Citizen Politicians: Selecting Politicians Randomly

I just watched a TED video by Brett Hennig titled "What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people". It's a great idea, and one which I proposed way back when I began this blog in 2005. But having read my original post, I think it is time to update some of the changes in thinking I've had since then.

One of Hennig's great actions during this TED talk is to ask two questions to the audience. The first was "Who thinks living in a Democracy is a good thing?" Answer? Pretty much everyone in the auditorium. The second was "Who thinks our democracies are running well?". Answer? Pretty much no one.

Since my original post in 2005, I am convinced more than ever that modern democratic governments are fatally flawed, mainly because the people we elect to make decisions for us are manifestly unsuitable. And this applies across all wings of politics. We expect our politicians to work co-cooperatively in parliament or congress when making decisions, but the way we select our politicians requires competition and advertising. Moreover, we cannot expect everyone in society to have the same interest or understanding of politics, which means that people will often vote for a party based on tribalism (like a sports team you support through thick and thin) or else they will vote according to what a lot of their friends, family and/or work colleagues will say. Sometimes this is justified, especially if a political party or its representatives have made bad decisions. But sometimes it is not justified, especially if a competent political party has been misrepresented using modern advertising.

The latter situation - a political party being misrepresented by an effective advertising campaign - was something I fell for when I was younger. In 1996 I voted for John Howard and the Liberal Party, mainly based upon their message that the Australian Labor Party had led Australia into a dangerous fiscal crisis. Many years later, when crunching numbers and statistics on Australian government debt levels, I came to the inescapable conclusion that the Liberal party message back in 1996 was a falsehood.

Advertising and propaganda is increasingly sophisticated. Lies are not punished. Instead the two tribes go to war for the ear of swing voters. People get increasingly angry and eventually violent language is used by people to describe their political enemies. The words "treason" and "traitor" get used. This is what happened to President Obama, and it is increasingly happening all over the world in liberal democracies.

Adversarial politics has always existed in liberal democracies. The problem is that it has gotten worse.

Corruption is also a problem. And I'm not talking here about underhanded, secret deals. I'm talking about legal influence peddling. Big business has bought politicians by providing them with the financial means of running a successful campaign in exchange for policies that benefit them, whether it be adjusting business laws, or cutting taxes or giving preferential treatment to specific businesses when issuing government contracts.

So the modern politician - the person who ends up in parliament or congress - is nowhere near an adequate representation for the people who voted for him/her. Ambition + money + propaganda is what happens. Yes, it has always happened to some extent, but our current situation is worse than ever.

What is needed are politicians:
    * who are not backed by rich benefactors
    * who are not engaged in defaming those who they disagree with
    * who prefer co-operation instead of competition
    * who see public service as service, rather than a chance at power
    * who are rewarded for being careful, judicious and objective
    * who depend upon experts for making hard decisions

Sortition is a way of doing this. By randomly selecting people to serve in parliament / congress, rather than electing someone from an established political party, modern democracies can be changed for the better.

Consider the following.

A randomly selected person serving in politics:
    * Is not backed by rich benefactors.
    * Has no incentive to defame those they disagree with.
    * Has not gotten to their position through competition.
    * Is given a chance for public service.
    * Realises that important decisions require care, and objective thinking.
    * Needs experts to communicate to them when it comes to making hard decisions.

Will this be a perfect system? Of course not. Once a person has won the electoral lottery, they may be approached and corrupted by big money and influence. This can't be helped but it can be mitigated, especially if there are laws set up that punish this crime and rules set up to prevent it. The question is not whether this system is perfect (it won't be), the question is whether this system will be better than what we currently have.

There are obviously a number of questions that arise out of this proposal. I've tried to anticipate them and I have written them here. Note that when I use the word "legislature", I am referring to the generic term that countries name as "parliament" or "congress" or "duma" or "diet" or whatever:

Q. Won't the legislature collapse if it was suddenly filled with randomly selected people with no experience now running things?
A. It probably will, which is why it needs to be introduced gradually into the already existing political system.

Q. How would this gradual change take place?
A. People would be selected randomly to serve in the legislature on a continual basis, rather than all at once. This would mean one or more people entering at least every month or so. As each new person enters, a person already in the legislatures would be forced to retire. A "transitional legislature" would exist in which the last of the elected politicians are gradually replaced by randomly chosen people. Once the last elected politician is retired, then the legislature would only ever consist of people selected randomly.

