US House of Representatives: combined election and sortition

DominusNovus

I’m a big fan of sortition - appointing govt officials by random lot - and like to see it incorporated in my timelines. The concept did not seem to have much of a draw on the American Founding Fathers, but they were certainly quite aware of it. Lets suppose it did wiggle its way into the Constitution.

To me, the most obvious place is the House of Representatives. They’re supposed to be somewhat chaotic and turbulent, a perfect place for legislators chosen by random chance. However, if it was entirely sortition, that would take away from the people the only office they could directly elect - and this before considering that voting rights were initially more restrictive, even for white men, originally.

So, elected Representatives should still be a thing. To that end, I have 3 proposals:

1) The simplest: for ever member elected, there is also one appointed by lot. So, every district would basically have 2 Representatives. This is nice and simple, but it does balloon the House to, if this were today, 870 Reps.

2) Every district elects X representatives, and 1 is chosen by lot to actually represent their district. Ideally, X would be some medium-sized number, like 3-5. A side effect would be that parties would likely be very powerful - people would just vote straight line if there’s so many candidates.

3) Every district’s candidates are appointed by lot, and then the people vote from among them. So, maybe there’s 12 candidates drawn from the district, and they all appear on the ballot. This would likely strongly weaken parties, as there’d be little ability to coordinate ahead of time. Totally possible for a Republican stronghold to end up with 12 Democrats running.

Methods 2 and 3 also have the side effect of basically being backdoor term limits. Personally, I think method 1 is the best, as it changes the least from how things are conducted presently.

So, which sounds most likely to you, and what might change about US politics were it adopted?
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
DominusNovus said:
1) The simplest: for ever member elected, there is also one appointed by lot. So, every district would basically have 2 Representatives. This is nice and simple, but it does balloon the House to, if this were today, 870 Reps.
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You are aware that there are various surveys and “public speaking” ranks right up there with “drowning” and “falling from a great height” as far as people’s greatest fear, right?

And then, not everyone’s going to be great at constituent services.

So, if there’s a face-saving way people could opt out if the last drawing? Say 100 people are drawn for a district, and someone can say “Thanks for the offer but I’m too busy with work and family,” so maybe the final winner is drawn from 60 names. Something like this.
 

DominusNovus

GeographyDude said:
You are aware that there are various surveys and “public speaking” ranks right up there with “drowning” and “falling from a great height” as far as people’s greatest fear, right?

And then, not everyone’s going to be great at constituent services.

So, if there’s a face-saving way people could opt out if the last drawing? Say 100 people are drawn for a district, and someone can say “Thanks for the offer but I’m too busy with work and family,” so maybe the final winner is drawn from 60 names. Something like this.
Click to expand...

I’d imagine there would be no more accommodation than for jury duty - with the caveat that this would be for 2 years and, as such, would pay better than jury duty - by 1815, they were being paid non-insulting salaries, and by 1855, said salaries were quite comfortable.

If thats not good enough, well, they can just suck it up and be miserable for 2 years. I think if up to half of Congress wanted to get out of DC at the earliest opportunity, we’d be better off as a country.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
DominusNovus said:
. . . If thats not good enough, well, they can just suck it up and be miserable for 2 years. . .
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And I guess it might end kind of like a test and a competition.

The people who don’t want to be there vs. the people who want to be there too much, and which gives a more crappy result! :openedeyewink:
 

dcharles

Banned
DominusNovus said:
I’m a big fan of sortition - appointing govt officials by random lot - and like to see it incorporated in my timelines. The concept did not seem to have much of a draw on the American Founding Fathers, but they were certainly quite aware of it. Lets suppose it did wiggle its way into the Constitution.

To me, the most obvious place is the House of Representatives. They’re supposed to be somewhat chaotic and turbulent, a perfect place for legislators chosen by random chance. However, if it was entirely sortition, that would take away from the people the only office they could directly elect - and this before considering that voting rights were initially more restrictive, even for white men, originally.

So, elected Representatives should still be a thing. To that end, I have 3 proposals:

1) The simplest: for ever member elected, there is also one appointed by lot. So, every district would basically have 2 Representatives. This is nice and simple, but it does balloon the House to, if this were today, 870 Reps.

2) Every district elects X representatives, and 1 is chosen by lot to actually represent their district. Ideally, X would be some medium-sized number, like 3-5. A side effect would be that parties would likely be very powerful - people would just vote straight line if there’s so many candidates.

3) Every district’s candidates are appointed by lot, and then the people vote from among them. So, maybe there’s 12 candidates drawn from the district, and they all appear on the ballot. This would likely strongly weaken parties, as there’d be little ability to coordinate ahead of time. Totally possible for a Republican stronghold to end up with 12 Democrats running.

Methods 2 and 3 also have the side effect of basically being backdoor term limits. Personally, I think method 1 is the best, as it changes the least from how things are conducted presently.

So, which sounds most likely to you, and what might change about US politics were it adopted?
Click to expand...

I always thought it would have made sense for the Senators to be selected by lot from the House itself, or failing that, from the state legislatures. Seems like the only way to make it work in the modern era.
 
Neoteros

Neoteros

I'm a fan of sortition as well; since we're talking about the US here, every county could elect its own representative through ranked-choice voting, then the pool of representatives inside each state is halved through sortition, then ranked-choice voting gets rid of another 50% of representatives, and so on. This system of alternate election and sortition (vaguely inspired by that of Venice, a country that by the time of American independence already had more than a millennium of republican tradition behind it) could go on until only two people (the President and the Vice President) are left.
 

Pesterfield

The Founders accept parties are going to happen so people vote for parties and a random drawing of party members determines the actual representative.
 

DominusNovus

Neoteros said:
I'm a fan of sortition as well; since we're talking about the US here, every county could elect its own representative through ranked-choice voting, then the pool of representatives inside each state is halved through sortition, then ranked-choice voting gets rid of another 50% of representatives, and so on. This system of alternate election and sortition (vaguely inspired by that of Venice, a country that by the time of American independence already had more than a millennium of republican tradition behind it) could go on until only two people (the President and the Vice President) are left.
Click to expand...

I don’t see any reason to include rank-choice voting. Just complicates things. We don’t need to imitate Venice.
 
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