The Problem with Mass Elections and the Micro-Democracy / Working Group Alternative
Electoral democracy as it is structured in the U.S. assumes that mass elections will translate popular will to a good set of government officials; however, this electoral system disproportionately selects good-looking liars and criminals rather than the best and brightest. Poor electoral outcomes are not an inherent property of democracy but a result of poor system design. The current electoral system in the U.S. (and the world) asks far too much of the average voter who takes cognitive shortcuts that are easily hacked by politicians and interest groups. Superficial appearances, catchy slogans and positions on a limited number of issues are used as proxies for intelligence, integrity, decency, experience and competence.
Doing a proper evaluation of a candidate is hard work and requires information rarely provided by political campaigns. Evaluating candidates also requires time, focus and an understanding of government and policy. Most voters don’t have the proper experience, aptitude, and time to do the necessary work and evaluation of candidates.
Even in cases where voters are well informed, the choice of candidates made available for selection has already been constrained and biased by a process of campaigning, coalition building, deal cutting, and fund raising that systematically compromises and corrupts most candidates resulting in voters only getting to choose among a series of bad options. The demands of mass elections leads to endemic corruption. The need to raise money to fund large scale campaigns and court voting blocs leaves politicians beholden to special interests and gives rise to a political economy of endemic corruption.
Campaigning is a very different business from administrating. Many excellent potential officials are deterred by the grueling, public, nasty nature of campaigning which adds another layer of negative selection bias to the democratic process. Successful politicians are good at campaigning, and governments are now populated with politicians who run their administrations like permanent campaigns with constant spin and perception management displacing competent administration.
The basic structure of the American democratic system was crafted at a time when modern democratic ideals were quite new. Analogs from Greece and Rome did provide rough organizational templates, but imperfectly adapted models from ancient city states have not scaled well in the information age.
With hundreds of years of experience with mass democracy, we can now design electoral structures which translate democratic intent into high quality, highly competent, high integrity public officials. This system design would be conscious of cognitive limitations and biases of voters and aware of a variety of attacks that could undermine the integrity and effectiveness of the system.
A large number of questions are wide open when it comes to designing leader selection systems. Several fields of study need to emerge to improve our understanding of a variety of topics in order to refine the proper system design. However, a thoughtful process that attempts to learn from the real world weaknesses of our current system and the history of electoral failures can lead to significant improvements over the current system.
Disappointment with the functioning of democracy is not new. Patronage oriented political machines dominated politics in much of the U.S. during much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Today’s party primary system was put in place to counter the political machines which previously dominated the political parties, but the primary system itself has frequently been corrupted.
Over the past two centuries, attempts have been made to refine the democratic process. Many of these innovations focused on expanding the right to vote and broadening inclusion in the democratic process. However, in the U.S., we are approaching the limit of how much more broadly the franchise can be extended, and further expansion of the right to vote will not significantly address the major flaws within the system.
Similarly, there has been a trend toward direct democracy (ballot measures, participatory democracy, etc.). As appealing as the idea of cutting politicians out of the process may seem, the results of direct democracy have not been encouraging. Direct democracy suffers from many of the same issues as do mass elections: an uninformed electorate, the requirement of the electorate to spend large amounts of time getting informed about specific policy issues, and organized blocks of motivated participants hijacking the democratic process.
One of the strongest obstacles facing reformers today is the strong association of mass elections with democracy. Democracy in ancient Greece and Roman, renaissance Venice and Florence, and the United State in its early years were not based on mass elections in the same way as modern democracies. Yet in the modern popular imagination, mass elections are equated with democracy to such an extent that most people cannot imagine an alternative democratic system.
Mass elections have significant problems beyond doing a poor job of selecting government officials and being systematically corrupted. Mass elections have a very negative, polarizing effect on the populous. This effect is now so bad that it threatens to undermine democracy in the United States. Most people in the U.S. know that the current system is corrupt and resent the current system. However, this basic alignment of interests is cleaved in two by the competitive system of mass elections. Instead of all Americans working together toward a better country, our electoral system pits American vs. American to the point where most of the country feels like half of the country hates and is violently opposed to them.
