September 30, 2025

lots to cast

the case for citizen appointment boards (CABs): mini-publics that hire

More than once once we've played with the idea that mini-publics might someday appoint individuals to prominent roles. In concept, randomly selected citizens would gather to do human resource work. They'd learn about the position, review applications, interview, deliberate, and pick.

The idea of citizen appointment, as I’ll call it, is an odd mix:

1. It seems pretty obvious once you get serious about government by lots, and yet
2. I don’t know that it’s ever been tried, and
3. I haven’t yet found anyone writing about it.

I don’t know why the idea hasn't gotten more play. Maybe some advocates of lottocracy find appointments too boring to discuss in detail. Perhaps some believe so strongly in distributed power that they don’t want to focus on individual positions of authority. In any case, I think we should be talking about it more; citizen appointment could be one of the greatest opportunities for mini-publics to get a meaningful foothold.

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I shouldn’t say I don't know of any examples of unelected citizens appointing civil servants; I don’t know of any recent ones. In Ancient Athens generals and financial magistrates were appointed by the ekklesia, a massive assembly of around six thousand citizens.¹

Athenians actually filled most bureaucratic positions directly by lot; I don’t recommend reviving that pattern. Specialist roles like attorneys general, judges, and heads of research organizations obviously shouldn't be randomized. But mini-publics would be far better suited to appoint specialists than either elections or elected officials, the two main ways we assign such roles today.

A US attorney general appointed by a mini-public, for example, would have greater far credibility as an impartial arbiter of justice than a presidential appointment. In an executive branch deeply lacking in checks and balances, the capacity of the president to hire and fire attorneys general is among our most embarrassing design flaws. Only 5 US states countenance such an obvious conflict of interest by allowing governors to appoint their attorneys general.

And there are few rituals suffering more from electoral poison than our judicial nominations. Appointments to the bench are perversely seen as one of the most valuable partisan prizes in US national elections. A federal judge is seldom mentioned in the press today without noting the party of the president who nominated her. The implication of partiality is plain, and trust in the federal courts has plummeted in parallel. Pew, Gallup, and Annenberg have all found favorability ratings of the judicial branches at or around all-time lows.

Directly electing judges is scarcely any better. Where, if anywhere, can the public readily learn enough about judicial candidates to make thoughtful choices? We should probably be grateful, at least, most judges don’t stump aggressively; what sort of campaign promises could they make without compromising the judicial system? What if, instead, a representative few of us got to know potential judges' qualifications deeply and deliberated about the best options? Isn’t that far better suited to the dignity of the role?

Mini-publics could help with trust in government information, too. A recent national scandal involving the removal of the Head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has cast doubt upon the agency's independence and the reliability of its data. Forget, for the moment, whether the firing decision was wise. Is the design wise? Does it make sense for us to have political appointees in charge of government data? Hasn’t that always had the potential to entice leaders to appoint politically and therefore compromise the data?

I would argue that no research-driven agency should be headed by a political appointee. There are dozens: the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)... the acronym parade goes on. You could well add the FBI and the CIA. All these agencies should be shielded from partisan politics. There is no good reason to have them more beholden to the president than to the public.

So why have we structured things this way? At least part of the answer is that we don’t have many other options on the palette. In the federal executive branch, you’re either appointed by the president or hired in a tree structure that can ultimately be traced back to the president. The Constitution doesn’t really provide any other hiring mechanism. So the standard story is one of accountability: if the heads of agencies are not under the thumb of the president, what thumb are they under?

Perhaps a few random thumbs? A citizen appointment board (CAB) – we can do acronyms, too – would provide far richer public accountability than political appointment. To say that appointees are ultimately accountable to the public because the president hires them is to accept a hopelessly diluted notion of public authority. Some 4000 jobs are directly appointed by the president. How nuanced of a commentary can we, the public, make about those 4000 jobs if our only input into the process is one flick of a lever every four years? Mind you, that’s only part of the message we’re supposed to communicate with that lever flick. That one lever is also the mechanism that lets us weigh in on everything the president does: economic policy, foreign policy, immigration, environmental issues, the national debt, military leadership, and on and on. One flick every four years. Government by the people.

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Giving citizen appointment boards hiring authority in the federal government would require constitutional change, which is part of why we’ve tried to articulate a credible roadmap for Article V conventions in which mini-publics could propose amendments. Presidents could, of course, convene mini-publics to support hiring efforts even without such a convention, of course, but (a) it’s doubtful they would happily forfeit their so-called “spoils”, and (b) they could not durably institutionalize CABs. Without amending the Constitution, it’s unlikely such a practice would last for multiple administrations.

And, more generally, it will often be tricky to take appointment power away from elected people, who tend to guard their authority jealously. (Although, as we will explore another day, opportunities do avail themselves from time to time). The easier gambit for implementing CABs is to replace elections in cases where the voting public would genuinely prefer not to be bothered.

There are many such cases. I have personally voted multiple times for a guy named Jeremy Breon. I couldn't tell you much at all about Mr. Breon, except that he won. He's basically just a name and party affiliation to me.

I voted for Mr. Breon to be my county’s prothonotary. I have no qualms with his performance as prothonotary, but then again, I have almost no idea what a prothonotary does and even less what Mr. Breon has accomplished in the role. I did learn recently how to pronounce it – it’s proTHONoTARy. So I have voted more than once for a man I knew nothing about to hold a position I couldn’t even pronounce.

I feel confident asserting that most of the residents of my county would sense no great loss of power if they were no longer charged with choosing their prothonotary by ballot. Personally, I’d feel only relief. And yet, if I were asked to take part in a CAB, a mini-public that spent a little time learning about prothonotaries, reviewing applications, interviewing, and ultimately choosing someone for the job, I’d be genuinely interested. I mean, I wouldn’t want to do it all year long, but it would be a novel way to serve my community for a few days. I’d be in.

Around 1200 US counties elect coroners. I have read a thing or two about coroners; fascinating stuff. Once called crowners, the job originated in medieval England (also around 1200), when these men went from town to town documenting things the king could demand payment for. Turf wars with sheriffs led to an agreement in which sheriffs hustled live people and coroners hustled dead ones. If there was foul play in a death, the king could charge for it. So it does make some sense that citizens would eventually want to elect someone to this role who would not automatically rule that the king was owed money for every death. Does it still make sense that we’re electing people to these roles in the age of qualified medical examiners? Not at all. But a CAB-appointed medical examiner would be sensible enough. And who would mourn the loss of a vote for a coroner?

Mosquito Board Commissioners, Transportation District Board Members, Mine Inspectors, Clerks of the Peace, Poll Workers, Drain Commissioners… I'm not questioning the importance of these jobs, just the wisdom of filling them via elections. Do we trust voters, do we trust ourselves as voters, to do the research necessary to make that choice wisely? Even if we did, would it be a good use of time for all of us to research who'd make the best Drain Commissioner and then weigh in equally? In every case, mini-publics would make more sense.

Using mini-publics to appoint persons to bureaucratic positions is not sexy, but it’s a start. And assuming the CABs' efforts are well received, we can aim for more: constables, sheriffs, city planners, etc.

But even before that, CABS could be significant as some of the first mini-publics to have the final say. No elected body would necessarily have to approve their hiring. They would simply write up their decision and give it to a notar… wait, is that what a prothonotary does?