Colin Sheridan: Ah sure don't mind elections — let's choose who runs the country at random
Picture the scene: You get an email saying that, just like jury duty, you've been selected at random for high office and are duly sworn in as a minister or whatever. Now get on with running the country. Picture: iStock
In the spirit of the broken clock that tells the right time twice a day, social media — for all the toxic hate it brews and the doom-scrolling it inspires — occasionally coughs up a morsel of clarity so pure you could bottle it and sell it as cognitive holy water.
The often fine, sometimes inspired Subway Takes series produced one such moment recently, when actor Riz Ahmed sat in a New York subway car and announced, completely straight-faced:
Traffic didn’t just stop. It reversed, parked on the footpath, and asked itself existential questions.
Before we dive further into this utopian fever dream, it’s important to understand the concept of the Subway Takes.
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Host Kareem Rahma rides around on an actual New York subway — an underworld perfectly suited to this absurd conceit — and asks a rotating cast of celebrities and assorted mortals for their “most controversial take”.
For the boomers reading, a “take” is just an opinion with notions. These takes range from the ridiculous to the admittedly mundane. Cate Blanchett, for instance, once declared “leaf blowers should be eradicated from the face of the earth”. Comedian Hasan Minhaj said adults should be exempt from being publicly serenaded with Happy Birthday in restaurants.
You get the picture.
Host Rahma listens, nods, and responds with either “100% agree”, “100% disagree”, or a facial expression suggesting he regrets ever leaving the house.
So when Ahmed delivered his political Molotov cocktail, Rahma laughed in disbelief.
“So … no more voting?” he asked, as though Ahmed had proposed banning shoes.
“No one votes that much anyway,” Ahmed shrugged, before explaining if public service functioned like jury duty, most people chosen would show up, try to do a decent job, and then sprint back to their actual lives as soon as possible.
The man may be onto something. Sortition — the academic term for picking leaders by lottery — isn’t new. The ancient Athenians used it extensively, blissfully unaware they were thousands of years ahead of a debate currently unfolding on TikTok. They felt elections were unfair because they favoured the wealthy and power-hungry. (Déjà vu, anyone?)
Instead, they pulled names from a pot and declared: “Congratulations, Demetrius, you’re now responsible for the city drains. Try to keep the smell down.”
And funnily enough, the system worked.
The people chosen behaved themselves, mostly because they knew they’d be returning to the olive market on Tuesday and couldn’t afford to make enemies.
Compare that to what we endure today: Politics powered not by public service but by personal animus, ambition, dynasties, feuds, and the occasional cousin who has somehow been “advising” a minister since the age of 14.
You’d get more transparency at a séance.
Naturally, politicians would be horrified at the suggestion that leadership should be left to chance.
Most insist they’ve “dedicated their lives to public office”, as though it were a years-long hunger strike carried out purely for our benefit.
Ego, they’ll tell you, never entered it. Nor power. Nor the salary. No, no — they simply heard the call to serve, like Jedi knights in pinstripes.
But imagine — just imagine — that sortition became real. Suddenly politics wouldn’t be a career and a pension but an unexpected life event, like jury service or finding out you have a brother you never knew about in London. It’s a shock to the system, sure, but some good may come of it.
Some lucky citizens would win by losing, if you follow. And imagine how that would change the current political landscape of triumphalist self-interest? There would be none of the nonsense of humble candidates being carried shoulder-high by an unfit team of Teletubby-sized party groupies roaring: “We showed them.”
Instead, the winners (losers, really) need to be consoled by their true friends — the ones who’d show up with wine and a Chinese takeaway, pat their hand, and say:
No bunting. No speeches. No laminated posters cable-tied to every lamp post from here to Gweedore. Just the knowledge that it’s your turn.
Meanwhile, we the people, would be the real winners as we would be led by normal people, temporarily in charge. Your Auntie Deirdre from Drumshanbo — office administrator, slow-cooker evangelist, never lost a receipt in her life — gets selected and casually delivers the National Children’s Hospital in nine months, with leftover change for a car park AND a bike shed.
Scandinavia would collapse with jealousy.
Would sortition fix everything? Of course not. But would it be worse than what we currently, relentlessly endure? A system that muddies the waters so they seem deep, drowning the rest of us in jargon, spin, and promises held together with vibes? A system in which the same surnames reappear like syphilis that refuses to die.
With sortition, at least the waters would be honest.
A randomly-selected councillor might say: “Look, I’ve no clue what any of these acronyms mean, but I’ll do my best, and then I’m off home to walk the dog.” And that level of transparency alone would be revolutionary.
So maybe Riz Ahmed was right. Maybe the subway — a place of chaos, hope, and occasional alchemy — is the perfect birthplace for rescuing democracy from itself. A little randomness, a little humility, and the radical belief that ordinary people might actually do a better job.
And if they don’t? Well … at least you didn’t vote for them.
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