By eliminating mass elections, this hateful, competitive, divisive dynamic is removed and the civic energy which is currently directed at battling other civic participants can then be redirected towards a culture of micro-participation and a collective civic effort to make the system work better. Instead of every person being expected to have an infinitesimally small say in a series of mass elections, civic participation would be redefined and channeled to a culture of targeted engagement in the supervision and maintenance of the government structure.
Most of the enormous civic energy that goes into mass elections is wasted. Campaigns, rallies, political parties, political machines, get out the vote efforts, and voting all accomplish very little. Having some rough idea of what the populous wants does have benefits. But given the low level of information and poor conception of how the system works, most people don’t even have a good idea of what they want. The idea that polling a large number of uninformed people to find out what the populous wants is flawed.
We need to transition from a system which focuses on each person expressing what they think and feel broadly to a system which taps into the civic energy and ability of the populous to select a group of leaders who are competent, honest, representative, and work in the interests of the people. The following section discusses some principles upon which a reconstructed system might be built.
Issues to consider for the design of robust electoral systems:
Cognitive limitations of voters:
Lack of time
Lack of knowledge of candidates
Lack of understanding of what the elected position entails
Lack of understanding of the important qualities in a leader
Lack of understanding of the relevant policies and issues
Fear, anger, etc. distorting decision making processes
Limited understanding of civics and knowledge of government architecture
Knowing people and the system is hard. The people who have the best understanding and information are the insiders. In some ways, the old, smoke filled room had much going for it. The insiders knew the people involved, their character and abilities. They knew the system and the jobs in the system. However, the smoke filled room filled with insiders had the giant problem of the conflict of interest and related self interests of the decision makers. Rather than a smoke filled room filled with insiders cutting deals, we would want a transparent room filled with knowledgeable, independent, intelligent, thoughtful observers of the system.
In addition to the cognitive limitations of voters, it is important to be aware of how the demands of campaigning on a mass scale lead to endemic corruption:
Structural corrupting parts of campaigning:
Need for money to run campaigns corrupts candidates
Need for blocks of votes leads to deals with special interests
Need for relationships and connections leads to deals with insiders
Incentives to lie
The question then becomes, how to create democratic structures which are capable of selecting independent, knowledgeable, honest electors who can represent the interests of the people in the selection of elected officials? How can the workload of the citizen electors be distributed to create situations where citizens can succeed in their civic engagement? And what supporting structures do we put in place to prevent the corruption of these electors?
Key principles to exploit in designing the democratic process:
People are good at evaluating people that they know well, but much less good at evaluating people that they don’t know
The more elaborate, large and complex a system is, the greater the chance for gaming and corruption
Transparency is a great tool for fighting corruption
The output of electoral systems are frequently easily gamed or corrupt, so random selection processes can, at points, be a superior selection mechanism.
Decomposing tasks into pieces can make it easier for citizens to successfully participate in the system
Proposal for an electoral system design:
The Local micro-democracy/sortition hybrid
Instead of mass elections, I propose a system where local micro-democracy is combined with random selection (sortition) to select the micro-representatives who then are involved in the government official selection process.
The process I imagine is one where the electorate is grouped into small groups of (40–100) neighbors. Each small neighborhood cohort will elect one person who they think has the integrity, knowledge, time, and ability to represent the cohort as micro-representative.
This local micro-election serves to select individuals who are capable, engaged and well suited to represent the interests of their slice of a neighborhood. The structure of these micro-elections is designed to take advantage of the local information that people have about their neighbors. People frequently know their neighbors and have some understanding of their character and abilities. In addition, most people are too busy or not interested in spending time to put in the work to understand the complexities of government administration. The micro-elections would have the tendency to select for participants who are both more interested, engaged and competent than the average person they would represent.
