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I have a proposal for a new type of representative democracy, and I'm curious to know if there are existing proposals that are like this. Can somebody post a link if they know of one?
This proposal is based on the way senators in the United States used to be elected by the legislatures of state governments. Imagine a national legislature which has its members elected by state or provincial legislatures. The provincial legislatures, in turn, have their members elected by legislatures on the county or municipal level. These in turn have their members chosen by lottery. The general public therefore does not elect any representatives. Instead, they pledge support to representatives after the elections have taken place. Representatives with many supporters get increased voting power relative to their peers who have less supporters. This is therefore a type of liquid democracy. What makes it different is that citizens are given a limited selection of representatives to pledge their support to, whereas in a pure liquid democracy, citizens are able to pledge their support to anybody.
What is the benefit of a proposal like this, which combines features of liquid democracy and representative democracy? Does this fix any problems with pure liquid democracy? I think the potential problem with liquid democracy is that it requires a government-sponsored social media platform to host and continuously update a complex and ever-shifting tree of relationships between citizens. Young, intelligent, tech-savvy people will utilize the platform to its full potential, but average people will struggle to sign up on the app, to navigate the complex ever-shifting tree of relationships represented graphically on their computer (or phone!), and to understand what it signifies and how they are supposed to participate. Liquid democracy will fail if it requires a complex social media platform that intimidates average people.
The advantage of my proposal is that the number of choices is limited so the process can be done using existing voting machines. Rather than having an app where citizens change who they support as often as they like, what I am imagining is a simpler system where elections are held once a year and citizens go to polling stations and use ballot papers or electronic voting machines to pledge their support. How many choices will appear on the ballot? The typical size of a national legislature for a large country is 500 members. Does this mean citizens will have 500 choices on their ballot? I think it will be better if citizens are limited to supporting national representatives elected from their state or province. 500 choices is too much for citizens to research every representative. The likely result is that support will accumulate to a handful of politicians with name recognition. This is also a potential problem with pure liquid democracy. If a legislative majority is concentrated in the hands of three or four individual persons, bad things could result. And lastly, having 500 choices would make the ballot papers too long and slow down the voting process. Limiting citizens to supporting representatives from their state or province prevents the concentration of power behind a handful of politicians with name recognition, and it will result in a more reasonable number of options to choose from.
Provincial legislatures will need to elect multiple representatives to give citizens options to choose from, and the election process must be set up to ensure those representatives have a diversity of political loyalties. The provinces do not have to be equal in population, but they cannot be excessively large or small. For the United States, it would be necessary to redraw state boundaries. Currently, seven states elect a only single representative to the House, and five states elect only two. I think three representatives should be the bare minimum for this proposed system. The election process will work like this: the state legislatures nominate multiple candidates, and each nominee will have to gain the support of a fraction of the legislature in order to be elected. For example, if there are three seats to fill, each nominee will need to obtain the support of a third of the legislature, or to make it easier, from a fourth of the legislature. If there are five seats to fill, each nominee will need support from a sixth of the legislature. For nine seats, a tenth of the legislature, and so on. The idea is that the legislature will divide itself into a left wing and a right wing which will further subdivide into subfactions which must each elect their own representative. The idea is to ensure that citizens will always have at least one representative on the left and one on the right to support. A feature of this system is that it will fractionate political parties and make it difficult for a two-party duopoly to hold onto power. There may be ways to game this system, but so long as one half-decent nominee makes it through, citizens can throw their support behind that representative and ignore the rest.
So, to overview how this proposed system would play out: local governments have citizens' assemblies with maybe a thousand members each. A couple hundred new members are selected by lottery every year and serve terms lasting four or five years, which ensures continuity from one year to the next gives members time to establish themselves as budding politicians. The large size of the assemblies compensates for the randomness of the lottery and for the fact that many lottery winners will not fully participate in the governing process. (Participation will not be required and winners of the lottery will have the option to give away their seat or auction it off.) Citizens' assemblies convene in January and govern local affairs for the duration of the year. At the end of the year, around September, each assembly elects between three to ten representatives to the state government using the procedure described above. Elections are held every year, and since representatives have term limits of twenty years, it is likely many of the representatives will be incumbents. The results of the election take effect the next year. Meanwhile, the state legislature also convened in January and governed state affairs for the duration of the year. At the end of the year, around September, the state legislature elects between three to ten representatives to the national government using the procedure described above. The results of their election also take effect the next year.
