral system In some places, yes. This is already viewed as problematic disenfranchisement by many people. > invoking the current age requirement of 35 to become president In sortition, your ability to serve in office becomes your "vote". The age requirement of 35 in a sortition system disenfranchises younger voters in a massive way while in our current system it does not. In sortition, selecting the "good ones" who are in the lottery is just a problematic as selecting the "good ones" who are allowed to vote in elections. While that doesn't mean we should have no restrictions, it does mean those restrictions should face very high levels of scrutiny and be treated as biased by default. > it’s questionable that many would accept felons being “randomly” chosen to lead the country. But again, sortition only works well if your sample is large enough to be reliably representative. It won't work well for selecting a president from a nation or selecting 2 senators from an entire state. This is because a sample of size 1 or 2 will always be prone to selecting outliers. > who wins office by random chance did so by subverting the lottery The integrity of the lottery, like the integrity of elections, is crucial to it's legitimacy. Our lack of experience with making this sort of selection process transparent, accountable, and hard to subvert is to me the biggest argument against sortition.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  > be prone to selecting outliers. I didn't phrase this well. I meant "selecting a highly disproportionate number of outliers" since having a large sample will also have outliers, but but will be much less likely to over represent those outliers in the majority in a significant way.

shkkmo 4y ago

> felons already can’t vote and participate in the electoral system In some places, yes. This is already viewed as problematic disenfranchisement by many people. > invoking the current age requirement of 35 to become president In sortition, your ability to serve in office becomes your "vote". The age requirement of 35 in a sortition system disenfranchises younger voters in a massive way while in our current system it does not. In sortition, selecting the "good ones" who are in the lottery is just a problematic as selecting the "good ones" who are allowed to vote in elections. While that doesn't mean we should have no restrictions, it does mean those restrictions should face very high levels of scrutiny and be treated as biased by default. > it’s questionable that many would accept felons being “randomly” chosen to lead the country. But again, sortition only works well if your sample is large enough to be reliably representative. It won't work well for selecting a president from a nation or selecting 2 senators from an entire state. This is because a sample of size 1 or 2 will always be prone to selecting outliers. > who wins office by random chance did so by subverting the lottery The integrity of the lottery, like the integrity of elections, is crucial to it's legitimacy. Our lack of experience with making this sort of selection process transparent, accountable, and hard to subvert is to me the biggest argument against sortition.

shkkmo 4y ago
> be prone to selecting outliers. I didn't phrase this well. I meant "selecting a highly disproportionate number of outliers" since having a large sample will also have outliers, but but will be much less likely to over represent those outliers in the majority in a significant way.