Election by JURY.

Popular Democracy has a new competitor...

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Below is a brief paper I recently submitted as part of an independent research project at my university. I hope you enjoy.

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Introduction:

Liberal democracy is at a crossroads. Falling trust, increasing political polarization, and persistent government dysfunction have left populations around the world increasingly dissatisfied with existing liberal-democratic political institutions (Norris 2011; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). This dissatisfaction has provoked a growing interest in alternative democratic institutional arrangements that, according to their advocates, have the capacity to address persistent political problems.

Interest in alternatives has produced an expansive and growing literature on the concept of deliberative democracy—a form of democracy that takes voters through a structured process of reasoned discussion prior to voting. Through various theoretical and empirical inquiries, scholars have developed new models of deliberative democratic decision-making inspired by the ancient idea of sortition (Fishkin 2018). In numerous works, including the popular books Open Democracy and Democracy for Realists, academics have advocated for citizens' assemblies—large, randomly selected groups of citizens tasked with making policy decisions or providing policy recommendations (Landemore 2020; Bartels and Achen 2016). Over the past few decades, countries including Scotland, Canada, Iceland, Italy, Belgium, and France have each implemented official citizens' assemblies for this purpose (Farrell and Suiter 2019; Fournier et al. 2011).

This paper advocates for a novel application of sortition—sometimes referred to as ‘democracy by jury’—in the context of elections. In place of the existing system of popular elections, i.e., elections in which the general public votes to elect political officials, an election by jury system would limit suffrage to a randomly selected sample of the population. Prior to voting, this sampled group would undergo a highly structured process of learning and deliberation, enabling them to make maximally well-informed and well-considered voting decisions. As of this writing, no thorough investigation of this particular application of sortition has been published.

Dysfunction in Popular Elections:

In the United States, as with every other liberal democracy in the world, political offices are filled through popular elections. Voters, consisting of the entire eligible public, are given the opportunity to express their preferences regarding candidates and/or parties. Given the widespread use of this system, it is surprising how little research has been dedicated to rigorously analyzing its effectiveness in selecting quality elected officials. I suspect this lack of inquiry is due to the absence of well-known, plausible alternatives to popular elections and the inherent methodological challenges involved in defining and measuring the quality of electoral outcomes.

Any researcher attempting to assess the quality of popular elections must first confront a challenging foundational methodological question: What constitutes a good decision in this context? There appear to be two ways to approach this question. The first—perhaps more common—approach is to evaluate the quality of the outcomes generated by decisions relative to the outcomes of all the alternative choices that could have been made. This method works when outcomes are clearly understood and when the options available differ in finite, measurable ways. For instance, research examining consumer decision-making in health insurance markets has repeatedly found that consumers are generally poor decision-makers. This is because, in controlled experiments, consumers frequently choose “dominated insurance plans”—plans objectively inferior in terms of cost, coverage, or both, compared to alternatives (Abaluck and Gruber 2011, 1183). Because we know consumers want to minimize cost and maximize coverage, and because cost and coverage are clearly measurable and the only differentiating variables between the plans, labeling the choice of a dominated plan “bad” is both appropriate and uncontroversial.

However, in democratic politics, clear determinations become significantly more challenging. Values in politics vary widely among individuals and are ever-changing. There is no one agreed-upon way to evaluate “good” and “bad” political outcomes. While mass starvation and war may be clearly worse than widespread prosperity and peace, most election decisions voters are faced with are not nearly as black and white. The closest thing to a universal outcomes quality measurement variable is “utility,” as defined in economics as the aggregate of individual preferences expressed through market behavior. However, the domain of politics offers no similarly granular method for us to observe people's preferences. In addition, electoral choices in popular elections are between candidates rather than singular policies. These candidates are far from simple. They vary from one another in an enormous number of ways, displaying diverse experiences, attitudes, and policy positions (Achen and Bartels 2016). This makes a systematic and comprehensive comparison extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.

Consequently, social scientists have generally adopted a ‘customer is always right’ approach in democratic contexts. Given that no objective measure can reliably be used to externally judge election decisions, voter preferences must be taken at face value. To challenge the fundamental rightness or wrongness of these preferences would be to venture beyond empirical social science and into the more precarious realm of philosophy, which is an entanglement most social scientists would prefer to avoid.

