One of the most serious defects of modern democracy is that most voters know very little about the policies they vote on. Moreover, as I have pointed out on previous occasions, it is rational for them to remain ignorant and to do a poor job of evaluating what limited political information they do know. Political philosopher Jamie Whyte recently focused on the same problem, and proposed an interesting solution [HT: Dan Polsby]:
The reason so many bad policies are good politics is that so many people vote: about 62 percent of adults at the last general election, both in Great Britain and in the United States. The best way to get more sensible policies would be to reduce the number of voters to less than 0.01 percent of the population.
To see why, consider a question that arises in banking. How many bankers should be involved in deciding whether to approve a loan application? The ideal number may vary with the complexity of the application. But the right answer is always, “very few.”
If a loan officer’s initial decision required sign-off by a majority of 100 other bankers, his own judgement would have little effect on the final outcome. So he would have little incentive to think hard about the application and the likelihood that the loan will be repaid. Since this would be equally true for each of the other 100 bankers, none would bother to think hard. Why struggle to make the right decision when your decision will have no effect?
This is the position of voters in a general election. Each individual’s vote makes no difference to the outcome. Even marginal districts are won with majorities of hundreds. If you had stayed home instead of voting, the same candidate would have been elected…
Research into voters’ knowledge shows a stunning degree of ignorance. Most voters would be as likely to vote for the best candidate if they entered the polling booth blindfolded…..
Hence the many foolish policies followed by democratic governments. And hence politicians’ sentimental and grandiose rhetoric. Modern politics is just as you should expect it to be when votes are cast by ignorant people taking advantage of a low-cost source of emotional gratification.
Here is Whyte’s proposed solution, a national jury system:
So what is the best way to improve modern politics? The answer is not to increase voter turnout. On the contrary, the number of voters should be drastically reduced so that each voter realizes that his vote will matter. Something like 12 voters per district should be about right. If you were one of these 12 voters then, like one of 12 jurors deciding if someone should be imprisoned, you would take a serious interest in the issues.
These 12 voters should be selected at random from the electorate. With 535 districts in Congress – 435 in the House and 100 in the Senate – there would be 6,420 voters nationally….
To safeguard against the possibility of abuse, these 6,420 voters would not know that they had been selected at random until the moment when the polling officers arrived at their house. They would then be spirited away to a place where they will spend a week locked away with the candidates, attending a series of speeches, debates and question-and-answer sessions before voting on the final day. All of these events should be filmed and broadcast, so that everyone could make sure that nothing dodgy was going on.
Some will complain that this system would disenfranchise most of the population. It would not, because every adult would be eligible for random selection. Of course, each of us would have a tiny chance of being selected. But, on the current system, it is equally improbable that any individual’s vote will make a difference to the election’s outcome. The difference with this “jury” system is that those whose votes make a difference would know who they are. And that would give them a reason to take the job seriously.
Everything old eventually becomes new again. Whyte’s idea is in some ways similar to a system used by the ancient Athenians. Each year, they selected 500 citizens by lot to serve on the Council of 500, which played a key role in the city’s policymaking. The system functioned reasonably well, but did so in part because of several key differences between Athenian and modern democracy that I summarize in this short essay reviewing historian Josiah Ober’s excellent recent book on political knowledge in ancient Athens.
Would Whyte’s version of the idea work today? I have several doubts.
First, the modern state is extraordinarily large and complex. I doubt that a few days of speeches and debates would be enough for the citizen-jurors to get more than a very superficial knowledge of it. The ancient Athenian members of the Council of 500 served for an entire year, voted on the policies of a much more limited and less complex government, and probably came in with greater knowledge to begin with (for reasons I discussed in my review of Ober’s book).
Second, Congress or some other political body would have to decide who gets to make presentations to the “jurors,” how those presentations would be structured, and so on. Would only the two major parties have the right to present? How long could they speak for and on what issues? I’m skeptical that the political system would produce unbiased solutions to these and other structural problems.
Finally, since there would only 12 voters per district, I am skeptical of Whyte’s claim that “A random selection would deliver a proportional representation of sexes, ages, races and income groups.” With such small groups, one could easily get an unrepresentative set of voters just by random chance. For example, in a district evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, there is a roughly 20% chance that 2/3 or more of the 12 jurors will belong to the same party. This problem could be mitigated by increasing the number of voters. But any major increase in numbers would undercut the whole reason why Whyte proposed the idea in the first place.
As a libertarian, I also dislike the coercion inherent in forcing people to be political jurors for a week, even though it is less severe than the coercion built into the juries we use in the justice system.
That said, I don’t think that this idea and others like it should be rejected out of hand. Perhaps we should adopt a version of it in some local or state government, to see how well it would work. It’s also possible that further research and analysis might reveal ways to mitigate the proposal’s shortcomings. We need more creative thinking about how to mitigate the dangers of political ignorance – including the kind of creativity that unwittingly revives the wisdom of the ancients.
Orin Kerr says:
From the article:
Why not pick a person at random and make them absolute dictator? Some might say a dictatorship would disenfranchise the people. But as I understand the author, it would not, as every person would be eligible to be randomly picked to be the dictator. And I’ll bet the dictator would be really, really focused on things.
