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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Alternative to Elections
Message-ID: <319@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Aug-83 13:34:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.319
Posted: Wed Aug 24 13:34:03 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Aug-83 11:02:44 EDT
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Organization: D.C.I.E.M, Toronto, Canada
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I don't think choosing people at random is a very good idea. Politicians
may seem like dopes at times, but I am sure that most of them are *much*
smarter than the average (based on the small sample I have met one-on-one).
They do, however represent groups who are (a) interested in the law or in
power, and (b) either can afford the time to be politicians or obtain
some professional advantage from being one.

One problem with elections is the election campaign. Once every now and then
everything stops while all the candidates sing their own praises, fill the
airwaves with unkeepable promises, and so forth. In the USA and some other
places this happens at regularly scheduled intervals; in other places when
the leader(s) of the party in power decide the time is ripe. However the
time is chosen, the mechanism is disruptive, and if the party in power
changes at the election, there are rapid policy changes that discourage
other countries from trusting the democratic country.

I propose two changes that might mitigate these problems: (1) self-selection
of electoral groups, and (2) asynchronous elections.

(1) Let us suppose that the group being elected (Congress, Parliament or
City Council) consists of X members. There are N voters in the electorate,
so on average it takes N/X (= W) voters to elect one member. In the USA,
British Commonwealth and some other places, these W voters reside in a
continuous geographic area. In other places, the W votes come from a
partitioning of all votes among the parties contesting the election.
I propose that any W people can combine to form an electoral group
to elect one of the X members. The group may be Objectivists, Engineers,
Followers of Swami Shadreen, or even residents of Exotville, so long
as they declare that their vote will be for the member representing
the chosen group. If their chosen group has insufficient voters, a
second choice or a default group (geographic region) would apply.
It seems possible that this method might ensure that a wider variety
of interests and professions could obtain representation in the
governing body.

In respect of item (2), asynchronous elections:
Suppose X, the number of members in the elected body, is a multiple of
12 (for small bodies) or 52 (for large bodies). Each member represents
one constituency, whether it be geographic or special interest. Every
month (for small bodies) or every week (for larger bodies) one member
is up for re-election. The business of government goes on without a
break for election. If the governing party is very unpopular, it steadily
loses members, but if its policies are popular, it gains members.
A transition of governing parties would be heralded by a period in
which the government majority declined steadily, and other countries
would know what to expect because the main opposition would be forced
into a position of stating real policies, rather than election-specific
ones. I realize that some mechanism must be built in to allow
hysteresis, because otherwise the government might change three or five
times during a shift of power. Perhaps the government need not be required
to resign until it has lost confidence by a majority of more than Z (= 2 or 3).

How do these ideas stike you?

Martin Taylor