I think it's time we defined democracy anew. The current form utilized in these United States and most parts of the world is a model drawn on the landed aristocracy of the early American Colonies, and the British experience with landed gentry. Ladies and gentlemen, times have changed.
The Current State of Affairs
The current system has some serious drawbacks. To enumerate a few:
Elected officials, pejoratively labeled as politicians, spend an inordinate amount of time and money and energy trying to get elected and stay elected, so that they can accomplish something. Running for a congressional seat every two years is tremendously distracting from the job at hand.
The popular vote is popular, but it is not very well informed. Most people have very little time and energy for government and politics. The net is some horrendous results of popular elections. In my own town, we had a candidate come within 16 votes of a city council seat, although she had moved out of the city and ceased being a legal candidate several months before the election. She was on the ballot, and she had an obviously female name in a crowd of male candidates. No one with any idea of the issues and candidates would possibly have voted for her -- yet half of the electorate did. People vote at the polls based on names -- a scary idea at best.
Another candidate at the state level won her party's primary for attorney general, although she was not an attorney and completely unqualified for the position. Her own party disowned her candidacy. At the state level, she garnered over 30% of the vote based on a female, Scandinavian sounding name!
We have had elected officials in major state offices, that were not well mentally. They sounded OK for a few minutes of door to door conversation, but any prolonged discussion with them always went off into never / never land. Anyone that met them, or read any serious commentary about them would have known in five minutes that you could barely trust them to find their way home, let alone run state government.
Sound bytes and simple slogans are what sell. We have not had a simple issue in government since the revolution. When I was running for local office, people would regularly want a 30 second description of my position on a controversial topic -- they were never happy when I said it was not quite that simple! This is not the way to get elected.
Our major parties are at war -- not at government. In order to get elected, they characterize each other as the enemy, the forces of evil, the beast to be defeated. In fact, frequently they both have decent ideas that they should talk about and negotiate over. If they felt free to negotiate, to spend time to come up with a creative alternative that would solve our problems, we would be much better served. In place of creative thinking, we have warfare. They can't even talk lest it be seen as caving in. They can't express understanding and concern for the other view, lest they be seen as wishy-washy, waffling, not strong.
This is nonsense. We aren't asking them to arm wrestle over issues -- we're asking them to come up with some very creative answers to some very difficult questions. Today it is winner take all, and kill the loser. We all need to live here together, and we will never all agree. Let's move to something that's closer to similar instead of drawing everything as black and white.
We can probably list another 20 things broken with the system -- how on earth does one fix it?
What Can We Do?
First of all, there's no natural law of democracy. We made this up, it's trial and error, and we should try to improve it, not just put up with it. We, the people, are in charge of this system. Let's 'fess up that it is broken, and let's fix it.
While it is essential to democracy that the electorate know and feel that they have a say in their government, this participation does not have to be structured as it is now. Today most officials are directly elected by popular vote. We have abandoned this model for many of our courts, and for most of our professional government service staff. We recognize that we simply could not survive if those people were amateurs and subject to change every 2 years.
Why not move to an indirect democracy? We could lay down some simple principles, and try some pilots at city, county and state legislative levels and find a practical mix that works. Here are a few basics to my mind:
Executive Officers Directly Elected
Continue to elect the chief executive officer directly. The president, governor, and mayor would be enough for me. I don't think we need this at the county level. These people need to be leaders, charismatic, energetic, pace setters, etc.
Given most of our government structures, it's not too dangerous if we get a marginal person in here on occasion. The legislative branch can remove them, and they generally need cooperation from the legislative to make any significant change. But the leadership role is significant. They are our royalty, our rallying point, our spokesperson. I'd like to remove the partisan politics from this over time, but I don't see a good way to do that now. If we fix the legislative one, perhaps this will follow. Truly open primaries and rank choice voting would help a lot.
