Suppose you could magically select 100 voters whose spectrum of views are about the same as that of the electorate at large, as is their intelligence. They must vote anonymously to reduce bribe potential. They don't have to fundraise or watch polls or mud sling, and can focus on the issues instead of their reputation, and have a wider range of input instead of just party platforms. Would you rather have them, or would you rather have elected politicians run the state legislature? In either case, experts would still be appointed for routine administration.
Well, I spoke to one of my roommates about Trump and Clinton. I was amazed how much different his internet experience is than mine. He showed me a lot I had not seen about Trump and Clinton. That can go either way: a citizen legislature could have a big picture and do just fine, or the elected legislature could have tons of people voting who can pick the right people. Either way, we don't want to exclude anyone. We all have a puzzle piece.
I would trust citizens who actually have to live in the world these politicians create for us, than the views of politicians who never have to follow the rules which they create.
We already have that in my state. Our state legislators receive $23,000 per legislative session (plus a daily per diem when they're at the Capitol doing state business). This means they all have careers outside of their duties as legislators.
Not sure you understand what goes into writing a good bill these days. Its not the same as it was 200 years ago because the laws are so much more complex and intricate now. It takes a lot of back story to write a bill that amends current law. You have to know what the law is now, and why it was changed, say four or eight or twenty years ago to reflect a different result and who wanted that change. You have be educated on how the current language in each section interacts with the systems involved before you can tinker with that language. In short you need those committees, the legislative staff on them and access to all those witnesses from diverse and opposing view points. Now your big problem is that the lobbyists are professionals with decades of the kind of knowledge that you truly need access to, but who also have an agenda to manipulate you. You have to have access to their information. If you are writing a bill impacting how doctors document their services for insurance compensation including medicare or Medicaid to make it more efficient but less frauulant, you need to have the AMA lobbyists, and representatives of the Hospital Assoc, and the Dept of Health there, to help you see their side of the proposed change. Legislative staff can't and those individual doctors that may show up at a committee hearing won't be able to reflect a broader perspective or understand all of the legislative consequences of your bill, like how you new change impacts section B of 12.357 describing the patient bill of rights, or how it interferes with how the Dept of health gathers data consistent with Section D of 5403.90 You need access to professional lobbyists . I wouldn't put up an amateur wrestler with a professional and expect the amateur to control the outcome. We need professional legislators at the state and federal level, but we need to make sure that big money is not what keeps them professionals.
We trust 12-person juries to decide multi-million dollar cases or vote on a death penalty. I think it should take more than 12 to do that, but it still supports my point: I say 100 legislators breaks up into eight 12-person juries who hear cases by lobbyists (who pay a fee for the hearing much like a court fee). Instead of awarding settlements, they vote on whether to change the law. Upcoming hearings are announced to the public in advance. If 7/12 vote for a change, it is sent to the legislature at large for another upcoming vote. More lobbyists get to speak before the legislature again, paying a fee much like a court fee. They have 3 vote choices: "better", "I don't know", and "worse". I simple majority voting "better" is the minimum needed to change a law. However, if at least 1/4 vote "worse", then 3/5 voting better is needed to make the change. If they mess up and pass a bad change, some other groups can come along, pay a hearing fee, state their reasons and changes, and get a vote to have it changed again. This is far better than writing to your legislator and saying "please pass my idea and I might vote for you later."
Yea if you had the House be citizens and the Senate elites, it would work. That's what the founders had wanted. It would be better to have both the bourgeois and the elite working together in separate houses.
Anonymous voting is a star chamber and the antithesis of democracy. On that, heck no. Logistically it is a problem. A factory worker cannot keep his job and take months off to be a representative. One of the reasons we are seeing so much corruption is because the government has its fingers in too many pots. Somewhere along the way the government has stopped working for the greater good of the whole of the people they represent, and started down the road of picking winners and losers just for the sake of being able to.
Here in California most of the Democrats in the state legislature have no skills to fall back on in the private sector. Their entire careers are spent in government. They get termed out and they run for another political office. If they lose, they are appointed to some government commission. I noticed when a Republican is termed out or loses an election they go back to the private sector and go back making a living, paying taxes like most Americans. A citizen legislature in California ? 1/2 of the people in California are stupid people. If California were to tax the stupid, California would have a $5 TRILLION DOLLAR surplus. There should be a stupidity tax !!! 1/3 of Californians are Cat-5's, morons. But they are allowed to go to the polls and vote.
