On Jun 24, 2008, at 15:44 , Terry Bouricius wrote:
That brings me to an interesting issue, which may be off-topic for
this
list..."sortition"...the selection of a legislative body by means of
modern sampling methods that assure a fully representative body.
There is
an interesting history of the tension between sortition on one hand
and
election on the other (Athenian democracy used both), where
sortition was
seen as the more democratic method, with election being the lesser
(because candidates with more money or fame had such an advantage over
average citizens). It is the old question of whether representative
democracy should be seen as "self-governance," or "consent of the
governed."
Sorry if this is too off-topic.
Very on-topic.
Another reason why sampling could be considered better is that in
elections people that want to become elected and are ready to fight
their way through and spend few years doing so are more likely to
become candidates and finally representatives. That has both positive
and negative impacts, but in any case this means one kind of bias in
the representation.
One intermediate approach is to combine the two approaches and first
nominate a pool of candidates that people want to represent them and
then elect among these by lottery (or maybe even the other way
around, first pick random candidates and then arrange an election
(maybe this method would be less good)). This method has the benefit
that the representatives are likely to be reasonably competent too,
and if the nomination process is reasonably open, then also people
that are competent and willing but that would not fight their way
through could be elected (nomination by few neighbours might be enough).
Juho
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