Leading questions:
Representative vs Direct Democracy?
Unitary or Federal?
Presidential or Parliamentary?
How much separations of powers should there be? In presidential systems, such as the United States of America, there is often deadlock between the executive and legislature. In parliamentary systems, the head of government is elected by legislature, therefore, there is practically no deadlock as long as theres is majority support of the executive in the legislature (although, there can still be courts to determine constitutionality of policiss). Would you prefer more checks and balances, but can also result in more deadlock, or a government more easily able to enact policies, for better or for worse?
Electoral method? FPTP? Two-Round? Ranked-Choice/Single-Transferable Vote? What about legislature? Should there be local districts? Single or Multi member districts? Proportional-representation based on votes for a party? If so, how should the party-lists be determined?
Should anti-democratic parties be banned? Or should all parties be allowed to compete in elections, regardless of ideology? In Germany, they practice what’s called “Defensive Democracy” which bans any political parties (and their successors) that are anti-democratic. Some of banned political parties include the nazi party.
How easy or difficult should the constitution br allowed to be changed? Majority support or some type of supermajority support?
Should we really elect officials, or randomly select them via sortition?
These are just some topics to think about, you don’t have to answer all of them.
Edit: Clarified some things
Dunno if there’s a more elegant term, but fractal representative.
Each person is part of a neighborhood, first level council of appx. 100 citizens, like an apartment building or suburban block, which elects a representative from among them.
That representative must personally know every member of their neighborhood, and participate in a second level council of appx. 100 such neighborhood representatives (representing a total population of appx. 10,000).
That council elects a representative from among them to represent them in a higher third level council of appx. 100 second level council representatives (representing a total population of appx. 1 million).
Repeat as necessary.
The principle here is that each citizen can petition their 1st level rep., whom they know personally, to petition their 2nd level rep., whom the 1st level rep knows personally, to petition the 3rd level rep., whom the second level rep knows personally, etc. This provides an explicit chain of personal accountability between each individual and the highest authority.
I believe a lot of the issues in our present representative democracy models originate in abstract representation of millions of people, to whom one representative is neither morally nor functionally beholden. Campaigns are based on hollow promises and marketing slogans that most voters don’t scrutinize. Additionally, local issues are decided at levels too high and separated to understand them.
In the US, this would look like a hierarchy of roughly: block/neighborhood -> borough/town -> city/county -> state -> nation.
So me and my neighbors confederate, voting on our immediate issues, including the election of Neil as our neighborhood rep. He knows us all and listens to our needs and concerns. He and the reps of the 100 closest neighborhoods confederate, discuss the issues of their constituents, and vote on issues common to all of them, including the election of Bertie to represent them on the city level. Bertie then listens to Neil and the other neighborhood reps to advocate their interests, including the election of Cathy to represent the city/county, which continues to the election of Steven to represent the state, and Nathan to represent the nation.
When I have a concern about the nation, I tell Neil, who advocates for the whole neighborhood when he talks to Bertie. Bertie now hears the combined concerns of all the neighborhoods, which she communicates to Cathy. Cathy hears the combined concerns of all the boroughs, which she communicates to Steven. Steven communicates the combined concerns of all the counties to Nathan. Every stage has a face. Each representative is accountable to, and personally familiar with, every consistent they represent. Votes bubble upwards, ivory towers are avoided, every citizen has a direct chain of 5 people, with personal familiarity, linking them to the president.
I like this concept. Do you have thoughts on how you would address gerrymandering? One reason I like proportional representation is it addresses that challenge, but wouldn’t have the same intimacy in the concept you’re describing.
I could also see challenges with too many steps meaning that officials in the upper tier of representatives don’t actually know the tier below them and so may not have that sense of interpersonal obligation.
The crux of the system is interpersonal obligation with your peers and constituents, mandatory regular meetings at each level would help. Every representative is required to hold a town hall style meeting with those they represent, and required to attend the town hall style meeting of their representative. The meetings should be scheduled such that upper level meetings always happen after lower level meetings, with sufficient time between for significant issues requiring escalation to be formally drafted before presentation to the next higher council.
As to gerrymandering, I’d suppose higher federations would emerge around logistic necessities (utilities, public transport routes, industrial sectors, etc.). Additionally, I’d propose that federation (e.g. which neighborhoods compose a borough) be decided from below by the constituents via some form of RCV, rather than dictated from above by some committee.
Well that’s the challenge, is that in order to have a vote on what the district lines are, you’ve already chosen a group of voters eligible for the election, so you’ve drawn a district. (Unless we’re having the entire country or entire state vote on districts) I also think district boundaries are exactly the sort of thing that voters aren’t inclined to research or show up to vote for, even though it makes a huge difference in election outcomes. For that reason I like STV/proportional voting for legislative bodies.
Effectively, yeah, initially via some form of iterative ranked/approval/runoff system.
