[EM] sortition/random legislature Was: Re: language/framing quibble

[Aaron Armitage]

I don't think I expressed my point clearly enough: I consider that making
the public the active agents in their own governance is a very major
benefit of popular government. THE benefit, in fact. Increasing the
percentage of majority policy preferences enacted, in such a way as to
make the people passive consumers of policy rather than at least
potentially the producers forfeits the reason for having popular
government. Managing your own affairs is for adults; having your desires
catered to without effort on your part is for spoiled children.

I'm not especially afraid that legislators chosen by sortition would be
corrupt, although if they can be reelected as you suggest they would
become corrupt at close to the same rate that politicians do now, and for
the same reasons. I do think that in practice the agenda would be set by
the permanent staffers and facilitators, and depending on who they are and
how effective they are at framing the issues the result may end up not
being very democratic at all.


--- On Tue, 9/9/08, Raph Frank <raphfrk at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Raph Frank <raphfrk at gmail.com>
> Subject: [EM] sortition/random legislature Was: Re: language/framing quibble
> To: eutychus_slept at yahoo.com
> Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Date: Tuesday, September 9, 2008, 7:28 PM
> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 11:23 PM, Aaron Armitage
> <eutychus_slept at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> If you picked 1000 people, then the odds of them voting
> differently
> from the general population is small (around 3%).  If the
> legislature
> is 100 people, then the margin of error is around 10%.  I
> think that
> most real legislatures have an even greater error between
> the vote
> percentages in the legislature and the vote percentages of
> the general
> public.
> 
> If you are afraid that they would become corrupted, then
> the same
> problem occurs for legislators who are elected (and more so
> as they
> must campaign for re-election).  If they aren't
> corrupted, then they
> are much more representative of the popular will than a
> legislator.
> 
> What is different is the abolition of the ability to punish
> candidates
> for acting badly.  You can't vote out a random
> legislator as they
> can't be re-elected anyway.
> 
> What about this:
> 
> 1) Country is split into districts.
> 
> - Legislators must be resident within the boundaries of
> their district
> prior to the update, or are considered to be retiring at
> the end of
> the term.
> - Districts are updated such that any non-retiring
> legislator's
> residence remains in his district
> - Districts are updated to keep population balance but
> should be
> minimally changed.
> 
> 2) Every N years, there is a vote of confidence held in
> each district
> and each voter can vote.  If the legislator loses, his seat
> is
> considered vacated.
> 
> 3) All unfilled seats are filled randomly from the citizens
> who live
> in the district.
> 
> This gets the benefit that it isn't possible to
> campaign for office,
> but allows the voters to punish a wayward legislator.
> 
> The legislator himself would probably campaign in the run
> up to the
> vote of confidence.  However, he just needs to show that he
> is better
> than average.  The fact that he is the only candidate means
> that he
> shouldn't need much resources to run his campaign.
> 
> It also removes the de facto 1 term term limit.
> 
> Combined with a PR-STV House, this would seem pretty
> reasonable.
> 
> One issue is that it is centrist favouring.  If you are an
> extremist,
> then you are likely to lose the motion of confidence.
> 
> Multi-seat districts could be used to help with that.  It
> could be
> PR-STV, with a rule that you must reach the quota.
> 
> "Rank all candidates you have confidence in, in order
> of your choice"
> 
> The legislators for that district would all stand.  In
> effect, there
> would be say 5 candidates standing for a 5 seat
> constituency.
> 
> Unfilled seats would be filled randomly.  This still
> semi-favours
> centrists, but less so than before.  Extremists would tend
> to be of
> lower 'quality' as if they are removed, they are
> likely replaced with
> a centrist.  This means that their supporters may be more
> reluctant to
> vote them out.
> 
> It also causes campaigning as each legislator tries to
> convince voters
> to vote for him and/or give transfers.