
Why Not Have a Randomly Selected Congress? - frgtpsswrdlame
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/why-not-have-a-randomly-selected-congress
======
caseysoftware
It's an interesting idea but has the same flaw as term limits: the power would
shift from the Congressperson to the staffers who are unknown, unaccountable,
and sometimes even worse people.

When I worked for various agencies in DC, one of the first things I learned
was who the power players and key people were in each of our Senators' &
Congresspersons' offices. It is quite often _not_ the Senator but the
scheduler. Yes, the person who runs the Senator's calendar and determines who
gets on it and who doesn't.

We found pretty quickly that this scheduler was - _almost without exception_
\- a single woman in her mid 20's. Therefore, whenever we knew that we would
need access, we would do little things like bring flowers or chocolates "for
the office" but make sure to leave them with her. When we found out about new
restaurants or a show she'd like, we'd pass her the info. By the time we
needed that meeting and gave her a call, we would get it every single time..
often the same day.

And yes, we worked with both parties and names you'd recognize.

* Am I proud about any of that? Nope but that is how the Hill works. And giving those people more powerful is an awful idea.

~~~
2845197541
Why would a representative leave so much influence in the hands of a girl in
her middle twenties who's dumb enough to doll out influence to bringers of
chocolate?

~~~
urethrafranklin
What's dumb about it? It's called greasing the wheel. You want to get the
meeting over every other asshole who wants a meeting. Who gets the meeting,
gets the laws.

~~~
2845197541
The girl is dumb for playing loose with American legislation for fucking
chocolates.

~~~
urethrafranklin
This whole phenomenon is over your head, isn't it?

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majewsky
As far as I can see, they advocate for a Randomly Selected Congress that still
operates on a term basis (i.e. new members are randomly chosen at fixed time
intervals, e.g. every two years).

An alternative approach that I've found quite interesting is to assemble a new
Randomly Selected Congress for every single bill. The idea is that certain
parties (e.g. government offices or public petitions with a sufficient amount
of backers) gain the right to identify problems. For each problem thusly
identified, a Randomly Selected Congress is formed, who can either vote that
no action is required, or who can enact a bill with the intention of solving
that problem.

The appeal is that every legislator will only be involved in exactly one law
over their lifetime (maybe two or three, but the chance of one person being
selected multiple times is excessively slim). So horse trades cannot work
anymore, and every legislator knows that whatever they sign into law will be
the single one impact they can ever have on the political system. Like: "This
may only be a zoning law for small villages, and I don't care because I live
in the city. But everyone will judge me by this law forever, so I better make
sure it's the best fucking zoning law ever."

~~~
madcaptenor
This sounds a lot like jury duty. I'm not sure what to make of that
similarity.

~~~
visarga
It's also similar to the Slashdot moderation system.

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clavalle
Do we want the statistical average of us to create laws that stick around for
years? If so, we need to raise the average significantly.

Also, this would put enormous power in the hands of lobbyists and bureaucrats;
a demographic that is not exactly brimming with the diversity that this
'solution' attempts to put in place.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
I think the solution is just to ban lobbying as it currently exists. I ran
across an interesting argument about a month ago basically saying that,
legally, there are things we can own but not sell, like a spleen, because the
societal consequences of allowing people to sell their organs are so
disastrous. They made the point that maybe you should similarly have the right
to lobby your congressman but that you wouldn't have the right to sell that
capability.

~~~
eli
So no lobbying from EFF or Natural Resources Defense Council?

