Sortition information

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In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lottery, selection by lot, allotment, demarchy, stochocracy, aleatoric democracy, and lottocracy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates.^[1] The system intends to ensure that all competent and interested parties have an equal chance of holding public office. It also minimizes factionalism, since there would be no point making promises to win over key constituencies if one was to be chosen by lot, while elections, by contrast, foster it.^[2] In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.^[3]

Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common-law systems and is sometimes used in forming citizen groups with political advisory power.^[4]