Democracy Without Politicians with Terry Bouricius

What if elections, which are a cornerstone of democracy, don't produce the outcomes that we desire?

Terry Bouricius spent twenty years as an elected lawmaker in Vermont - city council, then the statehouse - followed by a decade at FairVote trying to fix elections with better elections. Then he quit. Since 2005 he has been the leading American theorist of sortition: choosing the people who govern by lottery, the way we choose juries — a practice rooted in Athenian democracy.

This is a conversation about an idea most Americans have never encountered, and about why it keeps working wherever it is tried. Ireland used randomly selected conventions to settle same-sex marriage and abortion. Melbourne handed a stuck capital budget to 43 taxpayers chosen by lot. Connecticut is running the first statewide citizens' assembly in the United States right now. And the argument underneath it all is disarmingly simple: you can't lobby a jury. No donors, no primary, no next race, no way to know six months out whose ear to buy.

Recorded before the 2026 midterms. We close on elections themselves - and Bouricius, an election-reform veteran who says the machinery is sound, names the thing that actually frightens him.

Guest:

Terry Bouricius - former Vermont legislator, ten years at FairVote, originator of the multi-body sortition model, co-founder of Democracy R&D. His book "Democracy Without Politicians: Government By the People" (Routledge, 2026) is open access - the full text is free.

https://democracywithoutpoliticians.org

https://terrybouricius.com

https://democracycreative.substack.com

https://sortitionusa.org

https://democracyrd.org

Chapters:

0:00 Cold open: what if jurors were elected?

0:46 Intro

2:23 Twenty years in office, and why he left

5:40 What sortition actually is

5:53 Athens: a democracy because of the lottery, not the assembly

7:59 British Columbia, 2004: "This is what democracy looks like"

11:10 The 200-year project and the peeling strategy

14:19 Why left and right both nod along

15:43 You can't lobby a jury

17:25 More likely to die in office than lose an election

17:37 Plato's ship vs. the wisdom of crowds

18:21 A thousand assemblies, and Macron's climate convention

19:57 Connecticut: the first statewide assembly in the US

20:43 Aristotle: the lot is democratic, election is oligarchic

22:10 What Madison and the founders actually feared

26:09 "How many of us are renters?"

28:35 Cognitive diversity: why the room beats the experts

33:27 Designing against bribery and capture

35:09 Binding or advisory? Melbourne's budget

37:58 Ireland: marriage and abortion, decided by lot

40:00 The abuse survivor and the gay juror

44:47 Tribal loyalty: Obamacare, tariffs, switching sides

50:22 Groupthink, facilitators, and multi-body sortition

52:35 Agenda-setting: the wall, the bridges, the climate

55:33 AI: the bubble, and who gets to decide

58:29 Could AI agents replace a citizens' assembly?

62:09 What to do Monday: Sortition USA

63:10 The book is free

67:02 Are the midterms secure?

67:54 The refusal to seat: "a real possibility within two months"

69:59 Outro and links

Dave Troy Presents is published by America 2.0. https://america2.news