Q. How long would a person serve in the legislature? Are there term limits?
A. This is a good question and one in which there is no definite answer. There should be a term limit, but it should not be too short, and nor should it be too long. I would suggest somewhere between 6-12 years. When their term finishes, they are forced to retire and the only way they can get back into the legislature is if they are selected randomly again.

Q. What would happen if weird/crazy people end up being selected?
A. Well there are some weird/crazy people who are currently serving as politicians so the current situation is just as bad! One of the important things to understand about a legislature being populated by randomly selected people is that its size must be big enough to prevent the weird and crazy people from having too much power. This is about risk assessment, namely that the smaller the legislature, the less chance there is of a crazy person serving, but a greater chance of problems if by chance one does end up serving. In a larger legislature, there are greater chances of selecting a weird/crazy person, but a lower chance of that person causing problems. Thus a legislature needs to be of a certain size (probably more than 50 people) in order for this to work.

Q. Are there people who would be prevented from being selected?
A. There would be people who would naturally be prevented from serving. These would include children, people with debilitating brain diseases and conditions, people in jail, people living overseas, people who are too old, and people who aren't citizens (a person would have to prove citizenship before being part of the selection process anyway). Other criteria would include people who have violent criminal histories. There could also be added criteria, such as level of educational attainment and areas of study, but these can be determined later on.

Q. What if a person doesn't want to serve?
A. No one will be forced to serve. If a person refuses an offer to serve after being randomly selected, another person will be selected randomly instead and the original person would not be punished.

Q. What if a person is selected but doesn't really know how things run? What if they're called on to make a decision about something they don't know anything about?
A. This is a very important question. The fact is that many of our current politicians make decisions about things that they are not experts about. What are needed are experts who have the ability to explain important things to politicians, to help them make the decision. Governments all over the world have an entity called "the public service" in which a multitude of experts run various government departments. Once a person is selected and enters the legislature, they will be appointed a group of experts and advisors who can not only help them make make a careful policy decision, but who can also help them through the legislative process.

Q. Wouldn't having a randomly selected president be a bad idea?

A. Yes it would, but that's not what's being proposed here. This proposal is only aimed at the legislature, the group of people who create laws for their nation or state, not the executive. The role of the executive (ie president, prime minister) might be impacted by this proposal, but the person filling that position should not be selected randomly. This is because the role of an executive (who has control over the day to day functioning of the government) needs to be given to someone who is suited to that position.

(Edit 2018-09-12: If you don't understand the constitutional difference between the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary, you probably need to read this wikipedia article on the separation of powers. For Australian and British readers, you also need to understand The Westminster System.)

Q. Could random selection have any role in appointing people as president or prime minister?
A. The only way this could occur is to randomly select a person from a pool of qualified candidates. This would prevent unqualified people from serving in an executive role while still allowing some random selection. It would work better if the executive was a group of people, which is what happens in Switzerland. Another solution could be the executive being chosen by a group of people who were randomly selected for the express purpose of choosing the executive. Otherwise, the person could be selected via popular election (with all its problems). Note that the role of the executive is a separate issue to this whole proposal, which is aimed at the legislature (the law makers).

Q. Could random selection have any role in appointing people as judges in the judiciary?
A. Yes it could. As above with the executive, the best way would probably be to randomly select people from a pool of qualified candidates, with term limits applying.

(edit 2018-11-13)
Q. What process is used to randomly select someone?
 Random selection can be achieved in different ways. The most obvious modern day process would be people's names in a computer, and then software used to select someone randomly. This is a very simple process - it can even be done on modern-day spreadsheets.

Other ways would be a "lotto ball" system in which people's names are placed in plastic balls that are then drawn from a rotating cylinder - the same way lotto winners are determined, and, if you go back in history, how some people were chosen to serve in the Vietnam War.

No matter which method of random selection is used, the process itself needs to be fair and free from influence or corruption. The current process for modern elections - to preserve fairness, to count votes accurately and stop voter fraud - is a much more complex and corruptible system than random selection. The point here being that if we alread accept the risks associated with fraudulent elections by having a system that polices it, then there really is no problem in accepting the theoretical risk of someone fixing or manipulating a system of random selection.

