The biggest problem in the US is the electorial system that leads to two parties with each close to 50%. Elections are so close that it is essentially meaningless. Is a party with 50.1% really more legitimized to rule than the one with 49.9%?
Step one to fix democracy would be to get rid of the winner-takes-all system. Not only would this make more than two parties viable. You would also fix that most of the country's vote doesn't contribute at all (since people live in "safe" counties where they have little influence on the outcome.)
Then, when elections are won with clear margins, yes, you could abolish elections, and replace them by representative polls! The benefit is that polls are much cheaper, you can do them much more frequently, and the people can change bad policy quicker. It might be controversial, but I like that you can also apply "reweighting" to polls to make them more representative.
The smaller parties have little to lose playing "my way or the highway" during negotiations, so end up getting at least some top items from their program pushed through. This has led to some rather poor laws and regulations in recent times.
That said, while I've thought about this vs the US two-party model a bit, I think I prefer what we got over here.
The US also has that, the different is that its less visible, and the minor factions have more power because:
(1) the minor factions are esconced within major parties, so there is no public discussions about coalitions, and
(2) because of #1, and because such arrangements are stickier, the major factions have less choice as to which minor faction to make a majority with, making them more at the mercy of the minor and extreme factions theybare bound to.
This does not mean forcing you to vote for anyone in particular, but it does mean forcing people to turn up and indicate some type of preference - even if that preference is "no one here".
Mandatory voting is common elsewhere [1], and the sell is simple: voting is compulsory for all citizens unless a valid reason is provided (which isn't a high bar for most valid reasons) or a nominal fine is imposed (in Australia - $20 [2]). This fine isn't significant in anyway, it just has to exist because it does two things: asks people how much they seriously don't want to participate in the free thing which ensures their freedom, (2) forces the AEC to look into the matter - they have to try and collect the fine, and in turn ask why someone didn't vote, which means incidents are investigated, and (3) if a lot of people are getting fined the suddenly it's going to very much become a national issue as people make a fuss about it.
It's irrelevant to talk about anything else while substantial parts of the the American voting eligible public do not vote, and no one is responsible for investigating why and ensuring that it was a personal decision and not a problem of lack of access, time or intimidation. You can't run a democracy when the one defining characteristic of a democracy is handled so flippantly.
[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joi...
I'm not saying it's right, but it is what would happen.
But is there some reason to think that it would tend to improve the decision making quality of the population? That when compulsary voters are included, there would be better choices made on laws and representatives? I can't think of one. On the contrary it would seem to compel the participation of a lot more people who don't care.
Still regret it.
All political parties are filled with petty power seekers. From the article: "Though once a member of Australia’s Green Party, inspired by its commitment to grassroots democracy, he grew disenchanted with party politics." "he made his way into the activist circles of Occupy Wall Street after college but likewise became disillusioned." One of the biggest advantages of random selection is that you select people who are not actively seeking power.
Another inherent problem with party politics is that if there are election campaigns that cost money, there's corruption built into the system.
Sure, but with more than two viable parties, you have more incentive to run on a positive message, because driving people away from one particular opponent or demobilizing their base, especially in a way that alienates your voters but to a lesser extent, is not as effective a campaign tactic when its not 1-on-1.
First, that the group represented is as small as practically possible, so small numbers of people, small cultural subgroups, and a limited social distance between the elected official and the constituents.
Second, that the rules governing a group are as local as possible, large disagreements should be unusual, and ideally lead to splits in region. Issues on a state or federal level should be limited to interactions with other states or nations; weather or not you want to live in a group with legal abortion for example should be determined at the the smallest size that can make that decision; probably city by city, what people in other cities think should have no bearing.
Unfortunately the nature of government is to centralize and accumulate powers, things that were once the sole preview of a town or county are now federal issues. It seems impossible find a "fair" voting method, to reconcile how to weight two distant strangers opinion on what should be a local matter.
This is not in any way hidden.
In fact, they were often progressive steps away from even worse systems.
you still end up with what amounts to an uninformed electorate. You've figured out how to count an uninformed opinion in a better way. And maybe eliminated number 2 and some of 1 from being a complete problem, but unpopular controversial people will still manage to drive the conversation.
Both of these are particularly incentivized in systems with FPTP and the duopoly it tends towards. So, electoral rules do matter here.
The result is that even in homogenous societies that have shared history and values have trouble reaching consensus.