At the same time, local micro-elections would still do a good job of selecting electors who are representative of the broad diversity of the population. People tend to cluster together in neighborhoods with people of similar economic class and ethnic backgrounds. By breaking the electorate down in a hyper local way, all economic and ethnic groups should be represented in approximately the same proportion as their amount in the overall population. Even if the elected micro-representatives are richer, better educated and older than the average person in their neighborhood, these micro-representatives will still be well exposed to the experiences, situations and plights of their close neighbors.
One of the problems with mass elections is that the sheer effort of running a campaign means that candidates with funding resources can run better campaigns. This pressure to raise money and form alliances with interest groups can bias candidates and corrupt the election process. However, local micro-elections have such low campaigning requirements that outside funding and alliances may not significantly help a candidate. If a candidate needs to only speak with 40 people over the course of a campaign, then any person, without any outside resources can accomplish this fairly easily in a short period of time. Add in the fact that this campaigning will be done among neighbors who already know each other and speak to each other and this campaigning burden is lowered even more.
Analyzing vectors of corruption for local micro-elections:
Micro-elections should be fairly resistant to corruption, but no system can be perfectly free from corruption. The low stakes of the micro-elections greatly reduces the incentive to corrupt the system. The fact that people know their neighbors from real life interactions means that mis-information campaigns will have a harder time succeeding in micro-elections, and since the neighbors will need to continue to interact after the election, the norms of civility should be stronger than in mass elections.
That does not mean that micro-elections can’t be corrupted. In an extreme case, a neighborhood dominated by the mafia or a drug gang might be intimidated to support a representative of the criminal organization.
Could political parties come to dominate micro-elections? A great part of the benefits of a political party are the financial resources and network of connections that come with the political party. However, these resources and connections would not be of as much value in a micro-election. Political parties also group people by policy preferences, but many of those policy preferences will tend to be shared by neighbors, so this sort of coalition building would be less valuable. In a strongly partisan neighborhood, members of the dominant group would tend to be selected, but this is just a property of a democratic, representative system and not an indication of corruption.
Could an outside organization systematically influence a large number of micro-elections? Mass disinformation campaigns that impacted large swathes of the populous could still influence many people’s worldviews and preferences, but still these disinformation campaigns would have less impact of what people think of their neighbors, but the structural advantages of large political parties would be rendered much less useful by tiny, local micro-elections. However, every system can be gamed in certain ways, and real world trials may reveal weaknesses that I am failing to anticipate.
Step 2: Sortition:
In the revised democratic structure that I propose, the only elections are the micro-elections for the local representatives. Further participants in the process of choosing government officials are then chosen from this pool of representatives. This further refinement of participants is to be done by a process of random selection, not election. The further steps in the selection of government officials involves a separate working group process which will be described in the next section, but at this point, I wish to discuss the use of sortition (random selection).
Choosing the micro-representatives to participate in the various government official selection working groups will be done randomly; much like the selection of members of a jury. The use of random selection has several advantages. Sortition is easy to implement and fast to execute. Using sortition means that, from a mathematical point of view, the people involved in the process of government selection will be as representative of the population as a whole as the pool of micro-representatives. Sortition is also fair and if implemented correctly, immune to bias and corruption. Low tech, transparent, fair methods can easily implement the sortition process (picking balls out of a bin).
To see why sortition has been chosen as the method to refine the pool of micro-representatives, consider the alternative of another round of elections among the pool of micro-representatives. A second round of elections offers the chance to further refine the pool to select people who are even smarter, more engaged, and more knowledgeable than the general pool of micro-representatives. If ideal elections could be conducted, then it might be possible to achieve these worthwhile goals. However, ideal elections don’t exist, and the potential for bias and corruption far outweighs the possible refinement benefits.
