I think most of us would agree that money and politics should not go together. Yet, every other November, we are reminded that politicians spend billions of dollars to promote themselves with sleazy TV ads, half-baked public appearances, and those goddamn, tackyass yard signs1. Operating under the guise of “free speech,” corporations like Goldman & Sachs, Pfizer, and BP funnel money into the pockets of wealthy politicians who, in turn, lend an ear to their wishes once they get into power.
During the actual election cycle, however, our political “leaders” must mask their power-hungry intentions within the veil of “encouraging voter participation.” But how important is it—really—for every American citizen to cast that sacred vote?
I am not simply trying to express the common anti-voter sentiment of “How is one vote going to swing an election?” but am instead posing the question of whether or not voting should even be part of the process.
We need to wake up and realize it is no longer 1824. However, our democracy has operated in the same way since its inception—way back in 17872. In fact, one of the biggest political scams ever put forward still structures the way we select the president.
The Electoral College
When kids first learn about how the Electoral College works, their social studies teachers describe it as a complex system that is old-fashioned and outdated. But the story goes way deeper than that.
During the pre-Civil War era, the number of white men who could vote in the South was heavily outnumbered by the number of white men who could vote in the North. So, to bring balance to the country’s political landscape, James Madison of Virginia came up with the bright idea of the Electoral College.
Madison’s proposition entitled each state to a specific number of presidential “electors” based on its population. Each state would cast all of its votes for a single presidential candidate, and the election would be decided by a simple majority (Since 1964, 270/538 electoral votes have been needed to win the presidential election). However, Madison’s proposal was just the first step in his plan to create a much more damning system.
Madison’s second proposal included details that allowed non-citizen, black slaves in the South to be included as part of the southern states’ population. Effectively, this meant that the more slaves bought (or bred) by the South, the more sway they would have in choosing the next president.
So, from 1787 to 1865, the federal government counted each slave in the South as 2/5 of a man in order to provide more voting power to the less-populated Southern states. As a result, the U.S. Presidency was occupied by slaveholding-Virginians for 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years in effect3.
The First Five U.S. Presidents and Slave Counts
How the Electoral College Works Today
This is some real shit; the same system that was used to prop up wealthy, white slaveholders in the South still determines who becomes the president in our country today.
Fast-forward to 2023. There are now over 300 million people in America, each of us with a voice louder than ever. Largely thanks to the internet, the will of the people has been amplified beyond imagination; we now have more say over what we teach in our schools, more power to “cancel” people we dislike, and more influence over our ability to succeed in different spaces.
In addition, we are more informed than ever before. Many of us know more about what is going on in the nation’s capital than what is happening in our own neighborhoods and towns. Yet, somehow, we are still left with only two choices when it comes to who we want to represent us.
Naturally, a strongly-willed society threatens the traditional sense of government. When the citizens demand more freedoms and civil rights and are more willing to stick up for one another to get them, they are more likely to succeed. Politicians should not be exempt from that group-effort when, in fact, their role is the most important step of the process.
Supposedly, that’s how democracy works: we elect the people we want to put into power because that is the “best way” to get the “best candidate” who will do the “best job” of sticking up for us. Supposedly, our politicians work for the people who elect them, and NOT the lying, swindling, tax-evading companies that funnel money into their campaign funds. But it just doesn’t seem like that’s the case.
A Way Out
Believe it or not, there is actually someone out there who knows what you want, what you care about, what kinds of rights and freedoms you think are important, and what kind of role you envision the government having—even better than some politician you have probably never met (and may not even have voted for)—YOU DO!
Maybe you have never seen yourself as a Statesmen, but have you ever asked yourself, “Gee, I wonder why we literally pick strangers out of a hat to determine who has to go to fight in wars and who decides guilt or innocence, but are content hosting popularity contests when it comes to who gets to make the laws and who gets to control the bombs?”
Each of those roles carries important duties that must be performed by at least one of our fellow American citizens. My question is, how does sequestering more people who agree to put a checkmark next to your name somehow verify your ability to govern or adequately make important decisions about the greater good for the most people?
Open Democracy (aka Sortition) is based on the idea that government would work better, be more representative, and be more efficient if we were run by a random group of ordinary citizens who could vote on the things that our elitist politicians currently decide.
Why should we allow people who accept donations from the same companies that tie them to a single corner, thus ensuring that the American people never get a fair say or have fair representation, to continue to remain in power?