~~~
opportune
The EFF wouldn't need to lobby if Comcast/Google/etc. didn't lobby

~~~
eli
I disagree. Laws like CFAA get passed because legislators want to look tough
on crime. Not, IMHO, because corporations are lobbying for them.

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Overtonwindow
Neighborhood DC lobbyists here.. It's an idea worthy of study, but in practice
it would be difficult to implement. First, the warm-up time for someone
entering congress, to get them to the point where they do know what they're
doing, is about six months. These are folks who want to be there, who have at
least spent some time studying the issues, the process, and time on the
campaign trail. A completely random, lay congress picked off the street would
need about a year to get to that point. Those who have some advanced
education, knowledge, or training in government, are going to quickly run
right over them. Then there's the staff. You've got a randomly selected
congress, but what about the staff? That's who really runs the place, and
those with the best staffers are going to get up to speed the quickest. What
about parties? Who is the Speaker? Who runs the committees? If it's a free-
for-all with no one in a party, and no one able to unit a group to control,
it's chaos. Even Britain, with its myriad of parties and voting blocs, has a
lot of function built into their structure.

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Trickilozis
Anyone agreeing with this should read The Next Revolution by ya boy Murray
Bookchin. Libertarian Municipalism has the members of democratic citizen's
assemblies of a town or city creating laws directly, and the representatives
form a completely administrative role. By separating legislation and
representation he even suggests that randomly selecting the delegates is
completely reasonable.

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teilo
The level of knowledge of civics, current events, and history, not to mention
the level of civic responsibility has done nothing but go down since this
nation was founded. This idea might have been more tenable 200 or even 100
years ago.

The jury system is an entirely different problem space. There the decision is
made based on a relatively narrow pool of information, and is in fact
constrained to that pool of information and the personal experience of the
individual jurors.

Congress is a whole other matter. There decisions must be informed based upon
a vastly greater background of knowledge and, dare I say, wisdom.
International affairs and history, broad understanding of current events,
economics, knowledge of our system of law and jurisprudence. Do the
individuals in congress all meet this standard? No. But the process of putting
oneself and one's knowledge and experience forward to the voting public does
act as a sort of filter to weed out people who have no understanding or
ability to govern.

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webwanderings
Or teach people to become leaders who can govern. What does it take to have a
specialized field of studies to prepare people? The more the qualified experts
compete each other in getting elected, the better.

~~~
rmah
That is precisely what an aristocratic elite (or any semi-permanent elite
subgroup) is supposed to do. What seems to have changed in America is that the
elites no longer grow up learning that "we are better, and therefore, it is
our job to run things correctly for our heirs (and the plebes too I guess, as
long as they keep their place)".

While this is distasteful attitude on the surface, one thing it does do is
make sure that at least a few of the elites grow up with a sense of nobles
oblige and fosters a longer-term outlook. There are, of course, a host of
disadvantages. So while I welcome the dismantlement of such attitudes among
the elite, the problem is that nothing has risen to take its place. We sadly
seem to be becoming more and more a "what's in it for me" society.

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tmaly
I would much rather see all bills and amendments put under a public version
control where everyone could see who is adding what in real-time.

This transparency would really help out democracy in my opinion.

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namlem
I've been on a sortition kick for some time now and am a big proponent, but
simply choosing congressmen at random would never work. I believe that with
subcommittees and some sort of filtering mechanism, it could work very well.
The filtering mechanism is the trickiest part though. So far I haven't come up
with anything better than a qualification exam, which has some obvious flaws.

The way I see it working is like this: You have a central committee that is
like the legislature, but they don't draft bills. They only debate them and
vote on them. This committee is made up of at least 40% unfiltered complete
randoms. The term could be anywhere from 6 months to 4 years; the position
being non-compulsory and well compensated. The central committee also selects
someone to serve as the head of state, who will act kind of like the SoS and
be commander in chief of the military. This person could be replaced with a
vote of no confidence like a PM.

The actual legislation would be written by filtered subcommittees. For
example, you could have an infrastructure committee that has two lawyers, 2-4
engineers, two economists and two social scientists. These would be selected
at random from a pool of people who have passed some sort of qualification
exam. The exam would be very difficult, but people would be highly encouraged
to take it to maximize the size of the pools. Of course study materials and
services should also be provided by the state to make sure that everyone has
approximately equal access.

It's not an ideal system, and there are some flaws, but I believe it would
work very well. Having committees of experts crafting legislation would limit
the influence of lobbyists. You could also potentially have some sort of
petition system to keep effective leaders around for a second term.

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jimmytidey
This is such and outstanding idea and I would love to see it implemented for
some seats in the UK House of Lords - a low risk way to trial it.

