What if Everything
We Thought We Knew
About Democracy Was Wrong?
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“I’ve known and worked with Terry for decades, and his new book is a thought-provoking and deeply-researched take on how democracy might be reformed to genuinely allow government by the people.”
— Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate
“Bouricius explains why the failure of elections is inevitable, and how choosing representatives through a sortition system can finally deliver on the promise of democracy.”
— John Gastil, professor of political science and author of Legislature by Lot
“I live in a small Vermont town where we govern ourselves–pretty darned well–by annual town meeting, where everyone participates. So I think we should take seriously the idea that governing doesn’t require a special caste of life-long officeholders, and that all of us are actually up to the task.”
— Bill McKibben, author and environmental activist
“By reviving the ancient democratic tool of sortition, Bouricius shows us how to bypass the bought-and-paid-for political class and finally realize the promise of a government ‘by the People.'”
— Thom Hartmann, author and nationally syndicated radio show host
The Recovering Politician
There are precious few people alive today with Terry Bouricius’s exact collision of experience: 20 years in political office, 10 years promoting election reform, and ultimately, pioneering the critical innovations needed to replace our fundamentally broken model of government.
Catching the political fever in college after hearing a speech by a then-unknown Bernie Sanders, Terry channeled that inspiration straight into the legislative trenches—until he realized the structure itself was the problem: we didn’t need to find better politicians; we needed to build a better system.
Today, Terry is a leading international voice for that better system. It’s called sortition—returning to the roots of true democracy by replacing elections with randomly selected and broadly representative assemblies of citizens—We, The People—who study the evidence, consult with experts, and deliberate—as equals.
He’s not just an advocate; he’s an architect of “multi-body sortition”, the specific structural breakthrough required to take assemblies out of the realm of temporary, local experiments and scale them into a permanent, national government. It’s a framework that bypasses the political class entirely—and is already being used to design real-world assemblies across Europe. More than ten years in the making, his new book—Democracy Without Politicians—is the definitive blueprint for making it reality.
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The definitive blueprint for replacing elections with citizens’ assemblies.
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