The Newest Word From the Left — Sortition

Sortition — choosing political leaders by lottery, not elections — is emerging as a buzzword on the left, and a threat to the rule of law. The Nation’s Bhaskar Sunkara moots a reformulated Congress with a “lower house elected through proportional representation and a weak upper house selected through sortition.” The Sortition Foundation’s Brett Hennig calls for “replacing politicians with a demographically representative selection of random citizens.”“A randomly selected U.S. Senate,” Mr. Hennig asserts, “would mean that at least one law-making body would no longer be a millionaires’ club dominated largely by old, white, rich men.” An editorial issued by In These Times backs “the appointment of political positions by lottery, rather than election.” The editorial reckons that “on issues from healthcare to climate, ordinary people tend to be more progressive than career politicians.”Yet wouldn’t sortition require Americans to “trust a bunch of random people?” In These Times asks. The editorial assures “that’s what democracy is — and it’s good.” Lest anyone fear that solons chosen by lottery would deviate from progressive orthodoxy, In These Times asserts that their deliberations would be guided. “Elected congresspeople also rely on staffers, advisors and outside experts, so some support would be expected,” the editorial says.The talk about a Senate selected by sortition reflects the escalating aspirations of the far left, which is, at least for now, ascendant in the Democratic party. Mr. Sunkara has a forthcoming book titled “The Blueprint” purporting “how socialism can work in the real world.” Part of the game plan, it seems, is to transform the upper house of the Congress into what Mr. Sunkara calls “a sortition body with the power to initiate legislation but not vote on and enact it.”Such a scheme could run afoul of Article V of the Constitution, which asserts, in regard to prospective amendments, “that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” It’s also unlikely that it would pass muster under the Constitution’s States and Elections Clause to replace voting for members of the upper house of Congress, the so-called World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, with a lottery system.To a degree, the talk of sortition calls to mind William F. Buckley Jr.’s quip that “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” Yet Buckley’s professed point was to spotlight what he called the “intellectual arrogance” of Harvard’s faculty, not to suggest a method of selecting legislators.Mr. Hennig says sortition would “create a Senate where representatives are free from electoral imperatives such as fundraising and media baiting” and “eliminate” some “points of leverage for vested interests in today’s politics.” Yet under a lottery, the voters themselves are one of the “vested interests” that would lose a real say in their governance. Eliminating that check on the left’s power, though, might suit the socialists down to the ground.It’s not our intention here to overstate the prospects of sortition being adopted. It is our intention, though, to underscore the vaulting ambition of today’s leftists vis-à-vis our constitutional system of government. Democrats talk, if they regain Congress and the White House, of eliminating the Senate filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, and adding new states to the Union. Along with sortition, it reflects a growing lack of respect for the Constitution.

The Newest Word From the Left — Sortition

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