We have just
finished another cycle in the very diseased system known as the
American political system. By and large the winners were those with
the most money, the most insider cronies, and the most corporate
connections. One can have little hope that this sick system will get
better anytime soon. But perhaps one can have a little fun imagining
this: how might elections work in some future republic (here or in another continent) with a much
fairer political system? Below are some characteristics that such elections might have.
The United States
government does not have this characteristic. There are two houses of
Congress, and in one of those houses (the Senate), each of the 50 U.S
states elects two senators. But the tiny states of Rhode Island and
Delaware get to elect the same number of senators (two) as the huge
states of California and Texas.
What this means is
that under the US constitution, residents of California and Texas are
basically second-class citizens with a lower degree of
representation, and residents of little Rhode Island and Delaware are
specially privileged citizens with a higher degree of representation.
So let us imagine
that in our future republic, there is only one house of Congress, and
that congressional election districts are divided in such a way so
that each has roughly the same population. This means that
geographically speaking, each citizen of the republic gets equal
representation in Congress.
Characteristic 2: Congressional
representatives would serve a single term of 4 years, with 50% of
their terms expiring every two years.
The
designers of the US constitution imagined that if congressional
representatives in the House of Representatives did not look out for
the average man, they would soon be tossed out by the voters. The
founding fathers failed to anticipate our current political
landscape, in which it typically happens that representatives who do
not well serve the common man continue to be re-elected year after
year, because they have spent much of their time in office courting
crony connections and raising money from the rich and corporations.
The best way for a
future republic to avoid this problem would be to limit every
congressional representative to a single term. The whole concept of
re-election would be abolished. Congressional representatives would
focus on passing good laws, rather than spending half of their time
doing things related to their re-election, such as seeking political
donations from fat cats.
It might be argued
that you need congressional representatives who have been around a
long time, to help handle all the intricacies of legislation. But the
fine details of government could be delegated to bureaucracies to
keep things simple enough so that people recruited from other
occupations could serve as congressional representatives. There is
no reason why a Congress needs to be passing bills with thousands of
pages, when most of these details can be decided by appointed
bureaucrats. With a system under which half of Congress was
replaced every two years, there would always be “old timers”
around with two years experience, who could “show the ropes” to
new representatives.
Characteristic 3: A system would
exist making sure that Congress consisted of persons from each major
occupation, with the makeup of Congress mirroring the number of
people in those occupations. Such a system would issue people
invitations to make a fully funded run for office for a single term,
with the invitations being randomly generated by lottery from
particular occupational classes.
The United States
Congress has way too many lawyers and professional politicians. When
almost all of its members are used to earning large incomes each
year, one can hardly expect Congress to look after average people very
well. One way to remedy that would be to have a system that
guarantees that Congress consists of people drawn from the general
public, with each major occupational class getting equal
representation.
This could be
accomplished by a system in which a lottery is used to issue
invitations to make a fully funded run for Congress. The invitations
would be issued in such a way so that major occupational classes got
an equal number of invitations. For example, if 10% of the people in
the republic were information workers, then 10% of the invitations
issued would go to information workers; and if 5% of the people in
the republic were farmers, then 5% of the invitations would go to
farmers. The invitation system and funding would be paid for by
taxes.
Under this
invitation system, you might, for example, be working as a restaurant
chef, and you might one day be surprised to get an official
government invitation inviting you to make a fully funded run for
Congress. You would be told that your name had been randomly
selected from a list of those in your occupation. You would know that
there would be only a few other competitors for the congressional
seat you could run for, because only a few other people would get
such an invitation to run for that particular congressional seat.
The invitations
issued would be adjusted so that the population of Congress always
mirrored the occupational background of the general republic. So, for
example, if 5% of the population were farmers, and farmers tended to
lose elections or decline an invitation to make a fully funded run
for Congress, then there would be a temporary increase in the number
of invitations to farmers to make a fully funded run for Congress (so
in one year the number of invitations might exceed their percentage
in the population). Eventually things would balance out, and
Congress would well reflect the occupational percentages of the
general public.
