On Demarchy

[[ptx]]

Lately i've become somewhat obsessed with this idea - a sortition-based democracy - demarchy.

In short, unlike the electoral democracy, that is currently most widespread in the world, the representatives of the people are selected randomly (through a lottery from a pool of eligible candidates), rather than voted in.
This could, quite possibly, avoid the problems, that arise from having political parties - complacency, corruption, political decisions arising from the power struggle between parties/factions and others. Also, is it worth mentioning, that the majority of voters are quite ignorant in political matters and are easily influenced by cheap populism?

The rest about it can be read in the above article as well as many others discussing it online (google gogo!).

I personally love this idea and can find very few flaws in it. Can you?

[B3RS3RK]

Who would come into this lottery?

Only people that WANT to come into it?Do we include retards, women, people with extreme political views?

If we dont include everybody that has the right to vote, it will be unfair.

But if we do, what if there is a period of bad luck and all of a sudden 50% of the represantatives are chocolate chip cookies?Hooray for concentration camps?

[RandomDude]

Well it depends on what powers these randomly chosen people have and what responsiblities they have.

[[ptx]]

Who would come into this lottery?

Only people that WANT to come into it?Do we include retards, women, people with extreme political views?

If we dont include everybody that has the right to vote, it will be unfair.

But if we do, what if there is a period of bad luck and all of a sudden 50% of the represantatives are chocolate chip cookies?Hooray for concentration camps?

A lottery from a pool of eligible candidates. The exact eligibility can be anything, really. How would that be unfair? It is not like everyone with the right to vote can run for office in electoral democracy, anyway?

A period of bad luck and all of a sudden we get hit by a huge meteor? Hooray for armageddon?

[Kafein]

This solves nearly all the problems of democracy, but has other flaws.

The first category of problems is that such a system can't work on the basis of representative democracy. Random people do random things and you can't have a psycho alone in charge of a whole ministry.

Therefore a clear improvement of the idea IMO is either :
- to actually go back to active/direct democracy by simulating a very small population using the random selection
- either just to add that random selection layer to the current party democracy system. Instead of everyone being allowed to vote, only a very small number of citizen are randomly chosen to become electors. It is very likely that 100 people will be a lot more conscious of each other's role and influcence than millions. Also, due to their small number these citizen can be helped to make the right decision : party programmes, experts, studies and such. Also it should be a full-time and paid job during the true election process so there are no reasons not to do it seriously.

[B3RS3RK]

If Iam able to vote, I can join a party, and then I can take an office.It requires engagement, but its accessible to everyone.

A period of bad luck and all of a sudden we get hit by a huge meteor? Hooray for armageddon?

If it´s a lottery than that could easily happen.Also, there is a reason why we vote.The Idea is that the Party with the most votes represents the political stance of the countrys people the best.

Dont tell me you´d like a bunch of rednecks controlling your country...

We might aswell go back to Monarchy.Possibly even elected Monarchy.No partys, just single Candidates, one term of kingship is 2-4 years.

That way we can file out the best possible ruler.

[Kafein]

A clear advantage of current democracies is that they prevent ideological minorities to "win" the elections (and I insist on minority, chocolate chip cookies won the elections after the reichstag arson because they had the most votes).

An extremist party will do 6% of votes during dozens of elections, but that doesn't mean it has 6% chances of being part of the government at each election. That is a very good thing and a very good criticism of pure demarchy IMO. But also we might argue that precisely because the system only takes big parties into account, extremists are reinforced by the natural opposition process.

Anyway the idea of randomly selected electors solves the problem. 6% of 100 or maybe 1000 people is not a lot more than 6% of millions, except if you are very unlucky.