Election by Jury: A Neglected Target for Effective Altruism

In 2017, Aaron Hamlin wrote a compelling article arguing that voting methods were an open target for effective altruism. He was right. As an original co-founder of the Center for Election Science, I've spent two decades working to advance better voting methods like approval voting. The movement has had remarkable success, with adoption in several cities and growing awareness of alternative voting methods.

But in the past year, I've shifted my focus to what I believe is an even more neglected and impactful reform: Election by Jury (EBJ). Through electionbyjury.org, I'm working to advance this transformative approach to democratic decision-making. While voting method reform remains crucial, I've come to realize that no other democratic reform can match EBJ's potential impact-to-cost ratio, particularly when we consider existential risks facing humanity.

The Existential Stakes

We live in an era of unprecedented technological advancement, bringing both extraordinary opportunities and catastrophic risks. Advanced artificial intelligence could either solve humanity's greatest challenges or lead to our extinction. Synthetic biology could cure diseases or create engineered pandemics. Our response to climate change could determine the habitability of Earth for centuries.

These aren't just policy challenges – they're tests of our collective decision-making capacity. And we're failing these tests spectacularly:

• Only 3% of Americans rank AI risk as a critical threat, despite warnings from leading AI researchers
• 41% of voters oppose increased pandemic preparedness funding
• Carbon pricing repeatedly fails at the ballot box, even in environmentally conscious states

The problem isn't just voter ignorance – it's structural impossibility.

The Mathematical Impossibility of Mass Democracy

Here's the stark reality: it's practically impossible to educate society at scale. Consider the math:

If it takes 20 hours of careful expert presentations and deliberation to truly understand a complex policy issue (a conservative estimate for topics like AI governance or pandemic preparedness), that's 4 billion person-hours for a nation of 200 million voters. For comparison, the entire Manhattan Project required about 24 million person-hours.

Even if we could somehow create this time, we face three insurmountable barriers:

1. Attention Economics: In an attention economy dominated by social media algorithms optimized for engagement, how do we compete with engineered dopamine triggers?
2. Epistemic Bubbles: You can't force vaccine skeptics to sit through immunology lectures or make climate change deniers engage with climate models they've been primed to distrust.
3. Adversarial Forces: Concentrated wealth and hostile state actors have enormous resources and incentives to spread misinformation. AI-powered microtargeting will only amplify this problem.

The Statistical Solution

This is where the power of random sampling enters the picture. A mathematically remarkable fact: you only need about 40 randomly selected people to achieve statistically reliable decisions that match what the entire population would choose if they went through the same deliberative process. The math behind this is rigorous and well-established – you can find a detailed analysis here.

This isn't about estimating exact percentages - it's about the probability that the jury makes the same choice the whole population would make under identical conditions. With just 40 people, we get remarkably high confidence that the jury's decision matches what would have happened if everyone had participated in the same thorough deliberation process.

The main reason to increase jury size beyond these basic statistical requirements is to increase resistance to tampering through bribery or coercion. Even here, the math works in our favor – with secret ballots and reasonable jury sizes (200-400 people), the cost of reliably bribing enough jurors becomes prohibitive.

Philosophical Foundations

EBJ addresses a fundamental tension in democratic theory between epistocracy (rule by the knowledgeable) and democracy (rule by the people). Pure epistocracy risks capture by elite interests, while pure democracy risks catastrophic decisions from an uninformed public.

EBJ offers a unique synthesis:

• Democratic legitimacy through random selection (pure lottery, no qualification tests)
• Epistocratic benefits through structured deliberation
• Protection against capture through:
  • Random selection (can't buy your way in)
  • Secret ballots (can't verify bribes)
  • Large enough juries to make tampering prohibitively expensive

Expected Value Analysis

Let's consider the expected value of EBJ implementation:

Costs:

• Research & polling: $25,000-100,000
• Pilot programs: $100,000-500,000
• First city implementation: $1-2M
• Scaling to major cities: $5-10M per city

Benefits (conservative estimates):

• 10% improvement in policy decisions
• Applied to city budgets ($100M-1B+)
• Yearly benefit: $10M-100M per city
• Net Present Value (30 years, 5% discount rate): $150M-1.5B per city

Even with extremely conservative assumptions about decision quality improvement, the return on investment is extraordinary. This doesn't account for existential risk reduction, which could multiply these benefits by orders of magnitude.

Addressing Key Objections

When presenting Election by Jury to policymakers and the public, several important concerns typically arise. The most common is that people simply won't accept such a dramatic change to our democratic process. But we already have compelling evidence to the contrary from Oregon's Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR), a groundbreaking program developed by Healthy Democracy in 2009.

The Oregon CIR demonstrates the public's willingness to trust their fellow citizens' judgment when given the opportunity to deeply study an issue. Under this program, randomly selected panels of Oregon voters spend multiple days studying ballot measures, hearing from experts and advocates on all sides, and producing clear, factual statements for the voters' pamphlet. These citizen panels have consistently produced high-quality analyses that voters find helpful and trustworthy.