Citizens are given a map of the residences surrounding their own, and asked to select a ranked list of addresses forming a continuous and compact neighborhood of over 150 people. Residences share a building or utility connection, like duplexes, walled subdivisions, and apartments, are automatically joined. Large apartment buildings and other similar automatic groupings over 150 people are subdivided by similar vote into sections of no less than 75 people. I imagine this done by some graphic applet.
These rankings are then used to generate neighborhood districts of 75-150 people based on maximum consensus, perhaps with the inclusion of a final approval vote. The citizens then get a list of all the voting age members of their neighborhood, from which they select a ranked list of nominees for representative, as well as a list of time slots at public buildings, from which they select a ranked list of meeting times/locations. This establishes the base for at least the first meeting.
At this point, things progress like most representative democracies: constituents proposes an action, the representative forwards a formal proposition at the next meeting, which is voted on. These can either be purely local, or proposals to be presented at the next higher council. This includes the drawing of borough districts, which is similar to the process of drawing neighborhood districts except that the proposed borough map must be presented before, and voted on by, the neighborhood as a whole.
Steps 2 and 3 are repeated at the borough, county, and state levels, continuously balancing to approach equal representation (e.g. a borough composed primarily of small 80 person neighborhoods would have 125 representatives, whereas a borough composed primarily of large 140 person neighborhoods might have only 72 representatives). This will lead to some variance in “power” of each small-scale representative, but it should even out by the mid-scale.
The initial process is very involved, but once the framework is in place, redistricting, when necessary, becomes simpler. Ideally, this leads to districts which emerge naturally by neighborly consensus, rather than dictated by narrow points of failure. By being so distributed, it’s also much more difficult for a small number of people to wrest control of a large area.
Additionally, this is not to say that sub-districts of any given district can’t caucus together for issues in between the district and super-district level (e.g.
I’ve got to say, having been involved in campaigns to end gerrymandering, there is a subset of people who can be bothered to learn/care about how it works, and many others who don’t. Your process sounds even more complex and time consuming, and I don’t see it being effective because the general public won’t be invested in it. Like voting for traffic court judges but even more confusing.
More importantly I also think you’re underestimating the complexity of reconciling hundreds of thousands of neighborhoods per state, each a ranked choice list of different variants. One person will pick a boundary, and then some other person will pick a boundary that conflicts with it, multiply that by a dozen million and then what, some algorithm will decide which lines are correct? And then the resulting districts still won’t have an equal number of constituents? That violates the one person one vote principle, which is part of the issue with gerrymandering and the electoral college.
My goal here was to make that irrelevant. Districts emerge naturally rather than being researched and drawn. Yes there’s complexity, but not in the surface. On surface it’s just a paint-by-numbers of the area around your house.
Pretty much. Optimization algorithms are powerful. By ranking addresses like a topographical map rather than just drawing homogenous districts, you automatically have the data needed to refine the resulting districts. The whole system basically amounts to a matrix of weighted preferences, which is the one main thing current “AI” is actually good at resolving.
They already aren’t. Like I said, some neighborhoods will be bigger than others, so some boroughs will have more neighborhoods than others, by the time you get to the county level every district should be almost exactly the same. At the neighborhood level, equal sizes is less important than geographic relevance. By the scale that equal representation matters, you have it.
I can’t claim the system is perfect, but it’s hard to imagine a better one. Every model has limitations.
Nah. This is inherently flawed, because much like the present system, an intercept can be inserted at any point in the hierarchy to favour the rich and mighty.
Every system is inherently flawed. Unlike the present system, that intercept is subject to the familiarity and constant scrutiny of their peers and immediate constituency.
I don’t share your idealism, friend, but I admire you for it.
Like I said, every system is vulnerable to exploitation. I tried to advocate a system that minimizes opportunities for corruption; perfect is the enemy of good enough. If you know a less corruptible model, I’m happy to listen.
As the large-scale ellection campaigns are based on “hollow promises and marketing”, so would be your proposal prone to ?psychopats? who are able to act like ‘good guy’ and then do evil.
And if I had to accept your system, I would propose to elect more then one representant to the next level, becouse giving my power in hands of one person is really scary.
And another practical problem: let’s say sb. would be member of the Earth council, but also member of country, lander, regional, town and neighborhood councils. How would they be able to be active on all these levels? (Including also traveling problems, becouse I don’t really believe in usefullness of on-line meetings.)
I think your first point is just a reality for any representative model. The best this model does is introduce more direct accountability at each level.
To your second point, I suggest drafts that trickle down, and votes that trickle up. I’d recommend formal proposals to be voted on for most issues, and transparent records to review at subsequent meetings for the rest. Representatives should be largely a formality when it comes to voting, like EC electors. Their main independent function would be debating issues and summarizing those debates for their constituents.
As to your third point, it’s an interesting consideration. On the one hand, I would suggest a special election for the lower district to replace them. Perhaps even make the runner up a vice-representative to help conduct meetings and seamlessly step in in the case of the reps election to a higher district. On the other hand, I like the idea of even the highest representative maintaining some connection with every level of democracy, to keep them grounded. Certainly higher offices would require more clerical staff. I will give it some consideration.