March 9, 2010, 2:09 amIlya Somin says:
Why not pick a person at random and make them absolute dictator? Some might say a dictatorship would disenfranchise the people. But as I understand the author, it would not, as every person would be eligible to be randomly picked to be the dictator. And I’ll bet the dictator would be really, really focused on things.
I think there are many obvious differences between Whyte’s proposal and the randomly selected dictator, so I don’t see much need to spell them out.
March 9, 2010, 2:13 amOrin Kerr says:
Sure, Ilya, but my comment was intended to focus on the disenfranchisement point. Simply saying that you’re not disenfranchised if you have an extremely remote chance of being randomly selected to have your vote count is an extraordinarily poor argument, I think. (Although if that’s not where you want to take the thread, I’ll happily bow out and let others comment.)
March 9, 2010, 2:21 ameyesay says:
Whyte’s proposal is interesting, and I’m sure there are any number of reasons why it’s a good idea and reasons why it’s a bad idea. Here’s one reason it’s a bad idea: In the current system, there is an industry devoted to persuading the public with stupid nonsense. That industry’s flagship corporation is Fox News. People who listen to Fox News and are gullible enough to believe its stupid nonsense make poor voting decisions. Under Whyte’s proposal, Fox News would continue to try to persuade the public with stupid nonsense in the hopes of conning the “selectorate,” just as it currently works to con the full electorate. So the problem of ignorance induced by the lying liars is just as strong under Whyte’s proposal as it is now.
March 9, 2010, 2:25 amOff Kilter says:
OK: “Simply saying that you’re not disenfranchised if you have an extremely remote chance of being randomly selected to have your vote count is an extraordinarily poor argument”
and yet
Simply saying that you’re not disenfranchised just because you have an extremely remote chance of your vote changing the outcome is an extraordinarily accurate argument
March 9, 2010, 2:32 amIlya Somin says:
Sure, Ilya, but my comment was intended to focus on the disenfranchisement point. Simply saying that you’re not disenfranchised if you have an extremely remote chance of being randomly selected to have your vote count is an extraordinarily poor argument, I think.
Thanks for the clarification Orin. I think, however, that Whyte’s rebuttal addresses this point as well. We are no more disenfranchised by his proposal than by the existing electoral system, where we have roughly the same chance of having any influence with our votes. The randomly chosen dictator system disenfranchises people more than the status quo only in so far as the dictator is selected for life, while today’s politicians are chosen for limited terms. If the dictator were selected for a 2 year or 4 year term, the degree of disenfranchisement would be roughly the same as what we have now, though the idea would pose many other dangers unrelated to disenfranchisement (e.g. – the randomly selected temporary dictator could be a very dangerous or unstable personality, etc.).
March 9, 2010, 2:33 amOrin Kerr says:
Ilya,
I disagree, although I suppose it depends on what you think “enfranchisement” means. I think of enfranchisement as a right to have your vote included towards an overall vote count, not a right to have your vote be the one that changes the outcome that governs the entire polity. It seems to me that’s the usual meaning of the term, at least.
March 9, 2010, 2:43 amIlya Somin says:
I disagree, although I suppose it depends on what you think “enfranchisement” means. I think of enfranchisement as a right to have your vote included towards an overall vote count, not a right to have your vote be the one that changes the outcome that governs the entire polity. It seems to me that’s the usual meaning of the term, at least.
As I see it, real enfranchisement is an opportunity to participate in the selection of the nation’s political leaders in a way that has at least some chance of affecting the result, not merely having your votes “counted.” Everyone’s vote was counted in the USSR, but there was certainly no real enfranchisement there because the result of the vote had no effect on the selection of policies and leaders. When people say that their votes “count,” I think they mean more than that they were merely tabulated.
March 9, 2010, 2:47 amOrin Kerr says:
Ilya,
Your definition seems a bit unusual to me, and I’ll use an example to show why. Imagine a very conservative district with a small African-American population. Assume the district always elects the conservative candidate, but that the African American population always votes overwhelmingly for the losing liberal candidate. Under your definition, if you forcibly deny all black people the right to vote, you’re not disenfranchising them. (After all, they were disenfranchised before, as their votes never made a difference.) And alternatively, if you imagine that the African-American population was denied the right to vote before and you now give them the right to vote, you’re not enfranchising them. That seems like a pretty counterintuitive use of the term to me.
March 9, 2010, 2:59 amDavid McCourt says:
We already have Whyte’s system. There are five jurors who decide what companies can (or must) tell investors: they are the SEC Commissioners. The jurors over at the EPA will soon be deciding, among other things, how much economic activity (aka “carbon emissions”) will take place, and who will get to do it. The voters at large don’t get a say in any of this (down to what light bulbs or toilets they can use); nor do their elected reps, except at the margins.
We sure don’t need any more appointed panels directing things because they, and they alone, “have all the facts.”
