Citizens’ Assemblies: A Path Towards A More Perfectly Representative Union

Around the world, people seem dissatisfied with their leaders. This is particularly visible in the current era of anti-incumbency, which has taken hold in places as far-flung and different from one another as the United Kingdom to Botswana, India to South Korea, or Poland to Argentina. Incumbents are losing, or as ​​Zack Beauchamp of Vox puts it, “Across the world, voters told the party in power — regardless of their ideology or history — that it was time for a change.” We cannot definitively determine what is motivating this widespread backlash against incumbents. Vox points to inflation as one potential cause. Nonetheless, the global trend of rebuking incumbents indicates dissatisfaction with the status quo at the policy level, but it could also express dissatisfaction with our means of governance.

The United States is just one player in this global trend. The incumbent’s loss has marked the past two American presidential elections, so it is no surprise that Americans no longer trust those in political power. According to Pew, “As of April 2024, 22% of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right ‘just about always’ (2%) or ‘most of the time’ (21%).” These numbers are part of a generations-long decline in trust, which began in the mid-1960s due to the Vietnam War. Our government’s confidence decline has been well studied over the years but remains hazy at best. What we can do is set our sights on a future that can improve government trust, participation, and outcomes. Citizens’ assemblies, selected through sortition or random lottery, could be a way to usher in such a future.

Sortition is a catch-all term for processes that randomly select citizens for a governing body. Citizens’ assemblies created through sortition can occur at any level of government, from town councils to the U.S. House of Representatives- though there is merit in advocating for them at the local and state levels. Using a broadly inclusive population of citizens, such as a state driver’s license database, states might randomly select their temporary leaders. For more issue-specific bodies, seats may be allocated for random selection from much smaller populations. A school board may designate a certain number of seats for different district stakeholders, including school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Once selected, the newly elected individuals will serve their communities until their terms are complete. Sortition-selected lawmakers are expected to follow ethics rules and could be removed from office for reasons such as gross misconduct or incompetence.

The mechanisms of a citizens’ assembly from sortition might be accomplished through any means, but what matters most is knowing that it can be achieved. Take jury selection: every day, courts across the country can— imperfectly but effectively—select juries of a randomly selected pool of candidates. Juries promise more than just logistical possibility: they give us the hope that direct participation in seemingly esoteric processes can render a more transparent image of government. Researchers have long studied the phenomenon that “jurors who deliberate on a court case develop more positive views of courts in the relatively short time of jury service.” In other words, direct participation yields trust in our institutions. A world where the seats of city councils, school boards, county commissions, and even some lower houses are filled by sortition may be one where our government can more directly meet the needs of its community.

Citizens’ assemblies created by sortition may better reflect their communities’ demographic and ideological makeup than the traditional electoral approach. Pew Research reported in 2022 that 69% of Americans believe it is “very important to vote in elections to be a good member of society.” This is a surprisingly high percentage compared to those who actually show up to vote. At newly higher levels of participation, only 62.8% of people eligible to vote actually cast their ballots in the 2020 election.  With poor voter turnout, we cannot be surprised that those elected will not truly represent the current population. US News reports that the 119th Congress is older, whiter, and more male than the U.S. population.

There are numerous other potential benefits to such a proposal. Sortition eliminates the need for campaign fundraising for those who adopt it, making it harder for entrenched interests to sway legislators or build long-standing relationships. More than just addressing corruption, sortition, when performed with trustworthy mechanisms, can reduce the appearance of corruption,  creating a self-fulfilling cycle where the government is more effective because it is trusted and more trusted because it is effective.

Sortition isn’t the be-all and end-all either. By adopting this system of governance, especially at the highest levels, we sacrifice some strengths of traditional governance: issue-area expertise, an individual’s vision for their legacy in office, and the accountability of an election. We live in a world where no legislator has perfect or comprehensive information on every issue. Legislators rely on a robust team of often hidden but hardworking support staff in their offices and resources, such as the Congressional Research Service. Sortition has its own appeal – the hope that a legislator selected through this method would serve their fellow Americans with as much rigor and integrity as they hope to be served themselves.

We increasingly need innovative solutions to improve eroding trust and lagging participation in government. We may have a more representative, effective, and trustworthy government by directly involving citizens in government through sortition, especially on the local and state levels.