I've elaborated on this form of government I have proposed in great detail on my blog here
The purpose of this post is to be a persuasive argument for my proposed system of democracy. I am arguing along the lines that my legislature by sortition, random selection, is superior to electoral systems. It also mirrors the advances in overcoming bias which are currently being pioneered in the Sciences.
I. The Problem
It is insane that we allow the same people who are elected to cast their eye on society to identify problems, write up the solutions to those problems, and then also vote to approve those solutions. This triple function of government by elected officials isn't simply corruptible, but is inherently flawed in its decision making process.
II. The Central Committee, overcoming bias, electoral shenanigans, and demographics bias
In my system of sortition election there is a mini-referendum done by a huge sampling of 1,000-5,000 representatives at the highest level. They vote everything up or down and cannot change anything about a bill themselves. They are not congregated into one place and there is no politics between them. They don't even need to know, nor could they know each other. Perhaps they could be part of political parties, but there is no need or money behind this as the members of what I'm calling the Central Committee (C2) are never candidates and can individually never serve more than once per lifetime or perhaps per decade in 3 year terms.
Contentious issues can be moved to a general referendum. In the 1,000 member C2, any law in the margins of 550-450 can have a special second vote proposed by the disagreeing side such that if more than 600 agree then the item is added to the general monthly or quarterly referendum conducted electronically with the entire population. In this way the average person participates and feels heard by their government on a regular basis.
The major advantage of this C2 is that it is representative. It will have people from all areas, be 50% male and 50% female and will include all minorities. There can be no great misrepresentation or capture of the legislature by a powerful group. This overcome many of the inherent biases of an electoral system which in almost every democracy today routinely under represents minorities.
III. The Issue Committees (IC)
The IC is a totally separate body whose sole job is to identify areas of the law which need updating. They are comprised of 100 citizens and are a split between 51 Regular Citizens (RCs) and 49 Expert Citizens (EC) serving single 3 year terms. There are around 30 ICs and they each serve an area such as defence, environment, food safety, drug safety, telecommunications, changes to government, finance sector, banking sector, etc.
These committees will meet in person and discuss what needs exist which the government can address. They do not get to write any laws, nor do they get to vote on any laws. There are in fact more of these than there are members of the C2 and they will be the primary face of government where the average citizen can send in requests or communicate needs. The IC shines a spotlight on the issues facing the country. They also form the law writing bodies
IV. The Sub Committee (SC)
These are temporary parts of the legislature who write the laws. They have no authority over what topic area they get to write laws about, that is determined by the IC and then voted upon by the C2. They are composed of 10 RCs and 10 ECs with the support of 10 Lawyer Citizens (LC). The LCs do not participate to vote when the draft law can be moved up to the C2 for consideration, they simply help draft reasonable laws.
These SC's form and dissolved quickly, lasting no more than 3-6 months before a proposed law is made. Being called up to the SC is a lot more akin to being drafted for Jury Duty than the IC or C2 level of government as it is a short term of service.
V. Conclusions
- This system is indeed more democratic and more representative than current electoral democracies. It is less prone to corruption and electioneering is impossible as there are no elections.
- Members of the C2, IC, and SC parts of intentionally split in their duties so no conflict of interest can arise and there is no legislator bias where they have pet bills and issues to push through for benefits to specific parts of the country.
- This system is also less influenced by the views an opinions of the very wealthy and the demographic and economic makeup of the people involved.
NOTE 2: As for the nature of this being different, look at juries. We already use a process of sortition, though heavily and perhaps unfairly constrained in its current form, to determine if people are guilty or innocent and what sort of punishment they might receive. We even use sortition in committees of experts in various forms form peer reviewed journals with somewhat random selection from a pool of qualified individuals or ECs in my system.
NOTE 3: This is not about politics. I often say I am interested in government, but not politics. This confuses a lot of people. If anything, this system would lessen or (too optimistically) eliminate politics. I know there is a general ban on discussion of politics and this is not that. I am trying to modify government and democratic systems to reflect advances in cognitive bias, decision theory, and computer technology to modernize and further democratize the practice of government.
Abbreviations shorten the text, many posts on LW use them.
I have thought out the political implications and my desire was to design a system which has less of a place for politics. The void for politics to fill in how we conduct ourselves could be reduced intentionally.
The top level of government reads the bill and the call for a bill. If it doesn't match up with the focus of the call, then they can vote it down. Alternately the mid level issue committee could serve as a buffer to read proposed legislation before voting in a simple majority to pass it up to the top level of government.
Expert selection addressed in other comment.
This is a description of the legislative system only. I have the executive and judiciary outlined in my link and did not wish to discuss them and their system interplay here.
Sure, there can be a constitution with super authority which is difficult to modify. Again, excluded for brevities sake.
Perhaps I've confused about the journal citation industry. Certainly the journal can screen their pool of peer reviewers, but there will still be one. I suppose it was overstrong to imply a forced level of complying with peer review requests...but there is an implicit one. If a professor always declines to review papers, then they wont be asked again by the journal as it becomes a waste of time. It is also better as there is a pool of reviewers and the researchers are removed from that choice. The researcher cannot choose who reviews their article, in that sense there is a type of low-enforcement level sortition from a limited pool of candidates in place.
How random citizens are selected is addressed above. They must be in the normal range for intelligence, with a cut off on the low end, pick an IQ point like 75 or 80 based on a running average and some fixed standard deviation away from that average. Severe intellectual disabilities such as down-syndrome or psychosis can be initially excluded from the selection pool so that they are not constantly being screened out. I mean severe when I meant severe, something everyone could agree upon.
They would work from a specially designed computer system for communicating and voting. Could it be hacked or compromised, sure...but so could nuclear missile launch codes.
I want them to read the laws of course! I never said they shouldn't. The top level people in the C2 would have staff to help them organize their schedules and such. The IC/SC would create summaries of the issue brief calling for a law, the sub-committee would also create a brief of the proposed legislation. There is less worry of underhanded tricks and total crap being put into laws as no one has any constituents or donors to service. These are far more impartial and less invested citizens. The C2 is like a mini-referendum. They are a capture of what people would think if they took time to evaluate each proposed law. I want it to be that way to avoid corruption and bias on several levels. The people voting on the law didn't write it and have no investment in it passing or not, bias is removed at this step. They are less likely to have systemic corruption issues as they do not court donors or voters. They are to act as the average citizen would and individually matter very little. There are at least a thousand of them. They simply vote the way they want to and all the results are tallied up to take a measure of the collective will of the people. They are more sensitive to the will of the people as they are not removed from their communities. They live in their regular house and do not travel out of state to engage in full time politicking. I argue they are better connected to the real world than someone tied to the narrow and myopic range of 'voter issues' or campaign nonsense where single issues are compressed down to easy to understand sound bites.
Not sure what you mean by NSA. The C2 or the executive (not described how here) can reject a bill, if the majority, perhaps 60% of the C2 have a secondary vote, then it can go to a broad referendum for all citizens to consider. Essentially the mini-referendum group of the C2 is shown to be not sensitive enough to measure the will of the people and a wider referendum is needed on such contentious issues.
Cheers!
Nuclear weapons are protected by air gaps. They have physical guards that are military personal that we trust for protecting the weapons. It's okay when the military has the power to use nuclear weapons. On the other hand you don't want to give the military the power to dictate election results.
The fact that you use nuclear launch codes as example is also very ironic. At the beginning... (read more)