Public goods are either "competitive" (schools, roads), suitable for electoral debate, or "unitary" (redistricting, judicial appointments), requiring non-partisan consensus. Applying competitive electoral logic corrupts unitary goods. Representation by sampling, like a jury, is the appropriate, unbiased mechanism to govern these essential functions that underpin the rules of the game.
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A common assumption is that a neutral process is inherently fair. However, due to natural population clustering (e.g., Democrats in cities), a randomly drawn map can still heavily favor one party. Achieving fairness may require intentional design to counteract geographic disadvantages, not just the absence of malicious intent.
Our default method for promotion—open competition—is flawed because it disproportionately attracts and rewards individuals who most desire power, not necessarily those best suited for leadership. The Founding Fathers understood this, preferring reluctant leaders. Alternative models, like deliberation by a select body, can produce more competent and less self-interested leaders.
Politicians are fundamentally incapable of drawing fair electoral boundaries due to an inherent conflict of interest: they want to ensure their party wins. Using a randomly sampled citizens' commission, as Michigan did, removes this conflict. This allows ordinary people, guided by a sense of fairness, to create equitable maps where politicians and courts have failed.
The perception of a deeply divided society is largely an artifact of a political system built on competition and elections, which forces people into two opposing camps. A system based on deliberation would reveal that most people's views are not so rigidly coherent, and it would encourage finding common ground rather than winning at all costs.
The Catholic Church's method of selecting a Pope—a secret, deliberative process where cardinals vote repeatedly until a supermajority is reached—is a powerful example of an "election without candidates." This bottom-up meritocracy prioritizes finding a formidable, consensus candidate over rewarding the person who campaigned the hardest, a model that could be adapted for political and organizational leadership.
The combinatorial complexity of drawing district maps is vastly underestimated, even by Supreme Court justices. The number of possibilities isn't in the thousands but is astronomically large (like a googol), making it impossible to check every option and thus requiring sophisticated mathematical sampling techniques.
Representation by sampling, the method used for juries, is one of two fundamental forms of democratic representation, the other being elections. While we have doubled down on elections, sampling offers a powerful, underutilized model for governance in areas like redistricting, where ordinary citizens can make fairer decisions than conflicted politicians.
Paradoxically, the undemocratic nature of the UK's House of Lords makes it a highly effective legislative body. Composed of non-partisan experts who scrutinize bills in detail, it forces the government to justify its policies and improve legislation, a function the elected chamber often fails to perform.
Instead of single-winner districts, a powerful reform is creating larger, multi-member districts that elect several representatives (e.g., 4 districts electing 3 members each). This allows for more proportional outcomes that reflect an area's political diversity, as a minority group can win one of the multiple seats.
The US was structured as a republic, not a pure democracy, to protect minority rights from being overridden by the majority. Mechanisms like the Electoral College, appointed senators, and constitutional limits on federal power were intentionally undemocratic to prevent what the founders called "mobocracy."
