[EM] language/framing quibble

[Terry Bouricius]

Aaron makes a fundamental point about sortition...it may be "democratic" 
(the ancient Greeks thought it was more democratic than elections), but it 
is not what we call a "republican" form of representation, which involves 
people evaluating and choosing individuals (or parties) through election 
and granting authority to this select group to govern on their behalf, 
with those legislators subject to sanction and removal at periodic 
elections. Sortition to create a scientifically accurate representative 
subset of the entire community is closer to the concept of a democratic 
assembly than a classic republic. The members of a sortition legislature 
would not be "accountable" to any voters.  Each would simply be 
accountable to her/himself, knowing there are a proportionate number of 
other people in the society that think much the same way that they do on 
issues.

I can imagine a system in which one sortition body was charged with 
deciding what issues needed public action (agenda setting), and then 
various other legislative bodies were created for limited duration by 
sortition, each addressing a narrow range of issues (so they could gain 
some expert knowledge). Perhaps a national sortition legislative body 
would be selected randomly from local level sortition bodies, so the 
members already have some experience in how to deliberate, etc.

This may be fanciful, but since this model has actually been utilized in a 
limited way in at least a couple of Canadian provinces (which is more than 
can be said of many voting methods discussed on this list), it may not be 
so far-fetched.

Terry Bouricius

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Armitage" <eutychus_slept at yahoo.com>
To: <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 6:23 PM
Subject: Re: [EM] language/framing quibble


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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