A Lottocratic Political System Would Empower Ordinary People

The lottocratic system, as I introduce and defend it, would replace a generalist, elected legislature like Congress with a network of twenty single-issue, lottery-selected legislatures, each tasked with focusing on a particular policy area. Each of these single-issue legislatures would be made up of 450 people chosen at random, serving three-year terms, with terms staggered so that 150 new people would start each year.

Those serving would be paid a significant amount. There would be legal protections for those serving, and efforts would be made to accommodate work and family life. There would be learning, deliberation, and community consultation phases, and these legislatures would be empowered to enact policy directly. In the book, I go through all of these elements in detail and consider many natural concerns about such a system.

One of the central arguments on behalf of lottocracy is that capture of those selected by lottery would be more difficult, and that elites would be less capable of controlling political outcomes. Random selection prevents undue influence in the selection of representatives, eliminating the need for people to raise tons of money and reducing the importance of how one is portrayed in the elite-controlled media. Regular random rotation in relatively short terms would make buying people off more expensive and less beneficial, particularly compared to buying off a senator who might be in office for thirty-plus years. The significant pay to those randomly selected would be conditional on them not taking payments from others, and indeed there could be rewards offered to those reporting attempts at bribery and corruption.

Another central argument in support of lottocracy is that it would reflect a genuine commitment to political equality, where literally everyone would have an equal chance of being chosen as a political representative. Currently, Congress is much, much wealthier (and more male, and whiter) than the rest of the country. More than half of Congress has a net worth over $1 million. More than 50 percent have professional backgrounds as lawyers or businesspeople. Almost half of senators and 20 percent of members of the House of Representatives attended Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Georgetown for an undergraduate or law degree.

This elite distortion dramatically affects what those in political power are likely to know, what they care about, what problems they will be attentive to, and how committed they are to genuinely addressing those problems. With random selection, we would have an entirely different community of people in political power, and they would be a genuine microcosm of the broader community.

New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani began his victory speech by saying, “For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: these are not the hands that have been allowed to hold power.” Under lottocracy, and unlike with elections, these are the very hands that would hold power.