Background: I have maintained a prediction calendar since 2010 and will be creating markets of the (least ridiculous) predictions in there. Most of these will not be my own predictions. I will not be betting in any of the markets I create.

Resolution details

This market will resolve as YES if before 2060, elections within the European Union or United States are replaced by sortition. It does not matter at which administrative division (e.g. municipal, state, national) sortition is introduced, as long as the chosen members serve a governing role and as long as their selection is currently (August 2023) done via elections. If no example of such a change of process can be demonstrated within the European Union or United States, the market resolves NO.

Some edge cases:

• If sortition is introduced temporarily (e.g. as part of an experiment), the market will still resolve YES, regardless of whether the process change is rolled back at a later stage.

• If sortition is planned, but never truly implemented, this will not prompt a YES resolution.

• If governments decide to set up advisory councils or other committee forms that are constructed using a sortition process, this would not count as the selected individuals being government officials, meaning that sortition is not used to select for an administrative division. Such an example would therefore not prompt a YES resolution.

Background reasoning

Amidst growing concerns about contemporary liberal democracies, sortition has repeatedly been offered as a way to resolve polarisation and factionalism among representatives, while simultaneously decreasing the gap between government and governed. As democracies attempt to adapt to the 21st century, it is likely some will experiment with new forms of choosing their officials.

Further reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Elections-David-Van-Reybrouck/dp/1847924220

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/opinion/elections-democracy.html