Moreover even with the best intentions and actions one cannot predict unintended consequences or future events that are unaddressed by the past.
That’s true but there is also a very real constitutional problem here. My country has a system close to the US and sees the same issues.
A good constitution should foster a viable ecosystem of parties each representing the interests of a relatively homogenous group then force these parties to build coalitions through negotiations. That garanties than people feel that their opinions are represented, that there are a plurality of opinions in debates and the necessity to govern with people with different interests mean a consensus has to be reached and nothing to extreme should happen.
A system fostering two parties necessarily means the party will be caricatures. It’s obvious that both houses people with widely different opinions. It’s a travesty of democracy if you think about it.
In the State elections law I have read, this is set up to happen like this.
For example, Illinois election law specifically mentions Ds and Rs.
Election law in other States often sets major/minor party donation limits and ballot name ordering based on things like prior off-year Governor results. This uses math to keep the "minor" party allowable donations low.
What State election law are you in and does it mention major/minor party?
This election law setup to move toward two parties is obviously known to your State legislators who team together to prevent fixing it. And the people eat it up and argue about side issues!
I don't see anything that is arbitrary about the process.
You can't prevent people in the US from ganging up, but there is no reason elections should be required to promote parties or ballots print party next to candidates. Some offices (most judicial races for instance) do not use party affiliation.
George Washington was right when he warned us about political parties.
Because all this means is that minorities can not be stumbled upon.
Not creating artificially exaggerated mandates is a feature, not a bug.
Would you rather see politicians be elected with only a plurality of the votes?
Some would see this (having to build coalitions) as a feature.
(As a Canadian I can see pros and cons given our system.)
My country uses a single transferable vote system - pretty much no representatives are elected with a majority of their constituency's vote - instead each constituency elects multiple representatives (3-5), and you vote with a ranked choice of all of the people running in your constituency. No one gets a majority of first preferences because there's no concept of a "wasted" vote if you vote for someone on the fringe - your vote will eventually end up transferred to your favourite candidate that can feasibly be elected.
The result is a legislature that is extremely representative of the population at large with a wide gamut of parties. Our politics is obviously still as dysfunctional as anywhere, but I don't think any of it can be chalked up to the electoral system.
See Trump for example:
48% vote and a 1 in 2 turnout:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_president...
or Boris Johnsons landslide with 42% of a 67% turnout:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_...
1. They're too small.
2. They're not totally random. The attorneys are allowed to eliminate members of the pool.
3. The jury doesn't actually run the trial. Nor do they run the police department, for that matter. The trial is run by the judge and the attorneys. The jury is mostly passive listeners. They're spoon-fed info at the trial and not even allowed to know all the facts.
4. Jury terms are too short. Contrary to what the previous commenter suggested, it's not ideal to have short terms. Citizen legislators should probably serve 1 or 2 year times. They need time to learn how to do the job. They probably need preparation before they take the job.
This is election as per 18th century Britain elections by the propertied classes.
Furthermore, in the majority of cases, we are only allowed to elect those who are pre-approved by The Red Party or The Blue Party. Both parties have biases. Worse they, like the examples mentioned, tend to leans towards self-serving (the party) and/or serving their own mwmbers (i.e., don't offer the best possible representation). It's like cliques in high school all over again.
What I'd like to see is simple. Add "None of the above" to every race. Let The People fully express themselves. Let them give the parties direct feedback about the products they're marketing. Yes, that's kind of what not voting it. Unfortunately, the fact is, the parties don't recognize that as a possible "Crap products" votes. They can phantom that. NotA would stuff it right in their face.
A nice quote about this, from a corrupt 19th-century NY politician and businessman: "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating"
Very nice speaker about this: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE
Beyond that there's also another issue related to the above. Because of aforementioned divisive rhetoric many people are no longer even voting for people they like or even want to win, but voting against a bogeyman of an opponent. They aren't voting for "their" side, but because they fear "the other side" winning would be catastrophically worse. I suspect very few people willing to vote in the first place would intentionally and actively "waste" their vote simply to make a point. And if you get some very small chunk of NotA then suddenly the powers that be might even claim that's an endorsement of them.
Voting third party achieves the same as your ideal without the possible perverse inverse messaging of approval.
I think it's easy to preach this idea that political parties only serve itself and don't care about anything else.
In truth it's something that is more or less required to be effective since voting is only 1 part of it (someone had to write the legislation and do investigations).
Of course the party cares what their members think otherwise what would be the point of being a member of said political party.
