Voting doesn't work as well when there's billions of dollars being spent to influence the votes to make billionaires richer, while the working class that could vote against it is too busy working 3 part time jobs just to survive.

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mothballed 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is why I'm in favor of sortition instead of voting.

The majority of random people don't have combination of desire, corruption, sophistication, and political experience to pull off this kind of bribery.

Virtually every elected politician does.

~Everything about the election process selects for the worst kinds of people.

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jacquesm 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There is a lot of truth in this but I'm not convinced sortition is going to work either.

But what you could do is vote with a string attached and a penalty for being recalled that is going to make people think twice about running for office if their aim is to pull some kind of stunt. The 'you give me four years unconditionally' thing doesn't seem to work at all.

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Teever 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I've been mulling over a system where there's a legislative body composed of citizens picked through sortition and another legislative body that's elected like normal legislative bodies of today.

The twist on that body however is that voting is mandatory and ballots have a non of the above option on them. If a super majority (say 60-75%) vote none of the above the election is a do-over with all the people on the ballot being uneligable to run for that seat for say 5-10 years.

	▲	autoexec 34 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I like the idea, but I worry about choosing random members of the public when so many people are unprepared for it. Any kind of government made up of "the people" requires that those people be literate, educated, and informed. With things the way they are today I'd worry that your secondary elected legislative body would end up doing everything and you'd either end up with a figurehead who'd be out of their depth and ineffectual or one being used/manipulated. I could also envision an endless cycle of elections with 75%+ of the population voting "none of the above" because of issues like "Not my personal favorite candidate" or "eats the wrong mustard" or "I hate the idea of government"
	▲	jacquesm 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nice one, that might actually work. But it will be hard to explain to the electorate.

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kakacik 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nah thats a cheap excuse. Amorality of current gov was out there in plain sight, even before 2016 and definitely after. It was extremely hard for common folks to avoid it, some active acting would be required.

Then it boils down to morals, how flexible people are with them - this is weakness of character. Ability to ignore malevolent behavior if it suits me is more a ballpark of amoral sociopaths than good-hearted guy who simply doesn't have 2 hours a day to ponder philosophies of modern politics and regional historical details half around the globe. No amount of ads (which are so far trivial to avoid with reasonable lifestyle) change what a moral person considers moral.

And it couldn't have been easier this time, its not some left vs right view on things, just simple morality - lying, cheating, stealing, potential pedophilia, not hard to say of one is OK with that or not.

Sure I could eat a salad for 5$, but no I'll get a crappy burger for same amount because I like salty greasy stuff. Gee doctor why do I have bad heart, how could have I known? Must have been those evil mega corporations and their genius marketing.

	▲	psadauskas 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The amorality was not in plain sight, if your only source of news is Fox News or Breitbart or Twitter.