The Shays-Meehan Spam Finance Bill

[Gordon Mohr]

Dave Long writes:
> Isn't that whole "voting" thing a
> pesky intermediation?  Wouldn't it
> be more efficient to just sell the
> offices outright?

Hmm; perhaps not the offices, but I've always thought that
votes themselves could be salable proxies. Then at least
the voting masses, and not back-dealing politicians, would 
have a shot at receiving the bulk of the special-interest 
bribes.

Alternatively, and I think I've mentioned this idea here 
before, instead of having set polling times and terms for 
representative legislative offices, let people assign
(and reassign) their franchise to representatives as
desired. To be seated in the legislature, a representative
would need to have at least some threshold number of
proxies. Each rep's vote on pending issues would be weighted 
by the number of proxies they held. 

> (if, on the other hand, one prefers
> democracy to oligarchy, it's better
> to use random replacement instead
> of either votes or sales)
> 
> Dead Medium: Athenian Political Technology
> <http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/49/498.html>

Kleroterion.org, .com, and .net are available!

I think electoral juries could work very well, too --
perhaps much better than the primary system. Pick
a few hundred (or a few thousand) voters at random
to determine who the officeholders or general election 
candidates will be. Let them be individually pitched 
by the candidates for a few weeks, then bring them all 
together to a hotel/convention center for a week for 
a series of final polls and deliberations. 

- Gordon