I support Lottery Selection of government representatives (s

[CCS]

I bet your current political views are not even represented by any of the members of congress, are they?
Currently powers pay to get power hungry people on the ballot, who do polls, and then lie so they are attractive to voters. They manipulate the media, and you get two viable choices on the ballot. It ends 55% to 45%, with the 45% getting sand bagged, and most of the 55% only thinking the one candidate was not as bad as the other. Then we find out the candidate lied, once they are in office. And many of them are not that intelligent either. Is this representative government?


Here is a cheaper, non-bribable method for truly representing our political spectrum. The point of representatives is so people can talk to each other in an organized way, which 300,000 people can't:

Statistically, if you pick 300+ people at random from a large group, the views of the 300+ will be about the same distribution as those of the large group, which is what representative government is all about.

It is like jury duty. People who pass a test in basic economics, government, constitution, world and us history, basic math, and law writing, and are current on their taxes, are not on public assistance, and are age 30 to 60, are entered into a pool of qualified representatives. If your profession is rare but informative (such as doctors, lawyers, engineers and small business owners), you get more than one ticket entered so we get a little of everyone.

People are randomly selected, proportionately from each state, maybe the small states getting extra tickets. One person is selected every two days, and goes to Washington for two years, and one person leaves every two days, so there are not too many green people at once or sudden changes.

We could do a big drawing with actually tickets in a spinner in front of a crowd if needed for confidence of randomness.

This eliminates campaign strategy and bribery as well, and is incredibly inexpensive and fast.

Once in office, anyone who wants to pass a law or amend a law must get 1/2 to sign a petition to put it to an anonymous vote. 2/3 is needed to pass the law. The reason for it being anonymous is so that if anyone tries to bribe anyone, they will have no way of knowing if the person actually voted yes or no. And the total vote is not reported; only whether it was more or less than 2/3.

You may only serve once in your life. And the congress would of course elect experts to run offices like secretary of defense and others who need to be able to act fast to defend the country.

There would be no president, and no ranks inside the congress.


For state governments, you get one ticket for every 3 years you have lived in a state, up to a maximum of 15 years.

For city governments, you get one ticket for every multiple of $3,000 you have paid in property taxes in that city, only counting the last 15 years.

We just need a way to keep the federal government from walking over the state governments, and state over the city. That was the point of the senate being elected by the smaller governments, but today's senate is popularly elected, which means the lottery is not any worse.

All governing bodies must have at least 100 members so that statistics will play out, but not more than 500, so it is possible for them to stay organized.

In addition to the legislatures, many experts in different fields, including construction workers and laborers, will be selected at random to be on call by email or phone for a month or so, incase a representative wants to ask them for input on something. They do not have to pass any tests to be called on for this.


Yes, these people would make mistakes. But look how bad congress is messing up all the time, and the political swings that keep happening

 

[Cassin]

Re: How to give power to the people:

I for one support the CCS overlord.


stay strong brutha!

 

[CCS]

Re: How to give power to the people:

Here is my original post, moved a few posts down:

There are many election algorithms out there, parliament, and otherwise, with different parties. I still doubt whether they really represent people proportionally though. I think mine is more simple than parliament and lets any one run for office.

Every election cycle people have to wonder if the opinion polls are accurate, and if they should vote for their first choice, or the lessor of two evils of two more likely candidates. Often 45% get a raw deal, and of the 55% that win, half were fooled or thought the guy was the lessor of two evils. And it is hard for anyone else go get elected with the two party system.

The point of representatives is so people can be organized. You need a small enough number of people that they can have a discussion. And they need time to actually read the law, which most people working 40 hours don't have time to do. And they need to be educated enough about laws and loop holes to be competent. Aside from those requirments, proportional representation is the best way to go.

