How It Works

All Election By Jury advocates agree on the broad strokes of the idea:

• A randomly selected group of jurors are tasked with electing someone into office

• The jury hears arguments and evidence presented by all candidates

• After deliberation, each juror casts their vote

• These votes are tallied in order to determine the winner of the election

Once you go beyond these broad strokes, there are numerous tactical decisions with compelling arguments on both sides, and no authoritative right answer. 

For example, regarding the jury itself:

• How big should the jury be?

• For larger elections, should there be multiple juries, one per county? Or a single large centralized jury?

• Should jury service be mandatory, or voluntary? 

  • If mandatory, to what extent should exceptions be made for those with demanding life circumstances?

• Should jurors be paid? 

  • If so, should it be a nominal amount? An extravagant amount? Proportional to their current income?

Regarding the candidates who are featured in the jury-election:

• Should each jury-election feature only 2 candidates? Or should they allow a small number of candidates, all of whom are allowed to call upon witnesses and cross-examine one another?

• How should the shortlist of candidates be chosen? 

  • Should there be a playoff-like system of preliminary-jury-elections, leading up to the ultimate jury election?

  • Or should we use some completely different system, like mass voting, to choose the candidates?

Regarding the courtroom procedures:

• Should a time limit be imposed on candidates?

  • If so, how restrictive or generous should the time limit be?

• Should all candidates and their witnesses be sworn in, and face perjury charges for lying, like in existing courtrooms?

• Should any existing courtroom prohibitions, like rules against "hearsay" or "badgering the witness", be applied to election-juries as well?

• Should there be any prohibitions on what the candidates and their witnesses are allowed to say? Or on candidates/witnesses refusing to answer questions during cross-examination?

• Should jurors be allowed to pose questions to the candidates or their witnesses?

• What should be done if a juror or candidate acts in a disruptive manner, like interrupting others?

• What should be done if a juror is flagrantly not paying attention to the proceedings?

• Who should be in charge of enforcing the above rules?

Regarding the jury deliberations:

• Should jurors be required to discuss and confer with one another, before casting their vote?

  • If so, should the jurors' discussion be moderated in any way, to prevent a few factions from hogging the stage and harassing others? And who would be in charge of this moderation?

• How exactly should the jurors' votes be tabulated? 

  • The existing first-past-the-post system? 

  • Or more modern alternatives, like score voting, approval voting, ranked choice voting, etc?

As you can see, there are still many open questions left to be answered! Even within the Election By Jury community, we still have lively debates around the above topics. Which shouldn't be surprising. No two democracies around the world are alike, but that doesn't shake our belief in Democracy.

Besides, it is fun and exciting to debate the above. I imagine this is how America's founding fathers must have felt when they were creating a brand new system of governance from the ground up. How do you think a Jury-Election should be structured? Join our discord and tell us!