Common Lot Productions creates print and video materials which educate about, and advocate for, the next step for democracy. Policy-making bodies, from local to national, should be composed of willing and able citizens proportional to the population they serve. The use of sortition, random selection, is the only way to insure this.

In order for Common Lot Productions to continue, we must generate an income. Please purchase or donate.

Many respond “Great idea, but it’ll never happen”. Please help prove them wrong.
Click here to see our list of products and services.

N.B. We seek to support ourselves and others through this enterprise. We are not a ‘non-profit’; there are no tax deductions.

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Common Lot Sortitionist | Leave a comment

Common Lot videos

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Common Lot Sortitionist

“The Common Lot” Part One (40:15)

“The Common Lot” Part Two (40:20)

4-minute short

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Bugling for Sortitional Selection

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Common Lot Sortitionist
From ship to baseball to random selection!
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Videos from Common Lot Productions

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Common Lot Sortitionist

“Making Democracy Real — The argument for sortition (3 minutes)

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NY Times begins to notice

Posted on December 23, 2020 by Common Lot Sortitionist

There is no mention of sortition in this NY Times opinion piece. And it only muses on what a more equitably representative legislature might accomplish.But … it is still another little step into the mainstream.

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Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Common Lot Sortitionist

This newly published document from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development draws on data collected from nearly 300 case studies from 1986 to October 2019. Its 200 pages cover randomly selected Citizens’ Assemblies, Juries, Panels and ‘other representative deliberative processes …. This research and proposals for action fit within the organisation’s work on innovative citizen participation, which seeks to guide countries on the implementation … of the 2017 Recommendation on Open Government.’

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“Politics Without Politicians”

Posted on February 22, 2020 by Common Lot Sortitionist

Yale professor Helene Landemore outlines her thoughts on ‘Open Democracy’.

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Why Randomly Selected Politicians Would Improve Democracy

Posted on April 24, 2018 by Common Lot Sortitionist

“Their counterintuitive conclusion is that randomly selected legislators always improves the performance of parliament and that it is possible to determine the optimal number of independents at which a parliament works best.”

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423251/why-randomly-selected-politicians-would-improve-democracy/

From the MIT Technology Review of March 9, 2011

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Random Takes Baltimore – ebook free

Posted on April 12, 2018 by Common Lot Sortitionist

“FREE as e-book from 12-16 April, Thursday through Monday

RANDOM TAKES BALTIMORE

Hoping to be a forerunner of the Next Step For Democracy, Baltimore chooses its city council by random selection. The fifteen new council members must struggle to maintain this Peoples Platform against an uprising from the former powers-that-be.

This is a municipal version of my “Random Takes Off” screenplay.

See https://buff.ly/2GHCSo8 for all my work on this topic in different genres and formats.”

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Random Takes Off – e-book free

Posted on April 7, 2018 by Common Lot Sortitionist

From Sunday through Thursday, 8-12 April 2018, available as a FREE e-book .

RANDOM TAKES OFF screenplay

What if we selected legislative representatives the way we choose juries?

In this screenplay two ‘ordinary citizens’ enter the first randomly chosen Citizen Legislature. They face bribery attempts. A smear campaign. High-tech fright machines. An outright coup.

This comedic political action drama poses the question “How can we make democracy real?”

See my Author’s Page for my work on this topic in different genres and formats.

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Random Takes Baltimore (screenplay)

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Common Lot Sortitionist

RANDOM TAKES BALTIMORE imagines a political option for the not-too-distant future.

Hoping to be a forerunner in assuring that its city council be as statistically representative of the population as possible, the city of Baltimore chooses its city council by random selection.

The fifteen new council members — untested ‘ordinary citizens’ — must struggle to maintain this Peoples Platform against an uprising from the former powers-that-be. The council faces bribery attempts, a smear campaign and eventually a full-blown attempt to cut the city off from the rest of the state.

“Random Takes Baltimore” is a municipal version of my “Random Takes Off” (which considers using sortition on a national level).  Although spiced by elements of absurdist satire and purposefully stretched to the limits of plausibility, the fact is that the use of sortition is more likely to spread in a piecemeal and local progression as provoked in “Random Takes Baltimore”

See https://buff.ly/2FSHFP1 for my publications about sortition in several different genres and formats.

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