Acknowledging these conundrums, I propose an alternative method for evaluating decision-making quality in elections: assessing the presence of conditions conducive to good decision-making. While objectively identifying a good election outcome might not be possible, objectively determining whether voters met the prerequisite conditions necessary for good decision-making is, in fact, possible. Demonstrating that voters in popular elections consistently lack such conditions would suggest that the outcomes generated by popular elections are likely suboptimal.

To illustrate, consider the following hypothetical. Suppose there is an ice cream parlor where all the traditional flavors (chocolate, vanilla, etc.) have been provided entirely cryptic names, and no visual aids or descriptions of the flavors are made available. In this scenario, could customers reasonably be expected to select flavors that match their preferences? Likely not. An individual who wants rocky road would be left with no choice but to choose arbitrarily amongst the options and hope for the best. Decisions made in ignorance seldom reliably fulfill desired outcomes, as they depend on clearly understanding available options and their consequences (Gigerenzer and Goldstein 1996; Lupia 1994). If familiar names were to be restored, customers could effortlessly select their preferred flavor, significantly improving the quality of decision-making.

Similarly, voters must have an understanding of relevant information to properly select candidates who will best secure their preferred outcomes. This includes an understanding of the office being contested, the candidates and their abilities, the policies they support, and the outcomes those policies would yield if they were enacted. Reaching this high knowledge threshold is no easy feat. The sheer number of elections voters are asked to participate in, combined with the immense time demands of daily life, make it challenging even for the highly motivated to stay consistently well-informed for every election in which they cast their ballot.

More troubling, however, is that research suggests many voters do not make a concerted effort to inform themselves in the first place. Studies show that even when easily accessible political information is made available, many citizens opt not to seek it out (Prior 2007). Political scientists have also found that voters often fail to update their opinions when directly exposed to new information, suggesting low motivation among voters to improve their understanding (Nyhan and Reifler 2010). Its no surprise, then, that an extensive body of research going back decades shows that political ignorance is both widespread and deep. When voters are tested, a startling number lack even the most basic knowledge of civics and current events, let alone knowledge of candidates and policy (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Somin 2013).

Some suggest this ignorance could be mitigated through policies promoting civic education, but this claim conflicts with the robust literature in public choice economics on rational ignorance. Rational ignorance posits that voters have minimal incentives to inform themselves thoroughly, given the negligible probability of their individual vote being decisive (Somin 2013). If one’s vote does not sway the results of an election, then, for all practical purposes, it does not matter. In such a context, the considerable effort required to become an informed voter is not meaningfully rewarded, and thus, the costs of acquiring political knowledge are not outweighed by benefits.

Yet, the presence of rational ignorance alone is not sufficient to prove that popular elections are hopelessly flawed. A popular, theoretical defense known as the "miracle of aggregation" posits that, given that uninformed voters make random errors when voting, these errors cancel one another out. Thus, elections are, in reality, only decided by informed voters. To better understand this argument, consider the following example. Imagine an election with three candidates: A, B, and C. Suppose that 90% of voters are completely uninformed and select a candidate completely at random. Since this occurs, each candidate receives about 30% of the vote from the uninformed. Now, further, suppose the remaining 10% of voters are informed and all, due to being informed, prefer candidate A. In this scenario, candidate A receives an additional 10% more than their opponents, putting them at 40%, while B and C remain at 30%. Therefore, despite the fact that the informed voters are only a tiny minority, they ultimately determine who wins.

Yet despite the popularity of the miracle of aggregation idea, empirical evidence thoroughly discredits the notion that poorly informed voters make random errors and, consequently, cancel each other out. Data consistently demonstrates that uninformed voters exhibit systematic biases affecting their partisan affiliations and candidate preferences (Fording and Schram 2017). Research has also shown that low-information voters hold an array of systematic misperceptions about the issues. Referencing a thorough set of polls that split members of the American public into groups based on their level of political knowledge, George Mason University Professor Bryan Caplan documents that poorly informed Americans display a variety of cognitive biases that seriously distort their perception of reality, with these biases being anti-market bias, anti-foreign bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic bias. (Caplan 2007).

