1se of public impeachment hearings is finished. What can one say of the impact? Public opinion remains broadly unaltered. Some voters still seem persuadable, but oddly enough, the more persuadable they are, the less they pay attention. Indeed, fatigue amid the fog of political news is widespread. 

The conventional wisdom is that even if “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” were to be conclusively demonstrated, the Senate is unlikely to convict. Many hoping for the President’s removal would then say: Senate Republicans are spineless. It is not so simple. 

Those senators answer to constituents who have neither the obligation, nor, on the whole, the time to change their minds. If President Trump really is a tyrant in the making, and if he has enough committed supporters, then taking a stand now means eventually being replaced by a rubber stamp. So far, the country has not faced an economic crisis or a major war. An honest Republican may feel an obligation to stick around for the real crisis: when extra powers are asked for, and sometimes given. 

We would do better, then, to grant that senators may face a very difficult dilemma. Let us turn our attention to what is happening with the electorate. 

The mechanisms that keep public opinion fixed remain in place. Voters can pay selective attention to preferred narratives, and ignore others. No matter what evidence is presented, there are means to doubt it: talk of corrupt elites, spies in government, conspiracies, scheming, bad faith partisan maneuvering, and so on.

The essential argument being made for doubt is of the faultiest kind: ad hominem, ad infinitum. And the stakes could not be higher: the possibility of domestic corruption at the highest levels of government, coupled with interference by a hostile power. Going by gut instinct, failing to obtain a truthful account of what is really going on, is simply not an option here. And yet our democratic system seems to be providing no other options. 

It would be unsafe to assume that we are not in the midst of an information war, or to use an older label, propaganda war. What is the defense strategy? 

We will not get anywhere (in building a defense strategy) by glibly assuming that people who fall victim to propaganda are merely stupid. Propaganda works. We must come to terms with their dilemma honestly, and, crucially, admit that it may be our own dilemma as well.    

Propaganda raises (and relies upon) fundamental questions of what ordinary citizens are capable of knowing. The problem posed, in a nutshell, is that the voices we hear may be strategically chosen, and their motives can always be impugned. The epistemological difficulty that emerges is a genuine one. Small factions with corrupt or fanatical motives often do come to dominate societies by infiltrating key institutions through which the society understands itself. It is, metaphorically, generally possible to stack the deck, load the dice, pack the courts. 
  
Thus the questions used by propagandists to keep an electorate spinning its wheels cannot, in fact, be evaded. What if a corrupt elite really has seized the spotlight and systematically downplayed contrary evidence? How do we really know there is not a “deep state” at work? What if all those testifying against the President have base motives and are secretly conspirators? All witnesses themselves are thus on trial. And how long does it take to determine a man’s character and discover his motives? A week? Two weeks? Months? Years?

No single voter has the capacity to get to the bottom of this conundrum: the only feasible choices are to take it for a ruse; to more or less accept it (on the word of commentators who themselves, we should note, may well have complex motives: even rabbit holes have rabbit holes); or to tune it out. 

Throwing more expert commentary, star witnesses, and cunningly crafted publicity at this problem can only compound it. Even a Senate conviction (and supposing the President were guilty, which we must not presuppose)----however unlikely, would not bring closure. The President’s core supporters appear likely to regard such an outcome as an inside job, and to lose faith in American democracy as a result. The President and his movement will remain a key force in politics for years to come, no matter what crimes he may be guilty of. 

How can one combat the core assumptions through which misinformation and divergent perspectives break down public trust? There is an ancient institution that may be able to attack these assumptions at the root: the Athenian jury.       

Draw an assembly from the populace, and present both sides of the question. Count their votes; then send them home. However the vote turns out, it cannot be readily dismissed as one-sided or partisan. Nor can it be tarred as an elite or insider judgement. 

To be specific:

Obtain a random sample of registered voters large enough to represent the entire country. (Even though the Greeks lacked modern statistical methods, Athenian juries were roughly the same size as a modern poll sample: 200 - 1500 members.)
Pay this jury generously, and for enough time to conduct a full trial.
Allow teams of prosecutors and defenders equal time to present their evidence, and replay congressional testimony. 
Publicize the jury’s vote before the trial starts, and after it ends.   