The best result of
this system would be that Congress would be made up almost entirely
of the common people, and would be far more likely to pass laws
favoring the common people. This would be a great improvement over
our current system of government of the rich, by the rich, and for
the rich.
Some will say:
come on, you couldn't have a system in which crucial decisions on
people's futures are made by randomly selected citizens from all
walks of life. But we already have one such system which works well:
the jury system.
Characteristic 4: Instead of the
current system where there is rarely more than 2 viable candidates
for an office, there would be 5 fully-funded randomly selected
candidates for each congressional seat.
How many times
have you anticipated voting, and thought to yourself: none of the
above. This problem could be partially eliminated by a system
like the one described previously, a system that would guarantee that
there would be five fully funded candidates for each Congressional
seat.
Assuming that half
of the people are conservative, and half are liberal, a random lottery
invitation system would have only about 1 chance in 32 of producing a
slate of all liberals or all conservatives in a particular voting
district. This would probably be better than under the current
system, where your odds of having no real choice in a particular
congressional district is probably greater than 1 in 32 (since so
many Democrats are barely distinguishable from Republicans, and many
seats are uncontested).
Characteristic 5: Only those who had
received the randomly generated invitations could run for Congress.
Under such a rule,
it would not be possible for a rich ambitious person to appear on the
ballot for Congress because he had used his own funds to gather a
sufficient number of signatures supporting his candidacy. There
would be no way for the rich to buy their way into Congress.
Characteristic 6: There would be an
“instant runoff” system of voting wherein you list a first,
second, and third choice.
Our current system
of voting creates many strange paradoxes, and the evil of “strategic
voting,” in which you often end up voting for someone other than
the person you prefer most. In a race with three contestants, when
going to vote, you may favor candidate X; but you may worry that if
you vote for candidate X you will help throw the election to
candidate Y (who is in a tight battle with candidate Z, who you like a
little more than Candidate Y). So you end up voting for candidate Z, who is not really
the person you want to win. Such strange effects can be eliminated by
an “instant runoff” system in which you specify a first choice
choice, a second choice, and a third choice. In this case you would
specify candidate X as your first choice, and candidate Z as your
second choice. You would not worry that your vote would have the
effect of being a vote for candidate Y, because under the instant
runoff system if candidate X loses, you have not enhanced the chances
of candidate Y winning.
An "instant runoff" ballot for voting
Characteristic 7: A president of
the republic would be directly elected, without anything like the
electoral college.
The “instant
runoff” system would be used to elect a president of the republic,
with the winner being whoever got the most total points. By avoiding
any electoral college system, there would be no possibility of any
candidate losing the election to another candidate who got more
popular support, due to some electoral fluke such as occurred in 2000
when Gore lost to Bush even though Gore got more votes nationwide.
Characteristic 8: Anyone would be
able to vote without any prior registration.
It is easy to
imagine advanced technology that could make this possible. There
could, for example, be a retina scanner or fingerprint scanner that
would upload to a national database. If anyone tried to vote twice on
the same day, a computerized system would immediately prevent the
second attempt to vote.
Characteristic 9: The voting age
would be lowered to age 16.
We currently put
our lives (and the lives of our children) in the hands of teenagers
of age 16, by allowing them to get driver's licenses. But we do not
allow the same people to merely vote. Anyone old enough to drive is
old enough to vote.
Characteristic 10: Political
contributions by corporations would be forbidden, and contributions
by individuals would be limited to a small amount.
To prevent
corporations from having influence over elections to favor their
selfish ends, in our fairer future republic it would be illegal for a
corporation to make contributions to anyone's election campaign.
There would also be a limit on how much any individual could
contribute during a particular election, a limit such as 100 dollars.
This would prevent rich people from heavily influencing elections for
the sake of their own selfish ends.
No comments:
Post a Comment