My prescription is to “de-mass-ify” democracy by downsizing and dividing the electorate into multiple, issue-specific “Demi” (small) electorates, each responsible for a single electee. At a stroke the power of the Pernicious P’s would be cut by some 80%.
The representatives must be raised to a certain number in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and … must be limited to a certain number in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. —The Federalist #10.
Such Demi-electorates would continuously oversee and supervise their single officeholder throughout his/her term, not just during an election campaign.
These Proxy Electorates (PEs) would meet for hours every few months, primarily over a private intranet. Each PE would hear a report from its officeholder (who would have a correspondingly limited, issue-specific scope), pose questions, hear criticisms, discuss matters among themselves, and optionally make recommendations, authorize research, and launch investigations. During intervals individual electors could add comments, do research, chat, message, query the webmaster, etc.
In other words, these PEs would not be solely electors—they would be, at the least, actively involved overseers, and at most semi-legislatures, with their electee being only a functionary, depending on their charter and their mood.
Proxy Electors would be chosen as follows. Each member of the “full” (or “base,” or “mass”) electorate would be given 10 (say) “ballots” with which he/she could nominate similar everyday citizens to be his/her Proxies; no more than three ballots could be cast for any one person, including for him/herself.
All nominations would go into a virtual “bal-lottery box,” along, optionally, with some percentage of randomly selected names—say from 20% to 50%. From the box the names of pending Proxy Electors would be drawn and put into a reserve pool.
This technique is a combination, respectively, of selection (by nomination) and sortition (the technical term for random selection in politics).
There would be four (say) tiers, or levels, of Proxy Electorates: Local, County, State, and National. Bal-lotteries would be used to promote Electors from one tier to the next-higher tier, while remaining as much as possible within a similar issue-specialty (or “topical domain”) —e.g., education, law enforcement, transportation, commerce, etc. These successive bal-lotteries would tend to sift out the invincibly ignorant, improving the quality of the remaining Proxy Electors, especially at the upper levels, where noxious numbskulls would be the most damaging.
A dozen or so single-topic legislators would make up a “Demi” (i.e., small), single-topic legislature. Twelve to thirty Demi legislatures would in turn make up a full, Omni-topic legislature, whose approval would be needed before bills passed by its Demi components became law. Its members would be elected by either Demi-legislators, or Proxy Electorates, or some combination of both.
Proxy Electors would in addition freely nominate their favorite fellow electors for promotion to the electorate at the next level up (town, county, state, nation), using the random selection method already described, which I’ve dubbed a “bal-lottery.”
Adam Cronkright
Ali
Ahmed R. Teleb
avanderven
avergne
Alex Kovner
azakaras
Brett Hennig
campbellwallace
Simon Threlkeld
Nick Coccoma
codyhipskind
Common Lot Sortitionist
Conall Boyle
constitutionalism
davidschecter
graytmatter
gtridimas
H.J. Hofkirchner
John Burnheim
jgarry20151
Jochen Krattenmacher
johnedwardtaylor
johnhuang865
Jonathan Crock
keithsutherland
Jacob Richter
kkoreilly
lukewhito
SimonPek
Nathan El
Nicholas Gruen
Owen Shaffer
Patrick Chalmers
Paul Gölz
peterstone
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
pronfeld
Emil
rcaze
richwbrown
Roger Knights
roslynfuller
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
shaharavin
tbouricius
Ted Wachtel
Joshua Laferriere
theodorestathis
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Wayne Liebman
Yoram Gat
Oliver Milne
Equality by lot 
The core problem with your design is that those who would ask others to nominate them, and who would tend to win the electoral (nomination) part will not tend to be the best and brightest, but rather those with an inflated over-confidence, narcissism, sociopathy and most willing to lie. Elections do the opposite of what they were hoped to do. It is true that mass scale makes it much worse, but this plays out at every level (even at your demi scale). All of us are bad at accurately judging the competence of ourselves and others. those who “come off” as competent, are often the least competent (the Dunning-Kruger Effect collectivized).
Your hope that “These successive bal-lotteries would tend to sift out the invincibly ignorant, improving the quality of the remaining Proxy Electors, especially at the upper levels, where noxious numbskulls would be the most damaging.” is the opposite of the effect this process would have.
This is one of the major themes of my book “The Trouble With Elections: Everything We Thought We Knew About Democracy is Wrong.”