Advantage Australia

Byron Smith explains three advantages that Australia has over the US when it comes to elections:

1. An independent Electoral System
2. Compulsory Voting
3. Preferential Voting
   

I agree with them all. Here's why:

An Independent Electoral System
Electoral boundaries are determined not be political parties but by bureaucrats. There's no perfect way of doing this sort of thing but I would argue most vociferously that bureaucrats are better at doing it because they are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by any changes in boundary. Simple rules can be set up - such as keeping electoral districts populated by approximately the same amount of people and ensuring that the area is more or less a sensible "shape". By contrast, electoral boundaries in the US can be stretched out all over the place to make the seat "safer" for the incumbent or more likely to fall to the party in power.

Another good thing about the AEC is that they control all elections in Australia. This means that when Australians vote in Federal, state or local elections, the AEC, a Federal body, looks after all the details. This also means that the way people vote remains the same all over the country. When I walk into a voting booth here in Newcastle I am doing exactly the same thing as a person in North Western Australia - the names on the voting slips might be different, but the manner in which I vote is the same. This is in contrast to the US system where local governments control how people vote in all elections. This means that one county might have paper ballots while the neighbouring county has computer touch screens while the county next to that pulls levers. The "hanging chads" of the 2000 election showed up just how silly this had become.

Compulsory Voting
I find it amazing that Americans argue that it is our civic duty to vote yet are aghast at the idea that the state should compel its citizens to vote. If I'm an American who chooses not to vote, I am looked down upon and criticised yet if the law requires me to vote then somehow that is a breach of my freedom? As Byron points out, jury duty is a civic duty that is compulsory - so why isn't voting? There's no money wasted here in Australia on "get out to vote" campaigns. Compulsory voting doesn't stop people from choosing not to vote - all they do is turn up at the polling place, get their name marked off and then they can leave without voting if they want to. About 95% of people in Australia vote. The 5% who don't are either too sick (and who can get a medical waiver) or who don't care and are willing to pay the small fine for not voting.

Preferential Voting
Preferential voting is what Australia calls Instant Runoff Voting. It enables the voter to send his/her vote to another candidate if he votes for a 3rd/4th/5th/etc party candidate. This would've enabled Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential election votes to be redistributed according to the voter's second choice - in this case, Al Gore. It also would've redistributed Ross Perot's 1992 votes, which would've probably been redistributed to George HW Bush and given him the election.

The real advantage of preferential voting is that the major parties have to ensure that they modify their policies to prevent third parties from becoming too powerful. If they don't, the third party can convince voters to send preferences to the opposing party. Preferential voting allows voters to communicate their wishes more accurately to the parties in power, giving them information about what policies they should change or keep in order to remain in power. So while a two-party system is still maintained, preferential voting ensures that policies get changed if the parties wish to stay in power. The great news is that voting for a third party is NOT a waste of a vote.

The last time I voted for a major party was in 1996 when I voted for John Howard and the Liberal Party. Since then I have given my "primary vote" to either the Australian Democrats or The Greens.

BUT

Even though I like the way we do things here, I still prefer Demarchy. Imagine having a Democracy without political parties or elections, where the people in power are expected to let their reason and their conscience determine what laws to pass?

AAAAAAAAA

A blog post with every single category marked (I'm doing this for scribefire)

What to do with the Coalition?

Brendan Nelson is proposing a merger:

Federal Liberal leader Brendan Nelson says there is a strong case for the party to merge with the Nationals.

Some National Party members say their support will be dependent on the creation of an entirely new federal party rather than a takeover.

The Nationals are doing their own review of the party's future.

On Sunday Dr Nelson raised the prospect of a merger, and has today told AM the parties have similar aspirations, but he is not rushing into anything.

"I am waiting, as is [Nationals leader] Warren Truss, for John Anderson's review to come forward," he said.

"We also know that there is a push in Queensland and at a state-based level for a merger between the National and the Liberal parties.

"My view is it needs to be federally or nationally led.

"It needs to one that's led by the organisational leadership and executive of our two parties."

One natural result of the 2007 election loss is that the coalition will, hopefully, never be the same again. Both parties suffered not only electoral defeats, but continued an unsustainable decline in support.