Why should we keep electing representatives when many will simply turn around and use whatever resources they have to keep hold of their position of power? Commonly, and with much more regularity, tenacity, and aggression, politicians resort to three tactics to win elections:
Vilify their opponents.
Incite fear, divisiveness, and friction in society.
Make sensational claims, accusations, promises, and proposals without any council, any supporting evidence, or any initiative to act upon.
Politicians with the Highest Net Worth
I first heard about this idea of sortition, or selection by lottery, on a podcast by TrueHoop. The hosts of the show were speaking with an NYU professor named David Hollander, who brought up the idea of Open Democracy. What stuck with me, however, was the fact that he compared the current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court (including the three lifetime-appointed judges who were handed their power by a president who lost the popular vote) to “a team of 9 Steph Currys.”
Then I went further and started looking into how a system based on peer representation would actually play out in the real world. Obviously, there are a ton of concerns that need to be addressed upfront. First and foremost, this is an idea that could never be passed by the legislative bodies that currently occupy the three branches of government. As stated, those who are in positions of power are typically reluctant to give up that power—and they would never voluntarily restructure the entire political landscape when they are the ones who benefit from it the most.
Another obvious question is, “Who would be allowed to participate?” In other words, what would our pool of potential applicants look like? How would American citizens feel about being represented by someone like their shady Uncle Leo, who, although he was never formally found guilty, has been accused of being extremely perverted and inappropriate during gatherings? Should a college degree be required? Well, that wouldn’t work because most people in America don’t actually have a college degree4. Putting someone in office who did not go to college would actually be more representative for more people—and they would likely have much more in common with you than Ron DeSantis, AOC, or any other Ivy League-educated person with millions of dollars would.
Third question: Who chooses which people work on what? Who would fill the courtrooms, the Houses, and the Senates? According to Jacob Ostfield of the Harvard Political Review, the structure would look something like this: “Under sortition, legislative bodies are called ‘citizen assemblies.’ They function like legislatures but are composed of randomly selected citizens. A nonpartisan advisory body picks an issue for the citizen assembly to legislate. The issue can be anything from an annual budget to the nomination of a federal judge to presidential election logistics. The advisory body then sends out assembly invitations to randomly selected citizens, who can choose to either accept or decline the invitation. From the ‘accept’ pool, a subset of individuals that reflect the demographic makeup of the relevant geographic region is randomly selected as the citizen assembly. Instead of our current system, in which legislative decisions are made by primarily white, Protestant, college-educated men over the age of 50, these citizen assemblies will reflect the ethnic, religious, socioeconomic and gender diversity of the population. Members would also be paid a living wage for the assembly’s duration and receive a stipend to cover logistical expenses, including transportation, food and housing.”
Final Thoughts
As with all forms of democracy, Sortition has been tried before. It would be misleading for me to say that a full conversion to Open Democracy is our best chance of getting out of this big political mess, but I do know that it is not being discussed—at all. Also, I do not see how it can get much worse than this:
I’ll leave you with this quote that clearly summarizes exactly why we should just kick all of the politicians—red, white, blue, whatever—out of office altogether:
“This is the impact of money on politics. This is the way our system works. When you have giant corporations and billionaires pay the politicians in ‘campaign contributions,’ then, when those politicians get in there, they’re going to represent the corporations, the billionaires, and not the will of the people.
You can look at any public opinion poll and it will tell you (there are) some very clear preferences among Democrats, Republicans, among everybody, and we don’t get those things into law.
The stuff that goes into law is a new tax break, or a subsidy for a giant corporation, or a tax break for Wall Street. That’s the stuff that is prioritized because that’s who these people are getting paid by.”
—Kyle Kulinski, American political commentator5
And one more quote about the Ancient Greeks:
Perhaps the most striking thing about Greek Democracy was that the administration (and there were immense administrative problems) was organized upon the basis of what is known as sortition, or, more easily, selection by lot. The vast majority of Greek officials were chosen by a method which amounted to putting names into a hat and appointing the ones whose names came out.
Now the average CIO bureaucrat or Labor Member of Parliament in Britain would fall in a fit if it was suggested to him that any worker selected at random could do the work that he is doing, but that was precisely the guiding principle of Greek Democracy. And this form of government is the government under which flourished the greatest civilization the world has ever known.
—C.L.R. James, “Every Cook Can Govern” (1956)
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