Demiocracy: A Demos-Dominant Democracy, Chapter 1a: The Founders’ Foundation—Neighborly Nomination

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Roger Knights

If a parliament … is the method, then certainly let us set about discerning the kind of suffrages, and rest no moment till we have got them. —Carlyle, A Carlyle Reader, p. 432.

The fact is, however, that no practical substitute for the present type of representative government, with its dependence on the system of permanent party organizations, has yet been devised…. —James Hogan, Election and Representation, 1945, p. 55.

The recruitment of the deserving by their “familiars” was the basis of the Founders’ political system. Therefore, LET US VOTE the way they intended: not for party politicians, but FOR FELLOW CITIZENS IN OUR “NEIGHBORHOODS”—physical, social, collegial, and familial—who deserve it—hopefully because they exhibit “the requisite wisdom and virtue.”

Let us no longer vote for a slate of presidential electors, whom we don’t know, but rather for people whom we DO. Some of these nominees would become, by random selection, our presidential electors—in other words, our designated political Proxies.

We would thereby select our choices, not settle for a pre-selected name on a menu—hopefully (because we don’t really know his character) the “Least Evil” one of the bunch. Our free selections, on the other hand, would be of better-known quantities, constituting our personal “Best Men” (and Women).

Our Proxy Electors (PEs) would constitute a new and very different Electoral College — a “Popular” one.

Our current presidential Electoral College was originally intended to freely select, after investigation and discussion, an officeholder from out of a pool of candidates, which is what an executive search committee does today.

It was intended to consist of persons known by their neighbors (which was possible when constituencies were small and economically integrated) to be wise and virtuous, and thus to be mostly above the machinations of

professional politicians,
political parties,
pressure groups,
propaganda,
the press, and
“pelf” (money).

It was, in other words, intended to be the Common Sense Sovereign, or the incarnated General Will, dedicated to the Common Good.

… its Framers intended it [Congress] to be … a deliberative assembly made up of uninstructed men, chosen by their neighbors because they are “virtuous” men. —Wilmoore Kendall (political scientist)

The true object of the state is virtue. —Aristotle.

The most effective democracy may be the most informal. … by general public recognition, rather than by election or force. —A.E. Morgan, Bottom-up Democracy, 1954, p. 13.

Surreptitiously, reliance on institutional process has replaced dependence on personal goodwill. The world has lost its humane dimension and reacquired the factual necessity and fatefulness which was characteristic of primitive times. —Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, ch. 7, p. 159.

… [the citizen] has the option as well of looking laterally or horizontally to his fellow citizens; this too constitutes a political point of view, though not the viewpoint of power. —Robert J. Pranger, The Eclipse of Citizenship, 1968, p. 92.

However, our current Electoral College is NOT above those six “Pernicious P’s,” as I call them, but below.They largely govern it; it doesn’t govern them. Its elector-members are distinctly not persons “chosen for their wisdom and virtue,” but rather the reverse. On the other hand, the members of a Popular Electoral College would be such paragons—at least comparatively.

Therefore, “popular” electoral colleges are, by inference, legitimized by the Founders, and, as a corollary, our current presidential electoral system is delegitimized.

By logical extension, there should be more than one electoral “college”—there should be one for every elected office.

Can you dig it? Read on.

EPIGRAPHS

Why are the masses, from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder? … The cheapness of man is every day’s tragedy. —Emerson, Representative Men, ch. 1.

It is not true that in a democracy people always have the kind and quality of government they want or merit. —Joseph Schumpeter.

Perhaps as much as 2/3 or 3/4 of the citizenry appears uninterested, uninformed, or unconcerned about an issue that stirs the remainder. … Under these conditions, … the forms of democracy are manipulated by the leaders of the most active, influential, and powerful groups. … The realization of how much public opinion and policy-making actually approximates this pattern leads both cynical and realistic observers to say: “All government tends to be of the many by the few, that is, by minorities or oligarchies.” Acceptance of this view as either inevitable or right leads to the conclusion that democracy is impossible or undesirable. —John Wahlke (a former president of the American Political Science Association).

The greatest failure of civilized man … is his failure to fashion a competent and tolerable form of government…. If the ingenuity and good sense that go into the making of a Ford … could be applied to the common business of society the rate of real progress would be immensely accelerated…. — H.L. Mencken, “Treatise on Right and Wrong,” 1934

If your car worked as well as the [political] system, you would have had it in the shop ages ago, if not in the used-car lot. —Russell Baker, The New York Times, August 17, 1974.

The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him. —Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1899.

So here goes:

Something like republicanism or “democracy” will work after a fashion in a village or even a township, where everybody knows everybody and keeps an eye on what goes on. Why not, then, in a county, a state, a nation? … [But these] forms of organization [are] too large for their capacities. —A.J. Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, 1943.

Emergent properties are properties that result from the interaction of components within a system. [E.g., a change in their relative size, as described by Nock above.] They are not properties of the individual components themselves. —Google’s AI.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. —Thoreau

The apparently innocent electoral system—via the interaction of its individual ancillary components, the “Pernicious P’s”—is the root of those emergent evil “branches.”

