TOWN MEETING (Selecting Our Leaders)

[Koikaze]

I started this board to provide a town meeting environment to discuss the process by which those who represent us in government are selected. Here is one possible way to accomplish that.

IMPROVING THE ELECTION PROCESS
Before we can improve the election process, we must decide what's wrong with it. The flaw in our (American) system is that our "party" system is corrupt.

Corruption pervades our political process because the parties control the selection of candidates for public office. Candidates are not chosen for their integrity. Quite the contrary. They are chosen after they demonstrate their willingness and ability to dissemble, to obfuscate and to mislead the electorate. They are chosen when they prove they will renounce principle and sacrifice honor for the benefit of their party.


Any system that renounces virtue is ruled by cynicism.


If we are to improve the quality of our elected officials, we must find a way to select the most trustworthy among us to represent our interests. We must select representatives who will legislate for the benefit of the people rather than for the special interest groups that (currently) dominate the lawmaking process.

To select such people, we must harness our natural human tendencies and make them work for our benefit.


GROUNDWORK
To improve the election process, we must lay the cornerstone by using a method which favors the selection of the most principled among us as our representatives. The method must be democratic (i.e., allow the entire electorate to participate), it must be egalitarian (i.e., give everyone an equal chance of being elected to public office), and it must be in harmony with natural human responses.

This outline will present such a concept in the simplest, most direct way possible. It will, necessarily, mention a few of the mechanics, but they are secondary. The important thing is the concept of harnessing human nature. Once we've seen a way to do that, we can concern ourselves with the myriad other details.

Although the process is continuous, I will describe it as having two phases. The human factors dominating the first phase will metamorphose into a different set of factors as the second phase develops. This metamorphosis is the "magic" of the process.


METHOD
1) Divide the electorate into groups of three people.

2) Assign a date and time by which each group must select one of the three to represent the other two.

.. a) No participant may vote for himself.

.. b) If a group is unable to select a representative by the specified time, the group is disqualified.

3) Divide the participants so selected into groups of three.

4) Repeat from step 2 until a target number of selections is reached.


DISCUSSION
For convenience we'll refer to each iteration as a "Level", such that Level 1 is the initial grouping of the entire electorate, Level 2 is the grouping of the selections made at Level 1, and so forth. The entire electorate participates at level 1 giving everyone an equal opportunity to advance to succeeding levels.

* As the process advances through the levels, the amount of time the participants spend together increases. At level 1, groups may meet for a few minutes, over a back-yard fence, so-to-speak, but that would not be adequate at higher levels. As the levels advance, the participants need more time to evaluate those they are grouped with. They also need transportation and facilities for meeting and voting. These are mechanical details.

* The public has a tendency to think of elections in terms of just a few offices; a congressional seat, a senate race, and so forth. There are, however, a large number of elected officials who fill township, county, state and federal offices. The structure outlined here provides qualified candidates for those offices, as follows:

* At some level (determined by the number of offices to be filled), the two candidates not selected to advance to the next level are given an office corresponding to the level; first in the local, then the county, then the state, and, finally, the national governments.

The initial phase of the process is dominated by participants with little interest in advancing to higher levels. They do not seek public office; they simply wish to pursue their private lives in peace. Thus, the most powerful human dynamic during the first phase (i.e., Level 1 and for some levels thereafter) is a desire by the majority of the participants to select someone who will represent them. The person so selected is more apt to be someone who is willing to take on the responsibility of going to next level than someone who actively seeks elevation to the next level, but those who do actively seek elevation are not prevented from doing so.

As the levels increase, the proportion of disinterested parties diminishes and we enter the second phase. Here, participants that advance are marked, more and more, by an inclination to seek further advancement. Thus, a powerful human trait is integrated into the system.

Those who actively seek selection must persuade their group that they are the best qualified to represent the other two. That is easy at the lower levels, but it becomes more difficult as the process moves forward and participants are matched with peers who also wish to be chosen.

Each participant must make a choice between the other two people in the group, knowing that, once a participant is chosen, those who made the selection have no control over the selectee's future actions and decisions. Since they are unable to control the person selected, participants are obliged to select the person they believe can be trusted to conduct public business with integrity.

They do not make their selections blindly. The process occurs periodically and the majority of those seeking public office will to do so each time the process recurs. Some will be successful. They will achieve public office and their performance will be a matter of public record. When they participate in subsequent occurrences of the process, their peers can evaluate that record to help them decide the candidate's suitability. Since, after the initial levels, the peers, too, seek advancement, they will not overlook inappropriate activity. For miscreants, dissimulation and obfuscation will not work well in a very small group of people, each member having a vital interest in reaching the same goal as the miscreant. Thus, the future of selectees will depend on the probity with which they fulfil their public obligations.

This is a distillation process, biased in favor of the most upright and capable of our citizens. It cannot guarantee that unprincipled individuals will never be selected ... such a goal would be unrealistic ... but it does insure that they are the exception rather than the rule.

EXAMPLE
Here's an illustration of the process for a town with a total voting age population of 25,000. All voting age citizens are required to participate. The suggested distribution of offices is only one of many possibilities.

 
         REMAINING   CANDIDATES 
 LEVEL    ELECTORS    SELECTED 
    1       25,000       8,333 
    2        8,333       2,778 
    3        2,778         926 
    4          926         309 
    5          309         103 
    6          103          34 
    7           34          11 
    8           11           4 leaves 7 Town Board Members 
    9            4           1 Mayor and 3 Town Officials 
 

Note that the only cost for this method is for the facilities for meeting and voting, and, at the lowest two or three levels are probably not even required. Thereafter, the municipality has adequate facilities. Hence, candidates have no need of "campaign funds", the most corrupting influence in our current method.

I originally thought to buttress this presentation by citing two newspaper articles which discuss the (apparent) lack of interest in the election process among the majority of the electorate and the working of corruption in our system. I've decided that to do so would be superfluous.

Fred