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geff82
Get some information on the internal democracy of the Bahai faith. They have
candidateless elections - essentially you vote for any member of the faith you
personally think is very capable and the ones who have the most votes is
elected. And to avoid any cult of person, you elect councils of 9 people that
have to decide with absolute majority about their topics. This Bahai system is
almost impossible to game - in case you do bad as an elected person, they will
not vote for you the next time. This system also is multilevel: the elected
persons of a city do the same candidateless approach on the national level,
then those elected in all countries come together and vote for the
international "House of Justice" as they call it, which is located in Haifa,
Israel. This election process serves really as the perfect sieve for bad
people.

~~~
sethrin
You have a clear definition for "bad people" as part of your religion. Whether
or not that process works, adding a rigid morality does not improve simple
plurality voting for most populations.

~~~
geff82
I don't say copy this religion, but its processes.

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DomreiRoam
I m interested by this topics and I recommend a book by David van Reybrouck
that speaks about this topic:
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/18/against-
electi...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/18/against-elections-
the-case-for-democracy-david-van-reybrouck-review)

I think the way we produce new legislation and control the government is not
satisfactory as it is. My favorite approach would be to have a sortition
(based on a quota method maybe) then some intensive training (law,
constitution ... ) before the one term and after that training of the member
of the assembly that go back to the civil life.

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samirillian
I think there would need to be some minimal filter on those who would govern.
Age, for one, but maybe also a high school diploma or equivalent and a
"citizenship test" that everyone would have to pass to graduate high school.

~~~
logicchains
China has something like this: bureaucrats have to pass the civil service
exam, which is like a souped up IQ/SAT style test. The former president, Hu
Jintao, apparently had a photographic memory. Make of that what you will.

~~~
opportune
I would like this, but the anti-SAT / whiteboarding group would complain about
a system like this to no end.

And to be fair, there is a huge potential for a system like this to be abused
or to codify massive inequality in representation across racial / socio-
economic lines. So complaints would definitely not be without merit. Usually
additional barriers to participate in government only end up hurting those who
are most marginalized already, even if they are supposedly well-intentioned.
So while a system like this might sound good to your typical hacker news
browser, consider that a system like this would also mostly exclude poor and
uneducated people from government even more than they are already

~~~
samirillian
Yeah, I mean, it's really hard to come up with a solution to one problem that
doesn't create a new one. I guess I am kind of imagining a system of
mandarins. Perhaps the requirement is that you attend public school, where
passing the course is required for graduation. And so you cut out HS dropouts
but you also cut out private and charter school kids.

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forinti
We could also bring back ostracism (not from society, but from government, at
least). We wouldn't be able to select our representatives, but we would be
able to rule out those we definitely don't want.

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gregcrv
This is how democracy was orginally designed in ancient Athen.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

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rmah
IMO, a randomly selected congress hands power to the executive, or God forbid
the government bureaucracy (aka "civil servants"). Whichever one, they will
become the only ones who know what the hell is going on.

If a law gets passed they don't like, they will simply drag their feet until
they can get next random congress to change it. Assuming they listen to the
congress at all.

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lucozade
Obviously I have no idea whether this will be better than the current system
or not. However, I'm completely left cold by most of the the argumentation in
the article.

For example, it complains that 40% of Congress are lawyers, effectively
arguing that it's better to have substantially fewer people making laws who
are trained in law. Why? because people don't like lawyers.

Also, it complains that 50% of Congress are millionaires so reducing the
number of millionaires will remove the influence of lobbyists. Presumably
because it's only millionaires who are influenced by marketing and free money?

The one good argument that I can see is that it definitely means that there's
no money spent on campaign financing as there are no campaigns. Obviously the
suggestion that that money will then be spent on soft and fluffy causes is
just silly but at least the original argument makes sense.

Maybe it's just me. A big part of my day to day is understanding the
consequences of the decisions I make and mitigating for them. So I get
particularly irritated by arguments that only have pro columns. But if one
does just make pro arguments they really ought to be better than this.

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leoc
Obligatory Doge
[http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.html](http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.html)
. I think it would work better as a means for electing the President though
(as in Venice).

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xorfish
I don't see the advantage of such a system over some form of direct democracy.

A right to call for a referendum puts the final say always to the people.

So policymakers will need to ask themselves "Can this law pass a popular
vote?" instead of "Will this law increase or decrease the probability of my
reelection?"

