The selection

Imagine that we have just reached the registration deadline for our democratic lottery. We want to recruit 50 people to participate in a citizens’ assembly and we find that 225 people have registered interest in being an assembly member.

Selection is the word we use to describe the process by which we choose 50 people out of those 225 people to be our assembly members.

Sortition Foundation uses bespoke open source software to do the selection in a special way:

1. It is random – a person is selected using random chance.
2. It is stratified – we use targets to ensure that the 50 people we select are representative of the population from which they are drawn.
3. It is fair – everyone in the pool has as much chance as possible to be selected, given the existence of targets.

Targets - what and why

What are targets? Why do we use them?

Targets - when and how

When and how do we set targets?

Selection algorithms

What are selection algorithms?