Even another round of micro-elections, where groups of 40 micro-representatives compete to represent the whole group suffers the possibility of bias and corruption. The winners of this second round would be people who would be best at presenting themselves, talking, winning friends, building coalitions, and being social. These are not necessarily the skills that would be ideally selected for people taking part in the selection of government officials. In addition, the stakes of these elections would be higher than the micro-local elections, so the resources spent to influence and corrupt these elections would be much higher. In addition, a second round of campaigning would be an extra time burden on the citizens involved and further serve to bias the pool of representatives toward people who have the time and inclination to participate in the election process.
So my rough, theoretical attempt at an analysis indicates that the benefits in terms of higher quality candidates from the pool is outweighed by the biases, and more importantly, opportunity for corruption of the process. However, no doubt, the balance here would be case specific and is an area for further study. My initial proposal is not the optimum system design, and much work needs to be done to evaluate a variety of possible refinements.
The Working Group Process:
After election, the micro-representatives become available to staff a variety of working groups. Micro-representatives can be called upon to perform a variety of civic functions, but the one I will be focusing on is the government official selection process.
The task of selecting a government official can be broken down into a number of sub-tasks each performed by a different working group or set of working groups. These working groups have much in common with juries. In both cases, a group of citizens is chosen to perform a highly focused task.
Each working group would be staffed with between 3–12 people. Each of the working group members would be chosen at random from the pool of available micro-representatives. Whenever a micro-representative is chosen to participate in a particular committee, that micro-representative is then removed from the pool of micro-representatives available for future tasks. The number of people per working group should be determined by the importance of the task, the amount of work involved, the threat of corruption, and ratio of the total number of micro-representatives to total working group jobs needed to run the official selection processes. A larger number of committee participants does not guarantee a superior output of the committee, but it does make it harder to corrupt the committee.
Education and training can be important tools to improve the ability of the members of the working groups. The longer the lead time between selecting working group members and the commencement of the working group, the more time the electors will have to be educated. However, the longer the working group members hold their position; the more time they are available to be corrupted. Research and empirical observations would be necessary to understand the issues with these trade offs. Running these working groups will require a budget and staff to oversee and guide these processes.
The benefits of temporary working groups:
One of the core tenets upon which the working group system is based is that regular people tend to be honest. Dishonesty is typically associated with self interest. People from outside the system, lacking interests of their own and relationships with players within the system will tend to be guided by an interest in the general good. However, even honest people involved for a while in a system develop relationships, exchange favors, and become biased toward existing relationships and the existing players.
So working groups are designed to be ephemeral creations which exist for a short period of time and then disappear. The participants in the working groups are not known up until the very start of the working group process, and the working group is disbanded upon completion.
The very ephemerality of the working groups is a key part of the anti-corruption properties of the working group. Since the working group members are not known before the creation of the working group, they can only be influenced as part of the general population. After the working group is done, there is little benefit to corrupting working group members who are no longer in a position of influence.
Keeping the selection committee and working group members uncorrupted is a key goal of this process design. For the more significant officeholder being chosen, the stakes can be extremely high. The potential for bribes, threats of violence and corruption are very real. In order to minimize the risks of corruption, creating a tight timeline that limits the time where committee members can be corrupted is important. For highly valuable offices where bribes of millions or billions of dollars might be rationally deployed, higher levels of security including sequestering the working group members might be employed. In addition, laws outlawing the taking of bribes and requirements for transparency of the finances of working group members and the working group process can help create an environment which minimizes corruption.
A working group based government official selection process:
The process for selecting a government official can be broken down into a number of discrete steps which then can be delegated to a number of working groups each staffed by people drawn at random from the pool of available micro-representatives. By decomposing this selection process, the corruption of any one part will only partially corrupt the final result. The combined output of these working groups will be the selection of a government official.
The component pieces are:
Candidate selection committees- picking who will be considered for an office
Research working groups — working groups that will compile information on candidates for the use of the final selection committee
Final selection committee — selects the chosen official from among the pool of candidates presented by the candidate selection committees using research provided by the research working groups.
