CONCEPT
Sortition
Random selection of citizens for participatory institutions — stratified for demographic representativeness and deployed as the solution to the self-selection bias that systematically excludes the silent middle from conventional participation.
Sortition is the practice of selecting participants in governance institutions by random draw rather than by election, volunteer, or appointment. In modern participatory contexts, the random selection is typically stratified to ensure demographic representativeness across age, gender, race, income, education, and geography. Fung identifies sortition as the essential response to the self-selection bias that degrades most open participation: any process requiring volunteers systematically underrepresents populations that lack prior political engagement, precisely the populations whose inclusion participatory governance most requires. The Irish citizens' assemblies, French climate convention, and Canadian citizens' assemblies on electoral reform demonstrated that sortition produces participant pools more representative of the general population than any self-selected process.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The case for sortition rests on evidence that self-selection produces systematically unrepresentative participation. Open public meetings attract professional advocates, organized interests, and highly engaged citizens whose perspectives are unlikely to match those of the general population. Public comment periods privilege technically literate respondents comfortable with regulatory procedure. Town halls draw those