
Permalink for comment 488548
RE[7]: Human mess
by Alfman on Mon 5th Sep 2011 17:24 UTC in reply to "RE[6]: Human mess"
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"In Sweden, I have met someone who advocated random elections. People are picked randomly in the ID database and designated as part-time leaders of the country. To address things which they don't know, they refer to a public institution of people who work in the field."

Interesting, however I dislike the fact that this system would not be democratic either.

I've proposed some ideas in the past myself.

1. Rank voting, to address the problem when people end up voting for the candidates most likely to win, rather than those they actually want to win. This one is a no-brainer, but would severely weaken the democratic and republican parties such that I doubt there is sufficient incentive among politicians to fix the problem.

2. Revolving door vote. Instead of voting at distant intervals, a public vote could be recorded for each voter until the person dies or casts a new vote. The majority vote would be tabulated continuously (something like every month). This would have significant ramifications, but the idea is that politicians would have a far greater incentive to listen to the public over their own agenda.

3. Vote directly on issues instead of through politicians. A representative might not follow through on his stated plans. And even if he does, our vote for him doesn't imply endorsement of the full plan. People must vote for the candidate on a restricted set of dimensions (which often turn out to be those promoted by political think tanks). This implies that most dimensions will never see the light of the democratic process, and can even result in elected officials pushing policy which completely contradicts the majority view on them.

4. Domain specific elections. Short of being able to vote on specific issues, maybe it'd be possible to vote in representatives on a finer granularity such that voters can cast a ballot which better reflects their choices.

Of course I've heard some people say that democracy doesn't work in the first place because people are too stupid to make the best choices for themselves without political middlemen. Maybe that's true, but I'd still rather live democratically among a stupid people than live under tyrants who are wise.

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