What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people?

Who likes democracy? [everybody]
Who thinks our democracies are functioning well? [nobody]

The decisions made by these people would build on the wisdom of crowds. They would become more than the sum of their parts. They would become critical thinkers with access to experts, who would be on tap but not on top. And they could prove that diversity can trump ability when confronting the wide array of societal questions and problems.

We can experiment with sortition. We can introduce it to schools and workplaces and other institutions, like Democracy In Practice is doing in Bolivia. We can hold policy juries and citizens' assemblies, like the newDemocracy Foundation is doing in Australia, like the Jefferson Center is doing in the US and like the Irish government is doing right now. We could build a social movement demanding change, which is what the Sortition Foundation is doing in the UK.

Perhaps the first step would be a second chamber in our parliament, full of randomly selected people — a citizens' senate, if you will.