[eru]

> Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me.

Voters can take these things into consideration when casting their ballots. No need to make these choices for them.

[kelnos]

I think recent events in the US make it quite clear that voters don't really consider the things that actually matter when electing a president.

[Lanolderen]

Choose your evil:

Elect a dynasty to rule forever

Limit voting rights of group X,Y and Z to get "better" votes

Remain with the rule of the majority system

Elect ChatGPT to rule forever with a "be nice pls" prompt

[eru]

Well, you could at least move to Approval voting instead of first past the post.

Or you could try sortition, which you haven't even considered at all.

[Lanolderen]

The dream is probably dynamic voting through some login system where it's not done every X years but whenever you decide to change your vote maybe using ATMs as physical voting terminals for accessibility. Then voters can change their mind at any time and cause a change in leadership should the vote not be corrected over Y time. Then on top of that you can add multiple parties, individual person voting, etc. It probably won't happen in my lifetime since governments aren't built to be flexible\agile but one can dream.

[dylan604]

Good gawd that's a nightmare system. Election by mood based polling.

So if a person's poll numbers drop below some threshold, they are automatically recalled? Do you then set a minimum amount of time to keep the polling below that threshold. 0s? 24hrs? 1 week? You've now also limited the number of eligible voters to those with cards that work in ATMs, so people with some form of wealth which is probably in line with how the framers intended

[Lanolderen]

The ATM bit is just because we already have a system of safe terminals all over every country that are used to deal with personal data on the daily. It doesn't have to use a bank card per se. The idea is just to provide options outside of PC/phone login though even grandma has an Android nowadays.

The solution to the mood based polling is the "should the vote not be corrected over Y time". Y can be determined depending on what gov can handle but is it really mood voting if you get voted in, a year later you've not been in the lead position for over Y time (say 3 months) and you get replaced by the new favorite?

[eru]

> You've now also limited the number of eligible voters to those with cards that work in ATMs, so people with some form of wealth which is probably in line with how the framers intended

Calling them ATM cards was probably just a short cut in describing how the system would work. Not a suggestion to connect with the banking system.

In any case, it might actually be an interesting idea to perhaps give everyone a base vote for free and then let them have some bonus votes in proportion to actual net taxes paid. Gotta give those billionaires an incentive to not dodge their taxes so hard after all.

> So if a person's poll numbers drop below some threshold, they are automatically recalled?

That's a relatively simple flaw to fix, if you'd actually want to fix it. You already made some suggestions, and there are other ways.

In general, I would suggest trying these kinds of innovations out more locally before you go for the federal government.

That could either be in states or counties, or even for running local clubs and cooperatives and companies.

There's some standard ways for shareholders to vote on the board of directors etc. But it's relatively easy for willing companies (especially new startups) to experiment with alternative forms of governance.

[eru]

That's a nice dream. Let me shatter it: what you suggest might make policy reflect public opinion better, yes. But alas, public opinion is crazy and we can be lucky that policy by and large isn't quite as crazy.

Have a look at Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter" for more background.

[Lanolderen]

But now you have a system where the general public still decides who leads the caravan but a potential leader can straight up lie about what they're gonna do and it'll be a pain to replace them before their term is over.

To fix that you need either unequal votes or to remove the voting rights of those with incorrect opinions and understandings. Maybe education but then you'd have to make reeducation camps for those of incorrect opinions and understandings since educating the entire populace will mostly just move the average bar higher.

I'm not talking about doing referendums on every single issue direct democracy style and I am aware that to correctly implement something like this you'd need to do it gradually so that the populace has time to adjust to their increased political power which will hopefully increase their interest in politics in general.

[ClayShentrup]

i co-founded the center for election science, which promotes approval voting.

my alternative proposal to simple sortition is election by jury. https://www.electionbyjury.org/

[eru]

That's interesting!

Though I would just directly fill up parliament with a few hundred MPs picked at random from among volunteers.

Parliament can then make laws and pick leaders for the executive (like in Germany or the UK).

As a slight complication, I would allow people to pre-declare proxies that would sit in parliament for them. Proxy declaration season would be akin to traditional election season.

---

In the UK or Germany, this way you could keep most of the existing political architecture intact. You'd just change how MPs get selected. Compared to your proposal, you also get the benefit of the law of large numbers, and you don't have to have a judge etc.

I would argue against picking a singular leader at random, just because the variation is too high. But in the US, you could re-use much of the existing system: fill up the electoral college at random.

You could take inspiration from the 'National Popular Vote Interstate Compact' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta... for how to accomplish that gradually.

The US house of representatives and senate probably have enough members that you could bank on the law of large numbers.

[ClayShentrup]

do approval voting now.

fight for election by jury tomorrow. https://www.electionbyjury.org/

[eru]

Sure, that's a defensible position, too.

In that case, I suggest finding some obscure German house of nobles and putting them on the throne. Works reasonably ok for the UK.