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Deliberative Democracy

What do you think of allowing a random sample of citizens to govern?


  • Total voters
    26
Actually I explained why every single one of your criticisms is unsound, line by line. To which you didn't bother to respond. Not that I blame you.
Except, you didnt. You just repeated what you said before.

Nope. You defend it by explaining why every single one of the criticisms is unsound, line by line. ;)
Which isnt what you're doing, you're just repeating your theory. It's circular logic.
 
@ Kandahar
In reference to ‘Selection by lot’ (Athenian democracy), it’s a noble ideal. I would not mind a small experiment; keeping this model to local government (counties, cities, etc).
In reference to following the Declaration of Independence; our government has become a monster and we must defeat the monster before anything else.
 
You only have to be born in the USA and 35 years of age to be the President. You are allowed to be elected into your office by a group of majority electoral votes.

Creating this mature, jumped through X number of hoops to become a voter is the absolute worst idea that I have ever heard. Select-ism, nepotism, and crony-ism are not a good way to run a government. Our founders got it right the first time. The electoral college was their means of leveling the playing field. Not cherry picking a group of conservatives to do your voting for you. Apathy removes most of the unqualified voter opinions.

I'm against this proposed charade of a voting system.
 
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Our founders got it right the first time. The electoral college was their means of leveling the playing field.

I'm not sure what "leveling the playing field" has to do with this...but in any case, no one is suggesting it be used to pick the president. But it could be used for legislatures, especially at a state and local level.

Mickey Shane said:
Not cherry picking a group of conservatives to do your voting for you.

Cherry-picking? Group of conservatives? :confused:
The idea is that you would get a random sample of the population so that all political views were represented in roughly the proportion to which the population held them.

Mickey Shane said:
Apathy removes most of the unqualified voter opinions.

As long as people were under no obligation to serve, that would still be true.
 
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You only have to be born in the USA and 35 years of age to be the President. You are allowed to be elected into your office by a group of majority electoral votes.

Creating this mature, jumped through X number of hoops to become a voter is the absolute worst idea that I have ever heard. Select-ism, nepotism, and crony-ism are not a good way to run a government. Our founders got it right the first time. The electoral college was their means of leveling the playing field. Not cherry picking a group of conservatives to do your voting for you. Apathy removes most of the unqualified voter opinions.

I'm against this proposed charade of a voting system.
Lets not get carried away, the founding fathers also kept the general public AWAY from the electoral process for the most part for good reason. We basically voted for President and that was about it.
 
@ Mickey
It’s a pleasant thought that all we need to be is a natural born citizen and 35 years of age to the POTUS but, in reality I think history has shown us different. The candidates for POTUS have fallen into your negative points; select-ism, nepotism, and crony-ism. I would not want this ‘selection by lot’ based model for the federal/national nor state governments. I would only like to experiment at the local levels (counties, cities, etc).
 
I suppose, on the local level, what is being proposed wouldn't be much different than having 'tribal elders'. The hard part would be trying to figure out which people were qualified to handle the task (supposing that 'elder' wouldn't be a prerequisite). If the people as a whole elected the voting gang, we'd be right back where we are now. If there was one person responsible for filling vacant seats with appointees, totalitarian local governments would emerge.
 
@ Mickey
I definitely understand your concerns as I am concerned about mob rule, well, any form of tyranny. The founders of America worked from models of the pasts and thinkers of their time and I do not see any problem with us doing the same now. I still think we can experiment with this at very local levels.
 
I suppose, on the local level, what is being proposed wouldn't be much different than having 'tribal elders'. The hard part would be trying to figure out which people were qualified to handle the task (supposing that 'elder' wouldn't be a prerequisite). If the people as a whole elected the voting gang, we'd be right back where we are now. If there was one person responsible for filling vacant seats with appointees, totalitarian local governments would emerge.

You could just feed the voter database into a computer and have it randomly pick some people.
 
A much simpler way to decrease politcal corruption would be to put restrictions on lobbying and campaign donations along with other things that make politicians do things for the money instead of what is needed.
 
Compulsary Governance . Just like the draft when your numbers up. Tag your it your turn to govern.
 
Compulsary Governance . Just like the draft when your numbers up. Tag your it your turn to govern.

I doubt it would be compulsory, if it was ever implemented. There's no benefit I see from making it so, and plenty of reason not to.
 
Sounds like it could be a good idea, but the more I think about it the more I don't like it. The random sample may not be representative of the views of the country, and lets face it, how will the sample be held accountable? Say the sample was primarily poor people for whatever reason (a small sample out of 300 million people could easily end up like this) and ended up passing ridiculous laws? It sounds crazy, at least on the national scale. On a local scale, it might work a lot better (city councils) and I might be for it. But on the national level, I don't like it. It sounds fishy to me. What if people don't want to run a government? Maybe dont make it mandatory? An interesting concept, but it seems very unstable to me. Maybe it would work if another house in Congress was created with those people, or if the random sample people were added to, say, the house of reps, so it was a combination of random sample and elected politicians. That would seem better to me.
 
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