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Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

lottocracy.org

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Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#101

Post by pigpop »

Arainach wrote: post #77
pigpop wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just reinventing aristocracy?

No. Elected officials have to be elected, which is a control and feedback mechanism.

I think the point of contention the article and many people are identifying is that that control and feedback mechanism appears to be somewhat broken as evidenced by many elected officials achieving what amount to lifetime appointments that are only terminated by death or disability and even disability seems to be no obstacle in an increasing number of cases.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#102

Post by phtrivier »

haizhung wrote: post #98
phtrivier wrote: post #50

The "let's pick people at random to discuss hairy topics" has been done at least three times in France in the form of "Convention Citoyenne". In each case, people came up with relatively "popular" solutions (one of them is still in progress) In each case, the elected officials all but ignored the output, on the ground that the body had not been elected, was manipulated by experts, had no responsibility and accountabi…

Yep, people in this thread are claiming that this doesn’t work. In fact, it does work, and it is already implemented! Here in Germany we also have the concept of „Bürgerräte“, and we have similar problems as in France (no political power to implement their solutions). However, one takeaway was that people vastly underestimated how carefully the participants would try to understand the topic at hand. People that would…

But how useful is it as a tool if nothing is implemented in the end ?

What's worst is that, at least in France, there was an elegant solution to the problem : just ask the general population to approve or reject the proposals in a referendum. Even if the referendum was consultative, and even if the lawmakers were to make the law in the end, it would have massively made it harder to ignore the result.

And I would have loved to see the "popular jury" campaign for or against the measures.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#104

Post by ClayShentrup »

websiteapi wrote: post #19

I doubt this would work better. the average person simply isn't a good executive. they'd end up getting dominated by the assertive folks. a simpler and easier solution to our problems to enforce approval voting across all elections, local, state and national, which will easily allow for moderates to siphon all votes and moderate the country drastically.

yes. election by jury is the good parts of sortition without the bad parts. https://www.electionbyjury.org/

approval voting is great. i co-founded a major non-profit that got it adopted in fargo and st louis. for election by jury i'd advocate score voting, since higher resolution is more valuable with small groups.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#105

Post by gwbas1c »

nephihaha wrote: post #100
gwbas1c wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because many of us forget that getting elected and staying elected requires putting on an act for the minority of Americans who vote in primaries.

No, it just depends on being in one of two parties. Primaries are internal organisational operations. The US set up means that both of these parties are in power at some level and can never be removed.

See https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop

It explains the problem with primaries. To summarize: In order to make it through your primary, you need to be ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal, and even support policies that don't make sense in a general election.

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