Imagine a Democracy Built on Lotteries, Not Elections

We Already Randomly Select Our Juries. Why Not Do the Same With Congress?

Legislatures, and the elections that populate them, have so many flaws that we might be better off picking our representatives at random.

Before you chuckle, first consider how far we’ve come since April 1776, when John Adams wrote that a legislature should be “in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large.”

Over the past couple of centuries, our definition of “the people” has expanded to include people without property, former slaves, and women, but the ideal of legislative bodies that actually resemble the citizenry still eludes us. Congress …