Legislative elected through Electoral Panels
For the legislative branch, adopt the following principles:
Maintain the basic structure of city council, county board, state legislature, U.S. Congress. I don't have an opinion about bicameral or not -- I tend to think that it is a waste of time and energy at the state level, but it offers some safeguards at the national level.
Establish intermediary bodies from the local neighborhood up to the congressional district whose sole purpose is to discuss, advise, and elect the people at the next level up. Make the groups such that people only vote for someone that they actually know. This implies that the electoral body for any given person has to be fairly small. I think 30 would certainly work -- I'm sure 500 would not. Membership is conferred by residence in the precinct. They should be able to regularly get together in a room and discuss things. I would like to see the elected official able to poll these groups on their opinion, and argue and discuss differences with them. This also implies that the elected person from any electoral body has to originally be from that body. I say originally, because we need to keep them insulated from lower layers -- see below.
We would have neighborhood precincts (a bit smaller than today, I think, but perhaps not), that would each elect one candidate for the next level electorate. Depending on the size of the city, these people would elect the council, or they would elect another body one level up in large cities. This might be a few levels in really large cities, but that's their problem. Most of us know our mayor on sight and can talk to that person if we want to. Let them divide the cities up if they're unworkable. In fact, at a small group size of 100, and a city of 1 million would have 10,000 primary groups or neighborhoods that would elect 100 "electors". For a city of 6 million, they would end up with 600 electors, and that would call for another, intermediate electoral body.
At the county level, the same groups that elect the city legislators elect another electoral panel or panels that name the county representatives. With primary groups sized at 100, up to 50 million voters can be represented by no more than 3 layers of "electors.0. Counties and cities are the worst problems, given their variable size.
A third group of electoral panels names the state legislators. A fourth group is responsible for the congressional district. These districts tend to be a standard size, and may continue to cut across cities and counties. This electoral panel is only one layer deep -- the neighborhoods and the electors, even for U.S. Congress.
It's possible for an elector to be named to more than one of these trees, but that may generate serious problems with participation at the next level up. I'd start these off disallowing participation in more than one. That would also allow up to 4 members of every group of 100 at the neighborhood level to serve on an electoral panel up one layer -- giving most people with an interest the ability to represent their neighborhood. In my experience, a normal precinct generates 25 active caucus participants in most election years!
When someone from an electoral panel is elected to go higher, they are replaced by a new election at their neighborhood. They are no longer their neighborhood's representative, but the representative of the electoral panel that named them.
Set normal terms at the 4 year level, staggered every year for different layers and the city, county, state, and U.S., so that only a quarter of an electoral panel could be replaced every year. That would keep some continuity and guarantee some independence.
Instead of term limits, authorize the electoral body for each person to be able to recall that person at any time by a formal recall vote of a very large majority of the group -- perhaps three fourths -- naming a replacement from their membership. This would keep each level responsible to their electoral body.
The actual elected legislator can only be recalled by the group that elected that person.
Potential Benefits
What might this accomplish? A number of hopeful things:
Regular political discussions or town meetings should flourish. Everyone would have an opportunity, probably once a month, to get together with the representative they elected to the panel or to the actual legislature to discuss issues, ideas, concerns.
Thoughtful decision-making is possible. The legislators could actually talk with their electoral panel. They might explore difficult issues, explain complex matters, ask for a show of hands or an e-mail vote from their constituents. I would be disappointed if they simply acted on the basis of that vote -- I would prefer that they use their good judgment and act independently of the group.
No election campaigns. If you regularly meet with 100 folks, or the 25 who show up, your major problem in getting elected at the grass roots level would be to generate interest in those who do not normally attend the meetings! This would be good, not bad, and you should be able to bear an expense like that with minimal fund raising.
Political parties might remain. They would still work for the executive branch, and they could rally people around ideas and movements -- but they would have no power to dictate candidates.
Elected officials might work together. They no longer need to play to the masses -- just to the 100 people that they meet with monthly. They might work with their "colleagues" to come up with truly creative ideas to resolve our differences, instead of waging war.
Copyright Carl Scheider, 1996