The Worst People Run for Office. It's Time for a Better Way.
This is the headline on a Guest Essay in the OPINION section of yesterday's New York Times.
Written by Dr. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, the piece suggests eliminating elections in favor of a "lottery" system.
---------------- [excerpt] --------------- 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?
People expect leaders chosen at random to be less effective than those picked systematically [by election]. But in multiple experiments led by the psychologist Alexander Haslam, the opposite held true. Groups actually made smarter decisions when leaders were chosen at random than when they were elected by a group or chosen based on leadership skill.
Why were randomly chosen leaders more effective? They led more democratically. "Systematically selected leaders can undermine group goals," Dr. Haslam and his colleagues suggest, because they have a tendency to "assert their personal superiority." When you're anointed by the group, it can quickly go to your head: I'm the chosen one.
When you know you're picked at random, you don't experience enough power to be corrupted by it. Instead, you feel a heightened sense of responsibility: I did nothing to earn this, so I need to make sure I represent the group well. And in one of the Haslam experiments, when a leader was picked at random, members were more likely to stand by the group's decisions.
Over the past year I've floated the idea of sortition with a number of current members of Congress. Their immediate concern is ability: How do we make sure that citizens chosen randomly are capable of governing?
In ancient Athens, people had a choice about whether to participate in the lottery. They also had to pass an examination of their capacity to exercise public rights and duties. In America, imagine that anyone who wants to enter the pool has to pass a civics test -- the same standard as immigrants applyling for citizenship. We might wind up with leaders who understand the Constitution.
A lottery would also improve our odds of avoiding the worst candidates in the first place....The people most drawn to power are usually the least fit to handle it. --------------------- [end / excerpt]
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reader comments
~ David Gage
Grand Haven, Michigan
Representative government is silly. It may have made sense a couple of hundred years ago but does not today. We do have the technology to create a real democracy (Read the book: True Freedom - The Road to the First Real Democracy) where, when the taxation system is fixed, the voters take total control of their government and when that happens you actually have a real democracy which is under the control of the taxpayers and not the wealthy few.
~ Vermont
The simple truth behind this idea is that anyone who really wants to be president should be disqualified.
It's a terrible job that opens you to criticisms from all sides, the hours are terrible, and the pay is low (considering the size of the federal government and the not-insignificant risk of assassination).
At the same time, a simple lottery would be as likely to select someone ill-suited for the position.
Better to have real reform of the political parties and stop treating politics as a different form of team sports.
~ elbe
bay area
We don't need Randomocracy in a country where 33% of the populace has been brainwashed by rightwing extremist media into an absolute rejection of reality. Far too dangerous. We need to abolish Citizens United and the Electoral College, and implement ranked choice voting in every election nationwide.
If the candidates who won the popular vote in all the presidential elections since 2000 had taken office, our nation would be in almost unrecognizably better shape. Instead we have plutocracy and tyranny of an insane minority.
~ Erik
Maine
Reading through the reflexively dismissive comments on this excellent case for random selection of our leaders from among ourselves, it's quite clear: Americans do not believe in democracy. What cynics our corrupt system makes of us!
Some of the top objections I've seen: It's not serious. It's impossible. Presidents need constituencies and coalitions.
We're conditioned to believe we can't have what we need. Ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome? We are conditioned not to trust each other's wisdom by our exceptionally partisan system which makes disingenuous political hacks of all of us who vote.
The non-voters are alienated by the toxicity of the spectacle and like the voters whose candidates lose, they are not represented. No wonder we don't believe in "democracy"!
Before rejecting the idea of a randomly selected NON-PARTISAN legislature (and judiciary and executive) it's important to try to understand how this alternative works as a solution to the built-in corruptions of our current system--money, power, careerism, polarization, uninformed partisan governance.
The strengths of sortition -- scientifically fair representation of all demographics, the elimination of the corruption of campaigning, the primacy of duty to being selected to serve, informed debate -- all make sortition imperative to consider as an alternative to our present system.
~ BoulderEagle
Boulder, Colorado
It's pretty simple: get the money out of politics and pay politicians better (and also make them subject to their own decisions, e.g., if they shut down the government they don't get paid). Where national politics are concerned, shorten the length of the campaigns and forbid negative advertising. That's at least a start.
~ Tim in PS
Palm Springs
I'd settle for what Australia has been doing: compulsory voting (over 90% vote!), an independent, nonpartisan commission to oversee the process, including district making (no gerrymandering!), and rank choice voting (every vote counts). And they vote on a Saturday with cookouts (democracy sausages!). If we had any of that, we could begin to chip away at our profoundly unfair and dysfunctional, yet constitutional system: the electoral college, the senate, and citizens united.
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