So here is my solution:
Picture a political graph, where left to right is political spectrum, and the proportions of people in each camp is on the vertical axis, so you see 2 or 3 bell curves. We want our representatives to have the same proportions.
Here is how we get that:
1. Require candidates to get signatures from 1% of registered voters to get on the ballot. (that limits the number to less than 100 candidates, but is reachable for non-rich parties)
2. Tell everyone to vote for their favorite candidate, in a general election.
3. If a candidate gets at least 2% of the vote, they get a seat in a legislature.
4. The candidates voting power is proportional to percent of the vote they got: If they got 10% of the vote, they get 10 votes. If they got 2% of the vote, they get 2 votes.

How is that for a simple, proportional representation method? It would duplicate the population perfectly. Can't mess it up with voter strategy. The only way it can go bad is if someone pretends to have one agenda and goes back on their word once in office. That is what the watch dogs and debates are for.

But I have another good idea too:
A law that government spending must equal goverment tax revenue. They can only spend what they take in.
Each member of the legislature states what the tax percent rate should be, during their campain, and can't change it once in office.
The tax rates each proposes is lined up in order from biggest to smallest. If one guy votes it should be 20%, and he has 5 votes, then his is 20% 20% 20% 20% 20%.
The tax percentage that is in the middle of the list is the one that is used.
Whatever revenue that comes in from that is what they have to spend, and they can argue out how it is spent.
This only applies to domestic spending. Military spending would be changable once in office since candidates don't know what is going on until after they are in.

Now that really puts the power in the hands of the people. Each candidate running for office must publish the percent they are committed to, and state exactly how they would like the budget spent, so that the other candidates can debate it in the election debates. No more of this Obama not stating how much he plans to tax people until after elected.




Tired of the deceptive, winner takes all politics and ready for some proportional representation?
Currently:
The government is doing bailout after bailout which we will have to pay for later.
Bribes going left and right.
Power hungery senators in for life.
45% of people losing, the rest not happy either.
It takes millions of dollars for you to get into office, if you are even elected.
Are you really represented?



I just thought of a few improvements:

1. What if there are 1000 candidates and each gets less than 1% of the vote?
I say people rank as many candidates as they want, and then there is an instant runoff, which stops when the candidate with the fewest votes has 1% of the votes. I know IRV gets extremes, but that is OK since we want to have a spectrum here. They could take the IVR futher until there are only 30 candidates, and they could set the initial signature requirement just high enough that there are typically only 200 candidates to start, so people don't have to rank list so many.

2. The other change I want is for the house of representatives, the representatives from each state will have to total voting power of the federal taxes that state's residents paid plus 1/4 the national average, that way the small states have the same power they have today. A state's economic success will be measured by how much federal tax it sends to the feds compared to other states, and the state's right to change the tax rates will be determined by that same tax, with the plus 1/4 the average to give the small states a boost. However, the voting power of each representative will be the state's total voting power multiplied by the percent of the vote that representative got in his/her state.

3. And the representatives can't change the tax percentages they swore to when running for office. But they only can do this with taxes for internal projects. The number at the lowest 1/3 mark wins, so that it means 2/3 agree it should be at least that high.
Military spending would be controlled by the senators that have been in office at least 2 years, since they have been around long enough to know what is going on in the military. They'd also have the order voting, with the middle one winning instead of the bottom 1/3 since defense is important, and the senators could change their vote at any time. I say the senate should elect the secretary of defense, and the house of representatives should elect all the other cabinet members.

State governments should also have the proportionate representatives in one house, and senators that are elected by city councels. They should need 60% of both houses to pass laws, and 50% to remove them. I don't think they should have a governor.

City councels should be elected by owners of property that has property tax, and the voters should have voting power equal to the total property tax they have paid while living in that city. So the longer you are there, and more property tax you pay, the more voting power you have for electing people to city councel, again using the proportionate voting system I suggested. They should not have a mayor. It's all about not concentrating power to one person.

 

[CCS]

Re: How to give power to the people:

Wow. I just cracked the voter representation puzzle, and no one on here even cares.

