Voting is Undemocratic

[Ryika]

The title of this thread is in direct conflict with the very idea of the article. If voting is "undemocratic" because people are coerced into voting for certain people, and that's a bad thing, then how is replacing it with a system that gets rid of the democratic process all-together even a consideration?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The title of this thread is in direct conflict with the very idea of the article. If voting is "undemocratic" because people are coerced into voting for certain people, and that's a bad thing, then how is replacing it with a system that gets rid of the democratic process all-together even a consideration?

Representative democracy is still democracy, if the representation can be made to actually represent. The premise that no amount of "electing" is actually producing genuine representation is what takes the democracy out of the system. By instituting a plan to produce genuine representation democracy is restored, even though the whole "general election" sham is removed.

 

[Ryika]

Representative democracy is still democracy, if the representation can be made to actually represent. The premise that no amount of "electing" is actually producing genuine representation is what takes the democracy out of the system. By instituting a plan to produce genuine representation democracy is restored, even though the whole "general election" sham is removed.

It's not a representative democracy if the representatives aren't chosen democratically, but instead by chance.

That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, but the title of the thread very much puts emphasis on the idea that the democratic process is important, so it does stand in contrast with the idea that is being presented.

 

[Perfection]

I was running an errand yesterday and heard Brett Hennig talk about it on NPR as part of TED Radio Hour:
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/12/6565...d-we-replace-politicians-with-random-citizens

He cited a fair number of successful applications of sortition on policy issues.

While sortition has its faults so does elected officials. After all. elected officials are typically beholden to those that helped get them elected.

Hannig advocates for more experimentation on local levels for sortition based systems, this is something I can get behind. My conservatism (in the small "c" reluctance to change sense) would not allow me to at the time advocate for wholesale replacement of elected bodies but it could be used right now for single issue committees (say for redistricting) or as replacement of a single house in a state or local bicameral legislature.

 

[HoloDoc]

It's not a representative democracy if the representatives aren't chosen democratically, but instead by chance.

That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, but the title of the thread very much puts emphasis on the idea that the democratic process is important, so it does stand in contrast with the idea that is being presented.

I'm trying to stay out of the discussion to see where it goes, but the fact is that democracy actually doesn't require voting. It's just rule by the people. This is how socialist states were able to call themselves democratic without lying, matter of fact.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It's not a representative democracy if the representatives aren't chosen democratically, but instead by chance.

That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, but the title of the thread very much puts emphasis on the idea that the democratic process is important, so it does stand in contrast with the idea that is being presented.

If those representatives legislate through a democratic process than I would call it representative democracy, for lack of a better term.

 

[warpus]

It's not voting that's undemocratic, it's the way some democratic systems have been implemented that can be undemocratic.

I like the idea of using sortition in conjunction with voting. The details is what make or break this idea

 

[civvver]

or we could just fix political funding like allowing unlimited anonymous corporate donations to shell corporations that campaign on behalf of politicians.

 

[Perfection]

It's not a representative democracy if the representatives aren't chosen democratically, but instead by chance.

That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, but the title of the thread very much puts emphasis on the idea that the democratic process is important, so it does stand in contrast with the idea that is being presented.

Democracy in its most basic sense is rule by the people. I view a process as democratic if it takes into account the views of as many people as possible and seeks consent from as many people as possible thus providing a check against elite interests and serving population at large. In that sense, I view sortition systems as comfortably within the democratic umbrella.

 

[Ryika]

I'm trying to stay out of the discussion to see where it goes, but the fact is that democracy actually doesn't require voting. It's just rule by the people. This is how socialist states were able to call themselves democratic without lying, matter of fact.

Must be one of those bizarro world definitions of "democracy" then. All definitions I can find either directly mention that the people either vote for representatives, or directly on issues. In effect, such a system may very well still serve the will of the people, any maybe even better than our current system, but it's not democratic, or at the very least, the democratic process is weakened by the added lottery.

I do not consider a system where chance creates a gap between "the people" and "the people who decide what becomes law", to be a democracy, if those latter people are not chosen by, but randomly selected from "the people".

 

[Lexicus]

I don't think it's possible to imagine a really democratic politcal system that doesn't incorporate elections of some kind. I haven't read the article in the OP yet but it seems obvious to me that you can elect candidates who are selected by sortition, which seems to be to be an obviously more democratic method than having self-selection of candidates.

 

[Perfection]

Must be one of those bizarro world definitions of "democracy" then. All definitions I can find either directly mention that the people either vote for representatives, or directly on issues. In effect, such a system may very well still serve the will of the people, any maybe even better than our current system, but it's not democratic, or at the very least, the democratic process is weakened by the added lottery.

