Who Said Democracy Meant Voting?
This is not another democracy talk telling you to go vote.
Ancient Athens invented democracy. For most of it, they didn’t hold elections.
Instead, they filled public offices by drawing names. Any citizen could be called up to govern — the same way you get called for jury duty. They had a word for it: sortition. And they considered it the only method fair enough to actually count as self-rule. Elections, they worried, would always hand power to whoever had the money, the connections, and the loudest voice.
Somewhere along the way, we swapped sortition out for elections — and mostly forgot the swap ever happened.
Hannah Terry is Programme Coordinator at DemocracyNext, an international research and action institute working to bring citizens’ assemblies and sortition back into how democracies actually govern. She has helped run them in The Gambia, Luxembourg, Lithuania, and Slovenia — rooms of randomly selected citizens tasked with making real decisions for their governments. Not advisory panels. Not focus groups. Actual governance.
This talk is a look at what sortition actually is, why the Athenians trusted it more than voting, what happens when you put a random cross-section of citizens in a room with a hard question — and why a growing number of governments think this 2,500-year-old method might be exactly what struggling democracies need right now.
The format
Doors open at 19:00. Come early, grab a drink and mingle before it starts. The talk begins at 19:30: 45 minutes, followed by an open Q&A. No official end. The bar stays open after, so stick around to keep talking with Megan.
The talk is in English.
About Lecture Lounge
A bi-monthly series of expert-led talks, held in bars — never a lecture hall. One subject, one speaker, intimate enough size to ask anything. Somewhere between a bar and a classroom. Every event so far has sold out.
FAQ: Why does my card show as charged when I join the waitlist?
If you've joined the waitlist for a sold-out ticket type and noticed your bank app showing a deduction, don't worry — no money has actually left your account.
When you join a waitlist, we place an authorization hold on your card rather than charging it. Most banks reduce your available balance immediately for a pending hold, so it can look identical to a completed payment in your banking app — but it isn't. The funds haven't been captured, and they're only captured if and when you're approved off the waitlist.
If you're not approved (or you cancel), the hold is released right away on our end, though it can take your bank a few extra days to clear it from your statement — that timing is on their side, not ours.
If you have any questions about this, feel free to reach out to us directly.