Random Election

I like to think I’m entitled to entertain one completely irrational thought each day.

What if, instead of electing politicians, we used a random lottery to draft ordinary citizens to serve in every elected office?

It would be just like jury service. The letter would arrive in the mail, you’d be summoned to the Capitol on January 2 to serve as Senator or President or whatever, no excuses accepted. If you threw out the summons hoping that meant you didn’t have to show up, the next day the Marshals would be knocking on your door to tell you otherwise.

You’d have to serve a one year term. And once chosen, you could never be chosen again. After your one year term, your political career would be over forever.

They’d pay your travel expenses, put you up in a room in D.C., and match whatever you earned the year before. This way the job wouldn’t be an economic burden or a bonus. Your employer would have to keep your job open for your return.

The bribery laws would, for once, be strictly enforced. Any attempt by anyone to give you any money, take you on any junkets or pay your idiot brother-in-law $40 an hour to count pigeons would be punished with the stiffest sentences, them for offering, you for accepting. As with statutory rape, it’d be strict liability, no defenses.

You wouldn’t be running for anything, so you wouldn’t waste any time campaigning or fundraising. All your working time could be spent doing the job you were randomly selected to do.

Political parties could still exist, but with no funds to divvy and no elections to organize and no constituents to court and no districts to gerrymander, all they’d have left to offer is their ideas. They’re doomed.

You’re thinking there’s no way this could work, ordinary citizens don’t have the necessary training to serve as Senators or Presidents or whatever. Since when has that stopped anyone from running for office? Or winning?

But random lotteries would inevitably select some idiots. Evil people too, people with drinking problems, even people with bad teeth. How can we allow that to happen?

Haven’t we already allowed that to happen? Sure, our electoral system manages to weed out those with bad teeth, but does anyone think it’s done anything to weed out evil drunken idiots?

If anything, our electoral system is designed to attract these people. People who want to rule other people are usually not the nicest people. They’re often deformed, deranged and defective people.

People who crave this power, who are willing to shake the many thousands of hands and spend the many millions of dollars it takes to win, are, by definition, the most mega-megalomaniac of them all. The most deformed, deranged and defective. And often the most richest.

So under the current system, we pretty much cede the field to a tiny but particularly virulent segment of our population. Under the lottery system, we’ll instead get a random, but representative, sample of our entire population. Us that is, a group that’ll surely include some evil drunken idiotic megalomaniacs, maybe even some with bad teeth, but will also include plenty of the meek, the selfish, the rich, the poor, the mild, the thoughtful, the nice, the assholes, the diligent, the lazy, the reliable, the schlubs, the ditsy and the wasted. All types.

In other words, it’ll really put the representation back into representative democracy. Our randomly-selected representatives won’t have to answer to the people, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem because they’ll be the people.

With a bunch of newbies cycling through the offices each year, perhaps the bureaucrats would take over. Then again, perhaps they already have.

I can see you shaking your head by now, wondering when I cracked, my mind is a horrible thing to waste and all that, but I have to say I’m having a hard time coming up with anything better. There’s always apathy, I suppose, but that’s just passive acquiescence, and the thought of accepting the same old shit every November for the rest of my life is simply too depressing. There’s libertarianism, but my problem isn’t with government, it’s with those who govern. And even with a cracked mind I can still see libertarianism for the dream it is and the nightmare it would be.

So all I’m left with is the lottery idea.

And maybe I’m still entitled to a completely irrational thought today.