This whole theme — “One of the most serious defects of modern democracy is that most voters know very little about the policies they vote on” — has gained prominence because the public, in its benighted ignorance, refuses to accept what its “informed” betters tell it day and night, e.g., that greatly expanding a bankrupt government healthcare entitlement will lower its cost and improve the quality of its care, or that it is necessary to dismantle industrial society in order to save the planet from catastrophic warming.
One of the most serious defects of modern democracy is that its elected leaders too often follow the advice of those experts who think that extending a graph out in a straight line is a substitute for common sense and an awareness of human fallibility and the history of human folly. As the experts prepare to inflict the idiocies of LBJ’s “Great Society,” together with Nixon’s wage and price controls, on us once again, I say: give me the supposedly inert and ignorant public over the enlightened and energized experts any day. Sitting still beats charging off in what is almost invariably the wrong direction.
March 9, 2010, 3:00 amRicardo says:
If this is adopted, wouldn’t most of the time get filled up with objections from each candidate’s lawyer and then with sidebars with the judge or referee about about what should or shouldn’t be introduced to the jurors?
After all, if you want jurors to actually focus on the substantive issues to solve the problem of voter ignorance, there would have to be rules against talking about a candidate’s sexual history, whether or not he pals around with terrorists, whether he does his own grocery shopping, etc.
March 9, 2010, 3:03 amIlya Somin says:
Your definition seems a bit unusual to me, and I’ll use an example to show why. Imagine a very conservative district with a small African-American population. Assume the district always elects the conservative candidate, but that the African American population always votes overwhelmingly for the losing liberal candidate. Under your definition, if you forcibly deny all black people the right to vote, you’re not disenfranchising them.
I don’t think so. The African-Americans could have a decisive impact on the election if political coalitions shift, which is always a possibility, or if the election in question doesn’t turn on liberal-conservative differences. They could also have an influence by voting in the Republican primary for the less conservative of the possible nominees (allying with more moderate white Republicans). In real life, giving blacks the vote in conservative areas of the South has had a significant impact on political outcomes in those places. Even Strom Thurmond ended up making some concessions to black interests. Of course the black voters’ chance of having an effect in such a district is very small. But that’s true for virtually all voters.
March 9, 2010, 4:49 amIlya Somin says:
As the experts prepare to inflict the idiocies of LBJ’s “Great Society,” together with Nixon’s wage and price controls, on us once again, I say: give me the supposedly inert and ignorant public over the enlightened and energized experts any day. Sitting still beats charging off in what is almost invariably the wrong direction.
Actually, both more knowledgeable voters and professional economists are far more likely to oppose these sorts of government interventions than the average voter is.
If by “experts” you mean Obama and congressional Democrats, you may be right. But they are not a representative sample of those with deep knowledge of economic policy. It’s also worth noting that it was the voters who voted in the politicians whose proposals you decry in the first place.
March 9, 2010, 4:52 amThe string around your wrist says:
When you buy a Christmas gift, your choice is decisive. But that doesn’t make it informed. It may or may not be informed. There are other reasons for informing yourself.
You might buy a gift to give your brother’s wife. Do you want to please her? To please him? What’s the downside to getting it wrong? Just because you choose it, all on your own, doesn’t mean you’ll make a thoughtful choice. And so this idea that it matters what your fraction is, or that you’ll inform yourself when the fraction improves, is bizarre. What’s voting got to do with deciding anything?
If we vote for Kelly Clarkson to be our American Idol it’s for the same reason we vote at all, for anything. It doesn’t matter that our vote’s not significant. That’s not why we’re ignorant.
March 9, 2010, 6:24 ambgates says:
Are there objections to literacy tests or tests of basic factual knowledge besides the way such things were misused to disenfranchise blacks during Jim Crow?
March 9, 2010, 6:30 amBrett Bellmore says:
This isn’t a recipe for curing voter ignorance, it’s a recipe for making sure that the political class get to determine what the voters are ignorant about, without any input from those pesky interest groups. I’ve seen this before among the ‘reformers’, this notion that, ideally, only the candidates should be talking to the voters.
It’s nuts.
Come to think of it, though, it’s not really that different from the way the legal system treats jurors today, is it? Control the information the people ‘making the decision’ are allowed access to, you control the decision.
March 9, 2010, 6:40 amOcher Ocelot says:
Everything old IS new again.
See Asimov’s Franchise
ocelot
March 9, 2010, 7:07 amrhhardin says:
It makes no sense to vote, since the odds of anything that you care about being decided by your vote are zero.
If everybody thought that way, it would be worth voting, but they don’t so it isn’t.
But you can easily affect things by persuading. You swing thousands of votes that way, more the better you do it.
That’s where to put your effort. Skip the vote.
March 9, 2010, 7:12 amFantasiaWHT says:
We already have this system, it’s called legislature. Supposedly, voting on important issues is THEIR ENTIRE JOB, yet much of the time they don’t know what they are voting for, what all the facts behind the situation are, what problem they are actually trying to solve, etc. I have absolutely no faith that randomly chosen voters would be more incentivized to become knowledgeable than our current legislators.
March 9, 2010, 8:10 amDaniel Chapman says:
I really enjoyed the argument between Ilya and Orin in the comment thread… I bet that could happen more often if these threads weren’t overwhelmed with garbage 80% of the time.