After state and national elections have taken place, in the month of November, the general public has a Voting Day (a public holiday) where they converge at polling stations to pledge support to the representatives elected one month prior. Citizens will have around three to ten representatives to choose from at the state and national level. The state representatives will be from their county or municipality, while the national representatives will be from their state. Citizens can also pledge support to members of their local citizens' assembly. Lottery winners are announced prior to Voting Day so it is possible to pledge support for incoming members. The assembly has a thousand members to choose from, so this portion of the ballot will be write-in only. After Voting Day, the results are tallied and take effect the following year when the national, state and local governments convene. The voting power of representatives in each will be weighted based on how much support they received the previous year, and these weights remain in effect for the duration of the year. Weighting of voting power affects all actions taken by legislatures including the process of electing representatives. So, in the example I described above where a nominee to the national government needs the support of a fourth of their state legislature to be elected, that fourth must take into account the relative voting power of each member, as determined by the pledges of support given by the general public.
So anyway, my question is whether there are any preexisting proposals that are like this? I'm interested to know because I think this is a good proposal which has distinct advantages over other proposals for liquid democracy and representative democracy.
Very interesting! You write convincingly on the benefit of your proposal over "pure" liquid democracy, but what is the benefit of your proposal over representative democracy, specifically a proportional representation parliament?
After finishing my question, I realized I forgot to say what advantage my proposal has over representative democracy. The problem with our current system I'm seeking to address is "ballot access." Quoting from ballotpedia.org,
For an up-and-coming politician, getting your name on the ballot is the biggest hurdle to starting a career in politics. In my home state, you either have to submit a petition with 10,000 signatures or win the nomination of a political party. For this year's Senate race, two people actually did get the necessary 10,000 signatures to appear on the ballot as independent candidates, (they have both since withdrawn from the race,) but in both cases they are already established politicians who have previously held political office. For an up-and-comer without name recognition, the only way to get on the ballot is to enter a primary election for a political party. Primary elections in the US are well-known for being flawed. Searching around just now, I found what looks to be a good analysis of the topic, which I'll link here.
My proposal is an alternative system for determining whose name appears on the ballot during an election, which seeks to diminish the control political parties have over ballot access. It starts with the citizens' assembly. For somebody who might be interested in becoming a career politician, having the good fortune to win a seat in an assembly jumpstarts their career in politics without the need to join a political party. Alternatively, for an up-and-comer determined to run for office who wasn't lucky enough to win the lottery, they can start their career just by winning support from members of the assembly. Instead of needing 10,000 signatures to appear on the ballot and millions of votes to win an election, all they need is to convince 100 to 200 people to support them. And to run for national office, all they need is the support of 10 to 20 state legislators. In effect, the assembly and the state legislature replace the current primary election system and take on the role of nominating candidates for office. The method they use to nominate and elect candidates is intended to produce a diverse assortment of representatives from across the political spectrum, which will give the general public a wide range of options on the ballot whom they can pledge support to.
Now, you may be wondering, couldn't this system be tweaked slightly so that the assembly and the state legislature merely nominate candidates for the general public to vote on, rather than electing candidates which citizens must then choose to pledge their support to? Well, yes, that is a similar system that could also be proposed. The difference is, a system like that would work better if the states were smaller so that each state elected exactly one representative. My proposed system is intended to allow for larger states that vary in size and each elect multiple representatives. I like the voting system where the legislature nominates multiple candidates and each nominee competes for a fraction of the legislature, because I think it would produce greater diversity of political loyalties. If the legislature merely nominated candidates and let the general public vote on them, the result would be that all the representatives would occupy roughly the same position on the political spectrum, reflecting the average political leaning of their state. It would produce less diversity, unless you divided up the country into a bunch of tiny states. The state legislatures are supposed to govern affairs within their state borders, in addition to electing national representatives, and to that end it is probably better to let them be a bit larger instead of making each state the size of a congressional district.
Ballot access is a fake problem - most US states make it unnecessarily difficult because the rules are made by partisan-elected Secretaries of State and State legislatures, who all come from the two pre-existing big parties. But other countries have much easier ballot access for non-Presidential elections and it doesn't cause problems.
For example, in the UK, you need 10 signatures and £500 to stand as a candidate in Westminster elections, so you could run a full slate of candidates for about £350,000 (compared to a minimum budget of about £5 million to run a nationwide campaign). In Ireland you need 300 members (only 150 of whom need to be registered voters) to register a political party to stand in Dail elections, which then gives you automatic nationwide ballot access.
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