4 ms·
It's easy to fall in love with a political system that's never been tested at the United State's scale. My guess is, if we implemented sortition, a few unsavory
by morley 11y ago
It's easy to fall in love with a political system that's never been tested at the United State's scale. My guess is, if we implemented sortition, a few unsavory things would happen:
(1) The Republican and Democrat parties would just switch their efforts to getting people excluded from the random drawing, much as they currently aim to include or exclude people from voting.
(2) After selections, the losing party would attack the random selection process.
(3) Assuming the selection is allowed to go through without objection, the random person would be under the same duress that elected candidates have to accept bribes and kickbacks.
(4) It's possible that the average citizen would be more prone to reap their rewards during their short term in office, rather than someone who's mindful of their full career.
I'm guessing you're just being flippant out of cynicism against the current system, but I'm a little over that line of thinking.
- rdancer 11y agoTwo-party systems are the inevitable product of a First-Past-The-Post voting in a democracy[1]. There would be no Democratic and Republican party under a sortition system. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
- Retra 11y agoAre you trying to say that people's political affiliations are a consequence of how their votes are counted?
- finnh 11y agoNot quite. rdancer's saying that the options people have to choose amongst/between are a consequence of how their votes are counted. Proportional representation tends toward a larger number of parties; first-past-the-post tends toward two. And "tends toward" can be read as "definitely leads to" in the case of fpp.
- coldtea 11y ago>My guess is, if we implemented sortition, a few unsavory things would happen:(1) The Republican and Democrat parties would just switch their efforts to getting people excluded from the random drawing, much as they currently aim to include or exclude people from voting. Well, abolish the parties too then. It's just citizens.
- fweespeech 11y agoThe problem is you can't really "abolish" the parties. Social cliques will form regardless.
- coldtea 11y agoIf you pass a law forbidding them to have formal legal presence as an organization, you can. Social cliques are OK, it's the formalizing that makes it worse. I'd abolish lobbies as official entities if it was up to me too.
- fweespeech 11y agoThey existed as social cliques before they became official entities and were just as problematic at that point. Political parties didn't really become a bipolar construct we have today until ~1791.
- coldtea 11y agoWell, I think they've reached a level of depravity and institutionalization since that that was unknown in 1791.
- fweespeech 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts Eh....not really. The problem these days is a disconnect from reality.