Richard Dawkins writes in The Spectator:
The Electoral College is nonsense
In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have chosen an election year for my American book tour. It’s not that I dislike elections generally. And — praise be — a population of 300 million Americans has managed to raise one presidential candidate who is not a convicted felon awaiting sentence.
No, my problem with American elections — and it viscerally distresses me every four years — is the affront to democracy called the Electoral College. I’ve done the math. The Electoral College can hand you the presidency even if your opponent receives three-quarters of the popular vote. Of course that’s a hypothetical extreme. The familiar reality is that campaigns ignore all but a handful of “swing” states.
A genuine electoral college, however, could work rather well. Voters in every state would elect respected citizens to meet in conclave to find a president — like a university search committee or the College of Cardinals. They’d headhunt the best in the land, interview them, study their publications and speeches, exhaustively vet them — and finally after a secret ballot announce the verdict in a puff of white smoke.
Perhaps the Founding Fathers had something like that in mind. If so, the rot set in when electoral college members became pledged to a particular candidate, and each state’s quota voted as a monolithic bloc, no matter how slender the state’s popular vote margin.Alas, my “search committee” ideal would never fly: too vulnerable to corruption. And replacing the present ludicrously undemocratic Electoral College by a sensible plebiscite needs a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress, plus approval by three-quarters of the states — a near unattainable goal because of vested interests.
The Founders’ “genuine electoral college” was a mechanism by which the office would seek the man, the way an executive search committee seeks out an executive, as described by Dawkins, or the way the Venetian Republic sought out its chief (its “doge”) for 500 years.
To prevent “the rot from settling in” — i.e., to prevent the system from becoming a tool for office-seeking men like Trump — the Venetians made use of a lottery in selecting and promoting its collegian-electors. This was intended to elevate nonpartisan, or less partisan, persons who would have a more objective view of things. David Van Reybrouck provides some more detail on their method:
[In Venice,] to prevent tensions between the ruling families, sortition was introduced as way of appointing a new doge, but in order to ensure only a competent person could become ruler, the procedure was combined with elections. The result was an unbelievably roundabout system that took place in ten phases over a period of five days….
The Venetian system seems absurdly cumbersome, but recently several computer scientists have shown that this leader election protocol is interesting in that it ensured the more popular candidates actually won, while nevertheless giving minorities a chance and neutralizing corrupt voting behavior. Furthermore, it helped to bring compromise candidates to the fore by amplifying small advantages…. In any case, historians agree, that the extraordinary, lasting stability of the Venetian republic, which endured more than five centuries, until ended by Napoleon, can be attributed in part to the ingenious selection of ballotte. Without sortition the republic would undoubtedly have fallen prey far sooner to disputes between ruling families. (You do quietly wonder whether today’s governments are not similarly falling prey to the bickering between parties.) —David van Reybrouck, Against Elections, (2018), p. 70-71.
My “take” is that what is worth copying from Venice are: a small electorate, a mix of sortition and election, and an indirect, multi-stage process of electing electors.
In modern America, the whole populace would be given the right to select its electors from out of itself by means of “approval voting.” Each citizen would be able to nominate up to five (say) persons of his acquaintance.
From the names of nominees, random selections would be made. These selections would reflect the number of nominations each had got. Each selection would be double-checked to ensure that it had not excessively been nominated. This would be done by seeing if it came up too often in a series of subsequent draws. (Alternatively, the computer could simply dispense with all the names that were over-voted.)
Those chosen would initially be assigned to oversee and elect one low-level officeholder. IOW, all officeholders would be chosen by an Electoral College. Electors would gradually rise to elect higher-level leaders depending on the rating they receive from their peers. (I.e., by an ongoing form of approval voting.)
Officeholders would regularly report, over the internet, to their electors, and respond to questions and criticisms of their reports. Their conduct would be subject to inspection by investigators employed by their electors.