Of the two parties, it is the Nationals who are in serious trouble. As I pointed out in April 2007, the National Party is not national, which means that it is only getting votes from 3 of 6 Australian states. Moreover, the National Party managed to procure only 5.5% of the primary vote in the 2007 election, and has been suffering from a declining voter base ever since Pauline Hanson came along and permanently turned 3 out of every 8 National party voters against the party in 1998 (which I examine here).

The Liberals aren't doing well either. The last election saw 36.7% of the primary vote going to the Liberal Party. It's increasingly hard to argue that the Libs are an important political party when voters represent only a little more than one-third of the voting public.

Nelson's solution is to merge the two parties. I don't think that would work.

For starters, the two parties are very different. In essence, the two parties together as a coalition are similar to the US Republican Party, in that there are a mixture of libertarians, free-market lovers, (some) protectionists and (many) social conservatives.

The National Party, though, is the more socially conservative party. Drawing upon its traditional base of rural farmers, there is a natural moral conservatism within them. Moreover, I would also hazard a guess that the Nationals are very firmly planted in the Monarchist camp and wish to keep Queen Liz as our head of state.

The Liberal party is quite different, drawing upon the support of businesses and those from the higher socio-economic end of the spectrum. These supporters are urban and are more likely to support the idea of a Republic (which is obvious considering Malcolm Turnbull's prominence in the party). Moreover, while the party does have a number of social conservatives within it, they are not ascendant... yet.

Having said that, both parties are happy to espouse and practice conservative economic policies, which gives them their link.

I don't think the two parties should merge - the differences will be too great. There needs to be a better way, and that is for a "loosening" of the strings that bind the two together.

The most important step is for the National Party to truly become a national party and place candidates up for election in every seat in Australia. They should do this, even competing with the Liberal Party candidates that are there. Moreover, they can do this by promoting the dual message of economic and social conservatism. The Liberal party, on the other hand, can promoted themselves by being economically conservative and more socially liberal - after all, they are called the "Liberal" party for a reason. Because of their ties, each party would place the other second on the ballot paper, to ensure that one or the other party ends up being supported through the whole preferential process.

Having said all this, I would much rather Australia embrace Demarchy and the benefits that it offers. In the meantime, however, I would suggest that this would be a good way forward for both parties.

Minimalist Demarchy

This would be my proposed model for a minimalist Australian Demarchy.

The House of Representatives

• All elections for the House of Representatives are suspended indefinitely
• Each elected member in the house is given a term of office lasting from between 1 to 6 years. This number is determined randomly.
• Once the elected member's term has expired, the sitting member is replaced by an Australian citizen chosen randomly from the population.
• This randomly selected member's term in the House lasts 8 years.
• After this member's 8 years is up, they are replaced by another randomly selected Australian citizen.
• If the member's time in office ends prematurely (death, resignation, removed from office) then they will be replaced by another randomly selected Australian citizen whose term in office will be 8 years.
• The selection of a Prime Minister will be handled normally.
• No Australian citizen with a criminal record will be eligible to be selected as a member of the House of Representatives.
• The number of members of the House of Representatives will be 150.

The Senate

• All elections for the Senate are suspended indefinitely.
• Each elected Senator is given a term of office lasting from between 1 to 6 years. This number is determined randomly.
• Once the elected Senator's term has expired, the Senator is replaced by an Australian citizen chosen randomly from the population.
• The randomly selected senator must be chosen from the State of Australia that has been allocated to that seat. Eg: If the Senate seat is from NSW, then a person randomly selected from NSW will be invited to fill it. If the Senate seat is from Tasmania, then a person randomly selected from Tasmania will be invited to fill it.
• This randomly selected Senator's term in the Senate lasts 8 years.
• After this Senator's 8 years is up, they are replaced by another randomly selected Australian citizen.
• If the Senator's time in office ends prematurely (death, resignation, removed from office) then they will be replaced by another randomly selected Australian citizen whose term in office will be 8 years.
• No Australian citizen with a criminal record will be eligible to be selected as a member of the Senate.
• The number of Senators is 12 from each state in Australia, with 2 each from the ACT and the Northern Territory (total number 76).

The Governor-General

• The selection of Governor General will be handled normally.