Yes, but they still campaign and mud sling and spend time fundraising and are loyal only to their donors and those who voted in their primary. Not the same as a randomly selected group. Nah, just select people from those who filed a state tax return last year, and if they don't want the job, select someone else. Pay enough to compensate for their time, but not enough that lazy people will take the job and surf the web on their phone all day. We do anonymous voting at the polls. It is a bedrock of democracy. Even jurors are somewhat anonymous with their votes. Give them state paid severance pay so it is worth while. I agree the pay scale and hours should be such that we get a representative sample, not just people who are already unemployed. That is true, but at least an randomly selected, anonymously voting legislature could not be bribed as easily. Campaign finance and personal attacks would be gone. They would just focus on issues. As a separate issue, maybe we need stronger courts for overturning laws.
The random selection would cure that problem. No more hopping to another position. Yet those same stupid people are allowed to vote on representatives and on ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments. There is opportunity for voter fraud and vote counting fraud. If you trust all that, why not the direct vote too? Each is dumb but in different ways and would cancel each other out. At least this would be more representative of the population as a whole.
I assumed in the context of this conversation you would have known I was addressing anonymous voting by representatives as you proposed. Once they stop working for the factory and start working for the government, they are professional politicians
I do understand what you are stating here but can you really trust these professionals to provide the truth when their profit margins maybe at stake?
No, they try to provide slivers of it. Fortunately there are normally two or more sides to these issues and each has a lobby. You can get slivers of truth from all of them. The point is that the process takes a lot of time. That means that it is very hard to pull a full time job, and be an effective legislator for those months that you are in session. If you do not turn your legislators into professionals by paying them and keeping them for long enough to get real good, you are stuck with a bunch independently wealthy ( read rich people) or amateurs who simple cannot devote enough time to do it right.
Last I knew, legislator salaries in CA were way up there too. I would truly like to have term limits in the U.S. Congress, btw.
So you are OK with random selection of a citizen legislature, as long as they are paid well enough to do it full time, and kept on long enough to get good. How long is long enough? 2 years? 4 years? I would want to rotate in new people with new viewpoints.
I meant the randomly selected legislators could vote anonymously for the same reason that normal voters and juries do. OK. We should definitely pay them. By professional, I meant having a degree in law or political science, and having a campaign manager. So, if they are paid to do it full time, is that good enough?
Um, was I crazy to fail to mention that elections are necessary to me? That means that voters decide when they want to rotate new people in and when they are tired of old viewpoints. They may decide that two years is far too long for Sam Smith, and still want to retain Sally Jones for 25 years. I am DEFINITELY not a term-limits kind of guy. By the way, two years is not long enough to get any good as a state or federal legislator. You may avoid embarrassment, and you may make some smart decisions when you cast your vote, but you are far from effective as a legislator. You have barely started teething on parliamentary procedure, let alone understand the intricacies of the law or the personalities you have to work with to get your goals accomplished.
I am not sure what makes you think jury verdicts are anonymous. Don't see how that changes anything from what we have now. 100% public funded campaigns would be the closest we could come to addressing your concerns.
Even now we don't get to vote on laws. Maybe you love one of the candidates, but most people don't like any of them and choose between the lesser of evils. Also, our votes rarely make a difference in an election. We don't get to see our votes counted. Under my method, every voter gets a number, which we list publicly by their name in alphabetical order. The number is expressed in base 2, 0's and 1's, which correspond to heads and tails. We can then watch a coin get flipped for the number of digits of the largest number. 00001 is 1. That would be very difficult to fraud. You would not know if you prefer Bob or Tod because their votes would be anonymous. The 100 people would have a view spectrum similar to that of the electorate, or at least more so than our current legislators. They would rotate out every 4 years to bring in fresh views but still have time to get good. Currently, legislators spend half of their non-campaign season time fundraising. The random legislature would not need to fundraise and could focus on their jobs. It is very different than what we have now. No campaigns or mud slinging. Just selected full time legislators rotating in and out every 4 years, learning and doing their jobs. Have an issue you want changed? Pay a hearing fee and plead your case in from of 12, who also hear the opposition. If a majority think you have a good point, it gets sent to the legislature at large. Currently, I doubt you will be listened to unless you are in their district and voted in their primary and donated campaign money. As for public financing, who decides who the top 2 are who get financed? You have to first have financing to get financing. What if 8 people are running? Finance them all equally? You can still expect lying and mud slinging, and focus on the candidates instead of on the issues. If you love voting, go watch the coin toss and make sure it is fair. Are you even allowed to count your votes now? I doubt it.
