Sortition is random selection by lot from the entire population rather than by elections to appoint positions, for instance for parliament. Democracy is generally traced back to ancient Athens, but the democracy the Athenians practised was very different from modern representative democracy, with the default instead being use of sortition, believed to represent rule by the people, in preference to elections which were seen as tending towards oligarchy.
There are many advantages to sortition. Parliamentarians determined by sortition would be representative of the population demographically, so not overwhelmingly rich, white, middle-aged males disproportionately from the legal profession who see parliament as a pit stop on the way to a lucrative career lobbying or sitting on corporate boards. A parliament determined by sortition is the most demographically representative a parliament can get. Everyone has an equal chance so generally the people selected will reflect the population.
The limitations of partisan preselection processes is inherently not an issue in sortition. The outcomes in most elections are not particularly competitive, being reduced to choosing between two, or occasionally three, people preselected by parties, and in a safe seat the effective choice is eliminated altogether. For most voters elections are a largely empty ritual as they are not swing voters in marginal seats so there is little incentive to engage as their vote won’t matter. The determination of who the parliamentarians will be is largely predetermined by the internal party preselection processes. The preselection system produces parliamentarians who are mostly seen as a political class who have worked a corrupt, factional party system to get their position, separate and removed from the average voter.
The corruption of money in politics is much less of an issue when using sortition. Firstly because of bypassing of the partisan preselection process and partisan election, the latter especially coming with significant costs to compete in that are not a factor in sortition. A parliamentarian selected by sortition owes no factional loyalty or favours to donors, and has no need to try to accumulate any for the next election. While of course the possibility of brown paper bags under the table can never be eliminated (though of course a national ICAC would help) the structure of sortition isn’t susceptible to the systemic corruption of money in politics that we currently suffer under.
The use of sortition would reinvigorate parliament. There is research that suggests a proportion of parliament being randomly selected would be beneficial to the functioning of parliament. It would almost certainly mean the institution was not generally dominated by the executive. If a proportion of the lower house this would essentially guarantee a hung parliament with a significant crossbench of sortition parliamentarians meaning the chamber wouldn't be controlled by any one party and functioning as a rubber stamp for the executive.
If people when considering their vote have to keep in mind that perhaps they personally may be called upon to address the issues as a parliamentarian they are more likely to engage with the issues. Even if they assume they won't be called they will know that those selected by sortition will likely be like them rather than from the political class. The distance between the governed and the governing would be bridged. Parliamentarians will become more relatable, in that a significant proportion of them would be ordinary people like other voters, and overall would be more actually representative of the electorate being significantly more diverse, drawing people from all walks of life beyond the narrowed horizons of most professional politicians.
One possible way to seek to address the disturbing levels of disengagement and rage evident in our democracy would be allocating some parliamentary representatives via sortition, the random allocation of positions from among the eligible so all have an equal chance of holding a seat. The disengaged could be represented proportionally in parliament by representatives chosen at random from the population, like jury duty, probably for shorter terms than for other parliamentarians, possibly annually.
Opting for sortition could also be offered to voters on the ballot, at the top of the ticket so also somewhat addressing donkey voting, as an essentially none-of-the-above (below) option. This would provide a mechanism for the enraged to express their frustration that didn’t result in the election of faux anti-Establishment populist parliamentarians, but still definitely had an effect.
Under this model it would also importantly provide an incentive for political parties to try to engage the disengaged, something that they mostly don't have at the moment as demonstrated by the almost total lack of effort to do so. This sortition process would give political parties as incredibly powerful, virtually unregulated institutions in our democracy, some competition. Political parties would have an incentive to engage all potential voters so as to reduce the proportion of parliamentary seats determined by sortition and therefore not under the control of the party whips.
Restoring the legitimacy of our democracy requires that something be done to engage, or at the very least take into account, the huge and growing proportion of citizens completely disengaged from the democratic process and completely unrepresented in parliament. A random selection of representatives are likely to reflect the general will of the electorate at least as well as the representatives from political parties dominated by an elite and beholden to wealthy donors.
Some expression of the protest, active or passive, that this disengagement demonstrates, should be reflected in the election results. Expecting the disengaged themselves to fix the system clearly won't work, so an incentive has to be created for the political class to engage them, or at least take them into account, and a sortition process like this could be such an incentive.
Sortition while not a panacea would be a significant step in the direction of addressing the growing alienation of the electorate from the political process. It is radical approach seeking to limit the power of political parties as institutions largely seen to be out of touch, and to demonstrably seek to include ordinary people in the political process and a willingness to give them power.
A democracy without legitimacy is not really a democracy at all.
