* * * * *
Gordon W. Renneisen
As the U.S. is
exceedingly unlikely ever to adopt a system under which presidential elections
are determined by the votes of a representative sample of Americans, I read
your piece as a thought experiment. It is a good one, though.
I
agree that a properly designed representative-sample-voting (“RSV”) system
could yield results that reflect the preferences of a majority of the county
better than the current system. But even as a thought experiment, RSV
raises a number of questions that would need to be addressed before anyone –
including people like me who are predisposed to like the idea – could be
expected to support it. A few questions that spring immediately to mind
are noted below.
How is the representative sample to be selected? In designing any
survey in which a representative sample is to be questioned, and the opinions
of a larger population are to be determined by extrapolating from the sample’s
answers, reasonable experts can disagree regarding the proper design of the
sample – and small changes in the composition of the sample can have
significant effects on the results obtained. To avoid giving the party
controlling the White House (or the White House and Congress) the power to skew
the results of RSV by adjusting the selection of the sample, any law or
constitutional amendment adopting RSV would need to expressly dictate the exact
means to be used for selecting the sample. Reaching agreement on the
sample selection process would not be easy. Even if there was a consensus
that the RSV panel should be randomly selected from the census rolls, there
would be debates over how to weed out non-citizens and whether any adjustments
ever could be made if the initial sample selected was significantly
under-representative of any of the racial groups captured by the census
questionnaire.
How can the tension between having a representative sample and
having an informed panel be resolved? A truly representative sample would be
selected at the end of a traditional presidential campaign and then be
immediately polled. There would be no savings on campaign expenditures
and the RSV panel would have no more information than any other random slice of
the electorate on election day. Another approach, and the one your piece seems
to endorse, would be to select the RSV panel immediately after the Republicans
and the Democrats have nominated presidential candidates; skip traditional
presidential campaigns entirely; have the members of the RSV panel attend
hearings or forums at which the candidates would discuss their positions and
answer questions (the “Candidate Forums”); and defer polling the panel until
after the conclusion of the Forums. Under this approach, by the time the panel
voted, its members would have given a level of thought and study to the issues
that is not representative of the overall electorate. I can see the benefits of
either approach. But one or the other would need to be selected.
If there are going to be Candidate Forums, would third-party
candidates be allowed to participate and, if so, what criteria would a
third-party candidate have to meet to qualify? These are important
questions. But I am not trying to answer them today. Solely to
simplify an already complex raft of problems, I am assuming that the RSV panel
would be considering only Republican and Democratic candidates.
If the RSV panel will be attending Candidate Forums, what
logistical steps would be required to organize the Forums? And what
format would be used for those Forums? If, as you suggest, there would be
approximately 2,000 members of the RSV panel for each presidential election,
the logistics of getting them to Candidate Forums would be complex. Flying them
all over the country to attend different Forums in different cities would be a
logistical nightmare and immensely disruptive to the members of the RSV panel.
The obvious technological solution, giving the RSV panel the option of watching
televised Forums comparable to the debates conducted in the current system,
would be a suboptimal means of educating the panel. Many members of the
panel would not bother watching such Forums and the current debate format is
not a good way of conveying information about the candidates. My solution would
be something along the following lines.
- Each citizen randomly selected for
the RSV panel would have 24 hours to accept or decline appointment to the
panel.
- Alternates would be immediately
selected to replace those who opt out, and the alternates likewise would
have to quickly accept or decline appointment.
- The goal would be to have a full
and final panel list compiled within a week of the time the first 2,000
randomly-selected citizens are contacted.
- The government would then fly all
members of the panel to a pre-selected college campus. (Colleges and
universities would be eager to host the RSV process during the summer when
classes are not in session. All preparations for an election-year
RSV process could be completed well before the panel was selected.)
- The panel would be housed in dorms
and eat in the university dining halls for 7-10 days. (A tentative
schedule would allow members of the panel to check in between Friday
morning and Sunday afternoon, based on personal preferences and any
applicable religious constraints; run Forums and other programs
Monday-Friday; allow the candidates to campaign on campus on Saturday and
Sunday; have the candidates deliver sequential one-hour closing arguments
(with the order determined by coin flip) mid-day on Monday; have the panel
vote Monday afternoon/evening; and fly everyone home on Tuesday.)
- During the panel’s business week on
campus there would be three, major, “prime-time,” head-to-head Forums
featuring both candidates and designated questioners. (I will
leave it to others to come up with a precise format for the Forums, one
which hopefully improves upon the current debate formats.) In
addition, throughout the week each party would be free to put on
issue-specific seminars and other events.
- All events on campus would be
televised and/or broadcast on the internet but would not be open to the
public. Likewise, campus would be closed to the general
public.
- All members of the RSV panel would
be issued ID cards that, among other things, would allow them to swipe
into the university dining halls for free food. Each member of the
panel would be required to attend the three major Forums and the
candidate’s closing arguments. Attendance would be monitored by having the
panel members swipe in to these evets.
