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P.J. O'Rourke opined recently (April 10 on TVO's The Agenda) that politicians are in the business of doing nothing but acquiring power, and that the current crop of political candidates are no better than any random group of people.

And it's not just the elected, it's the electorate. The problem that O'Rourke develops in his book Parliament of Whores is that "Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."

How better to eliminate the acquisition of power as a temptation (from everybody) than by removing any element of being able to influence the outcome of an election i.e. WHAT IF politicians were chosen randomly?

The idea needs a lot of honing obviously: minimum education?; volunteers only in the "pool"?; how to apply this to executive positions (cabinet members in parliamentary democracies, governors, etc.) MarkTilley 20:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly, this is how politics was done in ancient Athens, where elections were deprecated in Aristotle’s Politics as leading not to democracy, but to oligarchy.

Nowadays the process is called sortition.

In 2019, a form of sortition has been implemented in Ostbelgien, a small province of Belgium. See The Ostbelgien Model or google it for more info. MarkTilley 01:54, October 26, 2019 (UTC)

Pro's[]

  • Eliminate electoral corruption, porkbelly politics
  • Reduce the cost and time spent on elections
  • governing becomes more participatory as more of the general population are chosen and visualize themselves as eligible
  • more ...

Con's[]

  • You figure it out!
  • May elect Extremists
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