Other cognitive biases are common in both the informed and uninformed alike, with one of the most relevant being confirmation bias. This bias, which appears to be almost universal amongst humans, leads individuals to disproportionately accept information that aligns with their existing beliefs while dismissing or downplaying evidence that challenges their views (Mercier and Sperber 2017). Due to confirmation bias, even when voters attempt to inform themselves, they are still, in large part, tethered to their original beliefs, wrong as they may be.

This brings us to our conclusion. Voters in popular elections, by and large, fail to meet the criteria for high-quality decision-making. They not only lack even the basic information necessary to make election decisions that accurately translate their preferences, but also portray a series of serious and systematic misconceptions. In addition, they suffer from an array of cognitive biases, including confirmation bias, which frustrates their ability to fully and impartially digest new information. These widespread shortcomings in voter competence seriously call into question the value of popular elections as a selection mechanism for political officials, opening consideration to alternatives.

Election by Jury as a Viable Alternative:

Given the well-documented flaws of popular elections, it is worth inquiring whether there are institutional alternatives that could do a better job at selecting capable leaders. One such alternative, novel but well-supported by theory and evidence, is what I term “election by jury.” Under this alternative approach, in place of the general public being granted the ability to vote in every election, suffrage for each election would be limited to a randomly assigned sample of citizens, who then would undergo a sophisticated education and deliberation process before casting their votes.

The case for election by jury is straightforward. Given that the core problem of popular elections is that voters lack both an understanding of the relevant facts and the assistance needed to overcome their cognitive biases, a simple solution is to shift the responsibility of voting from the general public to a smaller microcosm of the public where these issues can be rectified.

The structural processes that would be utilized in such a system are well understood. Both in real-world use cases and through a wide variety of controlled trials, the idea of randomly selected citizens’ juries has been thoroughly studied. Research on these experiments has consistently shown that ​​by decision-making time, participants are far more informed, reflective, and open-minded than members of the general public (Grönlund, Bächtiger, and Setälä 2014).

To look at one illustrative example, consider the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform in British Columbia. In this real-world application of sortition, a randomly selected group of 160 citizens spent nearly a full year studying electoral systems. Their studies included extensive reading and consultation with experts, followed by a structured deliberative phase, where they had the opportunity to engage productively with one another before making their final recommendation. Post-assembly assessments found that the participants were starkly different from members of the general public. They developed intricate and nuanced understandings of electoral design, became aware of the full range of arguments and evidence, including those contradicting their initial views, and many changed their opinions over the course of the process (Fournier et al. 2011). In short, the previously articulated decision-making criteria that are so starkly absent in the context of popular elections were successfully established for these assembly members.

Similar findings have emerged from James Fishkin’s deliberative polling experiments. Conducted in over two dozen countries, these controlled trials demonstrate that participants—when provided with the proper environment—shift their policy views in predictable and rational directions (Fishkin 2018). Findings from both these experiments in deliberative democracy suggest that, while voters may currently struggle with ignorance and bias, these issues are not insurmountable. With the proper context, these issues, large as they may appear, can be overcome.

Many of the characteristics of election by jury would reflect those found in these experiments and other related ones. For larger groups—consisting of 100 or more—simple random sampling could guarantee demographic representativeness. When sample sizes must be small, stratified random sampling could be used to ensure balance across race, class, gender, and other relevant demographic variables. Using processes akin to those for traditional jury duty, jurors would be selected from local voter registries with necessary employer leave protections and government compensation to improve access across income levels.

Those refusing to participate would be replaced by other randomly selected citizens to minimize self-selection bias. Though some drop-off may occur, the use of random sampling as the starting point is a key difference from current electoral processes, which is already greatly distorted by unequal turnout amongst demographic groups (Leighley and Nagler 2014).

The deliberative process would begin with a comprehensive educational phase. Jurors would receive background information on the office in question, including its legal powers, institutional limits, and pertinent recent developments. This would be followed by a candidate phase, during which each candidate would be granted the opportunity to provide factual policy summaries and biographical information to the jury. To be eligible to be submitted, these distributed materials would be required to meet a set of clearly defined standards, which will include, but not be limited to, the requirement that their materials only express information about themselves and not any other candidates. The briefs will also be required to include citations for specific factual claims and to avoid making lofty, unsubstantiated promises or assertions. Additional disclosures, such as those pertaining to their criminal record, tax returns, etc, will be presented along with these materials to the jury.

