Page 119 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

Step 5: Do you need Civic Lottery? Who should be involved? There is a role for active voices in different types of engagement, especially when exploring the exact nature of a problem. There is also a role for a representative sample of the community to contribute to decision making. Think about both from the outset. Governments inevitably hear from the noisiest voices who insist on being heard. In contrast, society trusts 12 randomly-selected people on a criminal jury to assess evidence, discuss their views and reach a consensus recommendation because random selection generates “people like us”. Random-selection is a process that gets beyond the enraged and the articulate because the public would perceive them as having a bias. Random-selection may not suit every form of engagement or decision making. It fundamentally improves the community’s trust in a decision, but sometimes what makes a decision difficult is not the trust in the decision but reaching agreement between two parties. This means that you should consider whether or not you require a representative sample of the community to either get beyond regular voices or contribute a different type of legitimacy or authenticity to a decision. Some alternatives to random selection include: • Blended - Curating a blended group by inviting key stakeholders from both sides of a decision into the process by giving them a set number of places within the group of participants. • Self-selected - allowing participants to openly self-select their participation, this improves the inclusivity of a process but increases the risk of having more active voices in the room. 117