And lastly it needs to be stressed if a political party or candidate don't listen to their voters then (if it's a fair election) they won't be re-elected.
You already have that by turning in the ballot without marking that race.
Incidentally, these color associations only became fixed in 2000, before then different media outlets used different color mappings. The fixed mapping is a creation of corporate media who wanted to simplify the presentation of American politics so even people with their brains completely turned off (e.g., sat in front of a television) could follow along.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#Con...
What do you mean by so few people? The size of the legislatures wouldn't necessarily change, so it's the same number of people at any given time, and since there's no reelection, it ends up being a larger number of people overall.
And I would say it's harder to corrupt people you don't have relationship with. Whereas long-serving politicians develop relationships with lobbyists over the years.
The biggest reduction of corruption is the elimination of campaign contributions, which is essentially legalized bribery. This leaves only illegal bribery, which can be prosecuted. You could audit randomly selected legislators for years after they leave office to make sure they're not taking bribes.
Except that the people in the legislature would have little to no knowledge about how things work, and so would heavily rely on the advice and expertise of the bureaucrats and lobbyists to know how to move on various topics.
With experienced legislatures they know the system and when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Some people bemoan "career politicians", but in what other profession does (more experience = bad)? Carpenters, pilots, developers?
Also, they don’t have as much to lose if they’re caught accepting a bribe. If a career politician is caught accepting a bribe, their career as a politician is over. But if a mechanic is caught accepting a bribe during their 2 year stint as a representative, they would suffer minimal reputational damage and could just go back to being a mechanic.
You also mentioned that you could prevent this with harsh penalties and long term audits, but I think it would be pretty easy to circumvent an audit. Like, if I wanted to bribe someone elected by sortition, I would just offer them free stuff instead of money so it’s harder to trace. Like free hotel stays or prepaid gift cards.
I could imagine apolitical people treating a sortition win like winning the lottery and expecting to get money out of it. And just auctioning their vote off to the highest bidder.
With all that said though, there would be a lot of advantages to sortition so the risk of corruption and bribery might still be worth it and would still probably be better than our current system.
I still like the idea, but something would need to be done about this. a fat pension perhaps. or anonymity. but that leads to its own issues
Sortition would remove the structural incentives towards corruption that exist today so our efforts to combat corruption should become easier.
1) make the sortition group big enough, say 1000 or 10000 people, so the required number of people bribed goes up, which increases bribery cost as well as chances of getting caught
2) make a bounty program to help put a lower bound on the cost to bribe
Each voter gets say (for example) 1,000 votes, which they allocate to whichever parties they want at election time.
The number of votes a party gets become its “currency”.
Any political party can put forward legislation to become law. They back their legislation with some number of their votes/currency.
Other parties can defeat legislation by spending a greater number of their votes to stop it.
When a party has spent all its votes/currency, it must wait till the next election to get more.
When distribution is equal or in your favor, the obvious gambit here is to propose abhorrent legislation to the opposition. They will be forced to spend more votes to stop it. Leaving you with enough votes to strong arm any legislation you want.
Any minority of power no matter the margin would be effectively silenced.
Maybe it’s different with multiple parties in play but if we could stabilize a more than two party system then that changes the calculus of the status quo too.
It’s precisely intended that if a party wants to spend all its its capital opposing, then it does that at the cost of being able to advance its own policies.
Switzerland works like this. It is a good system.
You could 2:1 amplify the power of your votes by creating a bullshit generator and the side with the most voluminous BS would end up with the only votes left.
The average citizen is more principled and less prone to corruption than the average modern politician. I don't think it would be a problem if politicians ended up more naive as a result. Just having well-meaning politicians would be a significant step up.
That said, I think we should rely less on government intervention in the economy. We need to fix the monetary system to provide a level playing field, then once that's done, we need to trim back regulations. The way to solve the corporate monopolization problem is through increased competition. The government's primary role should be to promote maximum decentralization.
The government should not concern itself with equality of outcomes; it should only concern itself with equality of opportunities. It should not think about efficiency; it should trust the free market to take care of that.
This claim needs some back up. I don't think there's an innate difference between an "average citizen" and an "average modern politician". What separates them is the opportunity, and having a system in place that works to keep people honest. I'm watching my fellow citizens litter and help themselves to "free stuff", and the behavior of freshly minted "politicians" who get voted in by disgruntled voters of formerly fringe parties (or formerly fringe wings of established parties).
