4 ms·

I can't remember where I read it, but I recall there was a study that argued that it would be "better" (can't recall the hypothesis: more democratic? more repre

I can't remember where I read it, but I recall there was a study that argued that it would be "better" (can't recall the hypothesis: more democratic? more representative?) to actually pick people like jury duty (i.e. at random).

retrac 4y ago
To the electoral policy nerds, that method is known as sortition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition a.k.a. selection by lots. It has consistently had its advocates over the centuries. I too feel it's underrated as a method. Plato was basically right all those years ago; those who actively seek power generally don't deserve it. I seriously wonder if we'd be better off with a legislature selected of random citizens, and an executive council selected the same way. It did work for the Ancient Athenians for some 300+ years. Democracy in ancient Greece meant selection by lottery and most offices in the Athenian democracy were picked that way. Following selection there was a public interview during which any citizen could pose questions and the candidate could at that point be disqualified for a legally established reason by a vote of the previously-elected archons. (The main exception was military generals, who were elected by popular vote. Competence and respect were considered more important than incorruptibility for that particular office.)
dragonwriter 4y ago
It would be better to have an electoral system that provides proportional results, like most established democracies. Sortition does that probabilistically, so it would be better in that sense. OTOH, most of the other proposed benefits of sortition are dubious. E.g., it's often portrayed as insulation against corruption because people aren't dependent on corporate cash to get reelected. OTOH, with most politicians not careerists with a relatively reliable fallback of various cushy sinecures in periods where they are out of office, the amount of money you need to dangle in front of randomly chosen and soon to revert to normal life citizens to radically change their post-term life drops considerably, and neither public enforcement nor media outlets are going to be able to devote the bandwidth necessary to police corruption in the firehouse of people pumped through government.
dane-pgp 4y ago
I think that Sortition might be viable for an upper chamber of a bicameral legislature. Basically the (proportionally) representatively elected career politicians in the lower chamber would become experts at law making, and build up reputations and relationships with the public and each other, but any law they proposed would have to get through the screening process of a chamber of "ordinary" people. By not allowing the upper chamber to draft its own proposed legislation, there would be less risk of them falling into some populist mania and pushing through some half-baked idea that was trending on Twitter.

retrac 4y ago

To the electoral policy nerds, that method is known as sortition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition a.k.a. selection by lots. It has consistently had its advocates over the centuries. I too feel it's underrated as a method. Plato was basically right all those years ago; those who actively seek power generally don't deserve it. I seriously wonder if we'd be better off with a legislature selected of random citizens, and an executive council selected the same way. It did work for the Ancient Athenians for some 300+ years. Democracy in ancient Greece meant selection by lottery and most offices in the Athenian democracy were picked that way. Following selection there was a public interview during which any citizen could pose questions and the candidate could at that point be disqualified for a legally established reason by a vote of the previously-elected archons. (The main exception was military generals, who were elected by popular vote. Competence and respect were considered more important than incorruptibility for that particular office.)

dragonwriter 4y ago

It would be better to have an electoral system that provides proportional results, like most established democracies. Sortition does that probabilistically, so it would be better in that sense. OTOH, most of the other proposed benefits of sortition are dubious. E.g., it's often portrayed as insulation against corruption because people aren't dependent on corporate cash to get reelected. OTOH, with most politicians not careerists with a relatively reliable fallback of various cushy sinecures in periods where they are out of office, the amount of money you need to dangle in front of randomly chosen and soon to revert to normal life citizens to radically change their post-term life drops considerably, and neither public enforcement nor media outlets are going to be able to devote the bandwidth necessary to police corruption in the firehouse of people pumped through government.

dane-pgp 4y ago

I think that Sortition might be viable for an upper chamber of a bicameral legislature. Basically the (proportionally) representatively elected career politicians in the lower chamber would become experts at law making, and build up reputations and relationships with the public and each other, but any law they proposed would have to get through the screening process of a chamber of "ordinary" people. By not allowing the upper chamber to draft its own proposed legislation, there would be less risk of them falling into some populist mania and pushing through some half-baked idea that was trending on Twitter.