Random Selection and Democracy in Athens and Asimov

The NOVA episode “Athens: Birthplace of Democracy,” which aired on Arizona PBS on July 1, 2026, stated: “For the ancient Greeks, true democracy only worked through the extensive use of random selection.”The candidate selection process in Isaac Asimov’s classic short story “Franchise” represents the opposite extreme, with no randomness (and perhaps no human input). Let’s look at some aspects of random selection as it relates to democracy through these examples. This post contains questions and activities that could be used for a high school or undergraduate class discussion about the “fairness” of simple random, stratified, and systematic sampling — and of nonrandom selection methods. Learning objectives include deepening understanding of these sampling methods, distinguishing between proportional and disproportional allocation, calculating sampling weights for a stratified sample, and relating advantages and disadvantages of methods for political candidate selection to statistical…