March 9, 2010, 8:19 amSoronel Haetir says:
I would in fact prefer randomly choosing the officials we currently elect to the proposed system of randomly selecting electors. Mostly because I would hope that such a random selection would pick people who aren’t go along to get along types. High turnover in legislative offices would, I think, be an improvement over our current political class. Having power due to longevity in office rather than persuasiveness of ideas is not doing the nation any favors.
March 9, 2010, 8:19 amDavid McCourt says:
Prof. Somin, A fair point, perhaps, when talking about LBJ’s great society and RMN’s wage & price controls, but I’m not so sure about the rest. AGW and the need for restrictions, taxes, cap & trade, etc., on carbon use is an article of faith of the expert class, not of the average person. Same with the “need” for a single-payer system. Same, more crucially, with the faith in “rational” decision-making and the ability of complex “programs” to achieve their intended aims. Hubris has a graduate degree and is an expert in its field.
This system would be more sail and less anchor, as you acknowledge, a not inconsiderable drawback. It also elevates the importance of technical knowledge over everyday experience. (Only a technocrat with no memory of past interactions with government could announce the things Peter Orzag does).
But experience, not logic, is the life of more than just the law, it is the essence of Anglo-American politics. This system strikes me as more Continental in its treatment of government as some sort of branch of science, where “facts,” not preferences, and models, not traditions, hold sway. Governing (including self-governing) is not geometry, but something more practical, less abstract, with many fewer straight lines and perfect circles.
Finally, this system also elevates the judicial decision-making model over the other ways we decide things. But all the world is not a court; to be a citizen is not to have passed through voir dire; and our choices are not contained on a verdict form, to be decided on what some gate-keeper decides is admissible.
I vote no and, in his absence, cast Mr Burke’s proxy — no, as well.
March 9, 2010, 8:21 amBarry Kirk says:
Here is another idea… instead of changing the way representatives are voted in… Give the people the power to eliminate bad laws and treaties.
I would like to propose a constitutional amendment… I’m not a lawyer and the language here is not precise, but I think this gets the idea across.
Part I
The citizens have the power to sign petitions that would nullify any law or treaty. If 10% of the citizens sign a petition to nullify a law or treaty, that law or treaty is nullified. Any convictions based on said law or treaty are immediately thrown out. Any fines paid on said law or treaty are returned.
Part II
Any law or treaty has a six month waiting period, between when it signed signed in or accepted and when it takes effect. A petition to nullify said law or treaty can be circulated and signed during this time period. It is possible for a law or treaty to be nullified before it takes effect.
March 9, 2010, 8:48 amDon Miller says:
This story made an impact on me as a kid. It was far-fetched, but the idea was that a single person was chosen nationwide, and his feelings about national and local issues was analyzed and the results decided all the national and local elections. Poor Norman Muller, the Voter for 2008
March 9, 2010, 8:55 amDJR says:
The problem with a randomly selected legislature is that if those with power are neophytes unfamiliar with the body and how it works, they will be unable to get anything done and the power will find its way to those who do know how to get things done. That is, do you really want the country run by career congressional staffers?
March 9, 2010, 8:55 amPersonFromPorlock says:
If what we hear about members not reading the bills they vote on is true, the country already is. /snark
There seems to be an unspoken assumption here that the goal of government is order, efficiently delivered. That’s true in the rest of the world, but here in the US the (principled) goal of government has always been liberty, even at the expense of order and certainly at the expense of efficiency. I don’t see the desire for the efficient imposition of order shown here as being good for what’s ‘American’ about America, regardless of whether the plan would work or not.
March 9, 2010, 9:58 amTamerlane says:
Why not a test at the polling place to determine whether a voter knows enough to “deserve” to vote. I’ve always thought that at a minimum a voter should know how candidates stand on issues that are important to the voter.
A simple system would be to allow each candidate to pick a given number of issues that he thinks are important. (Candidates could pick issues that they think are favorable to themselves or damaging to one or more opponents. It doesn’t really matter.) Each candidate would be required to present unambiguously his position on each issue. These positions would be publicly presented so that every voter should be aware of them. Would-be voters would be tested on their knowledge of candidates’ positions. Only those passing this test would be allowed to vote.
March 9, 2010, 10:04 amMCM says:
Barry Kirk – you’d love California. They have something similar going on, and are currently reaping the rewards.
March 9, 2010, 10:38 amMark Field says:
I’ll probably never again have this opportunity, so I’ll take it now: I agree with FantasiaWHT.
March 9, 2010, 10:39 amBarry Kirk says:
MCM…
I wasn’t aware of the California system. Could you please explain the benefits and/or problems with that system?
March 9, 2010, 10:48 amWidmerpool says:
Oh my goodness, let me jump on the FantasiaWHT bandwagon. As Bill Buckley said: “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory . . . .”
March 9, 2010, 10:49 ammattc says:
thnak god for elites and academics to bicker about how best to make sure american citizens don’t get to vote or have a say in electing their political leaders.
the fact of the matter is that american democracy and its institutions are fundamentally strong regardless of the corruption, “ignorance,” and high levels of voter interaction. this is no thanks to academics, i can assure you.