More evidence of a slowdown

Producer prices in the US have increased by only 0.1% in the last month. These numbers would not have taken into account the drop in oil price we have been seeing in the last 2 weeks. Given the inflationary effects of the oil price, either a) We have entered a miracle-stage of economic performance which has gotten rid of inflation altogether, or b) Prices are dropping because there is a drop in demand, because there is an economic slowdown. Obviously I am sticking with b).

Ross Gittins eviscerates the Liberal party's reliance upon the housing bubble in today's SMH. Just as persistent unemployment and fiscal looseness undid the Labor party back in 1996, the doom spreading in the property market at the moment will probably undo the Libs at some point and hopefully give a more realistic picture of their fiscal competence. The current situation is a result of a popped asset-price bubble that has been exacerbated by two federal government policies - the first homeowner's grant and negative gearing. These two policies essentially stimulated the housing market beyond what was acceptable.

The whole idea of being fiscally responsible and being concerned with economic neoliberalism means that the government should really butt out of certain industries. The coalition have not done this with the housing market - they interfered with it by throwing money in its direction and caused a bubble to form. While the bubble expanded, the beneficiaries voted for the coalition. Now that it has popped, the reputation of the coalition as good economic managers will be severely questioned.

In the bad old days, the ALP used to gain votes by throwing money at certain industries so that blue collar people think their elected officials actually cared (which of course they didn't). The same can be said about the Howard government's policy of boosting the housing market.

My solution? Demarchy.

Democracy without Elections

This essay was written before I discovered that this system had already been proposed years before by someone else. They named the system Demarchy. My system is slightly different because it is designed to replace elections in a large democracy, while the original proponents of Demarchy envisaged it almost exclusively for small communities and implied a move away from centralised government. I call my system Demarchy too, but it is more accurate to call it Klerostocracy (kleros = Ancient Greek for throwing lots... ie random selection).

Random Representation - an alternative democratic system

In our modern democracy today, we rely heavily upon a system that requires people to vote for which person or party they think will do the best job. This democratic system has been in place for centuries and there is no doubt that it is a superior governing model to the various monarchies, dictatorships and feudal systems of years past. Giving people the right to vote is seen as a civil rights issue, and much sweat and blood has been spilled over giving women the vote, as well as racial minorities like African Americans in the USA.

Despite all this, I believe that our political system is fatally flawed, and this flaw is based upon the very thing that gives us the impression of democracy - the individual's choice of who to vote for, or which political party to vote for. In this paper, I will not only argue that the modern democratic system is flawed and ultimately destructive, but that a better model be adopted by democratic nations the world over - the Random Representation model.

So firstly, what is wrong with our current model? We need to remember that those who fought for democracy and freedom in its early days honestly believed that it was the best and only viable model at the time. In this belief they were correct. The problem is that because democratic government relies upon elections, voters are more likely to vote for whichever person or party appeals to them the most. This may not seem problematic, but it is. It means that politicans and political parties are more likely to lie and decieve the voting population in order to gain votes. And when these lies are exposed after the election, it does not do the damage it should for that particular party because, by the time of the next election, people have forgotten or no longer care. In this sense, political parties are the same as rival companies who advertise their particular product. Advertising is not about truth or objectivity, it is about feelings, it is about impressions, it is about image. The fact that we have people who rely upon impressions and misleading information who make important decisions about our nation is a huge problem.

The second thing wrong with our current model is that those in political power are easily corrupted by those who wield other power in our society. It is no secret to say that, in Australia, the Liberal party is funded and controlled by big business, while the Labor party is funded and controlled by trade unions. the same can be said for the Republican and Democratic parties in the USA, and the Conservatives and Labor party in the UK. The fact is that money talks in our society, and big business wants to have sympathetic politicians in their pocket. They do this by granting huge donations to the political party to enable them to have the resources to advertise to the people and make them vote for them. Big business have also managed to keep the left-wing parties under their control through their checkbooks - by appearing to be non-partisan, big business funds both sides of politics, but what you have is two sides of the same coin. The same can be said for unions and the left wing parties, although they have far less monetary power than big business. The result of this situation is that politicans are controlled by minority groups in our country that have enormous monetary or social power. Our politicans today would not be influenced by these groups if they didn't rely upon a voting system.

