It's time again.

Housekeeping

• Apologies for the December/January lull. I was weighing how best to contribute to effort to speed the adoption of civic assemblies (or the Rabble Movement). I still haven't figured it all out, but I can say:
  • I've enjoyed connecting with others in the movement at Sortition USA. Anyone is welcomed to join, and I would encourage you to do so if you're interested. The new administration has promising enthusiasm for citizen engagement.
  • In fact I'm helping to create a local chapter in New York City. Please reach out if you know someone in the city who might want to get involved.
  • I'm also very excited about the fact that Terry Bouricius's book Democracy Without Politicians is coming out this year. It's a lovely read and a terrific articulation of a "north star" for the movement. I'm chipping in where I can to help make it a big splash; if you have contacts with podcasters or other platforms that could increase the visibility of his work, please get in touch.
• I've started cross-posting these articles on Substack. To my previous comments on the subject, I'll add:
  • a concern over the platform's potential for "enshittification" (Cory Doctorow's term for the progression of once-enticing software to exploitative entrapment). Substack seems very appealing in many ways now, and I do think the model of paid subscriptions may be a bit more enshittification-resistant than, say, free-but-not-really-free social media. We'll have to see if that suffices to keep Substack from going down the well trodden path of extraction over the long haul.
  • the appeal of cross-posting on other folks' "stacks." For now, this has convinced me to dip a toe into Substack, but Buttondown will remain the primary home for Lots to Gain. (And "hear ya" posts will appear only here).

Errata

No doubt many errors are sneaking past uncorrected, but I haven't been called out on much lately.

To revisit an issue from the first "hear ya", I have continued to learn how mistaken I was about the novelty of the "citizens' appointment board" idea I introduced by that name in lots to cast and explored further in lots to move forward. I wasn't aware of the longstanding effort to promote the concept under the banner of "election by jury," in no small part by the eponymous organization.

One of that organization's leaders, Clay Shentrup, recently wrote a fascinating real-life account of election by jury in action. He tells the story of an ethics board in Henry County, Georgia with a majority of members appointed by grand jury. The largely-citizen-appointed board faced down local political actors in the kind of contest from which electoral calculus makes typical political appointees shrink.

This stuff works y'all.

Asked

In general, this section is intended to cover questions outside of the newsletter's content area (the inside questions I will tend to tackle in the content). But there is a recurring theme that I want to acknowledge here. Several people have asked me about the role of facilitation in rabbles, including what styles I favor, how to prevent bias, who hires them, etc.

The short answer is that facilitation is an essential component of a successful civic assembly. The fact that ordinary citizens are capable of having profound, connecting, productive conversations doesn't imply that they're incapable of having crappy ones. Facilitation takes successful assembly outcomes from vaguely plausible to highly probable. It's key.

I hold facilitators in a place of honor, which is why I'm hesitant to write much about facilitation here: I don't yet feel informed enough to do it much justice. I can say the most basic job of the facilitator is to ensure equitable speaking time and that this is also among the most easily measured tasks. I can say that there are a wide variety of group facilitation methodologies: some aim at reaching consensus, others at evincing discontentedness, others at cultivating team closeness, etc...

I can also say that there are system design consequences of facilitation choices. For example, in the context of civic assemblies, most facilitation is aimed at achieving consensus, which means it stands considerable risk of promoting groupthink. That suggests an anti-group-think process would be appropriate for ratification of any proposals the civic assembly produces.

In short, facilitation matters. I hope someday to know enough to trumpet that fact more openly.

Reflection

When I started this newsletter, I had hopes of getting into the weeds of democratic system design. So far, that's not how it's gone. When I've gotten weedy, it's been more in the untended garden of constitutional convention calls than political theory.

One reason there is that I'm such a fan of Terry Bouricius's book that it feels more pressing to promote it than to build on it, which I someday hope to do.

Another is that I'm finding the societal risks we face too immediate and daunting to travel too far into theory. That may seem strange, since I'm often talking about changes that are not immediately possible. But there is a big difference between dabbling in minutia in hopes of eventual relevance and painting a grand picture that is necessary to inspire action now. I'm aiming for the latter.

Yahoo

When I last checked in, I was still struggling to find others working on this sortition stuff. Now I've got a growing network of friends and collaborators in the arena. They're a source of great hope and inspiration for me.

If anyone reading this wants help getting involved with advancing sortition in the US, reach out. We'd love to have you.