British Columbia is a Canadian province. In 2001 they set up a Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform where citizen's were chosen by sortition to put forward a recommendation for which electoral system voters should judge in referendum.

South Sea Republic has covered sortition methods in articles before. One article titled; Tapping the Wisdom of the People included a discussion of Nicholas Gruen's idea for a citizen's chamber. So how did the sortitionists in British Columbia do?

Campbell Sharman has an article; Citizens' Assemblies and Parliamentary Reform in Canada [pdf] on the Australian Parliament House website from March 2006 which discusses this event.

British Columbia is a Canadian province with a unicameral parliament and a first past the post [FPTP] electoral system. In single member districts a a FPTP system can accentuate swings against the government. The downside is that members can be elected without a true majority. Another problem is that it punishes minor parties, keeping them from any representation in parliament. This can focus the special interests of major parties and hinder parliament from being truly representative of the community which elects them.

The circumstances which precipitated the formation of the Citizen's Assembly was the 1996 elections. The New Democratic Party was elected with a majority of seats, despite not having a majority in the popular vote. At the end of their five year term they were in disarray from allegations of corruption and poor governance. In the 2001 election the New Democrats won just two seats, with the Liberals winning seventy-seven!

Apparently Gordon Campbell, the Liberal leader, went forward with the Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform despite reservations from his cabinet.

How Were They Chosen

Sharman writes;

First, invitations were sent to a randomly selected, age stratified, panel of electors from the electoral role in each district inviting them to attend a meeting in that district.

At the meeting, there was a presentation by Citizens' Assembly staff explaining that members of the Assembly would have to be willing to spend 12 weekends in the coming year (2004) and travel to Vancouver for each meeting (expenses would be paid by the Assembly).

At the end of the meeting, those who were willing to make such a commitment had their names put in a hat, and one man and one woman were selected. This process was repeated for all 79 electoral districts in the province.

So citizens that were chosen by sortition were given the chance to opt-out if they wanted to. The Assembly met over several weekends learning about the electoral system and the political process. They also attended several public hearings with the final six weekends spent deliberating over whether British-Columbia needed a new electoral system.

The knee-jerk reaction to average citizens doing what is seen as a professional's job - ie politicians - is usually "people are dumb". Yet everyday of the year people over-achieve, with their families, in their jobs, in the economy, culturally and socially. An individual is a ball of achievement waiting for new opportunities to excel.

Sharman writes on the media response to the Citizen's Assembly;

The news media were initially sceptical about the ability of 'ordinary people' to become familiar with the complexities of electoral rules and their parliamentary consequences but, as the Assembly's meetings progressed, the tone of media reporting moved from mild condescension to admiration both for the substance and the tone of the Assembly's discussions.

The faith in 'ordinary people' being able to make decisions on complex political issues had been overwhelmingly endorsed. The public goodwill towards the Citizens' Assembly process was perhaps its most important achievement.

So what did the Citizen's Assembly come up with? They decided a proportional system similar to the Tasmanian and ACT systems offered the best outcome. They also decided that keeping a member close to its electorate as more important over a majority party government. Unsurprisingly political parties see it the other way around.

In Australia the only altruistic electoral change was Steele Hall in South Australia who removed malapportionment from the electorate even though he knew it would cost him his government. He did it anyway.

Most of the electoral changes to secure permanent majorities in Australia have back-fired anyway. The biggest clanger was Chifley changing the Senate from winner takes all to proportional. Since then Labor has never had a majority in the Senate. That change also led to the rise of the Australian Democrats giving them in a niche in Australian politics for a quarter of a century.

So what did the British-Columbian politicians think of the Citizen Assembly's recommendation. Sharman writes;

The Assembly's recommendation of PR-STV [a variant of proportional representation by the single transferable vote] had been signalled during the final weeks of the Assembly's deliberations, but the recommendation still came as a shock to many of the political class.

For parliamentarians and established political parties it represented at best a major challenge to the existing pattern of electoral and parliamentary politics and at worst a threat to the influence of the major parties.

Some groups which favoured electoral reform

were not happy with the Assembly's commitment to PR-STV. The electoral system of choice for several of these groups was MMP [mixed member proportional - like NZ], and the rejection of this system by the Citizens' Assembly undid the image of MMP as the perfect electoral system and the unquestioned choice for reform minded people.

Even the Greens, who had much to gain from a proportional electoral system, were divided over the virtues of PR-STV; several of those in executive positions in the party liked the idea of MMP with closed party lists as a way of ensuring a socially diverse slate of candidates.

The electoral system still had to pass a referendum which required 60% of all British Columbians as well as 60% in each district. There were no funds put toward the yes or no campaign and the without anyone campaigning for electoral change the issue was swamped in the day-to-day party politics as the Liberals and New Democrats positioned themselves to try and take government.

The in the end all but two districts got the required 60%, but throughout the whole province the number who voted for the referendum was 58%. It was two percent short. Sharman writes;

This result was remarkable. Even though the referendum did not fulfil the requirements for acceptance, a substantial majority of the electorate had voted for electoral change in spite of an almost complete lack of organized campaigning.

One of the surprises to come from the aftermath was that many voters, despite not understanding the complexity of the PR-STV system, trusted the Citizen's Assembly because it was randomly drawn from the citizenry and voted for the referendum.

