What problem is this trying to address? Caplan's Myth of the Rational Voter makes the case that democracies choose bad policies because the psychological benefit from voting in particular ways (which are systematically biased) far outweigh the expected value of the individual's vote. To the extent that your system reduces the number of people that vote, it seems to me that a carefully designed sortition system would be much less costly, and also sidesteps all sorts of nasty political issues about who designs the test, and public choice issues of special interests wanting to capture government power.
The basic idea of a literacy test isn't really new, and as a matter of fact seems to have still been floating around the U.S. at late as the 1960s
And why do you claim this is "republican meritocracy" when it isn't republican per se (small r)?
Erm, from that link, I understood that "sortition" means "choosing your leaders randomly". Why would I want to do that? Is democracy really worse than random?
"And why do you claim this is "republican meritocracy" when it isn't republican per se (small r)?"
Probably because that word doesn't mean what I think it means. I assumed that "republican" means that people like you and me get to influence who gets elected. Which is part of my proposal.
We've had these for a year, I'm sure we all know what to do by now.
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