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Democracy Do-Over
written by: SAH
In the May issue of Wired, Joshua Davis writes a short piece titled "Fewer Voters, Better Elections," (which as of this writing has not made it to the Internet). In it, Davis takes democracy back to its Athenian roots and points out how, even then, rather than a pure democracy (one person, one vote for everything) they had a system of representative democracy, not unlike most modern democracies.
One of the things that made their system different is that they "randomly select[ed] citizens for office." This seems like a good idea to me. Now, I'm sure it would be occasionally disastrous. However, I'm not sure we can fairly describe our modern system, where citizens are given a choice between two parties composed of professional politicians who differ only slightly, any better.
The best form of government is probably a benevolent dictatorship with a representative counsel of learned advisors, but that is pretty much impossible to put together on purpose. So representative democracy is still the best system we have, for now. The question is, who should represent us?
Perhaps a system of randomly selected representatives might be better. As Davis points out, "such proposals can inspire horror. But the fact is, one man, one vote, is broken."
There is another problem in our system: the electorate is uninformed. And despite having several 24-hour news networks &151; all of which seemingly determined not to broadcast any news &151; who could serve as conduits to the debates and information we need, that level of discourse remains elusive.
Politicians, particularly those in Congress, seem more concerned with getting their sound bite on TV than actually representing the best interests of the electorate. Now, I think redefining term limits (to eliminate re-election entirely) could help with that, but I'll stay on topic. The problem with the elected officials is that they want to be there. They are politicians, not an informed cross section of the populace.
One of the ideas Davis highlights, based on the work of James Fishkin, is randomly selecting a "group of ideally 200 to 300 citizens to spend one or two days listening to experts on both sides debate the merits of a initiative or a candidate. Then the group votes and the results are enacted." I don't think that would be worse than the shallow, pandering, job-guarding, gerrymandered group we have in Washington now (and in most cases, at the State level).
Unfortunately, the only people who could test this idea, or change our system to work in this manner (without violence or civil war) are the representatives in power now. and if there is one thing they are worse at than representing us, it's regulating themselves.
All corrupt systems collapse eventually. However, America, a nation locked in a state of change since its inception (even when that change is glacially slow), could avoid this fate if we take a bit of advice from Thomas Jefferson and have periodic revolutions. These don't need to be as often as he suggested (every 20 years) or as violent as his times suggest, but perhaps once in a generation, every 50 years, there should be an ideological revolution within our own system where we break everything down. Back to nothing. A clean slate. And we start again, reinventing ourselves, casting aside the things that hold us back and embracing the ideas that move us forward. Chaos, I'm sure, would ensue.
But there is not getting away from the fact that our current system of stagnant, bitter, childish non-representation cannot last. Much like nearly everything else about the American way of life, our current system of representation is unsustainable. But it is not unsavable. We need only the will, and the courage, to form ourselves anew.
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