The jury acts as a proxy for the public. The initial vote confirms the honesty of the sample, since it can be compared with current poll averages. The final vote reflects what the public would decide if everyone had time to weigh all the evidence. Even if many jurors are too biased to change their minds, the change in votes across the trial may nevertheless say something about the quality of evidence presented by each side. (Voir dire cannot be used, as the resulting selection would no longer be random or representative.)   

The trial itself can be broadcast; the jury’s deliberations would be private, and their votes conducted by secret ballot. 

Could this whole process be impugned? Of course----but not without calling into question 1) the means by which our legal system decides questions of life and death, and 2) our entire basis for measuring public opinion. (Though the President has attacked particular polls, he has never attacked the idea of polling itself. Calling into question the accuracy of the sample is a matter for error margins, though that is admittedly a somewhat subtle aspect to communicate.) 

Here is a far deeper conspiratorial rabbit hole than voters have so far been asked to contemplate. 

Both sides of the impeachment question claim to speak for the American people; attacking the decision of an assembly drawn from the people would render such rhetoric hollow. Both sides also should support such a trial: the one for the hope of exoneration, the other for the hope of removal.

Anyone who donates either to Republican or Democratic causes ought to be willing to contribute to such an exercise. The stronger your views on the President’s guilt or innocence, the more you believe one side or the other speaks for the people: the more you should be willing to demonstrate the courage of your convictions and ask the people. If, on the other hand, you are bluffing----then that bluff can be called. 

*

Let us answer some potential objections, and (at the risk of compounding hypotheticals), consider refinements to strengthen the process, subject to time and feasibility.

Surely a random group of ordinary American citizens is not qualified to judge such a weighty matter. 1) American citizens are judging this matter, but without necessarily considering evidence. Since we cannot stop public opinion from influencing the Senate, the best we can do is refine the public’s judgement by bringing evidence to bear. 2) We already trust juries composed of ordinary citizens to make legal decisions even more weighty than removing a president.

The Founding Fathers knew about the Athenian system, but chose a republican form of government instead. Disasters like the Sicilian expedition and the trial of Socrates suggest they were right. Using an Athenian-style jury to inform public opinion is not the same as direct democracy. Republican government is still the final arbiter; any proposed jury would have no official status. The jury will evaluate only a specific question; it is not directing policy, writing laws, or conducting military strategy as the assembly of Athens did. As for the trial of Socrates, two millennia of jurisprudence and legal procedure have developed since that time. The United States of America has a Bill of Rights, which precludes executing philosophers (or anyone else for that matter) on account of their religious beliefs or public statements. The impeachment trial must be conducted along modern lines; only the size of the jury, the means of decision (vote rather than consensus), and selection by lot are modeled after the Athenian precedent.

Nevertheless, introducing even an informal element of direct democracy is an extraordinary measure. It certainly is. But republican government ultimately depends on an honestly-informed public, and elected officials adhering to democratic norms. Radical changes have occurred in both these spheres. Though they agree on little else, both parties assert that American democracy is now in crisis. The Nixon and Clinton impeachments occurred at a time when more of the electorate trusted their information, and more agreed on basic facts. That degree of trust and consensus no longer exists. If the American system of government is at risk owing to the loss of public faith, we should consider every possible measure to restore that faith.

Trials have stringent criteria for admissibility of evidence. What neutral arbiter could be trusted to make such decisions for an impeachment jury trial? And if prosecutors and defenders are instead given free rein to choose their evidence, what’s to stop them from bamboozling the jury in the same way they bamboozle the public? This is a real problem, but it’s a major step up from public opinion based on selective attention to facts and arguments. The jury must at least sit through the cases made by both sides. But it may well be worthwhile to take extra steps to rate the quality of proposed evidence, if there is time enough to do so. A separate and larger pool of jurors could be assembled to rate evidence, perhaps with guidance from a bipartisan panel of retired judges. Such ratings would have independent value for public opinion (for instance, knowing that even a majority of likely Trump supporters examined a particular piece of evidence and found it faulty would go a long way towards disarming it). Trial evidence might then be selected by starting with the highest-rated pieces of evidence, and going on to lower-rated evidence until the predicted time allotted to each side is filled. The goal would be to eliminate hearsay and character assassination, just as for ordinary trials.

