As Aristotle put it: ‘It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot, and as oligarchic when they are filled by election’ (Aristotle, Politics IV. 9, 1294b8).
We are now all aware of how our electoral systems have been manipulated by harvesting our digital footprints and preferences. Targeted messages, images and false information are then deployed to support or denigrate particular candidates, with no verification and no disclosure of the source of the posts.
Whatever it’s called legally, this is electoral fraud and we need to stop it. Here’s my suggestion – let’s adopt sortition (selection by lot) together with what I will call ‘filtration’ as our preferred electoral system.