The third thing wrong with our current model is that, because politicans worry about feelings and impressions and are funded by minority groups, they do not make intelligent long-term decisions. Instead, they will make decisions that are politically expedient at the time, and ensure that they remain electable next time an election occurs. An example of this might be a huge tax cut announced before an election, which rests upon that party's remaining in office. People think that would be a great idea, vote for them, and for the next decade have to deal with a rising and debilitating fiscal situation that requires drastic cuts to government services to control. What we have are short-term gains that are more than offset by long term pain. Many European governments, I believe, are suffering fiscally and with high levels of unemployment that can be traced back to unintelligent fiscal policy based upon political expediency.

The fourth thing wrong with our system is that it promotes the politics of aggression and hatred. All Australians are sick of question time, where politicans get up and deride the other party publically. The fact is that the people who run our nation are not rewarded for working together, they are not rewarded for praising the other side of politics, they are not rewarded for being kind and gentle to one another. If we wish to have a society based on trust and friendship, why are our elected representatives so aggressive? So long as our political system remains adversarial, so will our society.

The fifth and last thing wrong with our system is that, when you draw all these points together, is a system that does not reward the honest, hard-working. courageous and intelligent person who wishes to enter politics, but rewards the most selfish, conniving, self-seeking person. Altrusim has no place in politics, yet we as voters want our politicians to make the best decisions for our nation, rather than the best decisions for themselves and their political party. One of the great ironies of our system is that despite all these rewards for bad behaviour, there are politicians who genuinely do want to make a difference, who are courageous and honest. But these are in the minority, and they may have to sacrifice their political position in order to remain true to their beliefs - a situation that may force them out of politics, or to renege on their beliefs.

There is no doubt that our current system is flawed, but it is so much better than having a dictatorship or a feudal system. But we need to remember that our current system is not actually democratic, because corporations and powerful interest groups keep our elected officials on their payroll. In many ways, we live in a corporate state. We do not live in a democracy, we live in a monetocracy posing as a democracy.

So what is the solution? Hopefully what I've outlined to you is nothing you haven't heard before. You all may have known of these problems for many years but what solution can there be? Proportional democracy maybe? It could work, but remember that whenever people become career politicians they have to be dependent upon donations, which come from minority groups in society. The problem is still there.

My solution is radical, and I'm sure someone has thought of this idea before - if they have I haven't read about it or studied it. So what I'm proposing to you today is my own idea, even if it may not be totally original.

The democratic system I propose is called "Random Representation". It does away with the electoral process of voting but does not do away with democracy. It will do away with the career politician and, I'm afraid, will do away with virtually all political parties. This is not really as big a problem as you might think, since special interest groups and lobby groups will have some influence over government policy. The good thing is that these interest groups will have to work on intellectual persuasion rather than monetary influence - although one can never rule out bribery.

The proposal is this. Rather than electing our politicians via the ballot box, we determine how many politicans we need and select them randomly from society. How? We can do it via a random number generator from a computer or we can draw ballots from a ballot box. Either way, our politicians will be randomly selected. When these people become our politicians, they then have a four year term of office, and are then obliged to stand down as a new random selection occurs. If any of them are lucky enough to be selected again (akin to winning the lottery twice) then they can serve again - however the chances of this are remote.

The randomly selected politician has an advantage over the current system firstly because they are less likely to be corrupted by special interest groups. In order to rise to the top of politics, career politicians have to be in bed with these special interest groups over a long period of time. A randomly selected politician is much less likely to have these relationships. When they make their political decisions, they do so with less personal interests at stake.

The second advantage of the random politician is that only having four years in the job, they will not be making short-term politically motivated decisions. They will know that their time in politics is short and they should do the best they can while they are there, which will involve a more balanced and objective analysis of important issues, as well as a desire to learn issues while they serve. This means that any decision they make is likely to be made from honest convictions - they might still be wrong, but at least they had no hidden agendas.

The third advantage of the random politician is that the desire for aggression and disagreement with other politicians is lessened. I'm not suggesting that this new breed of politician will always be nice to each other, but we need to realise that the structures that cause division and aggression in our current political system will no longer be around. This means that the politicians will disagree with each other more politely, or at least with less of their personal interests at stake. After all, their performance in parliament is not going to keep them elected is it? This system will reward consensus and objectivity rather than back-room deals and political conniving.

