We need to scrap elections and have lotteries to select officeholders.

[AnArmyVeteran]

Face it, virtually no one can get elected without prostituting themselves out to big business or the rich. The Citizens United case made it impossible to ever elect an honest, competent person who will represent the people. What we need is a lottery system that selects people at random, say from their social security numbers.

We could still keep in effect the age requirements for the house, senate and president. But that's it. Every city, every district and every state would have identical lottery systems. We could eliminate virtually all the whores in government overnight. Instead of corrupt thugs in business being able to be just walk into any elected official in government and demanding things, they would be completely shut out.

Even if prisoners were made eligible to be selected for office we would still end up with a vastly improved and more honest government. I'd like to wake up on 'Lottery Day' and discover I was a US senator, govenor or president. I have no doubt I could do a better job than almost everyone in congress or the executive branch. Representing people and solving problems isn't rocket science. But it's almost impossible for anyone in the current corrupt system to do what is right and represent the people they are supposed to represent.

And we could pass a law that stated if any officeholder was caught taking bribes they would get an automatic 25 years in prison. No more slaps on the wrist like 'censures' for committing crimes while serving in government. And we could also keep impeachment as a way of removing people from office. Look at the billions we'd save on elections and the trillions we would save by not having our pockets picked by corrupt mobsters in business.

Yeah, I know this idea is 'out there' (and written in jest) and would have a lot of constitutional hurdles to pass, but so what. We need a huge change in this country or it will soon be history. We currently have is a damned whoredom, not a democratic republic.

[XemaSab]

1. I've had a similar thought before

At least for the house of representatives, state senate and assembly, and city council. :(

[AnArmyVeteran]

4. Thank you 'Governor' or is it 'Senator' this year? :)

[thunder rising]

2. You're right. It's like the old Roman Senate ... you got drafted.

[somone]

3. A door knob would have been a better choice than some current officeholders

Door knobs are boring, but harmless.

[AnArmyVeteran]

6. We could include inanimate objects in the lottery pool, or even dead people.

You're right, it couldn't be worse.

[NNN0LHI]

Yea, I am going to get right on that

[AnArmyVeteran]

7. Welcome, glad to have you on board!

[Autumn]

5. My Son in Law and I were discussing that

the other day.We agreed that they should serve no more than a year. For a Republican he is pretty smart. We liked the idea. No campaigning.

[obxhead]

8. I think it wouldn't hurt to add the maximum yearly take home pay

of an eligible winner can not be above 100K. Better yet, only allow the unemployed and homeless to participate.

[AnArmyVeteran]

18. That would make it a jobs program too!

[notesdev]

9. Funny you should mention that

I just gots me a brand new Diebold Lotterizer! Call me "Senator".

[AnArmyVeteran]

14. Welcome Senator Notesdev! But you have to wait till January for health insurance!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. It's called Demarchy or Lottocracy or Sortition and has been tried.

And, it would be a helluva lot more democratic than the oligarchy now in place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy#Demarchy_in_history

Demarchy (or lottocracy) is a form of hypothetical government in which the state is governed by randomly selected decision makers who have been selected by sortition (lot) from a broadly inclusive pool of eligible citizens. These groups, sometimes termed "policy juries," "citizens' juries," or "consensus conferences," deliberately make decisions about public policies in much the same way that juries decide criminal cases.

Demarchy, in theory, would overcome some of the functional problems of conventional representative democracy, which is widely subject to manipulation by special interests and a division between professional policymakers (politicians and lobbyists) vs. a largely passive, uninvolved and often uninformed electorate. According to Australian philosopher John Burnheim, random selection of policymakers would make it easier for everyday citizens to meaningfully participate, and harder for special interests to corrupt the process.

More generally, random selection of decision makers from a larger group is known as sortition (from the Latin base for lottery). The Athenian democracy made much use of sortition, with nearly all government offices filled by lottery (of full citizens) rather than by election. Candidates were almost always male, Greek, educated citizens holding a minimum of wealth and status.

In the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario, a group of citizens was randomly selected to create a Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform to investigate and recommend changes to the provinces' electoral systems. The Old Order Amish use a combination of election and sortition to select church leaders; men receiving two or three nominations to fill a vacancy (the number varies by district) are then asked to select a psalm book containing a slip of paper, one of those slips being marked to indicate who will take on the burden of the position.

[AnArmyVeteran]

15. Wow, thanks for that great information!

[handmade34]

11. my partner has been suggesting that for years

I'm in...

[Raine]

12. Really ... I don't think we could do any worse. nt

[stray cat]

13. Joe the plumber becomes president

[AnArmyVeteran]

17. Yeah true, but we did have bushy boy.

[Pholus]

19. 1 in 300 million, tops. And Fox News' money can't help.

At this point the odds are looking pretty good.

[NaturalHigh]

16. We could do worse...

you know, like we normally do whenever there is an election.

[SoCalDem]

20. Publisher's Clearinghouse

" Congratulations, You may already be a senator".. Send it IN!

[AnArmyVeteran]

21. I like that! Too bad Ed McMahon can no longer be part of the 'prize patrol'.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Iggo]

23. Kill all the lobbyists and you've got yourself a deal there, young man.

EDIT: Well, don't kill 'em, of course. But you know what I mean.

[keith_sutherland]

24. Sortition and Public Policy

The interesting thing is that all of us think that we've come up with this idea due to our sheer intellectual brilliance, only to discover that we're reinventing a very worn wheel. This is quite reassuring, because it shows that the idea of sortition (random selection for political office) is a natural concept. Regarding some of the extensive literature on the topic see http://imprint-academic.com/pp