Sortition

Overview

Sortition is a method of making moral decisions by choosing a random group of community members to vote on an issue, like juries in court cases.

Application

In a Direct Democracy system sortition allows for the community to self govern small scale disputes without a centralized state.

The randomly selected jury could be rewarded for their participation.

A majority rules decision could be implemented which in cases of unclear guilt could find a middle ground solution.

Voting methods such as ranked choice voting can be used, any person can present a solution and the jury rank the solutions according to preference.

Appeals

To reduce strain on more experienced community members, there could be levels of sortition implemented.

For example the first level might take a random jury of 7 members of the community to choose a solution, if either of the parties believes an incorrect decision was made they could raise it to a random jury of 11 members, all of which have been active for 3+ years. If the party still feels the decision is incorrect they could raise it to a final jury of 31 'elders', people who have attained a level of respect in the community, eg by being active for 15+years.

Each of the appeals might come at a cost, perhaps only paid if the appeal is rejected, to reduce frivolous appeals.

Alternatively frivolous appeals could be policed by the same issue raising process that is used for other disputes, the issue being 'abusing the appeal process', which would then go through the same judgement process and carry it's own solution/penalty.

New case

An old case could be re-visited at any time if new evidence presents itself. This could be similar to the appeal process, where abuse of the system results in penalties.