This is fascinating. One thing that would be awesome to try would be doing this with the House of Representatives in the US.
Basically, one registered voter would be randomly chosen from each congressional district. They would be obligated to serve for the 2 year term and paid the current salary of a member of Congress ($174,000/year). They would never be part of the lottery again after 1 term.
I think this could have a lot of benefits in terms of reducing partisanship and reducing the effects of money in politics as you would have 1/3 of the US Government that was not dependent on campaign contributions.
The problem with this technique is that it takes most representatives several years to learn the mechanics of governing effectively - how to laws without unintentional loopholes, what the other relevant laws are, details of particular fields of interest (eg, space policy).
The legislature has to have these details if it’s going to do anything at all. If the representatives don’t have that knowledge they’ll get it from somewhere else. That usually means lobbyists, since they’re (representing) the experts in the field.
So then I conclude that this version of sortition will shift the political power now held by experienced politicians onto experienced public servants (in addition to the power they already have).
I am not sure if this would be worse, but it would be quite a different political power structure.
Consider how well jury service (doesn't) work. A highly trained class of influencers can game the system towards their preferred choice of outcome using arguments and techniques that are knowingly manipulative.
You'd soon end up with an oligarchy disguised as a civil service. Representatives would come and go, the civil service would remain and "guide" them.
The real power would continue to be lobby influence - and very likely explicit corruption of both civil servants and representatives.
Sortition is a great way to make everybody in the country feel like they have absolutely no stake in or influence over the federal government, since the odds of any one person being chosen are infinitesimal --- lower than those of being struck by lightning.
I also dislike sortition, but I don't understand how this is a criticism of sortition. It applies equally to the current situation: any one person is unlikely to become a federal representative.
They probably mean exactly one vote being the deciding vote for an election - 13567 votes for the winner, 13566 votes for the runner-up. Which would be the case where each and every voter's vote mattered.
If the vote ends 1000 to 0, then 999 votes haven't mattered at all, all those people could have stayed home and the result would have been the same. If it ends 1000 to 999, then if even one person had stayed home the result would have been different, so each vote was necessary for the current result.
If the vote is 1000 to 0, then the result (vote count) will be different if one person stays home -- 999 to 0 -- but the result (victor) will be the same.
Exactly the same thing is true in the case where it's 1000 to 999. If one of the losing voters stays home, you get a different vote count --- 1000 to 998 -- and the same victor. There are 999 people, half the entire electorate, who can stay home without making any meaningful difference at all.
To me, the vote count is not the result. The result is one of A won, B won, or that there is a draw. So if the vote count ends up 1 to 0 or 1000 to 0, A still wins, so the 999 votes don't really matter.
In the 1000 to 999 case, yes, everyone whose candidate lost could have stayed at home. But everyone whose candidate won had to come and vote, otherwise there would have been a draw and their candidate would have lost (or at least there would have been a draw).
Also, to be clear, all that I'm describing is more of an emotional argument - analyzing whose vote counts in an election or not is better done through game thelry. If you take the reasoning I laid down further, it sort of breaks down, and it only 'works' retroactively anyway. But I think it captures the feel of what it means for your vote to matter pretty decently.
I would bet that people who voted Biden in Georgia or Pensylvania in last week's elections feel that their personal vote was much more important than people who did the same in NYC do.
i don't mean to be curt, but that sounds awful. in what sort of ideal world would any leader of anything be chosen this way? this is just some post-post-modern madness. you know what another equally reliable, and arguably more palatable, way to ensure 0 impact of campaign contributions? anarchy. just complete, absolute Hobbesian state of nature. at least then we would pick leaders that would help us survive...
randomness is good insurance against downside risk, especially when choosing a committee of people (e.g. a jury), but it has about as much upside as delegating everything to a random Youtube commenter.
"The Great Council of Venice was a large legislative body made up of a relatively small number of noble families"
So in Venice's case, it wasn't so much randomly selecting representatives from all its citizens as it was selecting from already wealthy and influential persons, on the assumption that they were somewhat competent if they could amass and manage their existing power.
being groomed your whole life to take your father's place is totally different from being randomly forced to be a member of a legislative body, though... even if you are unremarkable, at least you'd learn enough to "know the language" from being in that world your whole life. maybe. also, you could at least argue that nobility have the most "skin in the game" when it comes to decisions about the realm. (not that that justifies that sort of system-- i think everyone makes out a lot better now than they did then)
Members of the House of Representatives aren't really leaders in the sense of having the authority to decide things on their own. I think randomly-chosen representatives could be a workable solution. It might be awful in some ways, but the House would then be a reasonably accurate representation of the full population. And if they did anything nonsensical, there's still the Senate which would presumably still be elected in the usual way.
I'll bet people would take more interest the quality of public education for the average citizen, at least.
if by quality of public education you mean the quality of the floor. which is kind of my point-- i think the people at the ceiling can raise the tide for all boats, and the "randomly choose the benevolent leader" strategy is an explicit rejection of the idea that people can be distinguished or qualified in any way for anything.