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The Westminster system of the Executive Cabinet being embedded in Parliament grew from the need to route executive power away from the monarch while leaving the King with ceremonial authority. This is in contrast to the Washington system which separated the Executive entirely from Congress. The Westminster system, as practiced in Britain, also contains the upper house as a left over from the period when the King-Lord-Commons form of political philosophy dominated. Wentworth proposed this model for NSW when the colony was seeking self-government. Deniehy famously pilloried this illiberal model of government. Reform for the House of Lords in Britain is a common form of discussion, a new think-tank and advocacy group for a modern House of Lords has recently been formed, the Lords Reform Institute. They are proposing a sortitionist model.

Sortition

Sortition is the process of choosing public officials by lot. This is not a new technology, we have been using sortition to choose jurors for quite a long time now. Where this technology has not had traction is in selecting members of the three branches of government, Executive, Legislative or Judicial.

One of the arguments against sortition is that the parliamentary positions require specialists. This argument is true for the judicial branch, which often requires a great deal of legal knowledge to fully function efficiently, but in the legislative branch many members are professional politicians or party members, rather than specialist legislators.

The rise of lobbying in the US as the special interest legislators is a good example of politicians outsourcing the legislative process. This has accelerated in recent years as re-election requires more and more money in the US system. The Washington system of discipline in Congress has recently taken on Westminster characteristics, where legislation is made in the senior party leadership with party discipline - and threat of fiscal retribution - are used to ensure the party votes as a block.

An argument for sortition is the increasing education of the citizen population. When the American Republic was founded there was a great education gap between the elites of the time - Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison etc - and the regular citizen.

Today that gap is much smaller and many are as well educated, if not better, than the current leaders such as John Howard, George Bush or Tony Blair.

Due to British Columbia's [Canada] embrace of sortition for the creation of legislation that led to a referendum, we know have empirical evidence of public perception and reaction toward sortition in this context. Campbell Sharman writes;

The news media were initially skeptical about the ability of 'ordinary people' to become familiar with the complexities of electoral rules and their parliamentary consequences but, as the Assembly's meetings progressed, the tone of media reporting moved from mild condescension to admiration both for the substance and the tone of the Assembly's discussions.

The faith in 'ordinary people' being able to make decisions on complex political issues had been overwhelmingly endorsed. The public goodwill towards the Citizens' Assembly process was perhaps its most important achievement.

There was another curious emergent effect of using sortition and that was many voters cast ballot in the positive on the basis that they trusted the judgment of the 'ordinary people' in the Citizen's Assembly.

This is in direct contrast to Australia's experience in federal referendums where a campaign to 'not trust the bastards in Canberra' often works - and for good reason.

Lords Reform Institute Model

The Lords Reform Institute [LRI] contains their guide to reforming the house of lords which espouses the principles of improved representation and upper house independence. Given the hereditary and appointed nature of the House of Lords, any improvement in the selection process will increase democratic participation and outcomes in my opinion.

The LRI raises an important question relating to liberty;

There is a second question of principle involved, namely that of personal freedom. Jury service is compulsory, and any compulsion curtails the freedom of the person being compelled. We justify this in the case of jury service by saying the civic duty thus rendered is so valuable that it justifies taking perhaps a few weeks of their time.

The LRI solves this issue by removing the requirement for compulsion. They also argue for making service in a House of Jurors (to replace the house of lords) attractive with benefits such as good pay, advisors, administrative support and family relocation subsidy.

CFC Sortitionists

Sortition proved popular in South Sea Republic's recent Constitution Fun Challenge where readers were given the challenge of creating a constitution. There were four final entries, three of which were focused on the Australian Federal Government, with one state constitution for Queensland which currently lacks an upper-house. Of the four entries, three included sortitionist elements.

The interesting aspect was that those three applied sortition in different areas; I chose the house, adam chose the Senate and alan chose the executive to be chosen by lot.

Since the LRI is focusing on the upper-house, which in a bicameral parliamentary system is the only check and balance on the Executive from the legislative branch, it might be a good time to revisit adam's model.

4.

4.1 Small house of review

4.2 At least 20 members must be appointed by sortition from a pool of citizen nominees

4.3 At most 3 partisan and 3 non-partisan members may be appointed by the government of the day

4.4 Passes bills with a simple majority

4.5 The Legislative Council must be smaller than the Legislative Assembly

4.6 May not vote on money bills

4.7 May summon witnesses as before a court of law, and may delegate this power to committees

4.8 May instruct the Commission of Audit to investigate

4.9 Members serve for one year, but may choose to extend that service to 3 years

4.10 Any member may serve in the Legislative Council at most 10 years

4.11 Members are dismissed if they are

a. Convicted of a criminal offence

b. Dismissed by a two-thirds supermajority of the Legislative Council, which

is then confirmed by a simple majority of the Legislative Assembly

4.12 Members must be electors

This model is interesting in that it mixes appointed specialists with sortitionists. The issue of blocking supply is firmly in Australian Constitution memory and adam solves this by disqualifying the Legislative Council from voting on money bills.

The ratio of appointees to sortitionists is deliberate as well, as a super-majority can dismiss a councilor. A unanimous vote by the sortitionists can stop this process.

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