I'd like to hear how you propose to keep the "average citizen" principled in the face of increased access to opportunity and power.
That's silly. The politician is completing in a race that they are trying to win. The citizen is just trying to live, and takes time out of their life to vote and pick someone who might (might!) have a shot at fixing some of the things that annoy them without breaking some of the things that actually work. The politician is goal-oriented, the citizen is existence-oriented.
Exactly. In the current system, a candidate requires substantial funding in order to run. Who has that kind of money to spend on politics? Big corporations! What sort of people would these corporations want in government?
The most valuable trait in a politician from the perspective of a big corporate donor is corruptibility (their eagerness to cater to the needs of big financial interests). They are literally put forward on that basis. If the selection process was random, then political candidates would only be as corrupt as the average person; which would not be too bad.
There is a difference: politicians actively seek power. This already raises suspicions about a person, in my opinion.
Also, running for office takes money, so the average modern politician needs to raise a lot of money. How do you raise a lot of money? Make friends with rich people and do favors for them, obviously.
But at least in my country and city, if decisions were made by the average citizen, we would be living as in the 80s. Every time they remove a parking spot to make room for a bike lane or a wider sidewalk, people complain (even if in the long term, many end up seeing the benefits). Maybe it depends on the country, but at least in my place the average citizen is very, very reactionary. They want everything as it always was.
Politicians, with all their failures (we have plenty of corrupt ones here), tend to have more long-term thinking that Joe Sixpack.
Issues around rigging the electoral roll are less of an issue than in voting because the person selected has to show up to do their job. It is far less effective to have dead people on the electoral roll because someone will need to impersonate the dead person if they are selected.
Sure. we can create the protocols, logic and software. As a technical prospect it's within reach. All beautiful in theory.
But can you imagine the corruption that would ensue?! Where would people store these tokens that represent literal political power? How would they verifiably redeem them?
The problem is infrastructure. Civic cybersecurity is a great steaming turd. Digital literacy has declined as people surrender in the face of "convenience". Smartphones are wide open gaping holes, pre-pwned out of the box by vendor malware. Much of our electronic communication is designed and built in hostile nation states, served by a handful of greedy and untrustworthy big-tech monopolies, and overseen by governments who actively labour night and day to weaken our security.
Until we live in an entirely different kind of technological culture, where people take more ownership of their technology (probably not within my own lifetime) I'll choose a piece of paper and a wooden box with a slot in it any day! That would be my informed choice as a computer scientist. Although, it is possible that with some clever mathematics and manufacturing technology (modern physical cash is an advanced technology) some kind of paper equivalent might be feasible. But first consider what happened in Russia when the people were issued share certificates in the ex-soviet economy and bartered them for food.
Like, if there are two people participating and one’s random number is 01 and the other’s is 11 (binary), and you XOR them you get 10. But that doesn’t match any of the participants’ numbers, so who would win? Or does the number of possible outputs need to exactly match the number of participants? If so, does that mean the number of participants needs to be an exact power of 2?
>Homogenous
There are four language regions, how is it homogenous.
I'm increasingly persuaded by Plato's 5 Regime's view. In a nutshell, each system has its own virtue which taken to extremes becomes its vice and leads to its downfall and transition into the next system. The 5 regimes being Aristocracy, Timocracy (an implicitly anti-materialist government driven by systems of honor - think Spartans or Klingons - the Wiki page on this topic is simply wrong), Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny.
Also who writes what could be complex legislation for complex issues?
For reference see one of the biggest NFT drops this year and the pleas they made to not buy KYC’d addresses: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/04/29/please-dont-buy-a...
The same people who currently write it - policy analysts and lawyers.
These people are almost charmingly shameless. Rather than do better, they just want to put the fix in for the next time.
Rather than dismissing "these people", perhaps you would benefit from engaging intellectually with the idea. If you did, you would probably find that the supporters of this idea are very different from what you are imagining.
I'm quite familiar with the concept and have had to implement non-FPtP voting schemes. However, it is a trap to engage with the disingenuous.
The general public get to know their national candidates first at the local and then state level, and those candidates are judged as "better than a head of lettuce" by their peers in office.
The political wing of government is essentially (ideally) just about debating policy - it's the civil service, military, and judicial wings that get tasked with making things happen (subject to checks and balances).
The UK recently got one: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04... - MPs can be recalled if they are jailed. Quite significant as during the Northern Ireland civil war several MPs were political prisoners.
