Posted on 07/05/2021 1:17:00 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
Legislatures are often very unrepresentative of the people at large, and they pass special-interest legislation that inflicts great harm. One way to make them more representative would be to add a third, randomly-selected house to state legislatures: a “House of the People” consisting of members selected by lot. If random selection is good for juries, and worked for ancient legislative bodies like the Athenian Council of Five Hundred, why not use it for our legislatures?
All states except for Nebraska currently have two houses in their state legislature, both elected by state voters. Although these houses are elected, they are not representative, because normal people rarely run for office. Normal people typically don’t want to spend months running for office, repeating the same message over and over again, and begging for cash to pay for their campaigns. Normal people typically lack the ability to win elections, due to their lack of fundraising ability, and lack of skill in mass communications.
Despite being popularly elected, legislatures often favor the interests of political elites and special interests, rather than normal people. That’s because it is hard to remove incumbents who favor special interests, due to gerrymandering, incumbents’ advantages in raising funds, media bias, and collective-action problems.
A partial solution to this problem is to add a new house to each state legislature, whose members would be randomly selected from the public at large...
(Excerpt) Read more at libertyunyielding.com ...
William F Buckley suggested names out of the phone book.
We already have two houses and it is determined by which side of the aisle you’re on. Same with the senate.
wy69
In Article 1 Section 2, the original number of Representatives in the House was to be one for every 30,000 inhabitants. If that had been maintained, there would have been almost 11,000 representatives, but the number got capped at 435, and as the population grew, the congressional districts just got larger.
Having lots of representatives in much smaller districts would allow ordinary people, more representative of their neighbors, to run for Congress. They could stay in their districts and vote remotely, and we could tear down the capitol building.
It’s not pie-in-the-sky.
I believe anyone who wants to be in office shouldn’t be allowed.
I like WFB’s concept of throwing darts at the phonebook.
It’s called the House of Representatives or State Assembly (in some states). So if the chamber that’s supposed to represent the people, isn’t, what makes anyone think a “third, ramdomly-selected house” will do any better?
1. A legislature is not a jury.
2. Jurors are not ultimately “randomly selected”. The only random selection is the jury pool.
3. The “special interests” of the two sides of lawyers in a trial, with prejudice and bias toward the case outcome, vet the final jurors chosen to serve. Like a legislature, those opposing “special interests” chose the jury and have some influence on the case outcome.
A way this might work is that everyone (eligible voters) selected for this, like jury duty, would not *create* laws, but only have the authority to *veto* new laws.
Only those who wanted to *veto* would vote. Not wanting to veto meant for them to do nothing. There might be special significance for a absolute majority (2/3rds) veto over a simple majority.
Only if the new house members were armed.
And while we're at it, let's repeal the 17th to fix the Senate.
<>A partial solution to this problem is to add a new house to each state legislature, whose members would be randomly selected from the public at large...<>
Nah. Start with return to the Framers’ Congress. For starters, repeal the 17th Amendment.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.