The mirror of the Majles

Two walls facing each other. On the right, the two hundred and ninety who sit in the twelfth Majles; on the left, the fifty million Iranians aged thirty to seventy-four who by law could stand. Both walls are of one kind: four bands, age and gender and province and record, and on each band every group's share.

This mirror only shows who is in the building and who is outside. It says nothing about the decisions they make; a parliament that matches society does not necessarily decide better, and one that does not resemble it does not necessarily decide worse. The question of this experience is simpler: when you look at yourself in this mirror, is there anyone like you on the other side?

Age and gender are the two bands where the gap shows at a glance. The under-forties are a third of the population over thirty and four percent of the Majles; the over-sixties are seventeen percent of the population and twenty-nine percent of the Majles. The members' average age is about fifty-four, the youngest born in 1368 and the oldest in 1330.

Fourteen women among two hundred and ninety, less than five percent; there were more in the two previous terms. For comparison, women are forty-nine percent of the population aged thirty to seventy-four. The age figures come from the birth years of two hundred and eight members in public lists, extended to the whole Majles; an estimate, not a census.

The electoral law divided the seats among the constituencies, and the division has not kept up with the population. Tehran and Alborz hold a fifth of the country's people and thirteen percent of the seats; the ten small provinces eleven percent of the people and fourteen percent of the seats. In human terms: each member for Alborz comes from nine hundred thousand people, each member for Semnan from a hundred and seventy-five thousand.

Five seats are outside this count: Article 64 of the constitution sets them aside for Zoroastrians, Jews, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, and the Armenians of the north and the south. Religious minorities are less than half a percent of the population and nearly two percent of the Majles; this is the only band where the smaller group sits above its share, and on purpose.

The fourth band is about the door, not about people. Fifty-eight percent of the twelfth Majles's members have sat before. Before the vote a candidate must be thirty to seventy-five, hold a master's degree or its equivalent, and pass approbatory supervision; in 1402, of about forty-nine thousand who registered, about fifteen thousand were approved.

The lot takes this door off its hinges. In a parliament composed by lot nobody has «sat before», because nobody competes to stay; every term starts afresh. That has a cost too: legislative experience leaves with every term, and someone who does not come to parliament to stay may be less afraid, and may know less.

The draw button takes two hundred and ninety from the population, but not blindly. First the population is divided into groups by age, gender and province, and then each group is drawn from in proportion to its share; this is called a stratified draw, and citizens' assemblies from Ireland to France are composed this way. Every time you draw, the people change and the proportions do not.

What the lot makes is «descriptive representation»: a parliament that looks like society from the outside. What it does not make is the representation of wishes; resembling is not the same as agreeing, and someone who came by lot answers to nobody but their own conscience. The experience «The luck of the draw» sets these two sides beside each other. Here there is only a mirror; the verdict is yours.