March 9, 2010, 10:51 amgeokstr says:
Yes of course, blame Prop 13 for wild overspending, rampant environmental zealotry that stops development in its tracks and bowing before the SEIU and other public employee unions. If they could only have been able to raise lots more taxes, they would have attracted even more productive resources into their state, or so the left’s bizarre economic theories would have us believe.
March 9, 2010, 10:57 ammatth says:
W.r.t. Orin’s point, the issue is whether people are “enfranchised” in the intuitive, non-technical sense, of feeling as though they have a voice in government. The criminal law’s jury system is a good analogy: intuitively, this gives the “people” a voice in the criminal justice system, even though only a few individual people actually get a voice in any particular decision.
Viewed in this light, the relatively short lock-in period of who gets a vote is important to preventing disenfranchisement. Of course, the statistical argument is the same whether you select 1 person to govern the entire nation for life, or thousands of different people for each election. But with short term selections, people who were not selected in any particular elections would still be participants in the political process.
It’s likely that this sort of scheme is unworkable, though, simply because the corruption problems are probably insurmountable.
March 9, 2010, 10:57 amMCM says:
The California state constitution allows for ballot propositions. You only need 8% of voters to get one on the ballot (as measured by the number of people who last voted for governor). If more people vote for the ballot proposition than against it, it passes and becomes law, or an amendment to the California constitution.
As a result of this ridiculous system, California voters required more and more from the state while also denying the state the ability to raise taxes. For example, Proposition 13 in 1978 limits property taxes to 1%. Yet other amendments require the state to spend money – say, proposition 49 in 2002 which required the state to increase spending on after school programs. Basically it puts the budget at the whim of the mob.
March 9, 2010, 11:02 amMCM says:
It has nothing to do with left versus right, it has to do with idiot citizens simultaneously voting for no taxes and maximum services.
March 9, 2010, 11:04 amBarry Kirk says:
I think you misread what I wrote… You are right that allowing the people to create laws by petition is scary. I believe that democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
I’m not proposing giving the people the power to create new laws, but rather the power to repeal them.
March 9, 2010, 11:07 amSoronel Haetir says:
I’m hopeful that our random legislature members don’t actually have anything they’d like to impose on everyone else. Or at least that they don’t have a strong enough preference for such imposition that they will actually put any effort into it. Combined with the likelihood that you will get at least some people who will simply be obstinate (after all they won’t be around in a year or three). Unlike the current political game where getting along despite calling your opponents all sorts of slime is a high priority a jury legislature doesn’t have that force.
I guess I’m saying I think it would be hard for career staffers to push laws through when the legislators don’t have so great a personal agenda. It’s also less likely that any such agenda that might exist will get acted on because there’s much more turnover.
I do think it’s safe to say that a random selection will pick people with less personal agenda or at least less motivation to see it enacted because running for office almost by definition means that the office seeker has goals of some sort.
March 9, 2010, 11:08 amMCM says:
I think what California goes to show is that people are idiots and can’t be trusted to be directly involved with the legislative process, especially if all they have to do is “click here to do X”, whether that’s create or repeal a law.
March 9, 2010, 11:13 amJeff Black says:
Arizona has a similar system of ballot propositions. They have been disasterous here as well. It results in voter-mandated expenditures of funds that the legislature can’t touch without any available funds to pay for them.
March 9, 2010, 11:21 amBarry Kirk says:
Again… both those systems give the people the power to create laws… The founding fathers thought that was the rule of the mob and were horrified by the thought… and both of those examples you pointed out prove them to be correct.
However, what I’m proposing is different… I know how that sounds, but I’m not saying that people should have the ability to create laws to reach into other people’s business, but rather the ability to repeal laws that reach into their own business.
March 9, 2010, 11:30 amMCM says:
All laws reach into someone’s business.
March 9, 2010, 11:38 amlgm says:
Re-enacting a debate between Hobbes and Locke over fifty years ago (don’t lawyers read books?)
Seriously, Europeans have systems closer to this than we have. They elect governments, but between elections, governments make decisions.
And as a conservative, surely you realize that if you selected 100 people to educate themselves about the issues, they would, with high statistical probability, develop that liberal bias inherent in fact based decision making. Yes to global warming, yes to due process for detainees, yes to health care reform, etc.
March 9, 2010, 11:42 amBarry Kirk says:
Exactly, and if the legislature writes a law that steals from a few people, and re-distributes to a large number of people, they buy themselves a lot of votes. Hence the problem.
If that small minority had the power, to say, “Don’t tread on me”, it would have a tendency to put the brakes on that.
What I’m proposing is all about putting the brakes on expanding government.
March 9, 2010, 11:43 amMCM says:
I think this is a major advantage to their system.
March 9, 2010, 11:43 amSoronel Haetir says:
I have to agree with Barry Kirk that a strictly negative power is significantly different from the ability to enact positive law.
March 9, 2010, 11:44 amMCM says:
No, what you’re proposing is eliminating government at all. You’d never even have a military if you only needed 10% of people to veto it.
