Should legislators be chosen by lottery?

[soonersfan]

It would be so awesome to have the guy living with his grandma playing video games legislate foreign policy for me. Or the cashier that can't count back change balancing the budget. We would be set.

Was this lottery already instituted without me knowing about it? Our currents state of affairs would make far more sense to me if that was the case.

 

[LightningCrash]

Can't be any worse than 2001-current.


and:

Dennis: I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week...
King Arthur: Yes...
Dennis: ...but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting...
King Arthur: Yes I see...
Dennis: ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs...
King Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: ...but by a two thirds majority in the case of...
King Arthur: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Woman: Order, eh? Who does he think he is?

 

[poopgiggle]

Was this lottery already instituted without me knowing about it? Our currents state of affairs would make far more sense to me if that was the case.

Seriously, the only difference between them and many current legislators is that the current ones:

1. are from wealthier families
2. are better looking
3. have more soulless ambition

 

[DORR]

Tough to compare the Athenian model when Athens had much more stringent requirements for citizenship. Athens was not putting everyone's name in the hat. No women, no foreign born or children of foreigners, at times there were property requirements and prohibition of indebted people.

The non-payment of legislators was also tried in the ancient world. Guess what? Only those who could afford to miss work served, that meant only the rich. The common people couldn't serve because it took food off the table. Who would make your car payments or mortgage if you were randomly selected to serve for a years worth of legislative sessions?

 

[Poke78]

This discussion reminds me of William F. Buckley's commentary: I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

 

[farmerbyron]

Yeah, like some kind of "literacy" test, right?

Damn right.

 

[tntrex]

It would be so awesome to have the guy living with his grandma playing video games legislate foreign policy for me. Or the cashier that can't count back change balancing the budget. We would be set.

What's wrong with people who live with their grandma?
Or being a cashier?

Not everyone gets a job from daddy.

 

[poopgiggle]

Damn right.

*sigh* I was baiting you. You just failed a civics test.

"Literacy tests" were one of the ways that blacks were disenfranchised in the South after the Civil War. It's one of the reasons we have the Fourteenth Amendment.

Preconditions on exercising the right to vote are too easy to use to disenfranchise people.

 

[farmerbyron]

What's wrong with people who live with their grandma?
Or being a cashier?

Not everyone gets a job from daddy.

Go borrow 3/4 of a mil and make a farming operation work before you assume anything about "daddy".

There is nothing wrong with being a cashier, it's the incompetent ones that I was referring to. But read it however you want to.

 

[farmerbyron]

*sigh* I was baiting you. You just failed a civics test.

"Literacy tests" were one of the ways that blacks were disenfranchised in the South after the Civil War. It's one of the reasons we have the Fourteenth Amendment.

Preconditions on exercising the right to vote are too easy to use to disenfranchise people.

I know about the original intent of literacy tests. In today's world, education is a right available to everyone which would largely negate the disenfranchisement of any certain group with a BASIC civics test.