Results of the DWE 2025 Presentation Contest!
Our first ever Presentation Contest was a success! Participants found the event fun, engaging, and interesting. By hosting this contest, we strengthened our community, sharpened our sortition advocacy skills, and created a low-barrier way to invite new people into these ideas.
Thank you to our amazing judges for helping us with this! Thank you to all of our contestants!
Winners!
Congratulations to our winners! Your presentations will serve as a valuable model and template for our network of advocates.
See all presentations here (Please note, we are still updating and organizing these files)
What did we learn about good advocacy?
Generally, judges responded positively to these things:
Clarity over vagueness, especially about sortition processes
Framing the problem clearly (e.g. capture, dysfunction, etc)
Good narrative structure/pacing, and confidence and smoothness in delivery
Clear, real-world examples (e.g. Petaluma, Ostbelgien, juries), especially before moving into objections - this was very important!
How to combine/integrate sortition into existing institutions
Conversational delivery
Judges responded negatively to these things
Sortition not explained clearly enough, or not enough clarity about how it works as a process
Not enough concrete examples
Objections and counter-arguments not being addressed sufficiently
Confusion about highly technical or mathematical ideas (may need more time and explanation for lay audiences)
While judges preferred smooth, professional looking presentations, there was also a concern that sometimes this felt too much like a professional campaign ad. Ideally, there should be a balance with good production, but a grassroots feel.
Overloading the audience with too many concepts too fast
Reading bullet points off a slide
Note: there seemed to be a split in our audience between people who were more academic or familiar with the concept, and people who were learning about this entirely for the first time. It’s a challenge to have one general presentation that appeals to both of these audiences.
Main objections against sortition
These common objections were not sufficiently addressed for our audiences. Future presentations and advocacy should take care to address these:
1. Randomness / “bad draw” concern
“What about my stupid neighbor.”
“Some idiots are bound to be selected.”
“With random choosing, we could still get all R’s or all D’s or all idiots.”
“I’m still not persuaded that sortition would work.”
“The percentages graph has issues. It presents averages. With random choosing, we could still get all R’s or all D’s or all idiots.”
2. Lack of clarity
“There was no explanation of how the new system would work.”
“So for me, who knows nothing about sortition, it was pretty usless.”
“Still a little unclear what exactly this is.”
“Very clear articulation of the problem with the status quo; however, I would have loved to hear more about the details of the solution.”
“I didn’t understand what I was seeing.”
“Hard to understand what the main points were.”
“Difficult to grasp all ideas mentioned without supporting graphics and slides.”
3. Accountability
“I get the statistical representation, but I am not convinced about accountability.”
“Accountability slide too dense.”
“Presentation bogs down a little bit in the middle where speaker talks about how sortition jury members might be informed/stay accountable.” (Note - this means while accountability is important, it might be hard to make it an engaging topic!)
4. Feasibility/realism concerns for the modern day
“4th branch of government (watchdog) seems like it would be impossible to actually create without a constitutional amendment.”
“I find it hard to imagine that Americans might be excited about emulating Belgium.”
“Is a jubilee required to add sortition to the governance system?”
“The ancient history didn’t add a compelling argument.”
“It built up to recommending a specific proposal… which was perhaps too specific for this use.”
“The visuals (and the words) should take us into the present and future, not just the past.”
Feedback we received on the process
Loved it. Would like to know more about how finalists were chosen and who the target audience for these presentations would be. All of them would benefit from addressing criticisms about how sortition would be adopted - what are the paths to doing this?
Thanks to Jordan for inviting me to judge, very insightful and a great use of my time. Special shout-out to Mike for reminding everyone about tonight's Ken Burns.
Contest is good, but I think the contestants need more guidance about what is needed. This form is okay, but I'd like to see more questions. What was good? What was bad? What recommendations do you have? What was not addressed?
Painless, fun, interesting. I'll see y'all in December.
Great idea! Keep on rocking!
I like how the presentations are variable in forms. I really appreciate how much effort and thoughts the presenters put into this. I learned a lot about sortation. I think in the future, a debate would be a good form to allow people who are advocating it and who are having doubts about it to communicate.
I would say the next session to have it be longer to allow all presenters enough time (~30 minutes) to slowly but clearly express and explain their ideas.
A little practice goes a long way!
Very fun and interesting
Enjoyed this
Feedback on terminology
Average scores on a scale of 5
Sortition: 2.885
Democratic lottery: 3.355
Deliberative Democracy: 3.13
Citizen’s Assembly / Civic Assembly: 3.93
Rewrite America: 1.745
Democracy Without Elections: 3.35
Democracy With Everyone: 2.83
Assemble America: 2.645
Lottocracy: 1.715
Democracy Without Politicians: 3.63
What should we change/improve for next time?
Please share your thoughts and ideas! One possibility is that we could have an internal qualification round, to choose our top 4 for a larger session with external judges.
We’d love ideas from judges, presenters, and observers alike.