I don’t disagree. I am trying to explain that most people can’t be trusted with either.
March 9, 2010, 11:52 amIsaac says:
I don’t like the idea of sequestering the jurors and force-feeding them information. If the benefit we’re supposed to reap is that the jurors will be more focused as a result of being selected, then let them do their own research in their own ways. To prevent corruption, consider making it a crime for them to tell anyone they’re jurors. (I realize that that’s also going to be complicated.)
Finally, since there would only 12 voters per district, I am skeptical of Whyte’s claim that “A random selection would deliver a proportional representation of sexes, ages, races and income groups.” With such small groups, one could easily get an unrepresentative set of voters just by random chance. For example, in a district evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, there is a roughly 20% chance that 2/3 or more of the 12 jurors will belong to the same party. This problem could be mitigated by increasing the number of voters. But any major increase in numbers would undercut the whole reason why Whyte proposed the idea in the first place.
I think 12 voters per district sounds too low, but only by about an order of magnitude. If there were, say 200 voters per 700,000-person district, and if the district was evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, then you’d have a 95% chance that the split in your electorate would be in the 43-57% range. (Put 200, 700000, and 50 into the second calculator here: http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm)
As one of 200 voters in your district, you’d still feel that your vote could swing the balance and would focus accordingly. In addition, you’d have about a 2% chance of being selected once in your 60-year voting-age life, and you’d know personally many people who had been voters, which could alleviate Orin’s concerns about feeling enfrachised.
Finally, 200 per modern district (~700,000) would be roughly proportional to 12 per district at the time of the Founders (~40,000). (Numbers taken from another radical proposal to reform government: http://www.thirty-thousand.org/ )
March 9, 2010, 11:54 amBarry Kirk says:
I think we would still have a military, but it would be much smaller than it is now, and it would be a lot harder for a politician to use it for offensive purposes.
In fact, I believe that that would have the effect of shifting the burden of national defense onto militias. That works really well for Switzerland.
The point is that the government that would be left would be one that
a) would only provide those services that the overwhelming majority of people agree with.
b) If the government wants to do something, it has to do a really good job of selling the people on the idea. Otherwise, it won’t be able to do it.
c) Agencies that are arrogant and abusive to the citizens could find themselves nullified out of existence. IE, the bureaucrats would quickly discover that the citizens are in charge.
March 9, 2010, 12:51 pmbyomtov says:
Ilya,
In real life, giving blacks the vote in conservative areas of the South has had a significant impact on political outcomes in those places.
Where it has had a significant impact is in places where there are a large number of black voters. The example Orin was using was one where the number was small.
March 9, 2010, 2:11 pmAlaska Jack says:
I’ve enjoyed reading this thread. As the McCain-Feingold debate raged on, it occurred to me that randomly selecting legislators would probably be the only way to ever really remove the influence of money in elections.
I’m not convinced that such a system would necessarily be worse than what we have now. I could envision a system where legislators served, say, six years, in three overlapping cohorts, with lotteries every two years. A cohort’s first two years would be orientation: observing the two prior cohorts in action, getting educated via classes, taking fact-finding trips, etc. No sequestering, though, or coercion of any kind, really. If a person declined their selection, no big deal; the lottery would just pick someone else.
Of course, we’d want to sweeten the pot so that most people would want to serve. Maybe something like payment of all debts, a generous pension for life and mandatory rehire rights.
You’d still get a system with a lot of institutional power vested in the professional bureaucracy caste, but I don’t see this as terribly different than what we have now.
– Alaska Jack
March 9, 2010, 2:36 pmeyesay says:
Under Barry Kirk’s proposal, a 10% minority would have nullified legislation that helped guarantee the right to vote for African-Americans. A 10% minority would have nullified just about everything useful and important. Neither liberals nor conservatives would like this dystopia, since you can find a 10% minority to oppose almost anything.
March 9, 2010, 3:37 pmBarry Kirk says:
A 10% minority would also have invalidated the Jim Crow laws.
March 9, 2010, 3:41 pmMark Field says:
Only if they got to vote. And they wouldn’t have.
March 9, 2010, 4:18 pmCatCube says:
How would that work? ISTM that what you’re proposing couldn’t function on a fine enough level to “cut back” a program; it can simply kill it or leave it alone. How that’s supposed to work with most of the federal government, which is usually run through a series of bills over years, including budget bills, is unclear to me. Are you proposing that voters could, say, cut back individual weapons systems? What if one system is funded through several bills? Killing one of them while leaving the others could leave a non-functional “Frankenstein” of a system. (And what’s part of a “system” can be unclear to military insiders, much less the general public) What if one necessary system and a whole bunch of pork is funded in the same bill? Do voters have to kill the necessary system to get rid of the ones they don’t want?
All these practical objections aside, I’ll bet that between “Imagine” left-wingers and “black helicopter” right-wingers, you could get over the 10% hurdle to get rid of the military entirely.
