Sortition

In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lottery, selection by lot, allotment, demarchy, stochocracy, aleatoric democracy, democratic lottery, and lottocracy) is the selection of public officials or jurors using a random representative sample.[1][2] This minimizes factionalism, since those selected to serve can prioritize studying the policy decisions in front of them instead of campaigning.[3] 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.[4][5]

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Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common-law systems. What has changed in recent years is the increased number of citizen groups with political advisory power,[6][7] and the growing calls for making sortition more consequential than elections, as it was in Athens, Venice and Florence.[8][9][10][11]