[ExI] elections again

[Dan]

Speaking of elections, what about sortition (random selection) as a method of selecting people for public office?  This can be combined with other methods.  E.g., one could use sortition to select the field of candidates that people vote for.  Say, sortition picks out five candidates for each office and people vote for one of the five.

Or let people vote for, say, five candidates for one office and use sortition to select one of the five.

I'm only throwing this out as an idea to toy with.  I'm generally against democracy, but some form of sortition might make it harder to influence officeholders or the elections process.  It's not foolproof -- as one can easily imagine influencing elected officials or somehow stuff enough candidates into the sortition process that one's candidate is sure to win.*

Regards,

Dan

*  The fear that really, really bad candidates -- say, like a nutter or a sociopath -- getting by this process is overblown, I think.  Merely having a recall process would mitigate the problem.

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