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The infotech of Athenian democracy (new link)
And from here:
Application to presidential and judicial selection: combine election and sortition in stages, as did Venice. Sortition of electors who then pick the President, or nomination by states or election of various candidates, from whom the final winner is drawn. The appeal of spending vast sums is lessened, since there's no guarantee of victory. And you get, hopefully, some screening of kooks.
Similarly, lottery voting for legislatures (PDF). Votes cast their votes for representatives, but the actual representative is selected by lot from the ballots. So if you get 60% of the vote, you have a 60% chance of winning.
And from here:
Application to presidential and judicial selection: combine election and sortition in stages, as did Venice. Sortition of electors who then pick the President, or nomination by states or election of various candidates, from whom the final winner is drawn. The appeal of spending vast sums is lessened, since there's no guarantee of victory. And you get, hopefully, some screening of kooks.
Similarly, lottery voting for legislatures (PDF). Votes cast their votes for representatives, but the actual representative is selected by lot from the ballots. So if you get 60% of the vote, you have a 60% chance of winning.
More thoughts:
Lottery voting seems to subsume sortition. If everyone votes for themselves, you just get sortition, but the voting allows people to pass their chance to serve off to someone else. The only drawbacks I see is that you have both an election and a lottery system to keep secure, and you lose the simplicity (to me) of "grab 500 people for a year".
Analysis of traits: our system has locality and persistence. With plurality voting it can't even guarantee representing the majority, let alone cross-sectionism. Cumulative -- multimember, proportional representation -- voting in a state or nation-wide district gives cross-sectionism and persistence, but no locality. If you make more and smaller districts you get more locality, but lose representation. Also, it needs cooperation among smaller interests. Lottery is cross-sectional no matter what the district size or how an interest's vote is split up; you can get locality too with small districts. Persistence will tend to be just a few terms even for popular people.
Unpacking my terms: locality is that a legislator represents a relatively small district, and that people can point to their representative. Persistence is that a legislature can stick around for a long time, to gain influence (or cliqueishness.) Cross-sectionism or representation is that a broad cross-section of society is actually represented, that if X% of the people are Y then X% of the legislature is also Y, at least on average. Cumulative voting: if your district has N seats, you get N votes, which you can split up as you see fit: one vote for each of N candidates, or N votes for one candidate, or whatever. If Greens are 1% of the votes, but there are 100 seats, and all the Greens vote for the same person, they should be able to get her elected. If they split among two candidates not so much, while under a lottery one seat would probably (though not always, Poisson distribution joy) go to a Green no matter how they voted.
Yet another family of systems is delegation. You could start with direct democracy, but people hand their votes to someone else so you end up with fewer people, each representing a variable number of voters, or you could start with a fixed legislature selected somehow -- sortition? -- but then people endorse a legislator with their vote, so out of 100 one might have 5% of the vote and while several others had 0.1%. The endorsement is transferable at any time. I haven't thought about these as much; there's appeal, but also implementation problems and a vague sense of pitfalls.
Lottery voting seems to subsume sortition. If everyone votes for themselves, you just get sortition, but the voting allows people to pass their chance to serve off to someone else. The only drawbacks I see is that you have both an election and a lottery system to keep secure, and you lose the simplicity (to me) of "grab 500 people for a year".
Analysis of traits: our system has locality and persistence. With plurality voting it can't even guarantee representing the majority, let alone cross-sectionism. Cumulative -- multimember, proportional representation -- voting in a state or nation-wide district gives cross-sectionism and persistence, but no locality. If you make more and smaller districts you get more locality, but lose representation. Also, it needs cooperation among smaller interests. Lottery is cross-sectional no matter what the district size or how an interest's vote is split up; you can get locality too with small districts. Persistence will tend to be just a few terms even for popular people.
Unpacking my terms: locality is that a legislator represents a relatively small district, and that people can point to their representative. Persistence is that a legislature can stick around for a long time, to gain influence (or cliqueishness.) Cross-sectionism or representation is that a broad cross-section of society is actually represented, that if X% of the people are Y then X% of the legislature is also Y, at least on average. Cumulative voting: if your district has N seats, you get N votes, which you can split up as you see fit: one vote for each of N candidates, or N votes for one candidate, or whatever. If Greens are 1% of the votes, but there are 100 seats, and all the Greens vote for the same person, they should be able to get her elected. If they split among two candidates not so much, while under a lottery one seat would probably (though not always, Poisson distribution joy) go to a Green no matter how they voted.
Yet another family of systems is delegation. You could start with direct democracy, but people hand their votes to someone else so you end up with fewer people, each representing a variable number of voters, or you could start with a fixed legislature selected somehow -- sortition? -- but then people endorse a legislator with their vote, so out of 100 one might have 5% of the vote and while several others had 0.1%. The endorsement is transferable at any time. I haven't thought about these as much; there's appeal, but also implementation problems and a vague sense of pitfalls.
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Reply to self
Date: 2007-03-29 21:57 (UTC)From:The way I described it, full sortition + votes, seems better. Everyone starts with a 1/N chance of being selected. They can choose to give that right to someone else, but that doesn't affect anyone else's right.
As for presidencies and other cases where the wrong person could do a fair bit of damaged, I remembered a principle I came up with some time ago: that the real point of democratic elections isn't electing into office, but electing *out*. Elected leaders have actually been a lot more common than Western European history would tell you: Holy Roman Emperor, Polish kings, sultans... elected kings, that is, elected for life. But what matters is kicking people out.
So a simple trick is sortition + recall. Pick one person to be President, but they can be recalled at any time by the populace, or maybe by the legislature. If a nut gets picked, toss them out and try again. Also, don't give Presidents that much power...
I think I'd be leery of applying recall to legislators themselves; it might become a way for the majority to purge itself of minority representation. The sheer size and randomness of the legislature should check nuttiness; alternatively, even 'nuts' deserve representation.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 00:27 (UTC)From:In the US: In theory, Chicago has a "weak mayor" system of civic government. In practice, the mayor almost always rules.
The Minneapolis City Council is nonpartisan in theory -- but parties make endorsements.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 01:45 (UTC)From:I don't know much about the details of Chicago's governance -- they skipped that in public school -- but I imagine it has something to do with Daley's control of the Democratic party and electoral machinery. Also see the Soviet Union, with a wonderful if meaningless constitution.
But if you don't *have* an electoral machinery, but a random selection one (a delicate point, to be sure), the usual tricks might not work.