How would prosecutors and defenders be selected? They should be accomplished lawyers; if the parties themselves do not cooperate in nominating teams, they could be elected by registered Republican and Democratic voters. 

Why not have jurors speak to the public about how they are voting and how they made their decisions? Such testimony could, indeed, be compelling and persuasive; given that the only purpose of such a trial is to guide and influence public opinion, it might seem worthwhile to allow it and even encourage it. Members of the public might relate strongly to jurors from similar backgrounds. That kinship could be a powerful way of changing minds. 
However, this possibility introduces extraneous factors into the vote. Jury members would have to consider what they are willing to advocate publicly, and how their advocacy impacts relationships back home. Advocating unpopular views in our polarized circles can lead to fractured friendships and even ostracism. And advocating popular views can be a source of acclaim and praise. Such fears and temptations would bias the vote to an unknowable extent.
We could obtain the best of both worlds by taking the vote from a sequestered and private jury, while assembling another sample to observe the trial and speak openly about it.
Voters wishing to connect with and hear testimony from particular public jurors might 
fill out a voter profile, with demographic and other relevant information (age, sex, race, income, residency, occupation, religion, last Presidential vote, etc.) internally matched to the most similar public juror (all such information of course remaining private).

An impeachment jury would represent the entire country, but senators represent states. If the aim is to influence the senate (or at least to allow senators to vote their conscience without losing their seats), then senators must be able to accurately assess how their own constituents would react to the evidence if they had the time to examine it all. The jury vote could, of course, be weighted by state (i.e., jurors from less populous states would get a higher weight). The weighted vote would not be a whole number, and though that might appear odd, it is not a fundamental problem. However, a sample size large enough to represent the entire country is not necessarily large enough to represent each state within the same sample. Suppose, for instance, the national jury had 500 members. No individual state within it would be sampled to an acceptable degree of accuracy.
    Representing the electorates of all the states would require a process almost an order of magnitude larger. Suppose a single trial were conducted (the question being a national one), and that trial were broadcast to fifty state juries, each one having 500 members. (The margin of sampling error rises below 500, and reaches 10% with a jury of 100.) There are now 25,000 jurors. Suppose each were to be paid $1000 for a weeklong trial. The total cost in jury salaries alone would be 25 million dollars.
That, of course, is a great deal of money. It is approximately 2.5% the cost of a full presidential campaign.
A single national jury, though less direct in influencing senators, might still have considerable value in moving public opinion. 


How do we know whether jury votes would influence public opinion? Can this even work? There is of course no way to predict how much jury votes will influence public opinion. Perhaps influencing public opinion has become impossible; perhaps the unfalsifiability of ideological belief-systems has become terminal. Maybe it is at this point even impossible to preserve the American system of government! Questions of what is possible can be argued indefinitely. 
Let’s take another tack. Concern over the future of American democracy is now widespread and even, as we have seen, bipartisan. Either impeachment outcome seems risky at this point. If the American experiment eventually fails, a lot of other terrible things are going to happen. Thus, taking steps to shore up our democratic system would seem to be necessary. 
When people are faced with necessity, they simply do what is feasible to address the necessity, and allow the future to settle whether success is possible. If the Axis is building an atomic bomb, you try to build one even if you can’t be sure it will work. If you don’t have enough food stored for the winter, you do your best to hunt, gather, or grow what you can; in November you start praying (if not before). In necessary circumstances, we only ask what has a reasonable chance of helping, and we do what is feasible.
Given the scale of election spending, even the most extensive versions of the Athenian jury are financially feasible. Does the experiment stand a chance? Will spin doctors find a way to neuter it? Will jurors be too partisan to deliberate in good faith?  Little more can be said on this question, other than for the reader to ponder it. 
But let us say one thing. If there is presumed to be no possibility of minds changing when confronted with evidence; if the public is thought to be so divided and distracted as to be able to wholly ignore what a representation of itself decides; then we seem also to be presuming that the death of democracy is inevitable.