March 9, 2010, 4:21 pmBarry Kirk says:
The African-Americans would not have been able to vote…. but there were a lot of whites in the south who were morally opposed to the Jim Crow laws and eligible to vote. I would believe that they would be the source of the 10% to overthrow Jim Crow.
Yes, there are a lot of good laws that wouldn’t make it, but a lot of those good laws need to be put in place because of bad laws. Currently, it is very easy to create new laws, but there really is no mechanism for deleting bad laws.
Hence the ratcheting effect we’ve seen as government grows.
March 9, 2010, 4:24 pmBarry Kirk says:
Initially a lot of military spending and other spending would get quickly cut. The legislatures would quickly learn that they have to be really careful writing bills.
Too much pork, and the whole thing gets nullified. The reason I set the number so low at 10% is that it raises the bar for the quality of bills.
Right now we have laws, that at least 51% of the legislators like. Since, the legislators like pork, they write it in for each other. Hence we end up with a government that is mostly pork.
Now, if 10% of the population can get rid of a law. The legislators have to be really careful when writing a law. Right now, bills contain everything including the kitchen sink and than lots of pork. That kind of bill would never survive where the population can nullify it.
The hope is that it would force the legislator to create small bills that are of high quality that the overwhelming majority of the population would like. Let’s raise the performance bar on our legislature.
The reason, I put 10% in is that even if 25% of the population hates a bill, they are going to have to really hate it, to get even 10% to sign a petition to nullify it.
If the number was set at say 50%, and 80% of the citizens hated the law, they probably wouldn’t be able to get a petition together to nullify it.
March 9, 2010, 5:09 pmEnvironmental Noise and Sleep Disturbance | True Sleep Sounds says:
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March 9, 2010, 5:27 pmMark Field says:
Not in this universe there weren’t “a lot”. But I’ll grant you that there might — might — have been 10% of the whites willing to so vote at some point in time.
March 9, 2010, 5:45 pmCatCube says:
I think that legislators like pork because the population likes pork. We don’t get loads of wasted money, salami slicing, and other legislative games purely due to legislators bribing “special interests” with government funds, I think we get them mostly from legislators bribing the constituency with government funds. Now, maybe you’re arguing that enabling the national constituency to eliminate pork that only benifits a local constituency will pull funding back into line with a true “national interest.” I think that it is more likely to become a source of xenophobic demagoguery between regions of the country. (Voters in Iowa really, truly, believe that corn subsidies are in the interest of the nation as a whole. They will not be happy when that gets cut)
As to your numbers, I’m not sure where you’re getting 25% to get 10% to sign a petition. I think that if 25% of the population hates something, you can probably get about 25% to sign a petition saying that.
I broadly sympathize with your goals about more direct participation. I just think that your proposal, as laid out, will not function. Saying that you’ll enable the electorate to cut “a bill” elides over the fact that Congressional actions are a hell of a lot more complicated than that. You will never, never, never, ever be able to pass a budget, for starters. Unless you to split the budget into about 70,000 bills, which will drown the system you’ve laid out, rendering it useless.
March 9, 2010, 6:17 pmDavid Nieporent says:
What I think you’re ignoring is that 10% of the population is crazy. I’m not making an ideological judgment here (“all liberals are crazy”), but a pragmatic one. 10% of the population — it may be a different 10% wrt different issues — will just take a completely irrational, wacko position on a subject. That includes people who would do so deliberately, out of malice. Your threshold is just too low. You can’t get 90% buy-in on children and puppies being cute or National Fight Tooth Decay Month, let alone any military funding.
March 9, 2010, 7:06 pmBarry Kirk says:
Catcube,
To use your example, about the farmers in Iowa wanting corn subsidies. They will either have to do a really good job of selling the nation on why this is a benefit to most everyone, or they will have to look to the State or local government for those subsidies.
If they can’t convince the nation as a whole that corn subsidies are to their benefit, it may not be. The point is that right now, they don’t even have to try. So, people can point at it and call it pork.
If the corn subsidies are good for the nation, and they can convince the most everyone that is the case. It won’t be a problem.
The reason i’m suggesting this is to give the citizens a better way to push back on a government which many feel is out of control. I really believe that this would lead to better government.
Example I’ll give is the health care bill. With the ability of the citizens to nullify a law, the politicians would have to do a lot better job selling the population that this is a good thing. That means they would have to do a much better job of getting it right.
Instead of right now, where the attitude is. I know what’s good for you and I’m going to shove it down your throat whether you want it or not.
Also, if a program turns out to be a disaster, it’s possible to end it. Currently, it’s almost impossible to terminate a program that isn’t working.
I think a huge number of people out there don’t want the health care bill, because they know that if it does turn out to be a disaster. There is no way to undo it. We just have to live with it.
So, really not only would you end up with a smaller more managable government with this concept in place, but it would be much higher quality.
As for 70,000 seperate bills to get a budget through. Perhaps not. Politicians would just have to be really careful what went into the budget.
If you passed 70,000 seperate pieces of pork, somebody would have a petition to nullify 70,000 pieces of pork in one go.
By analogy, in the old days of steam engines, they had a device called a governer, that kept the engine from turning to fast. Without the governer, a steam engine would keep turning faster and faster until it blew apart.