Democracy … has today entered upon a critical phase from which it will be extremely difficult to find an exit. Democracy has encountered obstacles … from within. —Robert Michels, Political Parties, 1915, p. 6.

Every kind of government seems to be afflicted by some evil inherent in its nature [e.g., a mass electorate] …. A state may survive the influence of a host of bad laws, … but a law [i.e., an inherent evil; in other words, an emergent property] which encourages the growth of the canker within must prove fatal in the end, although its evil consequences may not be immediately apparent. —Tocqueville, in The Viking Book of Aphorisms, p. 210.

Impatience with bad government created democracy, and may someday destroy it. —James Bryce, from the The American Commonwealth, 1888, quoted in Ernst Schulz, Democracy, 1966, p. 179-80.

The System Is the Problem. —Sixties saying

Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Press |

« America Should Be Ripe for Sortition Demiocracy, Chapter 1b: The (Mass-Electoral) System Is the Problem »

5 Responses

Anonymous, on January 8, 2024 at 9:36 am said:

Theodorestathis
You will find answers to the problems you are raising in my book A Therapy of Dying Democracies, Dorrance Publishing Co.

LikeLike
Yoram Gat, on January 8, 2024 at 8:04 pm said:

Roger,

While “the 6 pernicious P’s” do have significant impact, it is a mistake that they are the root of the electoralist problem. The root of the electoralist problem is the fact that it is inherently impossible for elections to produce a government populated by normal people.

The issue is that for a candidate to have a chance to be elected, they must be known (if only by name, or some other designation) to a significant proportion of the population. Such a qualification by itself makes that person a member of a very privileged elite.

An electoralist government is thus populated by members of an elite stratum in society, and it is only natural that the members of that stratum would tend to have their own views about how society should be structured and managed, and that they would implement those views. Those view may very well be in conflict with the views of the majority in society. Thus the policy pursued by the elected elite may very well be seen as oppressive by the majority. This is exactly the situation in which Western societies find themselves today, and indeed in which most electoralist systems are in most of the time.

Note that the mechanism described above does not rely on the effects of “the 6 P’s” – it is completely inherent to the very core of electoralism.

LikeLike
Roger Knights, on January 8, 2024 at 10:41 pm said:

Hi Yoram, Roger here. Thanks for that “softball.” 🙂You wrote:
“The issue is that for a candidate to have a chance to be elected, they must be known (if only by name, or some other designation) to a significant proportion of the population. Such a qualification by itself makes that person a member of a very privileged elite.”

The problem is not “electoralism” as such, but only Too Big Electoralism—i.e., where the electorate is so large and diffuse that it cannot be “reached” inexpensively. If it IS that large, then a candidate needs the six Pernicious P’s: the needs the endorsement of a political Party to be credible; he needs its Propaganda to be heard; he needs its Pelf (or that of donors) to run a campaign; he usually needs the endorsement and volunteers of Pressure groups; and he usually needs to have either wealth or the sort of Profession (like politics, law, journalism, or consulting) that would allow him to interrupt his career for a term in office. If he lacks the elements above, the Press won’t deem him credible and give him the coverage he needs to make an impression.

So, the “Pernicious P’s” are needed if a candidate hopes to win IN A LARGE ELECTORATE. They aren’t needed to win in a “Popular Electoral College,” which would usually consist of under 100 members, assembled periodically in a dedicated Internet forum, and thereby easily reachable.

It is the large electorate that is “the issue.” It necessitates and empowers the Pernicious P’s, which constitute a hidden hand that deforms democracy—for instance by latently disempowering the common man.

You wrote,
“The root of the electoralist problem is the fact that it is inherently impossible for elections to produce a government populated by normal people.”

What is really needed to get “normal people” into power is a system in which “the office seeks the man” to a much greater extent. This is what Demiocracy does with its “bal-lottery” technique, in which neighbors nominate neighbors to serve as electors, and the winners are drawn at random from the bal-lot box. Normal people will be swept up by the dragnet! The winners will rarely be men “who have cast a longing eye on office.”

For more in this vein, see my upcoming (I hope) Parts 1b & 2.

LikeLike
Yoram Gat, on January 9, 2024 at 6:54 am said:

I agree that it is the scale that make elections inherently oligarchical. In a group where everybody knows everybody, elections can work. However, the large scale is a fact of modern life – indeed it is a fact of life in any society that is not prehistorical.

LikeLike
Roger Knights, on January 9, 2024 at 12:11 pm said:

Hi Yoram, Roger here: It is rational to use a sample when using the whole would be impossible, awkward, or undesirable. We moderns use a sample as juries for those reasons. Likewise we use samples in focus groups, in surveys of TV viewership, and in opinion polling.

It is desirable to use a sample of the electorate as electors because—for one reason among many—a large, whole electorate can be most effectively reached by candidates who favor the few and the wealthy.

There is no inherent obstacle in modernity to downsizing our electorates to make them small, equally reachable, level playing fields for all candidates, both rich and poor.