The fourth advantage is that the entire system rewards the politician who is open, honest, objective and altruistic - simply because it is does not reward the politician who lies and who makes decisions based upon personal gain or toeing the party line.

Now what I've given you is a bare bones explanation. What I'm going to do now is answer some of the questions you have before you even ask them. Namely, how will the random selection process work when you want the best type of person for the job? and how will this system fit in with our current parliamentary system?

First question. Although I have stated that the selection will be random, I am not suggesting that just anyone can enter politics as though they have won lotto. I believe that those who are randomly selected should meet a certain criteria. In other words, we only select from the pool of the best people in Australia. Now this in itself is controversial. What is this criteria? If the criteria is too broad, then we can get all sorts of weirdos and half-wits to run our country. If the criteria is too narrow, then we lose the ability of the random system to represent Australians. So what is the solution to this?

I believe that we should start with a relatively narrow criteria, but then ensure that future generations are more likely to meet that criteria in order to broaden its base. What should the criteria be? These are my suggestions:

The first thing they should have is a university degree awarded by a recognised tertiary institution. This does not have to be an Australian University, but it does have to be a degree. Why should this be compulsary, after all it is surely elitist and too narrow a criteria? I believe that those who run the country should have had the opportunity to develop their intellect at university, and have passed all the requirements of a degree. We need intelligent people running our country. This is not to suggest tha non graduates are stupid, but it does recognise that the position of politician is a professional position, and requires a level of intellectual competence. The only way to broaden this criteria is to increase the amount of university graduates - which means we should have a better education system as a result. I am certainly in favour if this.

The second thing they should have is some recognised study into many facets of learning that will enable them to at least understand the different issues facing political decision makers. So while I'm saying they should have a degree, I'm also saying that at least part of their education should be well-rounded to incorporate all sorts of different areas. I've thought of around ten areas that these people should be competent in. They should have an understanding of Economics and Accounting (to fit into the right hand side of politics), they should have an understanding of Aboriginality and Socialism (to fit into the left side of politics), and they should have an understanding of Mathematics, History, some form of Religious studies, English literature, Environmental Science and Legal studies (that all fit into a more neutral part of politics). Ideally I would like all of these areas to be studied at the level of a university subject, but, if not, then they should be of a greater standard than you find in the final year of high school. There are probably more subjects that can be studied, but these are the ones I think are pretty important at the moment.

The third thing they should have is that they be fluent in a language other than English. Many politicians in non-English speaking countries have made the effort to learn English, so why shouldn't we learn one of their languages? Why should this be a criteria? Our politicians will have to make decisions about other nations, and the ability to speak a foreign language will obviously enable some to relate more directly and personally to representatives of other nations. But it will also enable our politicians to have some level of knowledge about another nation, thus giving them a different perspective to our own limited one.

The fourth thing they should have is Australian Citizenship and, if they have become Australian citizens after migrating to Australia, have been naturalised for a decent period of time - say 15 or even 20 years. This criteria will ensure that Australians or long-term migrants will be our politicians.

It also goes without saying that anyone convicted of a serious indictable offense cannot be considered as a politician, even if they meet the other criteria.

The most obvious problem with this is, who meets the criteria? Not many people at the moment. That is why it is important to promote it. University courses should include the study of some or all of the broad areas I mentioned above - Mathematics, English, Aboriginality and so on - as part of the award for their degree. Professional bodies such as the Institute of Engineers, Chartered Accountants, Medical Fellowships and others should also include the meeting of the criteria as essential to membership. All nurses and teachers should fit the criteria as well.

I suppose my argument is that if more and more people fit into this criteria, then we will actually have a better and more informed society, not to mention a greater pool of people to randomly select politicians from. For this to work there needs to be a generous influx of economic resources in important areas, namely basic education at primary and secondary level. In the meantime what can work is that the selection criteria be broader at the beginning (taking away the need for a second language and the broad knowledge base, but still requiring a university degree) and then made narrower as more people begin to fit the criteria.

In terms of gender balance, the random selection should ensure more female representation in parliament, though this will obviously be determined by whether there is a gender imbalance in those who fit the criteria. People from a non-English speaking background will also be adequately represented since they already fit one part of the criteria. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation will not reflect their position in society because their low socioeconomic status will ensure that they find it more difficult to meet the criteria. I do not believe we should have special requirements that let people in on the basis of their race or their skin colour, mainly because it doesn't address the problem of why they can't meet the criteria in the first place - namely, that more educational and health resources need to be spent to ensure that they are able to make it on merit.

