I’ve been exposed to government by lot twice in my reading lately – first as a speculative proposal in Elizabeth Bear’s Ancestral Night, second in real history in Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance.

As a note, I am not, in fact proposing this as a means of government. Just exploring the possibility…which occasionally shows up in science fiction but not, to my knowledge, in fantasy.

So, what is sortition, and how has it been used in the real world?