The founding fathers created a system of checks and balances as a governer to the government itself. Well that system of checks and balances is unable to keep the government in check, and it has started to spin so fast that it is in danger of self destructing.
What this proposal is, is a means to slow things down and bring the government back into a controlled situation where it is stable.
Well thats the idea anyway. :)
Dave, Well 25% would be better than what we have now. I’m sure that there would be a number that would be acceptable to most people.
March 9, 2010, 7:25 pmCatCube says:
My point about the corn subsidies is that when it gets nullified, it will probably result in Iowa politicians railing against those morons in the rest of the country, rather than bringing Iowa voters to Jesus on fiscal restraint. Now, that won’t bring the subsidies back, but it will probably result in some significant inter-regional stress. I want to emphasize that I picked this example out of a hat–there’s nothing special about Iowa, and you can find similar things about every state. This isn’t by any stretch of the imagination my biggest objection to your idea. It was a quickly dashed off statement ISO the idea that the real reasons for pork and government expansion is that they’re popular with voters, not that there’s a secret cabal pushing these things on an unwilling public. And, I’m going to admit, my statement wasn’t well developed.
Now, about splitting a budget bill into 70,000 pieces: You say that someone can petition to nullify “70,000 seperate [sic] pieces of pork” in one go. Leaving aside that that’s doing so isn’t obvious to me from your proposal as written, you’re missing my point. Not all 70,000 of these bills are pork. Some are, but most probably aren’t. Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff will be so onerous that either it’s useless to even try, or doing so brings the government to a halt. And I don’t mean the good kind of gridlock that I’ve heard libertarians talk about: I mean nothing happens. Unless you’re an actual, honest-to-God anarchist, there’s no way that this proposal ends well. (Assuming arguendo that the outcome of an anarchic proposal ever ends well.)
P.S.: I’d almost be willing to bet you could find a criminal 10% of the population to petition to overturn statutes prohibiting murder.
March 9, 2010, 10:00 pmBarry Kirk says:
Catcube,
I agree that if you set the number low enough, at some point you get total anarchy and criminals will overturn murder laws. And truth be told, I don’t know what is the proper number, 10%, 20%, 90%, etc…
Certainly, the constitution was put in place not to protect majorities, but rather to protect minorities from being abused by the majority. It is a necessary restraint. Very often people will say, that the constitution protects bad people, and to a certain extent that is true, but in the long run and as a general rule, it protects everybody.
I’m proposing this right of the people to nullify laws and treaties as an additional protection, since the government seems to be finding ways to get around the rights in the constitution.
You are correct that most people want pork or more specifically, most people want pork that profits them. Most people are against pork that doesn’t profit them, because they have to pay for that pork.
The politicians are being told to get their constituents their pork. The best bargaining chip the politicians have to get it is to give other politicians their pork. Hence, we get a government with a lot of pork.
A good question would be, would most people be better off if all the pork was eliminated including their own pork? I think the answer is yes, but that is just my opinion and I have no facts supporting it.
What I’m trying to propose is a mechanism to reduce the total pork.
And yes, I would like a much smaller government. I’m not a anarchist by any means, but currently, the citizens are being forced at the gun point of the IRS to pay for a government that is far larger and more expensive than most of us want to pay for.
This proposal was an attempt to find a method of reducing the size of a government that does not have the ability to reduce itself on its own.
March 10, 2010, 8:33 amStones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e109v3 says:
[...] A modest suggestion. [...]
March 10, 2010, 9:07 amNick056 says:
Hmm, first, enfranchisement does not mean a right to participate in a drawing-of-straws that will then confer the ability to vote. It means the right to vote. The question isn’t just equality of access to the voting booth — the question is the ability to access the voting booth to cast a vote every time. Second, Ilya’s affirmative definition of enfrancisement (as opposed to his counter-example) doesn’t actually mention the word “vote.” Rather it discusses is “an opportunity to participate in the selection of the nation’s political leaders[...]”
Also, every voting system is a design imposed on the majority — but the more natural the system, the less artifice and the fewer levers involved in soliciting the opinions of the voting citizens, the less problem you have with the fundamental inability of any rulers to create a grand design whereby outcomes are more rational. I think that if conservatism has taught me anything, it’s that a federal design that facially stiffles a natural freedom — the freedom to have your say in how you’re goverened — as a way of guaranteeing more rational, informed outcomes, is highly suspect. (I say “rationally” provisionally.)
To more observations: a) I hate what goddamn focus groups do to movies, I don’t need to see what they’d do to the country and b) I used to be a little puzzled at Ilya’s posts about this kind of thing — now I find it interesting to read somebody who has virtually no allegiance to small-d democracy. To anybody who’d disagree about that assessment, all I have to say is, again, that his definition of enfranchisement is, as opposed to what it isn’t, doesn’t actually mention voting.
March 11, 2010, 7:03 pmNick056 says:
Bah! Was making edits, and got cut-off.
March 11, 2010, 7:09 pmBookworm Room » Last week’s winners at the Watcher’s Council says:
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March 16, 2010, 5:36 pm