Democracy In Crisis Part 3: Alternatives to Elections

Democracy in Crisis is a special online series of global roundtable discussions about the use of randomly-selected citizen assemblies to further democracy.  Democracy in Crisis is produced by Ahmed Teleb, Brian Standing, the 8 O’Clock Buzz and WORT-FM.

Welcome to the third and final episode of “Crisis in Democracy,” an in-depth series right here on WORT.  In our previous two episodes, we’ve heard about how representative democracies around the globe are failing to live up to their promise and some innovative ideas to get citizens involved in their own government.  Today, we explore the promise and challenges of citizen juries and assemblies — government by random selection, otherwise known as “sortition.”  Joining host Brian Standing are:

• Dr. Paul Cartledge, is the A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow, Clare College and Emeritus A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University. He is the author of many books on Athenian history, culture, and politics including Democracy, A Life.

  

• Hélène Landemore is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Her research and teaching interests include democratic theory, political epistemology, theories of justice, the philosophy of social sciences, constitutional processes and theories, and workplace democracy. Hélène is the author of Democratic Reason and Open Democracy, as well as a book in French on David Hume, two edited volumes, and multiple peer-reviewed articles. Her research has been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Review, Slate, the Washington Post, L’Humanité, Le Monde, and recently the New Yorker. She is a member of the core group behind the Democratizing Work movement. She is currently serving as expert consultant for the French government on a committee evaluating the CESE (Economic, Social and Environmental Council)’s experimentation with randomly selected citizens.

  

• Terry Bouricius, is the Senior Outreach Advisor for FairVote, a ranked-choice voting advocacy group.  He was elected to the Board of Aldermen in Burlington, Vermont in 1981. He served on the Board of Aldermen (city council) for ten years, and then for another decade as a member of the Vermont House of Representatives. He was a founder of the Vermont Progressive Party, which has over a dozen elected officials currently serving. He has also worked as an election administrator for both governmental and non-profit organization elections. In 2015, he organized an international conference on 21^st Century Democracy hosted by the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. who has written on ranked choice voting and democratic lotteries (or sortition).

  

• Dr. Madeline McCaren, is a biostatistician in the Department of Veterans Affairs. She earned a BS in Chemistry in 1978, a PhD in pharmacology in 1982, and an MPH in epidemiology in 1992. McCarren has worked with both primary and secondary data. She has designed, conducted, analyzed, and published studies based on both experimental and observational designs. Because of her diverse training and experience, her niche is to provide a bridge between subject matter experts and statisticians and design effective and efficient studies. She can often see opportunities and potential pitfalls that those separate groups miss. volunteer for America in One Room, is active in League of Women Voters, Braver Angels, and the Sortition Foundation.