That book is being released in weekly email posts (now at post #59, but the whole thing so far is posted on the archive page.) Below is a link to the archive. The last five posts of chapter 9 address the psychology of elected (nominated) representatives.
https://democracycreative.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elections?r=cvh3h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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Roger here. You (tbouricious) wrote: “The core problem with your design is that those who would ask others to nominate them, and who would tend to win the electoral (nomination) part will not tend to be the best and brightest, but rather those with an inflated over-confidence, narcissism, sociopathy and most willing to lie. Elections do the opposite of what they were hoped to do.”
But bal-lotteries are NOT elections: they are much closer to sortition. They are like a public-sifted lottery. Slick, presumptuous, cunning persons would therefore have far less chance of being drawn from a bal-lot box than they would have of winning an election.
I did not spell out all the features of the “bal-lottery” at this early stage; but I should have, to forestall an objection like the one above, which will likely have occurred to several readers. First, I’ll quote what I say in a later chapter about two checks on anti-social electoral office-seekers:
“It may be desirable to discourage excessive campaigning and ballot harvesting for a position as a Proxy. This can be accomplished as follows. After a name is drawn, but before it is added to a pool, it is set aside and some number of additional names are drawn. If any of these is a match, all the drawn names go back to the box.” So the temptation to campaign for ballots will be curtailed to a reasonable level.
“Allow blackball balloting—i.e., balloting AGAINST a potential nominee. After a name is initially drawn, if a blackball ballot against that name is drawn within a certain large number of draws, then it and all (or several) subsequent draws for him/her are returned to the box. This is to reduce the odds of a very objectionable person, especially one who is popular, being promoted or retained. The drawback is that truth-tellers and gadflies are sometimes considered objectionable.
“OTOH, casting blackballs will be the most satisfactory form of political expression for a large minority of the populace: those who see little to admire in their fellows, especially popular ones, and find many faults.
“I suspect that their negatives, however mean-spirited, and despite their exclusion of some valuable gadflies, will tend to result in a more generally acceptable set of Proxies, and hence provide more of that vital attribute, legitimacy.”
A third disincentive to heavy-duty campaigning is that each citizen must distribute his ten (say) ballots among at least four persons, because he can’t cast more than three of them for any individual, as I’ve mentioned earlier. IOW, a campaigner can’t get a fully worthwhile payoff from the persons he harangues. (Indeed, he risks provoking a counterproductive blackball ballot.)
A fourth possible disincentive to mere campaigners, which would be cumbersome but could be employed where the situation seems to call for it, is to verify that persons whose names get drawn are actually personally known by the persons who cast their winning ballots. If not, he is disqualified.
A fifth disincentive is the inclusion in the bal-lot box of a certain percentage (say 20%) of randomly chosen names (IOW lots), as I’ve mentioned as an option earlier. This would reduce the likelihood of his harvested ballots giving him a win.
A sixth disincentive would be the prohibition of public ballot-seeking by mail, email, advertising, social media, etc. After a name is drawn, and if evidence of such activity comes to light, the winner will be disqualified.
A final disincentive is that even heavy-duty campaigning will not have much impact in even a tiny constituency of, say, 1000. One’s normal expectation of being drawn is 0.1%. With moderate campaigning one could maybe get that up to 1.0%. But it’s surely likely to be in vain, so why put in any more effort?
Now to respond to your other claim: that Demi electorates will elect politicians just as bad as big electorates do now.
But electors in small electoral bodies feel more of a sense of responsibility than those in large ones, and thus are harder to enchant and deceive. This is what the four respected thinkers I quoted (Lieber, Mill, Burke, and Huxley) point out—it seems obvious to me.
It also seems obvious that an electoral entity of average citizens will be harder to mislead if their topical scope is limited to what they can easily comprehend, as my quotee Nock pointed out.
Third, it will cost little for a small electorate to supervise its officeholder continually throughout his term, as I described, thereby educating itself about his true nature and tendencies far better than a large, distant, intermittent electorate could do.
Fourth, a small electorate meeting over a private intranet would be mostly insulated from the distorting effects of the Pernicious P’s:
• Political parties,
• Professional (careerist) politicians,
• Pressure groups,
• Propaganda,
• Press power (more generally, “the media”), and
• Pelf (money) power.