A sibling mentioned this is called sortition. The main drawback another sibling mentioned is lack experience. I think a good combination is 'sortition & incumbency'. Elections occur in two phases:
1. If an incumbent wants to keep their seat, they keep their seat with a K% chance, say 50/50; and,
2. All remaining seats are chosen at random from the eligible (see below) that apply for the position.
An additional tweak is to require 'previous experience' by having statesfolk work in lower level representative positions. For instance: anyone qualifies for city council (maybe not metropolises) or county level positions; a person just puts their name in the hat to get started. Once a statesperson has successfully had a complete term at city/county level they can move to the state level, then the Federal level. It could even be lateral: lower-house to upper-house. There are 10s-of-thousands of county & city level positions, giving a sizable pool of new statesfolk to draw from.
The incumbency mechanism allows a subset of representatives to maintain stability & gain experience "in situ"; the pipelining provides a naturally trained pool of statesfolk. The sortition mechanism is a robust anti-gerrymandering, anti-corruption, anti-just-about-everything-we-don't-like-in-government mechanism.
> The sortition mechanism is a robust anti-gerrymandering, anti-corruption, anti-just-about-everything-we-don't-like-in-government mechanism.
I'd argue that the worst aspect of the US political system is the fine margins between two fiercely partisan factions which random members of the public tend to strongly identify with. Making which faction with ~45% hardcore supporters [in swing states] has control a matter of dumb luck as opposed to whether their conduct impresses or appals the few people able to see merit in both political philosophies doesn't sound like an improvement.
Also, the incentive to be corrupt certainly isn't weakened by removing any incentive to present oneself as clean for future re-election from the equation.
A significant source for enabling corrupt behavior is the fact that the party (usually) controls the seat, and highly noncompetitive races where incumbents are almost guaranteed their seat. If a statesperson doesn’t “own” their seat, and they don’t have a party to cover them, they have to worry about the next person asking questions.
"Sortition" is a dumb name. Name it so what people already know what it is: "juries".
If you say "I think we should use sortition to decide voting districts" no one will know what the hell you're talking about. If you say "Voting districts should be approved by citizen juries" it is simple and clear. Avoid jargon that doesn't add any precision.
In general I like the idea of random sampling an an efficient means of democratic process. The trouble is that democracy is better at deliberating than promulgating laws.
I think a better approach would be to have elected representatives craft legislation in congressional committees, and then allow randomly selected citizen committees (a la jury duty) to vote and deliberate on behalf of their district.
I think it would be interesting to have three Houses: Senate, with individual senators appointed by the state legislatures; Representatives, with individuals elected by popular vote; and Citizens, selected by sortition. Legislation could originate in either the Senate or the House of Representatives, but would have to be ratified by the House of Citizens, unless their veto were overridden by super-majorities. The number of citizens per state would be the sum of the state's senators & representatives.
This would take the veto away from the President, and give it to a random selection of people.
Maybe combine it with an amendment stating that all regulations must be passed by the Congress, or at least be ratified by the House of Citizens …
There are a lot of potential roles for citizen juries, but adding a third house is just a solution looking for a problem.
A good arrangement would be:
- Elect 50 Senators nationally by proportional representation (2% party vote = 1 senate seat)
- The Senate works with parliamentary style vote of no confidence system instead of fixed term lengths (fixed term lengths have repeatedly been a disaster for the US). Let's say the maximum is 6 years, in keeping with tradition
- The Senate appoints the President and cabinet directly, instead of using the Electoral College first and then approving the Cabinet. Since the Senate is now national, it's essentially national popular vote for President.
- The House remains on a 2 year limit, but add more Reps (1 per 100K people is good) and do things like Instant Runoff Voting and multimember constituencies.
- For the House districts, have the Federal Election Commission draw up plans and…
- Have the plans approved by citizen juries. It's crazy to just send one random person to congress and expect them to do well, but it's not crazy to ask random 100 people from across the country to come together to give oversight to bureaucrats. We have 12 random people give oversight to criminal trials already. Juries are good at oversight.
- We could also use citizen juries for some Supreme Court stuff, but that might be harder because the cases end up being very technical at that level.
Issue there is that the House and Senate would just represent the people, and no-one would represent the states. That seems contrary to point of a government whose title is the United States.
I've met too many complete fucks to believe in this concept. To be workable it would have to have some kind of qualifications. Maybe you randomly choose 99 people and then they can choose one among themselves in a deliberative process. Or maybe you have some requirements like a college degree, a clean employment and criminal history, etc.
So these random people are going to be put in power without making any ideological commitments, no platform, no coalition, no campaign promises. Where are these rookies going to get policy ideas if not from the lobbyists whose job is to convince them?
Basically, one registered voter would be randomly chosen from each congressional district. They would be obligated to serve for the 2 year term and paid the current salary of a member of Congress ($174,000/year). They would never be part of the lottery again after 1 term.
I think this could have a lot of benefits in terms of reducing partisanship and reducing the effects of money in politics as you would have 1/3 of the US Government that was not dependent on campaign contributions.