Candidates would then be allowed to address the jury directly in a strictly regulated format, with identical time allotments, standardized questions submitted by the jury, and separate appearances to avoid cross-debate. Public information submissions and expert commentaries would supplement these presentations. Before hearing from candidates, jurors would be explicitly trained to prioritize substance over charisma in order to minimize the risk of empty rhetoric’s effectiveness.

After the candidate phase, jurors would begin a methodical deliberation process in rotating small groups led by trained moderators, examining the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. Like judges, these facilitators would be evaluated and trained for rigorous neutrality and undergo stringent impartiality training. Sessions would be videotaped and periodically audited to guarantee impartial moderation.

To protect the process from outside interference, clear rules would prohibit candidates or aligned groups from contacting jurors outside of the formal deliberation setting. Financial incentives would be provided to jurors who present to the government proof of illegal campaign contact, and strict penalties will be imposed on abusers.

For most relatively low-stakes elections, these safeguards should be enough to protect the process. But, in the case that the election by jury concept is applied for a decision of particularly high stakes (like a gubernatorial election), jurors could be housed in specialized facilities that fully isolate them from the outside world. This approach substantially reduces the potential perverse influences of campaign donations, targeted disinformation campaigns, and partisan media spin (Persily and Tucker 2020; Allcott and Gentzkow 2017).

The complexities of an election by jury system should not be minimized or ignored. Proper execution of processes, like those outlined, is essential to the legitimacy and effectiveness of the process. But, for the purposes of comparison between election by jury and popular elections, it is crucial to be clear-eyed about how complex existing popular elections are. Due to the popular electoral model, there exists an enormous, multi-billion-dollar industry of politics. From political media to campaigns to nonprofits to fundraisers, consultants, and election lawyers, the political machine is one that is both very complex and very costly. So, too, is the challenge of administering popular elections. Operating free and fair elections in every zip code in the country is an incredibly intricate process requiring the mass distribution, collection, and counting of ballots under heavily supervised conditions. While election by jury introduces new administrative difficulties, it does so with the benefit of avoiding many of the challenges associated with the existing electoral system.

Conclusion & Discussion:

It is more pressing a time than ever to be considering alternative institutional arrangements to those of the status quo. Many liberal democratic societies have reached a breaking point, leaving the public scrambling and looking for reform. This paper articulates an argument for one unique approach to resolving the systematic issues that are presented in popular elections. A strong body of evidence suggests that citizen juries are capable of making decisions that are more informed and deliberative than those produced by the general public.

Still, significant obstacles face any sort of wide-scale adoption of the election by jury idea. The concept is controversial, clashing with widely held views about government legitimacy and democracy. It also requires more procedural experimentation and a level of institutional capacity and competency that is not currently present. There is no doubt that if governments were to entirely switch to this system instantly, it would be a disaster, both politically and practically.

For these reasons, the testing and adoption of election by jury must occur gradually. Popular elections were not made universal overnight, and neither will election by jury. The most fitting place to first apply the concept is in local, low-turnout elections for relatively unimportant offices. Positions like County Treasurer, County Clerk, and local Judge, without much uproar, could transition to being selected via this method. Over time, the number of positions subject to this process could expand to include more and more positions that the public generally desires to be kept independent and non-partisan. As this process continues, eventually, a question will be asked: How far is too far?

Will the public accept a Congressperson elected by jury? What about a Senator? A President? I believe the best world is the one in which the answer to all those questions is yes.

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Annotated Bibliography:

Abaluck, Jason, and Jonathan Gruber. 2011. “Choice Inconsistencies among the Elderly: Evidence from Plan Choice in the Medicare Part D Program.” American Economic Review 101, no. 4: 1180–1210. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.4.1180

In this study, Abaluck and Gruber study consumer decision-making quality amongst Medicare Part D health insurance plans. Using administrative data, the authors show that a large percentage of consumers make objectively poor decisions when choosing between plans.

