a claude article about my general preferred process

[Clay S]

Election by Jury: Clay Shentrup's Preferred Methodology

Election by jury represents a revolutionary approach to democratic decision-making that addresses many shortcomings of traditional mass elections. This system leverages the careful deliberation and impartial assessment possible through a jury process, while maintaining fairness through structured procedures.

Core Principles: Eliminating Bias Through Mechanism Design

The fundamental principle underlying this approach is avoiding bias at all costs. Rather than pursuing the fantasy of finding perfectly unbiased moderators or judges, the system embraces a mechanism design that creates fairness through structure rather than through unattainable "neutrality."

Referee, Not Judge

The person overseeing the election process serves strictly as a referee, not a judge. Their role is purely procedural—ensuring speakers adhere to their allotted time, maintaining order, and enforcing established rules. This referee has no discretion to select expert witnesses, determine topics, or influence the substance of the proceedings in any way.

The referee administers the process mechanically, without any "moderation" in the traditional sense. They simply enforce the technical rules of the proceedings, similar to how a referee in a sporting event enforces the rules without determining the content or outcome of the game.

Omni-partisan Neutrality

Instead of seeking false objectivity, the system embraces "omni-partisan neutrality." It acknowledges that every perspective has inherent biases, so rather than appointing supposedly neutral authorities, it creates a level playing field where each candidate serves as their own advocate.

This approach mirrors how our court system operates—no one expects prosecutors or defense attorneys to be objective; instead, justice emerges through structured adversarial advocacy. Similarly, election by jury recognizes that balance comes not from illusory impartiality, but from allowing all perspectives to be vigorously represented.

By creating a deliberative environment where jurors are exposed to evidence and arguments from all candidates, each acting in their own interest and free to critique opponents, this "omni-biased" presentation achieves effective neutrality through balanced opposition rather than false objectivity.

Procedural Design "Chess Timer" Approach

The process follows a structured time-management system similar to chess, where each candidate receives a fixed amount of time on their "clock." Candidates take turns presenting their ideas and cross-examining other candidates in a random order/cycle.

The process might work as follows:

1. Each candidate gives an initial presentation
2. Subsequent rounds allow candidates to cross-examine and respond to previous speakers
3. Candidates can engage in back-and-forth exchanges, with each controlling their own time
4. When a candidate finishes, they stop their clock, and it becomes the next person's turn

Structured Presentation Over Direct Questioning

The system generally avoids allowing jurors to directly question candidates. This decision stems from both practical and theoretical considerations:

1. Direct questioning can create bias by giving some candidates extra speaking time
2. Questions might reflect individual juror biases rather than serving the overall evaluation process
3. The management of question time creates game-theoretic complications

However, jurors may submit anonymized questions about issues (without calling out specific candidates) at regular intervals. These questions are presented to all candidates equally, who may choose to answer them at their discretion. This approach preserves candidate autonomy while providing insight into juror concerns.

The Power of Structured Presentation

Perhaps the most transformative aspect of this system is not jury deliberation itself, but the structured presentation and cross-examination process. Evidence from Intelligence Squared debates demonstrates that simply witnessing structured exchanges can dramatically shift opinions without any deliberation.

In these Oxford-style debates, audience members vote before and after hearing arguments, allowing precise measurement of opinion shifts. The results are remarkable: on average, 32% of audience members change their minds after a debate, despite never deliberating with each other.

Even on contentious political topics where opinions tend to be entrenched, structured presentation produces meaningful shifts in judgment—with a median shift of 7.6 percentage points toward the winning side. In a two-candidate race, this would represent a net difference of over 15 percentage points between candidates, more than enough to decide most elections.

This "omni-biased" presentation—where candidates vigorously present their best case and critique opponents—does the heavy lifting in helping jurors form well-reasoned judgments. While deliberation might provide additional benefit, it's the structured presentation and cross-examination that enables truly informed decision-making.

Jury Participation Optional Deliberation

After all presentations conclude, jurors are provided the opportunity to deliberate if they choose. However, they are not required to reach consensus or even participate in deliberations. Each juror is free to cast their ballot and leave at the conclusion if they prefer.

This approach respects juror autonomy while still providing the potential benefits of group discussion. It recognizes that the structured presentation process has already provided substantial information for decision-making.

Voting Method

Score voting is the recommended method for determining the winner. This approach allows jurors to express the strength of their preferences across multiple candidates, rather than forcing binary choices.

Research shows impressive results with even small jury sizes: 90% Voter Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE) with just 12 jurors, and 94% accuracy with 24 jurors. A jury size of 25 is considered ideal, as it makes true ties virtually impossible while maintaining high accuracy.

Jury Selection

Pure random sampling is strongly preferred over stratified selection. Stratification requires subjective determinations about which demographics to count and how to define them, introducing human bias into the process.

With proper random sampling, statistics naturally tend to create representative juries without human intervention. This approach eliminates subjectivity and potential manipulation, generally performing better than even well-intentioned human attempts at creating "balanced" juries.

Conclusion

The election by jury system described here represents a thoughtful alternative to mass elections, drawing on established jury principles while incorporating innovations to ensure fairness. By focusing on structural fairness through equal time and resources rather than seeking unattainable "neutral" authorities, this system promises more informed and considered electoral outcomes.

The combination of random jury selection, structured presentation and cross-examination, optional deliberation, and score voting creates a process that dramatically improves decision quality while minimizing the influence of bias, misinformation, and superficial campaign tactics.

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

Nice. Wanna post it on the site? We can put it in the Learn More page. I'm planning to post a similar essay at some point as well - would be good to have a few detailed proposals up, so people can get a feel for how EBJ would work, and the different ways it can be structured.

BTW, I've written up something briefly to enumerate all the different ways of running an EBJ. As well as some "foundational principles" that unite all EBJ advocates even if we disagree on specific implementation details.

https://www.electionbyjury.org/learn-more/how-it-works

Regards,
Rajiv

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[Clay S]

Nice. Wanna post it on the site?

yeah. i was thinking we could actually have an article that's like, "while we propose a set of core ideas, there are many ways to tailor the process. here our founding team each presents their ideal model of election by jury."

these could be sub-pages rather than one big article. whatever works.

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

Sounds good to me. Go for it.

Regards,
Rajiv

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