Fifth, with campaigns costing nearly nothing, and with legislatures being part-time because topic-limited, a new variety of politicians will emerge: sincere, part-time, less party-affiliated amateurs. They will be very effective critics of the traditional go-along / get-along “pol” whom you rightly abhor.
Indeed, YOU could become one of these and triumph in a jury-sized arena. Why not? Consider this, from H.L. Mencken:
“The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, … then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.” — H.L. Mencken, “Bayard vs. Lionheart,” 1920
These are only five advantages; a subsequent chapter lists 17 more. But I’d rather postpone posting it.
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While vastly superior to standard elections, I think your system still suffers from a similar, though less severe self-selection bias. What sort of people will ask their family and friends to nominate them? Far more males with inflated egos that any other subgroup will be put in the pool. In the hopes of promoting what Mencken calls “a first-rate man,” you create a lottery pool completely unlike the population. The key error, I think, is the notion that we want more competent individuals in the pool. You suggest:
>”These successive bal-lotteries would tend to sift out the invincibly ignorant, improving the quality of the remaining Proxy Electors, especially at the upper levels, where noxious numbskulls would be the most damaging.”
But, in reality we should worry about the competence of the body as a whole, which is hurt by having too many similar people, but improved by the diversity that can be achieved by a population-wide lottery instead. A lot of research has shown that greater diversity improves group problem solving ability. I will use an extreme example of having a member with Down syndrome in a deliberative body (I’ll call him Dave). The mere presence of Dave can prompt the others to draft better policy simply because they are reminded that the policy needs to accommodate people like Dave, and Dave may well have unique knowledge about how a policy would impact people like him that none of the “more competent” people would have.
I am on the fence about whether stratified sampling among those who are drawn and agree to serve, or mandatory service is better (it probably depends on the specific task, such as drafting vs. simply hearing pro and con arguments and giving a yes/no vote), but trying to stack the lottery pool is counter-productive.
Also, the idea that the proxy-electors will actually monitor their representative to the next level is unrealistic. Those that DO participate in the monthly meetings will get the bulk of their information about the performance FROM the person they selected, which won’t be “balanced.”
In short, the attempt to create a superior (smaller and more competent) electorate, to elect a superior, more competent legislator is a fool’s errand. It will generate a less diverse, and less competent final body that is mostly male and over-confident with an illusion of knowledge that hampers their ability to absorb new information that contradicts their prior beliefs. Ignorance among those selected is readily fixed, as long as those legislators recognize their initial ignorance, but intellectual arrogance is essentially un-fixable.
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Roger here. You (tbouricious) wrote: “What sort of people will ask their family and friends to nominate them? Far more males with inflated egos that any other subgroup will be put in the pool. In the hopes of promoting what Mencken calls ‘a first-rate man,’ you create a lottery pool completely unlike the population.”
I concede that you’re right that more males than females will ask for nominations. Perhaps even “far more” will ask—say, twice as many. But this fact doesn’t necessarily imply “a lottery pool completely unlike the population.” That’s far too big a stretch:
First, “asking” is not equivalent to persuading. It hardly needs pointing out that women aren’t as compliant as they once were to their menfolks’ wishes. (To their MERE menfolks’ MERE wishes, perhaps I should say.)
Even if a woman were to “agree” to such a request “to keep peace in the family,” she would nevertheless be under no compulsion to ACTUALLY cast her secret ballot that way.
Ballot harvesting attempts by “males with inflated egos” will offend some targets and provoke blackball-blowback. Depending on how low the cost of blackballing (say at a cost of two ordinary ballots) is structured relative to the extent of the odds-of-a-pool-access-penalty it imposes on its nominee, it could make campaigning quite counterproductive for offensive, bloated-ego phonies whom their womenfolk have seen through.
Women’s groups—some of them—will urge women to ballot only for women—especially if too many males get selected.
And as I wrote earlier, “… each citizen must distribute his ten (say) ballots among at least four persons, because he can’t cast more than three of them for any individual …. IOW, a campaigner can’t get a fully worthwhile payoff from the [females] he harangues.” They will still have seven free ballots.
Finally and conclusively, stratification after the draw could correct any egregious male/female imbalance among prospective Electors.
I agree that women are less likely to canvass others for nominations. But they could less intrusively indicate a desire or willingness to serve as Electors by wearing one of a number of items that have been assigned as signifiers of candidacy.
If this convention is adopted, males too should be allowed similar signifiers, such as a particular button on a lapel, or a bandana of a certain color and/or pattern. Or a coonskin cap.