Achen, Christopher H., and Larry M. Bartels. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc7770q

This book challenges the widespread notion that popular democracy is optimal. Drawing on a robust body of social science research, the authors demonstrate that voters in popular elections are almost uniformly irrational decision-makers. Archen and Bartels' research reveals that rather than being guided by nuanced and in-depth policy considerations, voters tend to base their voting decisions chiefly on tribal affiliations and partisan loyalties. The authors further show that partisan alignment frequently shapes public opinion rather than the reverse and that people's views on both policy issues and empirical reality are not fixed but rather shift to satisfy their preexisting partisan preferences. Finally, they find that when electoral outcomes are influenced by real-world conditions, they are typically driven by short-term economic factors around the time of the election, a poor proxy for the actual quality of economic decision-making by incumbents.

Bartels, Larry M. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7t9ks

In this book, Bartels shows that voters often support policies counter to their own interests, implying a deep and foundational lack of understanding across broad swaths of the voting population. He also dwells on the corrosive effect of big money in politics, discussing at length the effectiveness of campaign spending on securing additional votes, and how the presence of this phenomenon allows moneyed interests to skew policy-making.

Caplan, Bryan. The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691129426/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter

In this book, Caplan argues that popular democratic systems frequently produce harmful economic policies because voters are not just poorly informed but also systematically irrational. He splits this irrationality into four distinct cognitive biases–these being anti-market bias, anti-foreign bias, make-work bias, and unjustified pessimism. From these observations, Caplan concludes that popular democracy will consistently lead to public policy choices that are deeply flawed.

Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Scott Keeter. What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300072754/what-americans-know-about-politics-and-why-it-matters/

In this book, Delli Carpini and Keener draw on an enormous amount of survey data to investigate what Americans do and don’t know about politics. This investigation leads the authors to conclude that there are two groups within the American public: the informed and the greatly uninformed. The informed are disproportionately white, older, and richer, while the uninformed are the opposite.

Farrell, David M., and Jane Suiter. “Deliberative Mini-Publics: Core Design Features.” Paris: OECD Publishing, 2019. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/deliberative-mini-publics_7a6e8f2e-en

This brief by the OECD explains principles of design for deliberative “mini-publics” and proposes an array of empirical research standards for evaluating their performance.

Fishkin, James S. Democracy When the People Are Thinking: Revitalizing Our Politics Through Public Deliberation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://academic.oup.com/book/27472

In a world of fake news, big money in politics, and informational bubbles, Fishkin argues that modern democratic systems are failing. He suggests that the “will of the people” requires a citizenry that grasps the relevant truths, is up to date on the issues, and has considered opinions on policy matters. To achieve these ideals, Fishkin argues we should embrace deliberative democracy. To evidence this view, Fishkin draws on decades of global research on deliberative polling, showing that randomly selected citizens, when given good information and an opportunity to exchange ideas in a controlled setting, can form thoughtful opinions on complex policy issues. To materialize these ambitions, Fishkin argues we need to embrace deliberative democracy.

Fording, Richard C., and Sanford F. Schram. “The Cognitive and Emotional Sources of Trump Support: The Case of Low-Information Voters.” New Political Science 39, no. 4 (2017): 670–686. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316753944

This article shows, using election data, that Donald Trump drew disproportionate support from low-information voters. It also outlines a causal mechanism for how low political information can make voters more sensitive to populist appeals, especially reactionary populist appeals.

Fournier, Patrick, Henk van der Kolk, R. Kenneth Carty, André Blais, and Jonathan Rose. When Citizens Decide: Lessons from Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. https://academic.oup.com/book/12775

This book covers three-year-long experiments with Citizens' Assemblies in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario. From these experiments, the authors derive a variety of important conclusions. One amongst them is that in the case of citizen assemblies, a three-phase structure is most appropriate. These three phases are a learning phase, a public consultation phase, and finally a deliberation and decision-making phase.

Grönlund, Kimmo, André Bächtiger, and Maija Setälä, eds. Deliberative Mini-Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process. Colchester: ECPR Press, 2014. https://cora.ucc.ie/server/api/core/bitstreams/4e15f66a-18fa-4d81-a62c-ab262539fa55/content

In this book, the authors point to international experience, where citizen juries have been selected historically through stratified random sampling, while citizens' assemblies have been selected through pure random selection. Another point they put forward is the decision-making mechanism used by sortioned entities. The authors discuss multiple options, including majority rule, super majority rule, and perfect consensus.