The procedure that I am outlining is a general one intended to show the workings of a working group based selection process. The size of the process (number of participants per working group, number of working groups, etc.) can be scaled to fit the size of the covered population. The number of people involved in the selection process needs to be calibrated to the time available from the pool of micro-representatives.
For a small office, like choosing a school board member in a small town, all of the functions could be carried out by one committee of 3 people. For truly massive elections with many tens or hundreds of millions of citizens, a version of this process with multiple final selection committees each with a vote towards a final tally could be implemented. In the discussion below, I am assuming that the underlying population is at least 100,000 people and that the office is one of reasonable importance. For example, a member of congress, mayor of a moderate sized city, governor of a small state, etc.
Step 1:
Candidate Selection Committees would choose candidates for consideration by the final selection committee. Several candidate selection committees would work in parallel. Five (5) may be a good number of candidate selection working groups and hence final candidates. By distributing the work, each candidate selection committee would be less able to corrupt the final result. In high stakes situations with a high potential for corruption, extra candidate selection committees could be instantiated with a random process used to eliminate the surplus candidates.
The candidate selection committees are free to discuss and select any eligible candidate. Candidates can be proposed to the candidate selection committees, or they can be known by members of the committee.
Step 2:
Candidate Research Working Groups — They compile and present information to the final selection committee. These working groups have a role analogous to the prosecution and defense in the trial system. To some extent, the Candidate Research Working Groups would also perform some of the functions of the media in today’s existing election systems.
The functioning Candidate Research Working Groups needs a deeper investigation to determine the proper level of staffing. I imagine having 3–5 independent Candidate Research Working Groups each staffed by 3–8 people. Candidate Research Working Groups might have between 1–2 weeks to do their job. The Candidate Research Working Groups should receive training on how best to do their job and be provided with examples of previous good research.
The Candidate Research Working Groups will each independently research and compile information about all the final candidates. They will interview the candidates and people who know the candidates. They will read books and articles about the candidates. They will review their financial information, education history, etc. They will have full access to all relevant info. The Candidate Research Working Groups may access, use and verify the research of outside experts/sources (reporters, authors, etc.). The Candidate Research Working Groups will produce reports on each candidate. They will also compile and provide the raw data: interviews, notes, articles, etc. upon which they based their reports.
Step 3:
Final selection committee -
The Final Selection Committee is tasked with taking the list of candidates provided by the Candidate Selection Committees and the output of the Candidate Research Working Groups and choosing the final choice for the office holder.
Research and experimentation will be needed to determine the best number of members for a final selection committee. 5 -12 members might be appropriate. Training and education of committee members can help improve the quality of the committee’s deliberations. The tail end of the period where the Candidate Research Working Groups are working would be a good time for the Final selection committee to be trained on what makes an effective office holder, how to interview and identify talent, and how to evaluate character. The Final Selection Committee will have access to interview the candidates, people who know and can be references for the candidates, review scholastic, tax, work, and other records. They will have access to the work product and raw materials of the Candidate Research Working Groups. The multiple Candidate Research Working Groups should provide different perspectives that should help the Final selection committee get a solid picture of the candidates.
Office holder selection working group timeline:
Below is a rough outline of a possible timeline for the candidate selection process. The specific lengths of time will depend upon the details of the particular office, and research and experimentation is necessary to determine the actual appropriate timelines. The main purpose of this example timeline is to give some sense of how such a process might work.
Day 0: Candidate Selection Committee members chosen.
Day 1: Candidate Selection Committee training
Days 2–5: Working Period for Candidate Selection Committees
Day 4: Candidate Research Working Group members chosen
Day 5: Candidate Research Working Group training
Day 6–10: Working period for Candidate Research Working Groups.
Day 9: Final Selection Committee members chosen
Day 10: Final Selection Committee training
Day 11–15: Final Selection Committee working period
Day 15: Office holder chosen by Final Selection Committee