When the Greeks did sortition, it wasn't perfect either. Laws ended up favoring the richest landowners, and the richest landowners tended to have a higher representation (in the boule anyway). They tried various means to engineer the problems away, but they persisted. This is because it's nigh-impossible to prevent human beings from figuring out a way to exploit a system when they are committed to the task.
Another way to have a superior political body is to make it superior and hold it to a standard. Rather than select average people, there should be basic requirements of intelligence, ethics, acts of good will, and the abandonment of luxuries, rewards and favors, in exchange for the support of the state. The state should support the education of the populous toward this end. In addition, the judgment over matters of serious concern should be presided over by experts. No decision of serious concern should be made without a meta-study, to root out bias and find the best possible solution.
Basically, we should hold ourselves and our political process to the highest standards, rather than the easiest ones. Let the noblest and wisest lead us in a structure designed for reason and fairness.
It sounds like you're describing Plato's philosopher kings.
A key component of both sortition and Plato's Republic is that they're selecting leaders who aren't actively seeking power, in contrast to elections. (According to Plato, philosophers seek truth, not power, and must be forced to rule for the benefit of the community.)
That's the system we have now and it fails all the time, because the "experts" would rather give any answer than no answer, even if their data or understanding is insufficient to yield an accurate prediction.
Besides, handing nukes over to a plebiscite is a bone-chillingly awful idea. In the days following 9/11 I think we probably would have voted to start a nuclear war. The public, save the Dixie Chicks, were even more blood thirsty than the US Government.
The US government used 9/11 as an excuse to invade two countries.
Iraq was not involved in 9/11 at all, despite allegations, and it didn't have WMD either, despite allegations.
And we invaded Afghanistan, but bin Laden was eventually found in Pakistan, our "ally".
The US public might have voted to invade Saudi Arabia, which actually would have made more sense than Afghanistan or Iraq.
FWIW, I pay most of my taxes to the Gemeinde and Canton. About 3% goes to the Federal state, which I assume is mostly to the (compulsory) military.
It seems to me as a foreigner that a large part of the U.S. problems(and indeed the world) is the concentration of power to the U.S. federal state.
For what it is worth, I am French, and my country recently made a sortition experiment[1] that I found less than convincing. This was in response to the yellow vest movement. I did not feel represented by that 'citizens convention'. I do not know what part of their propositions come from them, and what part come from the experts advising them. Some of their propositions (like putting a more stringent speed limit on highways) were not implemented because, ironically, they were impopular. The whole thing felt like a failed experiment to me.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Climat...
- The lot was usually determined by birth, so it tended to perpetuate privilege.
- People who didn't want to serve often found ways to get out of it, so the people who ended up serving were often the ones who didn't want to.
- It resulted in a lot of incompetent people in positions of power.
- And perhaps worst of all, it tended to breed a culture of resentment and envy, since the people who were chosen by lot often felt that they didn't deserve it and the people who weren't chosen often felt that they did.
The idea that democracy by lottery is a good idea is simply absurd.
Finally, this whole thing reeks of identity politics. Representation as a proxy of good decision making or even just good intent. But think about what this would do to minorities. It would be quite unlikely to chose, e.g., transsexuals or people with rare illnesses. Also, people have many different identies at the same time but but cannot represent them all equally well, anyways. So some aspects of society wouldn't be represented at all during a legislative period because everyone is supposed to represent their own identities, not someone else's.
So unless we create a legislative assembly that's so large that it borders on direct democracy, I don't see the benefit. And in that case, let's just have direct democracy. If necessary with a legal requirement to vote.
Lawmakers today rarely write the legislation they vote on. They have support staff and experts who assist them in drafting legislation. Nothing prevents providing similar infrastructure to representatives selected by sortition rather than elections.
> Finally, this whole thing reeks of identity politics. Representation as a proxy of good decision making or even just good intent. But think about what this would do to minorities. It would be quite unlikely to chose, e.g., transsexuals or people with rare illnesses.
Um... What? Minorities would unequivocally be better represented under sortition than under elections. Poor people would be better represented, women would be better represented, young people would be better represented. The primary group that would loser it's massive overrepresentation is the old rich white lawyers who dominate our current house and senate. Your argument here makes no sense.
Why do you assume there would be 3 branches of government like the current system?
As the article discusses, the founders of the US divided the government in order to dilute democracy and maintain the power of the economic elite.
