AKRON, Ohio -- Democracy is in crisis. The warnings come almost daily from newspapers and cable shows. And not just the pundits are worried. An NPR/Ipsos poll from the beginning of this year found that 64% of Americans believe that U.S. democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.”
Should we be surprised? To be sure, our democratic backslide has had some shocking lurches. The biggest example of which is the Big Lie — that is, our former president’s continued insistence that the 2020 election was stolen. (It was not.) Still, beneath the surface, there’s been steady friction. For decades, politicians in this country have relentlessly pushed to slip their power free from their voters’ preferences.
We’re feeling that push now in Ohio. Here, the GOP majority on the Ohio Redistricting Commission has passed a series of gerrymandered maps, trying to give Republican candidates an unfair advantage in the Statehouse. The irony is that, even under fair maps, the GOP. would probably win the most seats in the legislature. But they are seemingly so dedicated to the undemocratic ideal of winning power without votes that they insist on doing things the hard way — creating maps that the Ohio Supreme Court has repeatedly held are unconstitutional, and, in the process, throwing Ohio’s elections into potential chaos.
Meanwhile, democracy’s defenders don’t seem to be up to the task. At the national level, Democrats touted two big voting rights bills that were supposed to protect us against manipulated elections. Both bills stalled in the Senate. And, despite the high stakes, there do not seem to be any other major efforts in the offing to protect our democracy.
We can do better. But, first, we must be more ambitious. We should be dissatisfied with small changes around the edges of our election laws — such as those proposed by the Democrats in Washington, D.C. — and instead, try to find new ways of making our government more representative of, and responsive to, its citizens.
We can look abroad for examples. Across the globe, multiple countries and communities have experimented with bringing regular folks into democratic decision-making through lotteries — similar to how juries are selected for trials. (This selection process is also called “sortition.”) These randomly selected citizen assemblies are given varying levels of responsibility for passing new laws.
For example, Ireland established a Citizens’ Assembly — consisting of 99 members picked at random, plus a chairperson — to make recommendations regarding some of that country’s most vexing political issues. Most famously, the assembly recommended passage of a constitutional amendment permitting abortion, which was adopted in a referendum. As a result, the country resolved a heated political dispute through a democratic process that involved more than just the politicians.
There are similar examples of governments convening citizens’ assemblies in Belgium, France, Canada, Iceland, and elsewhere to weigh in on pressing political questions.
Here in Ohio, we could follow these countries’ lead and bring regular citizens into our legislative process. A new initiative petition — available at www.citizensjuryohio.com — would do just that.
The petition proposes a state constitutional amendment that would allow state legislators to convene citizens’ juries to consider passing new laws. These citizens’ juries would consist of 150 people selected at random. After the jury was convened, legislators would make their case to the jury, with equal time given to those who are for and against the bill being considered. The citizens’ jury would then deliberate and vote. If 60% of the jurors approved the bill, it would become law; if not, the bill would fail.
This proposal would be especially appropriate in Ohio, where our politicians are pushing hardest against democracy. We need democracy to push back. That means proposing solutions, like citizens’ juries, that give people a greater say in the laws that govern them. After all, if we want people to fight for democracy, we should offer them more than just different politicians. We should offer them more democracy.
Lucas M. Blower is an attorney from Akron and a precinct committeeperson for the Summit County Democratic Central Committee.
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