I do not consider a system where chance creates a gap between "the people" and the people who decide what becomes law.

electoral representative processes introduce a large gap between the people and policy decisions as well. And am inclined to believe that gap is often bigger than that of chance in a well-designed sortition system.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Must be one of those bizarro world definitions of "democracy" then. All definitions I can find either directly mention that the people either vote for representatives, or directly on issues. In effect, such a system may very well still serve the will of the people, any maybe even better than our current system, but it's not democratic, or at the very least, the democratic process is weakened by the added lottery.

I do not consider a system where chance creates a gap between "the people" and "the people who decide what becomes law", to be a democracy, if those latter people are not chosen by, but randomly selected from "the people".

Do you think this "chosen by" is accurately selecting representation?

On the other end, a random element does not necessarily mean "randomly selected" in the sneering tone that you seem to be imparting. Using a random element in a process designed to produce a representative sample provides genuine representation.

 

[HoloDoc]

Must be one of those bizarro world definitions of "democracy" then. All definitions I can find either directly mention that the people either vote for representatives, or directly on issues. In effect, such a system may very well still serve the will of the people, any maybe even better than our current system, but it's not democratic, or at the very least, the democratic process is weakened by the added lottery.

I do not consider a system where chance creates a gap between "the people" and "the people who decide what becomes law", to be a democracy, if those latter people are not chosen by, but randomly selected from "the people".

Literally the first democracy in the world practiced sortition to choose representatives: classical Athens. I just googled "democracy definition" and one third of the definitions don't mention voting or elections at all. So you couldn't have searched very hard.

 

[Ryika]

Using a random element in a process designed to produce a representative sample provides genuine representation.

Who will provide this unbiased sample?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Who will provide this unbiased sample?

Statisticians have been designing systems for representative sampling for as long as there have been statisticians. Adapting that shouldn't be terribly complicated. The only thing that has prevented it is the fascination with voting as "an expression of power." Which it demonstrably is not, really.

 

[Ryika]

Statisticians have been designing systems for representative sampling for as long as there have been statisticians. Adapting that shouldn't be terribly complicated. The only thing that has prevented it is the fascination with voting as "an expression of power." Which it demonstrably is not, really.

Representative sampling only ever accounts for a few traits that are being seen as important to the topic. There is no way to create a sample that accounts for all traits that might differentiate one group of people in the general public from other groups (unless your sample is equal the group that you're sampling, in which case, you aren't sampling at all). The problem in creating an unbiased sample is not to create the sample, it's to decide which traits are important and must be included in the process of creating a representative sample, and which are not.

People of different political leanings will heavily disagree on which traits are important to include and which aren't, so again I ask, who will provide this unbiased sample?

 

[Perfection]

Who will provide this unbiased sample?

If a region has a good list of everyone within its borders using unbiased sampling method is relatively straightforward. If such a list does not exist, there would need to be a process established to draft it.

There are some ways to slightly "cheat" here if a perfect list is impractical, for instance if you have an imperfect list but good demographic data, you can use the demographic data to help balance out biases in the list.

Now you're right that this would require a group of people to faithfully execute, but that's true of elections too, so I don't view that as a defeater for sortition systems.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

People of different political leanings will heavily disagree on which traits are important to include and which aren't, so again I ask, who will provide this unbiased sample?

Will they?

I suspect that people of certain political leanings might want to push for an age limit, but I don't see a whole lot of disagreement as being likely. There might be some negotiation as to what that age limit should be, but from a US standpoint the voting age or the minimum age to serve in congress currently are going to be the end points on the range and I doubt that anyone is going to be that excited by anything that is chosen within that range, including either endpoint.

While people of a certain political leaning tend to be more tolerant of misogyny, I don't think a "this gender should be selected for" position is going to hold any sway. The sample being selected is going to follow the gender distribution of the population well enough as long as it is a descent sample size. The people shouting in their distant corners that only men are "really qualified" to serve will be pretty much ignored.

The kind of obvious manipulations that will appeal to any other group of extremists are going to be similarly dismissed. No, we are not going to disenfranchise people by making property ownership a standard. Or employment.

In the US we are almost certain to be stuck with some sort of "empowering" for small states. Advocates for doing away with the electoral college will push for a reduced empowerment, fans of the senate will push for greater. Something very close to the current level would undoubtedly be agreed to eventually.

 

[warpus]

The sample being selected is going to follow the gender distribution of the population

I presume this will also follow ethnic, transgender, etc. lines?

It works great in theory, but certain minorities of people (not necessarily ethnic or religious) will find themselves not represented well under such a system, due to their small numbers. So for example say there's only 100,000 Jews living in Canada. Let's say they all live in generally the same place. They are a community, but under this system they would have a small (or non-existent) voice in this system since their numbers are so small compared to the population of Canada as a whole.

Would this be a problem?

And do we also make sure we include a population representative % of vegetarians? Atheists? Satanists? Sports fans? Sports haters? People who are allergic to peanuts? How do we pick these groups and where do we draw the line?