[EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process

[Juho Laatu]

On 23.7.2012, at 0.22, Fred Gohlke wrote:

> re: "If we start from low/local level and parties set the
>     candidates, I might try giving the decision power on who
>     will go to the next levels to the regular voters, and not to
>     the candidates that may already be professional politicians."
> 
> That is certainly a possibility, although I think it unwise for several reasons:
> 
> * as described in an earlier post, those at the lower levels can
>  influence those at the higher levels.  Each candidate achieves
>  selection by a known list of electors, so communication between
>  the electors and the candidate is straightforward.  That
>  capability is more important than voting; it lets the electors
>  influence, not only the choice of candidates, but the public
>  issues on which the candidates will be legislating.

In the quoted text I assumed that your question "What would you think of letting interest groups (or parties) select their most effective advocates to compete with other candidates for public office?" referred to candidates that are not set by the electors (starting from the most local level) but by the parties. In that case I felt that there maybe was a need to allow the regular voters to decide instead of letting the party nominated candidates make the decisions. But maybe that was not your intended scenario.

Juho