Anyone could be a candidate—no political party endorsement (or private funding) would be required. Campaigning would cost virtually nothing.
Officeholders would ideally be given topically specialized jobs, dealing with matters a typical specialized congressional standing committee handles. This will open legislative membership to the mass of persons who do not have a ready answer to every political question that may be put to them, but only to topics that interest them.
Adam Cronkright
Ali
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Equality by lot 
That’s very interesting Roger — the Serene Republic certainly survived a long time (this probably sparked Dawkins’s interest). Bear in mind the electoral college was designed for a non-political role (the president and commander-in-chief). I doubt whether the process could be adopted for the legislature, where the (proportional) representation of competing discourses cannot be avoided. Once the democratic genie is out of the bag (forgive the mixed metaphor) you cannot return to a legislative system designed for a small republic. The founding fathers intended “the total exclusion of the people, in their collective capacity”, and there is the danger that your proposal would be seen in this light (if applied to the legislature).
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Roger here. Anonymous wrote: “Bear in mind the electoral college was designed for a non-political role (the president and commander-in-chief).” That was an executive position—which hardly made it non political. Even today 80% of the biils that get passed originate in the administration of the executive, and the administration’s wishes are or can be a powerful force in the legislature.
Proportional representation is preferable to the single-member districts I described. I didn’t get into PR because it would have overwhelmed the reader with complexity and disputatious points. But it could be accommodated as easily as it is currently.
im hopeful that the Democratic bona fides of Demiocracy will be established by its operations in overseeing and electing executives,and by its electing of a representative spread of members to the boards of Inner Voice Entities to represent soldiers and employees. Such IVEs could easily be established by daring leftists at white collar employers with out of touch management.
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I think you are right to focus on executive and overseeing boards. Agree the presidential role is now political, but that’s not what the founders intended. I don’t see how Demiocracy could be extended to the representation of discourses.
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Anonymous wrote: “I don’t see how Demiocracy could be extended to the representation of discourses.”
Once Demiocracy has been established for the election of mayors and governors, and for the on the job representation of soldiers and employees, it’s extension will seem doable somehow, and many experimental approaches will be tried.
Under Demiocracy, at the state and national levels, there’d be about 24 separate mini-legislatures, each devoted to a specific topic, like health, education, etc. The bounds of discourse for the overseeing Proxy Electorates would be set automatically.
The maxi legislature and maxi-legislative electorate would have to cope with the full range of issues. But they’d be somewhat pre-digested.
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>The bounds of discourse for the overseeing Proxy Electorates would be set automatically.
I wasn’t referring to the range of topics (health, education etc), it’s the different policy options. The current US election, for all its faults does provide voters with (what looks like) alternative approaches and yesterday’s UK Budget statement enacted an alternative fiscal approach to the previous regime. Any democratic (or demiocratic) system needs to offer alternative policy options that reflect the ideological diversity of the citizenry.
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As an illustration of the representation of discourses, in his work on the CCC, Alex Kovner hypothesises that, under superminority, the elected deputies in the national assembly might come up with three proposals — a business-oriented group proposing minor modifications to the status quo, an environmentalist group with a deep green proposal, and a labour group pushing for more infrastructure spending. This would approximate to the ideological diversity of the citizenry and the citizens jury would decide between them. How would that work under demiocracy?
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Anonymous writes: “Any democratic (or demiocratic) system needs to offer alternative policy options that reflect the ideological diversity of the citizenry.”
Oh yes, of course. The Proxy Electorates, having been chosen by a mix of spontaneous approval voting and a lottery (the “ballotery”), would presumably reflect the community’s political diversity and thus not be biased against any faction.
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Keith wrote: “the elected deputies in the national assembly might come up with three proposals … This would approximate to the ideological diversity of the citizenry and the citizens jury would decide between them. How would that work under demiocracy?”