Here's an idea, let's try first having PG give YCombinator funding to startups based on a random lottery, rather than actually picking them. When that's successful, then we can talk.
However the issue is that the party members are a small proportion of the general public.
Thus a small group is enough to win the vote in the party, This tends in a two party system to make the winner more extreme and less likely to be liked by the general public.
See Liz Truss as a good example here (as well as Trump)
Gerrymandering, yo.
This is _such_ a US centric view. Guys, you have way a worst problem than elections. You have a party strongly pursuing getting rid of democratic results altogether.
Beyond the stated (That G word) the republican party is STRONGLY preparing the landscape to not recognize the results of the next election (Or the next one after that).
I actually have a bet with a friend about when the last democratic election is going to happen, and my money is on this last midterms being the ones (Gotta reckon, I wasn't expecting Gen-Z, and I'm gladly surprised I might be wrong).
Take for instance the last election in Brazil, where Lula beat Bolzonaro by the bare minimum: 51% to 49%. What would had been the results of such an election in the US? In 2016, Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1%, and _still_ Trump won the presidential race. In 2020, even thought Biden wan the popular vote by a large margin, the results were still down to a handful of votes [1]
The problem, as I see it, is that you have a democratic system that allows for suppressing democracy.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/940689086/narrow-wins-in-thes...
You've literally got republican candidates (I think actually voted in now) saying unless they win the election was false/stolen. There is something very wrong with that.
But as you state, there's nobody countering my comment.
All in all, interesting times. Obviously nobody wants a non-democratic US, but if that happens, I'm going to have the popcorn ready.
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story) (Spoilers!)
In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held.
The story centers around Norman Muller of Bloomington, Indiana, the man chosen as "Voter of the Year" in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Although the law requires him to accept the dubious honour, he is not sure that he wants the responsibility of representing the entire electorate, worrying that the result will be unfavorable and he will be blamed.
However, after "voting", he is very proud that the citizens of the United States had, through him, "exercised once again their free, untrammeled franchise" – a statement that is somewhat ironic as the citizens did not actually get to vote; even he himself did not vote for any candidate, law, or issue.
The idea of a computer predicting whom the electorate would vote for instead of actually holding an election was probably inspired by the UNIVAC I's correct prediction of the result of the U.S. presidential election in 1952.[1]
> Thus the process for electing the Doge, as of 1268 (when it was employed for the election of Lorenzo Tiepolo), had reached this amazing almost-final form [Lane p.111; also described by Lines p.156]:
> - Choose 30 of the Great Council members (of whom there were 1000-to-1500, typically; all male) by a random process;
> - Reduce them to 9 by random processes;
> - The 9 name 40 nominees;
> - The 40 are reduced to 12 by a random process;
> - the 12 name 25 nominees;
> - Reduce them to 9 by random processes;
> - The 9 name 45 nominees;
> - Reduce them to 11 by random processes;
> - The 11 named 41 (all of whom had to be age≥40 years);
> - The 41 elected the Doge (from among nominees they chose; any of the 41 could write a name on a slip of paper, and from then onward, that name was a candidate) by range3 voting!
> - This choice theoretically was subject to approval or veto by the mass of the people (assembly) but I am unaware of any instance in which that veto was exercised. This perhaps meant this step was a mere formality with the People not really having any power. But another interpretation is that the threat of a veto kept the Grand Council honest in its choice – they refused to risk the embarrassment of a veto.
Love it or hate it but a minority of better organized elites will always run the show in every organization from a local bake sale to government.
Then try finding an old book and a very old story: "The Science of Government Founded on Natural Law" by Clinton Roosevelt a relative of the much better known Franklin Delano and one of the scammers of the NY bank who became the FED years later [1] or the blatant explanation that all society develop a kind of hierarchy who is not at all democratic (nor meritocratic) who drive and (ab)use the others not differently than a shepherd with the flock. Sometimes the shepherd is soft and hidden enough that the flock do not revolt, sometimes it's not and get assaulted by the flock, sometimes it have to create a bit of theater, like wrestling, pushing the flock to think there are different ideas into play, they decide etc. The modern version of ancient Greeks theater where the orator start to plead a cause, convincing spectators who acclaim, than start to plead the exact opposite, in equally convincing manners. Those who understand applaud, those who not think he/she made fun of them and try to assault physically...
[1] https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=car... the scam is well described by one of the scammers letter, itemized at the end of the long page for those who are curious.
― T.S. Eliot, The Rock
