The problem is, as always, the fact that Lord Acton was right. Therefore it behooves us to dilute the corruption as much as possible by spreading the power around as widely as possible.
But I would favor a system that prevents anybody who has ever watched Honey Boo Boo from ever breeding, much less voting.
This is nonsense.
Younger people are faaarrrrrrr less forward looking than older people. Which group makes the most stupid impulsive decisions? Which group has children and grandchildren to worry about?
Yes, that’s one of the methods that was used in ancient Athens.
The trouble is that our current government is much larger than the city-state of Athens. Like, really really big. And so under a system of sortition the randomly selected citizen-legislators will be completely lost and will forced to rely on the permanent government–the lobbyists, the bureaucracy, and the political bosses.
Basically such a body will be utterly unable to legislate, it’s only function will be to ratify the decisions made by the permanent government.
It might be that such a body having such a veto power might be helpful–a body of citizens randomly selected that could veto the most egregious legislation created by the regular parliament. That is pretty much the function of the Canadian Senate, although it doesn’t use sortition. Other countries have similar “upper houses” that are largely ceremonial but could in theory veto legislation.
I’ve actually been considering this for a while. I really do think it ought to be tried, but perhaps in combination with a nomination/election of say 30 people from each constituency to a large common pool, and then random selection from within that pool. It should solve quite a few problems related to corruption, although it may create others. Probably deserves its own thread.
There’s the Robert Heinlein system. In order to get the right to vote, you have to volunteer for public service. Once your service is completed, you get to vote. You can drop out at any time but once you drop out, you can’t volunteer a second time. And the government cannot refuse anyone who wishes to volunteer so nobody can be disenfranchised against their will.
I guess you’d have to keep selecting names until someone accepted, right? I certainly wouldn’t accept such an “offer”.
There would be a registration for the pool, like there is registering to vote today. You don’t want to be considered, do not register. The compensation for the legislators should be set reasonably high so that it would cover the work interruption and other disruptions.
$170,000 for a job with no real requirements other then sitting in a room and hitting a voting clicker every once and a while. I bet I could get a lot of reading done and pay off some credit card bills.
Its an awful idea, but it’d be a good deal for the 535 people chosen.
You’re assuming the pay scale for this “citizen’s legislature” would be the same as now. You know what happens when we ass-u-me? 
While I suspect that the results of your system would be better than most would expect (the wisdom of crowds, and all that), is it really accurate to call it representative democracy? The representatives actually being chosen by the represented is essential to the definition. Further, to count as democracy, all citizens must have an equal say (ie, vote); your system eliminates the votes altogether.
Seems like a more accurate term would be something like “revolving oligarchy”.
The thing is, most of our votes are not about deciding anything, but about electing someone who will decide stuff for us.
The exception is voting on Propositions like in California, and we can see how that turned out. I don’t see how you test if someone is good at judging character. I can see giving tests on the actual wording of a proposition, and only let those who understood it well enough to pass vote on it. That will also have the advantage of the advertising addressing the actual text somewhat, as opposed to today where someone dressed as a cop but is as much a cop as someone in the Village People tell us to vote one way or another.
More importantly, the kinds of people who do well on tests already have sociopolitical power far out of proportion to their numbers. Why give them even more?
So the best we can come up with is to let the morons make critical decisions, no matter how moronic or ill-advised they are, and no matter how harmful their decisions turn out to be?
Dems: “I will feed you the same flavor of Kool-aid that Jim Jones fed his followers with the same result!”
Pubs: “I will feed you a different flavor of Kool-aid, and we’ll have to see what happens!”
Vote Dem!
Vote Pub!
I always liked that Asimov story where a computer selected a single guy at random, and his was the one and only vote.
At least it would save the other 299,999,999 of us a lot of time and effort.
The system would be much more “representative” than the current one - simply because statistically a random sample of reasonable size represents the population from which it is chosen way better than the self-selected bunch of scoundrels we have today.
As for democracy - “equal say” does not have to mean “vote”. Everyone has equal chance of being selected for representation, that’s the “equal say”. “Democracy” is
“people power”. The system I describe fits.
Who is and isn’t a “moron” is very much subject to debate.
A hundred years ago, without a single exception that I’m aware of, the heads of every major university in the US were firm believers in eugenics and those who didn’t were considered morons.
Similarly, to build on a post from a previous poster, far and away the greatest mistake ever made by the US since WWII was the Vietnam War. Something that was not pushed for by “the masses” but by “the best and the brightest” as documented in David Halberstam’s book of the same name.
While I’m no fan of Howard Zinn, he made a good point when he noted that one if the underreported facts of the 1960s and early 70s was that poll after poll continually showed that people “with college educations who read the newspapers on a daily basis” were far more likely to support the Vietnam War than those without college degrees and who didn’t regularly read the newspapers.
Also, I would disagree with Simplicio’s claim that the two greatest mistakes of the US government were the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq War.
I think the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the deregulation of the banking industry was vastly more disastrous than the Bush tax cuts and that was definitely not pushed for by the people you call “morons” but was a hugely popular bi-partisan bill signed into law by a President who was a Rhodes Scholar and was pushed for by the beltway insiders and “brilliant people” of both parties.
Blaming the current problems on “the great unwashed” and thinking we’d be better off with rule of “the best and the brightest” is elitist bullshit that doesn’t pass the laugh test.
I can’t remember who it was, but someone or other proposed the following:
You get one vote per election period, and you can either use it to vote in the election or for your favorite American Idol/Big Brother/other reality show contestent on television. Either you vote for reality television or you participate in the electoral process, but not both. That ought to winnow out a lot of the idiots.
Oh. Hadn’t thought of that. I guess you’re right. Let’s seek out the worst and the dimmest. That will give us a better result. Maybe I’ll hit myself in the head with a ball-peen hammer before entering the voting booth, just to be sure I’m not thinking too clearly.
Any political system favors the interests of those who it must answer to. Any political system based on having some elite group running things will therefore end up serving the interests of that elite group. Democracy works better than other systems because it makes the government answerable to the majority of the people so it is forced to serve the interests of the majority of the people.
You may believe most people are morons but the reality is most people are smart enough to see where their own interests lie and act on them.
Oh. Now I understand. I have beliefs, and you have reality. How silly of me not to see that.