The proxy electors under democracy would not cast policy-setting votes—although on hopefully rare occasions they might be asked for straw votes, indicating their preference. Their role would be in being an attentive and informed Public and electorate over each of the government!’s legislative topically specialized standing committees. Decisions would be made by those elected officials, as at present.
Hopefully, as a result of the electorate’s being better informed, and having vetted candidates, and having closely questioned officeholders and their critics about pending bills, the laws that get passed will no longer be additions to The Blunders of Our Governments; indeed they might actually be net positives.
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Rather too much “presumably” and “hopefully”. At root it is a structural problem — the ideological diversity of the citizenry is destroyed by the decision rule in the elected assembly (50+1). That would be true irrespective of the balloting method and the quality of the candidates (vetted by better informed citizens rather than the rationally ignorant).
(For some reason I (Keith) can’t seem to log in on this computer.)
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Anonymous wrote: “the ideological diversity of the citizenry is destroyed by the decision rule in the elected assembly (50+1). “
Under Demiocracy bills that pass the elected assembly would include features that reflect the diversity of the randomly chosen electorate who observed and critiqued their path to passage and the diversity of the amateur politicians who got themselves elected under Proportional Representation by such a diverse group.
In chapter 19 of Demiocracy, posted fairly recently here, I addressed the issue of variety, in Items 11 & 12:
11. A greater variety of political options would be on the electoral “menu,”—e.g., more “third parties”—as a result of easy (cheap) ballot access—and, perhaps, of proportional representation.
Nobody knows what American politics would be like if we had the institutions to facilitate the development of a wider span of political competition. —E.E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People: A realist’s view of democracy in America, 1960, 72
… we have the discriminating tolerance today already, and what I want is to redress the balance. … The chance of influencing, in any effective way, this majority is at a price, in dollars, totally out of reach of the radical opposition. —Herbert Marcuse, in Prophetic Politics, 1970, 109
At present city bosses have little trouble, for example, fending off insurgents…. Only by the dint of the most heartbreaking labors can they even make their names known to the urban mass and even then they cannot win the city dwellers trust, for they have no opportunity to do so. —Walter Karp, Indispensable Enemies: The politics of misrule in America, 1973, 308
12. As a result of the above advantage, a greater variety of policies would be pursued across the political landscape, providing more opportunities for unorthodox policies to demonstrate that they will work in practice. There would be more pioneering jurisdictions serving as “laboratories for democracy.” I’m assuming that idiosyncratic persons would have more influence under Demiocracy, hence greater variety. Under DeMockery, OTOH, “no matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.”
In addition, the variety of policies pursued will increase simply because the small size of Proxy Electorates will increase random variations in their political composition—in other words, there’ll be more outlier-electorates.
… radio and TV have helped to increase the interest of the public in news, but at the same time, they have undoubtedly strengthened the current trend toward the standardization of ideas for easy assimilation for busy people. — J.A. Corey & H.J. Abraham, Elements of Democratic Government, 1947, 1964, 386
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If we presuppose (majoritarian) democratic norms, then the diversity of proposals must represent the diversity of the citizen body. Although random selection will increase diversity, statistical representation only applies in aggregate, so the proposals generated by demiocracy might be perceived as random in the pejorative sense. The problem with current democracies is the proposal threshold in the elected assembly (50+1), and this will not be affected by changing the balloting method.
>Under Demiocracy bills that pass the elected assembly would include features that reflect the diversity of the randomly chosen electorate who observed and critiqued their path to passage and the diversity of the amateur politicians who got themselves elected under Proportional Representation by such a diverse group.
Sure, but it all comes down to the final vote. Demiocracy, as I understand it, reserves that privilege for the elected majority, who both propose and dispose.
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Anonymous wrote: “Sure, but it all comes down to the final vote. Demiocracy, as I understand it, reserves that privilege for the elected majority ….”
I personally would prefer an arrangement under which persons could “foot-vote” into a locality where their political preferences prevail. But that is too utopian to have a chance of being accepted.
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