Equality by lot

Chapter 9: IVE-Proxies should be Overseers of nongovernmental elected bodies too: e.g., of Student Councils

IVEs might also be employed by social groups that (unlike the ones under Chapters 7 and 8) do elect representatives. They would be supplementary overseers of the electees—guardians of the guardians, in other words.

Let’s start with student councils. In most high schools and colleges the student body is so large that few students know any candidate personally. All they know is how the candidates present themselves in their speeches, campaign posters, and position papers—if they even pay attention to those. (“Student apathy” is common: in one student council election at the U. of Washington only 15% participated.)

There is thus no way to vote for someone on the solid basis of personally trusting him/her. On top of which, to some voters, all student-council office-seekers are somewhat untrustworthy because of their power-seeking, and/or because of their over-earnestness about mostly Mickey-Mouse intramural trivialities. (The film “Election” humorously documented some of this.)

Voters in these large electorates have less “agency” than members of the bal-lotteried institutions described above would have, because the latter could freely cast ballots for anyone they like. Students, on the other hand, can’t spontaneously vote for a classmate or roommate. They can’t, in other words, select their choice, but must settle for a name that’s on the menu—who’s probably some sort of phony.

If they could select their choice, then “the office would (tend to) seek the man”—and a better, less presuming type of (hu)man would win (via the bal-lottery). It would be a person who is more representative of the whole, and more respected by the whole (on the whole), which is a worthy consideration in judging between the democratic “cred” (legitimacy) of different voting systems.

I’m thinking of the common-sensical, outsider, non- “political” hero of The Ugly American, Homer Atkins, as the sort of “best man” an electoral system should encourage to rise. I.e., one of nature’s noblemen—and not his theory-mad, professional-insider antagonists in the capital. Those are part of DeMockery’s upside-down “elite,” not Nature’s.

Studies have found that persons who seek a political career have undesirable psychological traits:

The sex drive and the ego are separate in most persons. When the two come together, a love of self results. This unification has taken place in most politicians. —Walter Reum, Politics from the Inside Up, 1968, p. 104.

… he [the politician] is concerned only with the deference-meaning of objects for his ego. … he seeks reassurance for his inflated or wounded ego by gaining power … It is not too farfetched to say that everyone is born a politician, and most of us outgrow it. —Harold Lasswell, quoted in John Bunzel, Anti-Politics in America, 1970, p. 190 & 200.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure. —Oscar Wilde

We want persons who shrink from self-promotion. Not the facile and specious partisans who beset us now.

Students in some cases wouldn’t know the full names of the persons they would like to nominate. So they should be allowed to identify each informally, such as by a description of the class(es) they’re in, where they usually sit, what they look like (perhaps with the aid of a photo), etc. It would not be hard for the vote-counters to work out who is meant, especially with the assistance of the the class’s instructor, the nominator, or even the student body—after an appeal through the school newspaper and/or intranet. There would be only ten to twenty names drawn, making this a manageable matter for the election supervisors.

[A]ll real democracy is an attempt […] to bring the shy people out. —G.K. Chesterton, “The Travellers in State”, Tremendous Trifles, 1909.

The constituency determines the vote of the representative…. The reason why he knows about them is that he is of them. —Emerson, Representative Men, ch. 1.

But there is no need to make a choice between systems, because the two can operate concurrently. The Proxies selected by a bal-lottery could function merely as a supplement—as a check on and/or spur to electees on the student council.

Specifically, Proxies could observe student council meetings (live or recorded) over the internet, by Zoom or some similar app. They could then comment, and even vote, on whether they agreed with the actions of the council. Cases of sharp disagreement might require the council to reconsider and take another vote. A second vote of no confidence by the Proxies might amount to a veto, or serve as grounds for a new election of the councilors who were out of step.

In effect the Proxies’ IVE would function like a House of Commoners (mere citizens) checking and/or spurring-on a House of Commons (politicians).

Chapter 10: IVE-Proxies as partial electors of Student Councils

Proxies could also, or instead, elect some portion of student-council officeholders—say half. (There’d need to be IVEs for each grade-level, to elect that level’s representatives.)

Rationale:

• A small electorate would be able and willing to question and examine candidates in more detail than a large electorate. A Proxy Electorate (PE), aka a “Demi-electorate,” such as this would function like an executive search committee. It would have more agency than present-day passive mass-electorates. There would be more candidates from whom to pick and choose. Its range of choice would be less constrained. It might even select a non-candidate.
• The type of candidate who would come forward before such small electorates might well be less brash and more thoughtful.
• In general, a 1% (say) portion-of-the-whole Proxy Electorate would feel more responsibility to be attentive and thoughtful in its voting behavior, because each member’s vote would be 100 times weightier.

I hope that a professor of political science will push for his/her college to experiment with such a “Demiocratic” student council. Regardless of the outcome, it would be interesting enough to justify a publishable paper. However:

In such matters the academic mind, being chiefly animated by a fear of sneers, works very slowly. —H.L. Mencken.

So more likely it’ll be a fed-up student or student-group that is the first to shake things up. C’mon!

Filed under: Academia, education, Elections, schools |