One more thing before I move on. People who fit the criteria should probably be rewarded with some form of public recognition and even having letters after your name, Member of the Australian Representative Body, M.A.R.B. or something like that. It would look good on resumes and confer some amount of respectability upon such people.

Alright, how can Random Representation fit into the current Australian Parliamentary system? How about listening to my fastasy first. My own preference is for a unicameral system based on a proportional random representation alongside a president as head of state. This would mean the merging of both Senate and House of Representatives into one representative body. I'd like a relatively small amount of representatives, say 101 people to make all the decisions and create all the bills. The President will not be elected by the people of Australia, but by the Representative Council, who, after their four years in office, elect one of their own members to serve as President for four years after that. In other words, the president will be a former member of the Representative council, who will be signing the bills presented to him by the council that replaced the one he was a part of. We get rid of state governments, and merge a few local government areas, who use exactly the same random representation model except that people who are residents of the local area will form the pool of representatives that can be randomly drawn from.

So that's my model. I like it. It seems simple, but obviously needs a lot more work. What about our system now?

We must remember that the House of Representatives currently offers the clearest representation of the nation, while the Senate confers equal power to the States, regardless of how many people there are in them. Many people have bemoaned the fact that NSW and Tasmania have exactly the same power in the Senate, despite the fact that Tasmania has a much smaller population base. As far as my memory of Australian history informs me, the reason why the Senate is what it is is because each state was given some form of individual right to ensure that they are not swamped by the numerical power of other states. It has something to do with the rights of individual states as part of the constitution.

The system can work as follows. Both House of Reps and Senate appoint their members as per the random representation model. There are no more geographically based "seats" in Parliment, instead the lower house draws its members randomly from the entire Australian Population. The Senate is similar, except that it draws its members equally from each state. Say, ten people from NSW, ten people from Tasmania, and so on. The governor-general is appointed at the end of their four-year term from one of the members of the Senate or House of Reps, and is elected jointly by both houses as their final decision before they are all replaced by new representatives.

State governments can work exactly the same, as can local governments. Rather than people voting for people, people who meet the basic criteria are randomly selected to serve a four year term.

One variation I can live with is that representatives are appointed every year to serve a four year term. This means that at the end of each year, one quarter of the representatives retire and are replaced by new people. In the election of the governor-general, his or her selection will only be determined by a successful completion of four years as a representative, no matter how many years difference there has been between their completion of parliamentary service and their appointment to the office. For example, a man has finished his four year term of office and was generally liked and admired by all he served with. Unfortunately, the office of Goveror-General has another 2 years to run. He spends two years out of parliament, but is then elected by Parliament as the new Governor-General when the other one steps down.

So, what place is there for influence in the system? Apart from the death of political parties, it will ensure that single-issue entities form lobby groups to try to influence representatives. You can be assured that the Housing Industry Association, people representing the Australian Stock Exchange, people representing big businesses like Microsoft, will all have their people in Canberra ready to influence these random selected politicians. But groups like Greenpeace, Amnesty International and others will as well. And because these politicians have not been directly influenced by these entities (although they may be indirectly influenced by propaganda and advertising) they are more likely to make objective and selfless decisions than our current politicians.

I well realise that this system is not perfect either. One skill that politicians have is the art of compromise, and there may be some randomly selected representatives who do not have that skill. I am also sure that a lack of experience in government will also affect decisions. However I do believe that the system of Random Representation is a far more democratic and workable governmental system than the system we have been running now for years. It will be revolutionary, and I believe that it will change the way individuals in our country perceive politics and government. For once we will have relatively honest and intelligent politicians.


From the One Salient Overlord Department



© 2005 Neil McKenzie Cameron, http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License.
To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
You are free:
* To copy, distribute, display and perform this work.
* To make commercial use of this work.
Under the following conditions:
* By attribution. You must give the original author credit.
* No derivative works. You may not alter, transform or build upon the work.
* For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the author.
Additional copyright information from the author:
* You may remove the "Department name" from the text when copying.
* You may Americanise any minor spelling (eg Humour, Humor).