- Each member of the panel also will
be requires to submit a ballot. Protocols would be in place to
preserve ballot secrecy and to give panel members the option of submitting
blank ballots or votes for write in candidates.
- All members of the
panel who attended the four mandatory events and submitted ballots would
be paid for their service. This would be a true payment, not the
kind of token payment made for jury service. My recommendation would
be for a payment in the range of $2,000-$3,000.
What limitations can or should be put on media contact with the
RSV panel? I don’t know. But both a prohibition on all press
contact and a free-fire rule, which would allow the media to overrun campus or
surround the panel members in their homes, seem highly problematic.
How much campaigning or lobbying will be allowed after the
selection of the RSV panel? If my proposal for having the whole RSV process play out on
a university campus were adopted, every PAC, interest group, and lobbyist in
the country (collectively “Lobbyists”) would be clamoring for access. On
a practical level, everyone except for the panel and the two campaigns could be
kept off campus. But that would seem to violate the First
Amendment. Maybe there could be a set of rules that allowed Lobbyists on
campus but restricted them to a different set of dorms and dining halls and
limited them to hosting events. Thus, while the Lobbyists would be
precluded from approaching the panel members, the Lobbyists’ information would
be available if the panel members sought it out. The question then
becomes whether the types of events put on by the Lobbyists could be
regulated. Would they be limited to presenting informational seminars or
would bread and circuses be allowed? Could Earth Justice put on a campaign
rally for the Democrat featuring a concert by Bruce Springsteen? Could
the NRA host a dinner in support of the Republican featuring Wagyu steaks,
caviar, and 18-year-old Scotch Whiskey?
If
the RSV process plays out over a longer period of time, with multiple weeks or
months passing between the time the identities of the panel members become
known and the time that they vote, they would be subject to constant one-on-one
campaigning and lobbying – which would overwhelm and supplant the effect of
formal Candidate Forums. There would be no practical way of even partially
sequestering the members of the panel. They quickly would cease being a
representative sample and would become celebrity royalty. Lobbyists and
campaigns presumably could be precluded from giving the panel members anything
of value or wining and dining them. But what will it do to the RSV
process if panel members have their favorite actors or athletes showing up in
their living rooms to pitch them on one candidate or another?
If
you have thoughts on how to solve this problem or how to address the other
questions flagged above, I would love to hear them.
Mr. Renneisen and I had many of the same thoughts.
ReplyDeleteSetting aside the political impossibility of reaching this system in the first place by any democratic route, the biggest issue I see is the candidate forum notion.
ReplyDeleteClearly, even if the panel begins as representative of the general population, after it's been through these forums, it will have become radically unrepresentative. So, forget about this being genuinely representative government, it's only representative in an attenuated sense.
Now, it might be argued that this is good, they're unrepresentative in the sense of being better informed. And I *like* the idea of a better informed electorate.
But this isn't an electorate that's become better informed out of self-motivated research. It's an electorate that's become 'better informed' by exposure to carefully curated information. If only just due to lack of time, (You can't become fully informed on all issues in half a year, even if it's your sole occupation!) the information provided will be limited, according to somebody's idea of what is relevant.
The panel will become jurors, and in the proverbial mushroom sense: Kept in the dark and fed BS. Inevitably this will happen.
Let's be honest here for a moment. It won't just happen. It's the point of this whole exercise, isn't it? You can't curate the information the general public are exposed to, so you dream of reducing the electorate to a small enough group that you can control what they hear.
It's an electorate that's become 'better informed' by exposure to carefully curated information.
ReplyDeleteThe author of the comment is well geared to flag this issue.
Anyway, interesting. I'm not really impressed with the idea writ large as I noted last time. But, the concept (as one comment then noted in particular) might be useful in certain contexts. So, generally, I appreciate thinking about it.
I'd like to add that it would be an awful idea even if my side got to do the curating. Nobody is to be trusted with that sort of power.
ReplyDeleteYou can't curate the information the general public are exposed to, so you dream of reducing the electorate to a small enough group that you can control what they hear.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once said:
I don't think you have a hope of understanding people who disagree with you, so long as you're committed to a Manichean worldview in which everybody who disagrees with you does so from horrific motives.
Do you agree?
Remind me again which party was outraged by the Citizens United ruling preventing censorship in the name of "campaign regulation"? Which party defends deplatforming? Raves about "agnotology"?
ReplyDeleteIf the shoe fits, wear it. Only one side in America's political spectrum wants to silence its foes, and it isn't my side. It hasn't been for a long time.
Not being permitted to censor political speech was a big part of what caused Sandy to declare the Constitution "broken".
"Agnotology?" WTF?
ReplyDeleteOnly one side in America's political spectrum wants to silence its foes, and it isn't my side.
CU? Personally, I think CU would have been rightly decided had the court ruled narrowly in CU's favor. It is the expansion to all corporations that I think was both wrong and politically motivated.
"Deplatforming" is right-wing nut job paranoia.
Only one side in America's political spectrum wants to silence its foes, and it isn't my side.