This means of silent signaling will level the playing field for the shy and civic-minded. I now see it as a near-essential element of Demiocracy. I’m happy I’ve been provoked into inventing it. I’m going to add it to my base document. (This is an illustration of the benefits of discussion and debate.)
Furthermore, persons who DON’T want to serve would be able to adopt certain accoutrements indicating THAT preference!
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You wrote: “we should worry about the competence of the body as a whole, which is hurt by having too many similar people, but improved by the diversity that can be achieved by a population-wide lottery instead. A lot of research has shown that greater diversity improves group problem solving ability.”
But: 1) Men won’t greatly outnumber women, or If they do, it can be corrected by 2) stratification and/or 3) the inclusion of a random component of 20% to 50% of the population in the bal-lottery box (as I mentioned in Chapter 2).
The entire population will be balloting for people whom they personally know, in their diverse social circles. Their nominees will thus be vastly more diverse than any conventionally elected assembly ever heard of.
To the degree that they diverge from a random sample, the difference will be beneficial in 80% of the cases, as balloters will tend to avoid nominating most persons who are badly mentally ill, or anti-social, or lacking in a desire to participate, as signaled by the absence of the attire signifiers I described above.
If the whole population participates in balloting—and implicitly in candidacy—that “buy-in” provides the system with a rooted legitimacy that a purely random system lacks, and that is very important.
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Regarding the representation of the disabled: there should be more of it among Demiocratic officeholders than at present. I quote an item from a future chapter:
There would be more participation by the disabled. This is another group whose talents shouldn’t go to waste. With officeholding no longer being a full-time, “meatspace” job, many of the disabled would no longer be effectively blocked from a political career.
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You wrote: “the idea that the proxy-electors will actually monitor their representative to the next level is unrealistic.”
Most of them WILL monitor their representatives if: they are well paid, if the demands on their time are not onerous, if (as is likely) they were nominated because of their perceived civic-mindedness, and if they are quizzed on the proceedings and removed if they fail to pass.
Also, their fellow Electors will judge them by the online comments they make; if they say nothing, or nothing worthwhile, they are unlikely to get promoted to the next level up, or even to the “Omni” legislative inner circle. So inattatentiveness isn’t likely to be a problem at the levels where it would be the most damaging.
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You wrote: “Those that DO participate in the monthly meetings will get the bulk of their information about the performance FROM the person they selected, which won’t be ‘balanced.’”
Not at all. Here’s what I said in Chapter 2: “These Proxy Electorates (PEs) would meet for hours every few months, primarily over a private intranet. Each PE would hear a report from its officeholder (who would have a correspondingly limited, issue-specific scope), pose questions, HEAR CRITICISMS, discuss matters among themselves, and optionally make recommendations, authorize research, and launch investigations.”
In a subsequent chapter I describe how political parties will sponsor “shadow critics” of all incumbent officeholders of opposing parties, thus making meetings interesting and keeping incumbents on their toes.
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You wrote: “It [Demiocracy] will generate a less diverse, and less competent final body that is mostly male and over-confident …”
These are 90% baseless assertions, or “illusions of knowledge,” as I’ve shown above.
You continued: “… with an illusion of knowledge that hampers their ability to absorb new information that contradicts their prior beliefs.”
How do you know? Aren’t you just assuming that persons like that must be the winners of any contest in which balloting is involved? Sure, pompous blowhards and other unsavory types of demagogues and ideologues garner a majority or plurality of votes under DeMockery.
But not under Demiocracy, where detectable campaigning to become an Elector will be (as I’ve said above) both forbidden and counteracted by 1) the checking-for-too-many-ballots drawing after a name is drawn, by 2) blackball ballots, and 3) by the forced ballot-share distribution among at least four nominees, making campaigning less rewarding.
Balloters will have AGENCY. They will have Free Votes. Their ballots will all count equally, even if they vote for an unpopular person, since the fickle finger of fate may draw him/her out. Such ballots will never be “thrown away.” Balloters will never have to vote for a “lesser evil.” Most balloters, I believe, are sick of politicians and will prefer to nominate their opposites, their personal Besties.
Nominees will thus tend not be persons who have committed themselves to positions in a political campaign and become unwilling to absorb new ideas that contradict their prior beliefs. They will be, on the contrary, what the Founders desired, comparatively UNcommited persons.
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