Thursday October 22, 2026 Presentation on Sortition/Citizen Assemblies at the Bosler Memorial Library (1-2:30 pm) and Cumberland County Historical Society (6-7:30pm)
Presentation by John Gastil, the Distinguished Professor; Communication Arts and Sciences, Public Policy, and Political Science at Penn State and Senior Scholar, McCourtney Institute for Democracy, and co-editor of the book Legislation by Lot. John will be speaking on the promise of Sortition/Citizen Juries as a solution to many of the problems in our politics.
The talk is sponsored by the J. Sherwood McGinnis War, Peace, and Justice Project and the Carlisle Quaker Meeting.
Additional resources
Simple introduction to sortition – talk by “Spectacles.”
Video recommended by John Gastil
See John Gastil’s books on Amazon and talks on Youtube.
There has been an explosion of material on the web about sortition. Favorite authors are Helene Landemore at Yale and Terry Bouricius, a former politician from Vermont. Again, Youtubes, books and articles.
Favorite sortition website is Yoram Gat’s Equality by Lot.
“Is not representation an essential and fundamental departure from democracy? Is not every representative government in the universe an aristocracy? Representation and democracy are a contradiction in terms.”
John Adams
Goodbye Politicians. Hello Democracy.
