Posted on 08/22/2023 8:53:35 AM PDT by Tench_Coxe
On the eve of the first debate of the 2024 presidential race, trust in government is rivaling historic lows. Officials have been working hard to safeguard elections and assure citizens of their integrity. But if we want public office to have integrity, we might be better off eliminating elections altogether.
If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?
(Excerpt) Read more at dnyuz.com ...
One big flaw sits at the heart of the author's article: who chooses the pool from which to draw?
After all, it works so well in DC and NYC for juries (re: Donald Trump)....
The problem the 'elites' really have is people's self determination. If only 'those people' were out of the way....
Garbage!
We have proven that any idiot can vote. Good thing we live in a representative republic that has an electoral college.
The issue is not “democracy” - never was, is not now, nor never will be.
The issue is our FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC created by the U.S. Constitution which is maybe the greatest political and legal document ever created and which despite the ongoing Leftist insurrection, is the Supreme Law of the Land (US Const., Art. VI, Cl. 2).
Al Gore’s pal Lawrence Tribe argues it can and must be done. For his part, Dershowitz (who was part of Bush vs Gore) has ridiculed the Georgia case and says keeping Trump off the ballot is unconstitutional. He says they also planned alternative slates of electors but the SCOTUS decision mooted that.
Newsom is asking the legislature to keep Trump off the ballot in California. Why would Trump be able to win in the People’s Republic of California?
Documents case is the toughest case for Trump.
America has been “Selecting vs Electing” for decades. Very few offices have fair elections ……
When Rush first started to predict that they were going to just stop the idea of voting I thought that would be one of the predictions that wouldn’t happen. I guess he saw something way back when. They haven’t made it official but O now see a very reasonably path to that end.
I am working on an opinion article about what “Our Democracy” means - but since I may never finish it, the TL;DR is: “our democracy” means a pointless struggle between two groups, both hostile to the majority in this country, designed to make sure voters never achieve self-government and to make sure no truly popular political movement ever emerges.
Rush was right again. I remember his predictions that the dims wouldn’t campaign and win anyway. They don’t want to deal with those pesky elections and deal with people out in fly over country.
Winning doesn't matter. What matters is that Trump got 4.5 million votes in California in 2016, and keeping his popular vote total down in 2024 is important to Democrats, for various reasons.
The idea of political offices being filled by random selection has been suggested before. Aside from the question of who sets the qualifications for the candidate pool, an even greater problem is who actually would be running things. It would be the unelected advisers, bureaucrats, “experts”, etc., far more than even the shadow government that we have today. No, thanks.
“Good thing we live in a representative republic that has an electoral college.”
I can riddle that with two states and their voting history, New York and California.
wy69
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U.S. Senators weren’t elected in every state until the 20th century.
In the 1792 presidential election, only 6 of the 15 states selected their presidential electors through a popular vote. For the other 9 states, the electors were appointed by the state legislatures or governors.
The founders of this nation wouldn’t have bothered fighting for their independence if they knew they’d end up with a government where every mouth-breathing moron could vote.
If you take both of those states with a popular election, they will almost always determine the outcome of an election regardless of what voters the other states decide.
Yes, of course I know that and agree - but every time someone says "our democracy", they are specifically talking about schemes to limit the franchise by limiting choices to "approved" parties which are committed to choosing only "approved" candidates - and I know you know that.
An electoral college that can’t be certified with integrity by corrupt politicians.
Is the headline channeling jonah goldberg?
“If you take both of those states with a popular election, they will almost always determine the outcome of an election regardless of what voters the other states decide.”
You aren’t far from wrong. The election is not decided by the popular vote. It is decided by an assignment of electors in their electoral college in different ways for their outcome. The feds have very little to do with the election itself, just to verify the outcome. When congress receives the information from the states for January 6, they don’t count the popular vote, just the electors. And there is no consistent assignment of electors in each state. Some go with the percentages by having an amount for each party’s general votes. Some give all their electors away to the winning party whether by one vote or one million. Others like Nebraska and Maine don’t give them to one candidate or break them down. There is no consistency.
So if the two candidates are even one vote apart, only one gets the state’s electoral votes. I see a problem with that as it makes it too easy to have mistakes or intentional changes and disenfranchise half the state. This is why the 2020 was being contested. And no one would ask the question if it could have been done and to look at it. When they looked, they found screwups all over the place that could have changed the outcome. But we’ll never know will we? If you can’t find the facts by not allowing the investigation, then is it worth the money and time to elected a leader. This is what we left in England from kings and queens. The colonies recognized that in the early 1770’s.
wy69
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