[EM] language/framing quibble

[Aaron Armitage]

I see a real philosophical problem with this. The whole point of having a
republic is so that the people can make public decisions in common. Any
chamber which is not subject to popular control is therefore
anti-republican, even if it is more demotic than the chamber the people
would have chosen for themselves. That it is only one of two chambers
doesn't help much; it's certainly more representative in a statistical
sense than a House of Lords would be, but is just as unrepresentative in the sense that the community the members legislate for never made a choice to authorize them to represent it.


--- On Tue, 9/9/08, Terry Bouricius <terryb at burlingtontelecom.net> wrote:

> From: Terry Bouricius <terryb at burlingtontelecom.net>
> Subject: Re: [EM] language/framing quibble
> To: "Fred Gohlke" <fredgohlke at verizon.net>, election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Date: Tuesday, September 9, 2008, 4:00 PM
> Although it may be off-topic for a VOTING method list, I
> have long 
> advocated a greater use of sortition (the selection by lot)
> to select 
> legislators (perhaps one chamber of a bicameral
> legislature?) Having 
> served ten years as a state legislator in Vermont, USA, I
> can assure you 
> all that legislators are not more qualified, nor wiser, as
> Burke hoped, 
> but rather simply less-representative and more egotistical,
> than average 
> people. The experience and excellent work of the Citizen
> Assembly 
> established by the provincial parliament in British
> Columbia a few years 
> ago is compelling evidence that elections may not be the
> key to genuinely 
> representative democracy.
> 
> Terry Bouricius
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Fred Gohlke"
> <fredgohlke at verizon.net>
> To: <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 4:10 PM
> Subject: Re: [EM] language/framing quibble
> 
> 
> Whoops!
> 
> It was your entire post of Mon Sep 8 03:44:51 PDT 2008
> 
> I didn't cite it because I was responding to the entire
> post, which 
> follows:
> 
> (clip)
> One option is to select the legislature at random. 
> Stratified random
> sampling would yield a highly representative legislature. 
> The
> population would be split into N groups, such that each
> group is
> reasonably homogeneous and then 1 person picked from each
> group.  This
> also reduces the benefit from corrupting the random
> process.  Also,
> corrupting the stratification just increases the random
> variance, it
> doesn't actually change the expect result.  Corrupting
> both means that
> you get to pick the legislature.
> 
> This has the advantage that it eliminates the point in
> campaigning.
> Every 5 years, a group of people get a mail in the post
> informing them
> that they have been selected for 'legislature duty'
> .. though unlike
> Juries they would presumably be paid.
> 
> The disadvantage (or advantage depending on your viewpoint)
> is that it
> leads to a legislature made up of average people.
> 
> I have suggested that a way around it is to have a
> multi-stage process.
>   The people picked at random are asked to select the
> 'person they know
> who they would most respect to hold office' and that
> generates a second
> group.  The rule would require that the person picked is
> somehow
> connected to them, say friends or family members.  After a
> few stages,
> say 10, the final group becomes the legislature.
> 
> This should result in a reasonably competent legislature
> (assuming each
> person picks someone more competent than themselves) and
> the rule that
> you must pick a friend/family members for each link means
> that
> campaigning is pointless.
> 
> This resulting legislature would then appoint the PM (or
> nominate 2
> candidates for President) and approve any cabinet posts.
> 
> The big disadvantage is that it is unlikely that a person
> would be
> re-elected.  This could lead to short term thinking.  OTOH,
> each
> legislator would know that he will have to live in the
> country after his
> term ends, so he won't want to mess up to badly.
> (clip)
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