~~~
namlem
The advantage is this: A randomly selected jury has the time to carefully
consider a bill for days at a time, whereas any particular member of the
voting public cannot be expected to devote more than an hour or so considering
it.

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corpMaverick
In my opinion. Instead of randomly selected congress, we should have a
randomly selected electors. You select them randomly. They are sequestered
like a jury for a few days. They listen to the candidates and at the end they
chose one. Their power only lasts until they make a choice.

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rm_-rf_slash
Maybe. Maaaayyyyybe this could work. Or it could spell the end of the world's
largest economy as we know it.

I have in the past toyed with ideas like randomly selecting the Senate from a
pool of outstanding civil service exam scores, or by instituting a third
legislative house to be randomly selected, but in any case to do so is to jump
headfirst into an uncertain pool of chaos.

The system set up by our founding fathers is, for the most part, a good
system. A large republic was supposed to be impossible. It has lasted nearly
250 years. It has survived a bloody civil war (1864 marked the first national
election conducted during a civil war in history). It has expanded liberties
to abolish slavery and grant the vote for all citizens (with some exceptions).

Right now, the system has been hijacked and rigged by the rich and powerful.
Change them, change their influence, by all means, but upending the system for
the sake of "trying something new" or god forbid "drain the swamp," will be
akin to using a sledgehammer for a problem that requires a screwdriver.

~~~
corpMaverick
Funny you say that when your name is rm -rf /

~~~
observation
It's getting bad when he's the conservative.

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astigsen
The author Ernest Callenbach made a very detailed proposal for just this back
in the 80's, called "A Citizen Legislature":
[https://www.well.com/~mp/citleg.html](https://www.well.com/~mp/citleg.html)

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kem
Not bad to think about this, but I think much smaller changes would have huge
effects.

Thinks like approval or rank voting, for example.

I don't understand why these minor changes don't get implemented.

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tud11or
Or like the Canadian Senate, members need to be independent

~~~
maxxxxx
How does that work? What does "Independent" mean in this context?

~~~
tud11or
As no party affiliation

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Entangled
If your job is to create laws, then you must be an expert in that field. So
the pool of candidates should be meritocratic in its nature, like a Law School
degree and at least 10 years of experience plus 2 in public domains.

Then you can randomize.

Most countries in the world allow any bus driver to be a congressman and we
know how great their understanding of laws and human rights are, none.

~~~
dleslie
Bias towards those whose profession benefits from a growing abundance of laws?

Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

~~~
Entangled
If you are going to build a bridge are you going to hire an engineer or a
cook? Now if you're going to create laws would you hire someone who has
studied roman, germanic, sharia law since the times of Hammurabi, philosophy,
sociology, politics and everything necessary to understand human interaction
and association, or a bus driver?

We get the government we deserve, proportional to our level of ignorance.

There is a big difference between picking from a pool of politicians (crooks
who climb the ladder by manipulation, backstabbing and deceit) and the best
lawyers according to market forces and meritocracy then randomized.

~~~
dleslie
The writing of laws can be left to staff, who may be lawyers, the impetus to
have them written and passed need not be left solely to those who benefit from
there being an abundance of them.

It doesn't take an Engineer to recognize that a bridge needs to be
constructed.

------
wayanon
Why not have random jurors like we do in the UK?

~~~
urethrafranklin
The US does have random jurors, congress would be akin to houses of
parliament.

------
abiox
eventually, congress should be ai (with human oversight).

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briandear
How is a “popular mandate” measured if not by elections?

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brador
Because it leads to tyranny of the majority.

The original idea was congress would be intelligent people supporting
decisions for the good of the nation. That doesn't work so well anymore now
that the only decisions remaining are split between party lines.

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tpeo
>Limits the likelihood of Congress being dominated by rich white guys

>There is no downside to this

I guess that whoever wrote this piece didn't consider that it also increases
the likelihood that some poor white guys whose political positions are way
farther to the right from the author's own than Ted Cruz's positions are get
into Congress.