Even if I convince the public that this system represents people best, I suspect many will not go for it just because they love the winner takes all, best deception wins political system we have now, since people don't want their oponents to have any power. They all just want a total win for themselves.

Usually someone can't rip you off unless you want to rip them off too. But it is the political leaders who are ripping us all off.

 

[The Gardener]

Re: How to give power to the people:

The problem is that no matter what kind of a system you devise, it will inevitably be corrupted. I think your constant reference to politics being a partisan "republican versus democrat" thing is misguided. Its a sham, a kabuki theater.

Money talks. Feudalism never ended. The feudal "lords" of our time will never give up power... and if someone threatens them, then they will outspend you in order to mock you, "Spitzer-ize" you, make you look like a looney case (like they do with Ron Paul), and in general use the media (which they OWN) to discredit you.

Accept your role as a pawn and just be happy that you have as much, quote-unquote, "input" into the system that you have, and we do have quite a bit of personal freedom. It could be worse.

And, on the flip side of the coin... living in modern feudalism is not all that bad of a thing. It's GOOD to be a country that coddles the elites, because they stock our banks full of capital which we can use to start small businesses and buy stuff. Of course, this all comes at a price!.... debt slavery.

Our founding fathers got it right. Revolution every once in a while is a healthy thing, a sign of an engaged populace. Not that I'm in favor of such a draconian thing, but I think the philosophical point is valid. This country needs to fundamentally change its business model. It's broken.

I hear people say "free markets are better", and others say "socialism is better", and they blame each other for the current failings. Frankly, there are no socialists nor capitalists in government in the US. Socialism implies that government controls the means of production, and redistributes wealth on the basis of need. What's going on in the US is an absolute vaporization of money, with NO redistribution. Capitalism implies free markets.... and ironically the GOP, who are supposed to be the real capitalists in our society, have been rigging markets and corrupting regulatory authorities so that wealth can be redistributed to the oligarchical elites. Of course, they say this is a GOOD thing, because the more capital that gets accumulated in the bank accounts of the elites, the more capital there is for US to BORROW FROM THEM, AT A PRICE.... and, oh well, unfortunately LESS capital in our OWN wallets.

Frankly, I'd LOVE a TRUE capitalist OR socialist government in the US. I know it sounds contradictory, but it makes no difference to me because EITHER would be a lot better than the oligarchy, or kleptocracy, that we've been saddled with here for decades. In true socialism the elites would all get chopped down at the knees. And in true capitalism the elites would actually have to compete with each other for a change... instead of having a poodle dog government to coddle to them and write all of the rules in their favor, to protect the "kings of the mountain" from any more ambitious and more deserving challengers stealing their perch.

Our government sucks BECAUSE we are lazy, we sit back and tell ourselves that "well, we have this 'SYSTEM', and as long as we tweak the SYSTEM, we can make it work." We need to stop relying on SYSTEMS to do the hard work that we should be doing individually to make this a better place. An elegant system is NO replacement for active management by an informed and invested populace.

 

[casperz]

Re: How to give power to the people:

I know it's been debated to death but I think term limits
would go a long way toward fixing what is wrong. Something
like 8 years total in any position: house, senate or executive.

Take away re-election a lot of the reasons to spend to excess
goes away.

 

[Petchsky]

Re: How to give power to the people:

Good post Gard.

To give power to the people we would have to abolish the current monetary system, which gives private bankers the control of the money supply. This is something I feel should be controlled by the government, not the private central banks, or the Federal Reserve in America, who levy interest on all money lent to the government. The interest on any money borrowed is then passed on to, yep you guessed it, YOU!

Pretty much all Western countries have this system. Our economies are all based on DEBT! I was literally astonished to learn this. No debt, no economy. f*****g ridiculous system if you ask me, unless you're a financial oligarch.

Society is rigged, always has been.

You won't learn any of that in school either.

 

[CCS]

Or maybe the lottery could just be a third house of congress or replace the house of representatives. You know, just so the people could have a voice and not be bullied so easily.