Only one side in America's political spectrum wants to keep its foes from voting, and it isn't my side. If that doesn't count as "silencing," what does?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think the issue may be placing too small a group under too large a microscope.
ReplyDeleteWhat if the selection group is something like 10,000 people who take up residence in the dorms with up to 4 friends or family able to attend with them. Pay them whatever you want...we are not a poor country and this is an important election.
The identity of the actual selectors is secret, or at least they are given nothing to denote their special status so anyone on campus over the age of 18 can claim to be a selector to anyone who asks.
The actual 10,000 selectors all fill out a completely anonymous ballot. But some random process selects just 2,000 of the ballots to count.
Does that change any of the concerns about the courting by interest groups and the attention of the press? Let them all show up on campus. It starts to get very expensive to buy steaks for every single potential selector when they are mixed into a crowd.
Set reasonable limits on lobbyist, etc. events and even on what they can spend if you want so a billionaire doesn't foot the bill for all the steaks.
It would all be quite the party (and you may have to limit alcohol!) but in the end some good could come from it.
Even better than 10,000 for randomizing the process and avoiding things like bribery would be 150 million.
ReplyDeleteEven if this could be done, I think it's a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteIs that sample really going to learn enough about the issues during the week-long session to be significantly more knowledgeable than the average member of the electorate? I doubt it. I'll ask the law professors here how much understanding of Constitutional law, for example, the group might acquire, bearing in mind that it would be only one of a number of subjects discussed. Think of macroeconomics, tax policy, the various aspects of foreign policy, environmental issues, etc. In a week, with a group starting with a widely varying knowledge base?
Candidate forums? If they are anything like the televised "debates" we now have they will be useless recitations of rehearsed talking points, along with occasional attempts at clever gotchas.
Seminars put on by the parties? Will attendance be voluntary? If so, these will mostly be propaganda sessions, aimed at the already convinced. They sure won't be "seminars" in any meaningful sense.
In other words, I think the experience of the group would simply be a more intense version of what voters go through now - some tidbits of solid information and argument, mostly swallowed up by noise.
" I'll ask the law professors here how much understanding of Constitutional law, for example, the group might acquire, bearing in mind that it would be only one of a number of subjects discussed. Think of macroeconomics, tax policy, the various aspects of foreign policy, environmental issues, etc. In a week, with a group starting with a widely varying knowledge base?"
ReplyDeleteAnd then you get into the fact that there are disagreements over these things. You want them to understand constitutional law? From a living constitution or originalist perspective?
You want them to understand economics? Austrian, Keynesian, neo-Marxian?
You want them to understand foreign policy? Isolationist or interventionist?
What you teach them drives the conclusions they arrive at, and thus how they "vote". Obviously, trivially. What they're taught is the whole game.
Imagine the entire resources and emotion of a full Presidential campaign, focused down on the fight over what 2000 people get taught. With the stakes of winning being everything.
That's what this proposal entails.
Lessons learned.
ReplyDelete(1) What "agnotology" means.
(2) There actually is some things that people here as a whole agree is a bad idea.
(2) Well, of course there are. We just don't tend to discus them, because it's rare that anybody proposes something that's almost universally opposed.
ReplyDeleteGM repeatedly brings up things that people on both sides here tend to agree are off.
ReplyDelete"The panel will become jurors, and in the proverbial mushroom sense: Kept in the dark and fed BS."
ReplyDeleteThis is today's 'conservative,' someone who despises that idiosyncratic, historical bedrock of Anglo-American jurisprudence, the jury.
Today's 'conservatives' are Jacobins.
"Nobody is to be trusted with that sort of power. "
ReplyDeleteThis is the guy who approved of office holders using their office powers to selectively go after their political opponents*
*except for days later when he raged against that, though based in an absurd conspiracy theory
Not. Serious. Persons.
"Which party defends deplatforming?"
ReplyDeleteYou mean like calling for NFL players or ESPN commentators to be fired for their speech?
Which party leader talks about opening up libel laws and talks about challenging the FCC licenses of news outlets that they don't like?
This is one of the least self-aware persons in the universe.
The thought experiment is basically juries. Juries decide cases in which many powerful people have considerable interests. How do we protect the integrity of juries? That, I think, is the beginning of an answer to Sandy's thought experiment.
ReplyDeleteAgain, though, I think for me the biggest argument against this is: there are lots of groups who, as opposed to feverish conspiracy cranks like Bircher Brett, would have a reasonable even if irrational basis to object to this. That is, even if this were run by up and up folks like Sandy and designed by the best social scientists, groups like blacks, women, gays, Native Americans, etc., who have struggled so long and hard for basic democratic rights are going to be too prone, and reasonably so, to believe in large part 'in their gut' that this program which purports to speak for them will not. That's earned suspicion, and their loss of perceived legitimacy by this would be tragic.
Juries have a limited function that in an average case addresses the fate of one individual. And, then we have multiple safeguards in place including the appeals process. Not sure how that would apply in the thought experiment here.
ReplyDelete