A civic lottery, a popular term for the contemporary use of sortition or allotment, is a lottery-based method for selecting citizens for public service or office.
Civic lotteries are increasingly popular in Canada, where provincial Citizens' Assemblies on Electoral Reform took place in British Columbia in 2004 and in Ontario in 2006.
Ultimately, during a final selection process, 158 names were drawn from among the candidates to participate as members of the BC Assembly.
MASS LBP, a Canadian company inspired by the work of the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (Ontario), that has designed and implemented 50 Civic Lotteries between 2007 and 2023, has developed an increasingly sophisticated system for running civic lotteries to randomly select citizens to participate on government advisory panels.
The lotteries, which ask citizens to give up several consecutive weekends to participate on a panel, enjoy a strong positive response rate, typically exceeding five percent.