An ancient cure for contemporary politics

Given the morass that the Illinois legislature has become, maybe it is time to consider sortition, the ancient practice of selecting a legislative body randomly from the pool of eligible voters.

The lottery approach for choosing members of the legislative branch of government was the cornerstone of Athenian democracy in 600 BCE. By contrast, the democratic process in the neighboring city-state of Sparta selected legislators using a system comparable to that employed in Illinois today, namely, the pool of eligible voters cast ballots for those among themselves pre-selected, usually by party nomination, to be their legislative representatives.

Democracy in Athens was government by the many, as any voter could be selected to serve in the legislature, whereas Spartan democracy was government by the few, since only those on the ballot would be eligible to serve.

Sortition is a better way to select legislators than representative ballots on a variety of levels. It is less susceptible to corruption, as a voter's service in the legislature is limited to one term per lifetime; it empowers ordinary people not career politicians; it is inherently egalitarian as all eligible voters have an equal chance of serving in the legislature regardless of any biases evident in society as a whole; and in theory, it puts the interests of society as a whole above those associated with one's political party or personal aspirations.

To guarantee the latter and discourage members of existing parties from trying to co-op sortition legislators with promises of future support, it might be necessary to prohibit any sortition legislator from seeking a regular-party nomination for two years or more after service.

The other benefits associated with random selection of legislators are evident in our current judicial/jury system which is basically an application of sortition. While the jury-selection process is not without its shortcomings, the consensus is that jury selection in Illinois and throughout the United States is effective and fair, usually producing a collection of citizen jurors who are able to put aside their individual biases and propensities and almost miraculously come to a consensus with regards to rendering cogent judgments involving complicated and intricate laws, both civil and criminal.

Also, to get the members of the current legislative system to willingly become a quasi-sortition one, the proportion of sortition legislators might be limited to, say, no more than one-quarter to one-third of the total members of the legislative body. This would leave the current political party system basically intact, but with considerably less power than is currently the case as a sortition-augmented legislature would bring a sense of independence to government not readily apparent in today's politics.

Naturally, some voters randomly selected for legislative duty might decline to serve, so the initial pool of sortition representatives should be sufficiently large to accommodate such choices. Additionally, the compensation of sortition legislators should be comparable to that of those elected by ballot, and there would need to be a guarantee that any sortition legislator currently employed would be able to return to his or her previous status.

One final safeguard would be a sunset provision for sortition, say 10 years, at which time the whole process would could be reviewed, and subsequently renewed, modified, or discontinued. There is no guarantee that an experiment with sortition would make Illinois politics better, but it is a certainty that it will not make matters worse.

James Cicarelli teaches economics at Roosevelt University in Schaumburg.