Hartz-Karp, Janette. "How and Why Deliberative Democracy Enables Co-Intelligence and Brings Wisdom to Governance." Journal of Public Deliberation 3, no. 1 (2007): Article 6. https://delibdemjournal.org/article/324/galley/4743/view/delibdemjournal.org+3delibdemjournal.org+3delibdemjournal.org+3

In this piece, Hartz-Karp criticizes traditional consultation methods in Australia, describing them as “ineffective” and often leading to frustration and disengagement despite intending to do the opposite. She introduces the concept of deliberative democracy as a potentially transformational alternative. By involving citizens directly in policy discussions through structured deliberative processes, she argues, democratic governments can achieve outcomes the public perceives as more legitimate and acceptable.

Landemore, Hélène. Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv10crczs

In this recent book, Yale Professor Landemore argues that traditional representative democracy is dominated by elected elites and suggests that it should be replaced by a system she calls “open democracy.” Her vision of open democracy includes both sortition and mini-publics, which she discusses at length.

Lupia, Arthur. “Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections.” American Political Science Review 88, no. 1 (1994): 63–76. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2944882

In his paper, Lupia examines whether uninformed voters are capable of making competent decisions in elections if they rely on informational shortcuts. Analyzing California ballot initiatives on insurance reform, he shows that certain generally available heuristics enabled less-informed voters to make choices closely resembling those of well-informed voters. This finding suggests that the quality of public decision-making can be dramatically enhanced if the uninformed are presented with high-quality decision-making cues, like those that could be presented in the context of an election by jury.

Mercier, Hugo, and Dan Sperber.The Enigma of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674237827

In this book, Mercier and Sperber put forward the "Argumentative Theory of Reason," postulating that human reasoning faculties evolved for the primary purpose of social interaction. Specifically, he claims that we should justify our actions to others, persuade others through argument, and critically evaluate others’ justifications. To substantiate this claim, they examine experimental literature highlighting the prevalence of confirmation bias, i.e., the frequent propensity of humans to seek evidence supporting their preexisting views rather than to search for truth impartially. They also reference research on the effectiveness of deliberation. Drawing on studies of problem-solving in both children and adults, they demonstrate that individuals consistently overcome confirmation bias more effectively in social settings where they are confronted with alternative positions and can identify arguments stronger than their own. The authors conclude by emphasizing the profound support this research provides for deliberative democracy.

Nyhan, Brendan, and Jason Reifler. “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions.” Political Behavior 32, no. 2 (2010): 303–330. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2

In this paper, Nyhan and Reifler provide empirical data that demonstrates voters often fail to adjust their perception after being presented with corrections for previously consumed misinformation. The authors find that, in some cases, corrections can actually backfire, making misperceptions even worse than they were previously. This work demonstrates that the issue of voter ignorance cannot be easily remedied.

Prior, Markus. Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections. Cambridge University Press, 2007. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/postbroadcast-democracy/A0D17A3CD156A0D1BB4318EE5DBCC60B

In this book, Prior shows that the expansion of media choices in the digital era allows citizens a new opportunity to avoid political content altogether, making room for increased gaps in political knowledge within the population. His research finds that a large portion of the population actively avoids political information, even when said information is readily available and easy to process. This result affirms the argument that political ignorance is not simply accidental; rather, it is often intentional.

Somin, Ilya. Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. https://masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/Somin_Introduction.pdf

Somin argues that rational ignorance among voters leads to poor democratic decision-making. To support this point, he presents empirical data demonstrating that the general public has a limited understanding of current events, political institutions, and policy issues. Somin contends that this ignorance is rational, as the benefits to an individual from being an informed voter are minimal. Consequently, he suggests that widespread ignorance is unlikely to change, making substantial improvements in government decision-making unrealistic. On this basis, Somin advocates for embracing a narrower scope of government, thereby reducing the areas where poor decisions can undermine the outcomes of a free society.

Van Reybrouck, David. Against Elections: The Case for Democracy. New York: Random House, 2016. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/645360/against-elections-by-david-van-reybrouck/

In this provocative book, Reybrouck critiques the overreliance on elections and presents what he calls “sortitive democracy” as a favorable alternative. One example he points to in this book is Iceland, where a citizens' assembly was used to draft revisions to the Constitution.