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Why elections are bad for democracy

Edit The Guardian 29 Jun 2016
drafting by lot, or sortition as it is presently called ... With sortition, you do not ask everyone to vote on an issue few people really understand, but you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible decision ... Experiments with sortition have been successfully applied in the US, Australia, and the Netherlands....

Opinion: Ancient Greeks would not recognise our ‘democracy’ – they’d see an ‘oligarchy’ (University of Cambridge)

Edit Public Technologies 07 Jun 2016
(Source. University of Cambridge). We owe to the ancient Greeks much, if not most of our own current political vocabulary. All the way from anarchy and democracy to politics itself. But their politics and ours are very different beasts ... Equality then and now ... the use of sortition, for instance - a random method of polling by lottery that aimed to produce a representative sample of elected officials ... Worst of all possible systems ... (noodl....

Would picking our reps at random improve governance? Guest commentary

Edit LA Daily News 08 Apr 2016
Legislatures, and the elections that populate them, have so many flaws that we might be better off picking our representatives at random ... Congress is a political class distinct from the citizenry — whiter than the American population at large, much more male, and much wealthier. A majority are millionaires ... Sortition, or selection by lot, has considerable advantages over elections ... Sortition has precedents....

Are short-sighted, pork-barrelling elections ruining Sydney?

Edit Canberra Times 04 Nov 2015
Kill your darlings. This advice, to which writers and architects are tutored from youth, braces them to jettison their most beloved parts of a work for the good of the whole. And that (you may think) is art. But what if democracy is a little bit ditto?. Democracy is our sacred cow, our shibboleth ... Sometimes, looking around, you'd think it already had ... No ... No. Not one ... Periclean Athens used sortition, a random selection of citizens ... Twitter ... ....

Sortition meeting was held concerning resettlement of 45 families from the high emergency building at ...

Edit Public Technologies 31 Aug 2015
The sortition of the 2nd stage of the program of resettlement of the families living in high emergency building at Sisakyan 3 took place in Yerevan City Hall ... decisions of Yerevan Mayor on allotting the flats will be prepared after the sortition....

Early Elections, Bush or Clinton?

Edit Information Clearing House 17 Jun 2015
By Jimmie Moglia. "I would with such perfection govern, sir, To excel the golden age". The Tempest, act 2, sc. 1. June 17, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - I finished my coffee, closed my book, paid my bill and got up to leave ... ME ... But I must disappoint you. I will not vote ... The process was called ‘sortition’, that is, the selection of officers from a larger pool of candidates ... Sortition is the only and true democracy....

Is It Time to Take a Chance on Random Representatives?

Edit The Daily Beast 08 Nov 2014
It’s called sortition. Here’s how sortition works ... First, sortition was the main system for choosing political officials in ancient Athens ... And, second, we already use sortition to select an important deliberative body, the trial jury ... The Athenians considered sortition to be an especially democratic way of choosing certain decision-makers ... Today, there are people who talk about using sortition more widely in our society....

Reading group: Choose a Scottish book for September

Edit The Guardian 03 Sep 2014
Scotland, for obvious reasons, is a big subject this month. Some of those reasons are fairly painful ... … Or at least, part of our identity for the time being ... I'll put the nominations in a hat and in a few days time I'll pick the winner out by sortition – the original and best form of democracy ... ....

Senate reality show has Parliament in a tizz

Edit Canberra Times 12 Jul 2014
Illustration. michaelmucci.com. Politics, we so often lament, is infested with professional politicians. Parliament is crawling with lawyers, erstwhile union officials, former political staffers, former party officials, and perhaps most shamefully, those who once graced the noble profession of journalism ... The ancient Athenians, who after all invented democracy, often used “sortition” (the random selection of decision-makers)....

101st Commencement Concert features outstanding student soloists (Olivet Nazarene University)

Edit noodls 24 Apr 2014
(Source. Olivet Nazarene University). Posted. Apr 23, 2014. Olivet's 101st Commencement Concert provides an opportunity to recognize and feature several top music students on Saturday, April 26, 2014, 7 p.m., at Kresge Auditorium in Larsen Fine Arts Center ... 38, Canzone ... • Ben Geeding (senior, Manteno, Ill.), baritone; Christine Caven, soprano; and Lillian Guenseth, soprano, Mozart's Susanna or via sortite (from Le nozze di Figaro) ... (noodl....

Naxos begins a project to record the complete songs of Federico Mompou

Edit The Examiner 30 Mar 2014
This past Tuesday Naxos released the first CD in a project to record the complete songs of the Catalan Spanish composer Federico Mompou ... All the songs on this first CD are sung by soprano Marta Mathéu ... Among the early efforts are three different settings of the “Quand l’amant sortit” (when her lover left), by the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck, composed in 1914, 1915, and 1919, respectively ... ....
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