The program remains on the books today and has been extensively studied by academics, who have documented its effectiveness. The only thing preventing its continued operation is funding – it requires a modest $100,000 to $150,000 per election cycle to run. This relatively small cost for demonstrated benefits suggests that more ambitious reforms could also be surprisingly cost-effective.

Critics sometimes argue that Election by Jury is simply too radical a departure from current practice. But it's worth remembering that we already trust randomly selected citizens with matters of life and death in criminal trials. Moreover, what we consider "normal" democracy today would have seemed radical just a few centuries ago. The secret ballot, universal suffrage, and direct election of senators were all once considered dangerous innovations.

A more sophisticated objection concerns capture by special interests. Couldn't wealthy individuals or organizations simply bribe or coerce enough jurors to swing the outcome? This is where the mathematics of random selection and jury size becomes crucial. With secret ballots and sufficiently large juries (200-400 people), the cost and risk of trying to influence enough jurors becomes prohibitively high. Multiple layers of protection – random selection, secret ballots, and careful size requirements – work together to create a remarkably tamper-resistant system.

Finally, some worry about the quality of deliberation. Can ordinary citizens really understand complex policy issues? The evidence from citizens' assemblies and Oregon's CIR is clear: when given time, resources, and a structured environment for learning, citizens are remarkably capable of understanding and making informed decisions about complex issues. The key is creating conditions that support genuine learning and reflection – exactly what Election by Jury is designed to do.

How Would It Work? Implementation Pathways

Election by Jury isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. There are multiple ways to implement it, from gentle advisory roles to fully binding decisions. Let's explore the two main applications: ballot initiatives and candidate elections.

For Ballot Initiatives: Building on Proven Success

The Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) provides a proven model for ballot measure deliberation. Established in 2011 through the work of Healthy Democracy, the program randomly selects panels of voters to study ballot measures and provide recommendations to their fellow citizens.

The CIR remains law in Oregon today and requires only modest funding - about $100,000 to $150,000 per election cycle - to operate. We could build on this success in several ways:

1. Advisory Role with Enhanced Visibility
   • Place jury recommendations directly on the ballot itself, not just in the voter guide
   • This "nudge" approach preserves voter autonomy while maximizing the influence of deliberative judgment
   • Could be implemented without changing existing voting rights
2. Hybrid Binding/Advisory System
   • Require measures to pass both the public vote AND a citizen jury
   • This provides a check against misleading campaign tactics while maintaining broad participation
3. Fully Binding Decisions
   • Have citizen juries make final decisions on ballot measures
   • Could start with specific types of measures (e.g., technical policy changes) before expanding

For Candidate Elections: A New Approach

Electing candidates through citizen juries would work differently from ballot measures, using a structured deliberative process:

1. Advisory Implementation
   • Citizen juries interview candidates and make public recommendations
   • Their detailed findings appear in voter guides and on ballots
   • Voters retain final decision but benefit from thorough jury evaluation
2. Hybrid Systems
   • Add new "jury-elected seats" to existing councils or legislatures
   • For example, a 9-member city council could add 2 jury-elected seats
   • This creates a controlled experiment in jury selection while maintaining voter-elected majority
   • Allows direct comparison of the two selection methods
3. Full Implementation
   • Citizen juries make binding decisions for specific offices
   • Could start with offices requiring technical expertise
   • Uses the structured time-bank system for candidate presentations

The hybrid approach is particularly promising as a stepping stone. By adding jury-elected seats while preserving existing voter-elected positions, we can:

• Demonstrate the effectiveness of jury selection
• Build public confidence gradually
• Allow direct comparison of decision-making quality
• Maintain democratic legitimacy during transition

Each of these approaches can be tested at various scales - from small municipalities to state-level implementation. The U.S. system of local control and ballot initiatives provides an ideal laboratory for proving these concepts incrementally.

A Call to Action

The effective altruism community has demonstrated remarkable wisdom in identifying neglected opportunities for massive impact. Election by Jury represents exactly such an opportunity – a chance to fundamentally improve humanity's decision-making capacity at a time when good decisions have never been more crucial.

This isn't just another reform – it's potentially the most important reform possible. The challenges humanity faces in the coming decades will require unprecedented wisdom in our collective decisions. EBJ offers a mathematically rigorous, philosophically sound, and practically implementable path to achieving that wisdom.

The question now is: Are you ready to help create a democracy that can tackle humanity's greatest challenges? Visit electionbyjury.org to learn more and get involved. The future is watching.

Extending the Power of Secret Ballots

While the core EBJ proposal focuses on jury selection and deliberation, there's an intriguing possibility for further reducing corruption: extending secret ballots to elected officials themselves. Just as we protect jury independence through secret voting, we could require officials elected by EBJ to cast their legislative votes in secret.

This would make quid pro quo schemes practically impossible – how can you verify someone voted as promised if their vote is truly secret? Combined with EBJ's resistance to initial electoral corruption, this could create a system remarkably resistant to undue influence.

This extension remains speculative and would require careful consideration. But it demonstrates how the principles that make EBJ powerful – statistical representation, mandatory participation, and secret balloting – could potentially be extended to create even more robust democratic institutions.

Clay Shentrup was an original co-founder of the Center for Election Science and is a long-time advocate for democratic reform.