Elaborating beyond a mere response to Yoram: There is however a “political” obstacle—the populace doesn’t want to be deprived of its ability to express itself by voting.

This desire should be accommodated by allowing citizens to enter the names of their acquaintances into the box from which the sample will be drawn. This feature should make the citizenry much more willing to accept small-sample-sovereignty than it has as yet been to accept pure, but bitter-to-it, sortition.

A pill-sweetener is likely what is needed to get the public to swallow sortition. It would be ironic—but all-too-human—for sortition’s advocates to object to it for its tastiness.

LikeLike

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Anonymous, on January 8, 2024 at 9:36 am said:

Theodorestathis
You will find answers to the problems you are raising in my book A Therapy of Dying Democracies, Dorrance Publishing Co.

LikeLike

Yoram Gat, on January 8, 2024 at 8:04 pm said:

Roger,

While “the 6 pernicious P’s” do have significant impact, it is a mistake that they are the root of the electoralist problem. The root of the electoralist problem is the fact that it is inherently impossible for elections to produce a government populated by normal people.

The issue is that for a candidate to have a chance to be elected, they must be known (if only by name, or some other designation) to a significant proportion of the population. Such a qualification by itself makes that person a member of a very privileged elite.

An electoralist government is thus populated by members of an elite stratum in society, and it is only natural that the members of that stratum would tend to have their own views about how society should be structured and managed, and that they would implement those views. Those view may very well be in conflict with the views of the majority in society. Thus the policy pursued by the elected elite may very well be seen as oppressive by the majority. This is exactly the situation in which Western societies find themselves today, and indeed in which most electoralist systems are in most of the time.

Note that the mechanism described above does not rely on the effects of “the 6 P’s” – it is completely inherent to the very core of electoralism.

Roger Knights, on January 8, 2024 at 10:41 pm said:

Hi Yoram, Roger here. Thanks for that “softball.” 🙂You wrote:
“The issue is that for a candidate to have a chance to be elected, they must be known (if only by name, or some other designation) to a significant proportion of the population. Such a qualification by itself makes that person a member of a very privileged elite.”

The problem is not “electoralism” as such, but only Too Big Electoralism—i.e., where the electorate is so large and diffuse that it cannot be “reached” inexpensively. If it IS that large, then a candidate needs the six Pernicious P’s: the needs the endorsement of a political Party to be credible; he needs its Propaganda to be heard; he needs its Pelf (or that of donors) to run a campaign; he usually needs the endorsement and volunteers of Pressure groups; and he usually needs to have either wealth or the sort of Profession (like politics, law, journalism, or consulting) that would allow him to interrupt his career for a term in office. If he lacks the elements above, the Press won’t deem him credible and give him the coverage he needs to make an impression.

So, the “Pernicious P’s” are needed if a candidate hopes to win IN A LARGE ELECTORATE. They aren’t needed to win in a “Popular Electoral College,” which would usually consist of under 100 members, assembled periodically in a dedicated Internet forum, and thereby easily reachable.

It is the large electorate that is “the issue.” It necessitates and empowers the Pernicious P’s, which constitute a hidden hand that deforms democracy—for instance by latently disempowering the common man.

You wrote,
“The root of the electoralist problem is the fact that it is inherently impossible for elections to produce a government populated by normal people.”

What is really needed to get “normal people” into power is a system in which “the office seeks the man” to a much greater extent. This is what Demiocracy does with its “bal-lottery” technique, in which neighbors nominate neighbors to serve as electors, and the winners are drawn at random from the bal-lot box. Normal people will be swept up by the dragnet! The winners will rarely be men “who have cast a longing eye on office.”

For more in this vein, see my upcoming (I hope) Parts 1b & 2.

Yoram Gat, on January 9, 2024 at 6:54 am said:

I agree that it is the scale that make elections inherently oligarchical. In a group where everybody knows everybody, elections can work. However, the large scale is a fact of modern life – indeed it is a fact of life in any society that is not prehistorical.

Roger Knights, on January 9, 2024 at 12:11 pm said:

Hi Yoram, Roger here: It is rational to use a sample when using the whole would be impossible, awkward, or undesirable. We moderns use a sample as juries for those reasons. Likewise we use samples in focus groups, in surveys of TV viewership, and in opinion polling.

It is desirable to use a sample of the electorate as electors because—for one reason among many—a large, whole electorate can be most effectively reached by candidates who favor the few and the wealthy.

There is no inherent obstacle in modernity to downsizing our electorates to make them small, equally reachable, level playing fields for all candidates, both rich and poor.

Elaborating beyond a mere response to Yoram: There is however a “political” obstacle—the populace doesn’t want to be deprived of its ability to express itself by voting.

This desire should be accommodated by allowing citizens to enter the names of their acquaintances into the box from which the sample will be drawn. This feature should make the citizenry much more willing to accept small-sample-sovereignty than it has as yet been to accept pure, but bitter-to-it, sortition.

A pill-sweetener is likely what is needed to get the public to swallow sortition. It would be ironic—but all-too-human—for sortition’s advocates to object to it for its tastiness.