Fair algorithms for selecting citizens’ assemblies

Flanigan, Bailey; Gölz, Paul; Gupta, Anupam; Hennig, Brett; Procaccia, Ariel D.

doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03788-6

Cited by 46 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Despite their advantageous properties, randomized mechanisms have in the past often met with resistance by practitioners and the public [27], but we see signs of a shift in attitudes. Citizens' assemblies, deliberative forums composed of a random sample of citizens, are quickly gaining usage around the world [29] and proudly point to their random selection -often carried out using complex algorithms from computer science [19] -as a source of legitimacy. If this trend continues, randomness will be associated by the public with neutrality and fairness, not with haphazardness, and randomized apportionment methods might receive serious consideration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In This Apportionment Lottery, the House Always Wins

Gölz¹,

Peters²,

Procaccia³

2022

Preprint

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Apportionment is the problem of distributing ℎ indivisible seats across states in proportion to the states' populations. In the context of the US House of Representatives, this problem has a rich history and is a prime example of interactions between mathematical analysis and political practice. Grimmett [22] suggested to apportion seats in a randomized way such that each state receives exactly their proportional share of seats in expectation (ex ante proportionality) and receives either ⌊ ⌋ or ⌈ ⌉ many seats ex post (quota). However, there is a vast space of randomized apportionment methods satisfying these two axioms, and so we additionally consider prominent axioms from the apportionment literature. Our main result is a randomized method satisfying quota, ex ante proportionality and house monotonicity -a property that prevents paradoxes when the number of seats changes and which we require to hold ex post. This result is based on a generalization of dependent rounding on bipartite graphs, which we call cumulative rounding and which might be of independent interest, as we demonstrate via applications beyond apportionment. 3 We will revisit this result in Section 3 and show that, while Balinski and Young's theorem makes additional implicit assumptions, the incompatibility between quota and population monotonicity continues to hold without these assumptions. 4 A second shortcoming of deterministic apportionment methods is a lack of fairness over time: For example, if the states' populations remain static, a state with a standard quota of, say, 1.5 might receive a single seat in every single apportionment and therefore only receive 2/3 of its deserved representation. Using randomized apportionment, the long-term average of a state's number of seats is proportional to the state's average share of the total population. 5 In mechanism design, a similar approach extends strategyproofness to universal strategyproofness [28].

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In This Apportionment Lottery, the House Always Wins

Gölz¹,

Peters²,

Procaccia³

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…While creating the set of assemblies, the algorithm's aim was to provide the fairest possible distribution of probability among individual citizens. Then, assemblies added to the set were assessed on the basis of two criteria: whether they matched the demographic quotas, and whether their addition would upgrade the fairness of the distribution of probability within the set (Flanigan, Golz, Gupta, et al 2021).…”

Section: Stagementioning

confidence: 99%

Sortition and its Principles: Evaluation of the Selection Processes of Citizens’ Assemblies

Gąsiorowska

2023

Journal of Deliberative Democracy

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Sortition is sometimes seen as a means of addressing some weaknesses of the electoral system. Advantages of sortition are related to its three principles - randomness, representation and equality. Nowadays we are witnessing the growing popularity of the citizens’ assembly - the most expanded form of deliberative process based on sortition. The methods of selection of assembly members are very diverse. Theoretically, they should ensure that the selection process fulfils the principles of randomness, representation and equality, but in practice there are many factors that can disturb their implementation. The aims of the paper are to investigate what selection methods are used in the citizens’ assemblies and to evaluate the processes of selection of assembly members from the perspective of principles of randomness, representation and equality. For this purpose selection processes from 29 citizens’ assemblies organised in the years 2020-2021 in 9 European countries were analysed. Then the selection processes were compared with an evaluation model prepared on the basis of theoretical concepts concerning randomness, representation and equality. The study was conducted using a desk research method whose subjects were reports and methodology descriptions regarding each citizens’ assembly, as well as the assembly members’ data. The study shows the selection methods used in citizens’ assemblies are very diverse. Although almost all of the analysed assemblies were representative of the given population, in some of the cases the selection processes were far from the ideal of randomness and did not provide everyone with even near equal chances of being selected to participate.

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“…Again, theorists and practitioners have developed approaches to mitigating such risks. One is to assure representation of at-risk groups in decision-making panels, a property known as "descriptive representation" [25,50]. This ensures that their voices will be heard, but they can still be subject to negative outcomes if they are outvoted by the majority.…”

Section: Conceptual Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is the Will of the People? Moderation Preferences for Misinformation

Atreja¹,

Hemphill²,

Resnick³

2022

Preprint

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To reduce the spread of misinformation, social media platforms may take enforcement actions against offending content, such as adding informational warning labels, reducing distribution, or removing content entirely. However, both their actions and their inactions have been controversial and plagued by allegations of partisan bias. The controversy in part can be explained by a lack of clarity around what actions should be taken, as they may not neatly reduce to questions of factual accuracy. When decisions are contested, the legitimacy of decision-making processes becomes crucial to public acceptance. Platforms have tried to legitimize their decisions by following well-defined procedures through rules and codebooks. In this paper, we consider an alternate source of legitimacy -the will of the people. Surprisingly little is known about what ordinary people want the platforms to do about specific content. We provide empirical evidence about lay raters' preferences for platform actions on 368 news articles. Our results confirm that on many items there is no clear consensus on which actions to take. There is no partisan difference in terms of how many items deserve platform actions but liberals do prefer somewhat more action on content from conservative sources, and vice versa. We find a clear hierarchy of perceived severity, with inform being the least severe action, followed by reduce, and then remove. We also find that judgments about two holistic properties, misleadingness and harm, could serve as an effective proxy to determine what actions would be approved by a majority of raters. We conclude with the promise of the will of the people while acknowledging the practical details that would have to be worked out.

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Fair algorithms for selecting citizens’ assemblies

Cited by 46 publications

References 23 publications

In This Apportionment Lottery, the House Always Wins

In This Apportionment Lottery, the House Always Wins

Sortition and its Principles: Evaluation of the Selection Processes of Citizens’ Assemblies

What is the Will of the People? Moderation Preferences for Misinformation

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