Presidential Debate 2012 Live Stream from ABC News and Yahoo News: The Candidates Debate (Part 1)

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Presidential Debate 2012 Live Stream from ABC News and Yahoo News: The Candidates Debate (Part 1)

The Lottocracy Has Arrived: Say Goodbye (and Good Riddance!) to Campaigns, Candidates, and Elections

Pic: USGOV (PD)

“It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot, and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.” – Aristotle (Politics IV. 9, 1294b8)

I was in the process of cobbling together a piece on sortition (the selection of government officials by lottery) but it turns out that Alexander Guerrero – an assistant professor of philosophy, medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania – has beaten me to the punch, and then some! He has written a superb essay about the subject and has also come up with an alternative system which he has dubbed “the lottocracy”, an idea which is challenging, thought-provoking, and incredibly hopeful…

So what’s wrong with the system of representation which we currently employ?

“In the presence of widespread citizen ignorance and the absence of meaningful accountability, powerful interests will effectively capture representatives, ensuring that the only viable candidates — the only people who can get and stay in political power — are those who will act in ways that are congenial to the interests of the powerful.”

What is the historical precedent for sortition?

“In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, lottery-selection was used to choose political actors in three of its four major governmental institutions. Selection of political officials in late medieval and early renaissance Italy incorporated selection by lot. More recently, Citizens’ Assemblies (in which citizens were chosen at random to serve on the assembly, and in which citizens heard from experts prior to coming up with their own proposals) were used in the Netherlands to reform election law, and in Canada (in British Columbia and Ontario). Randomly chosen citizens were also brought into the process of constitutional reform in Iceland in 2010, but nothing of the scope that I am envisioning has been tried before.”

How would Guerrero’s “lottocracy” function? 

“First, rather than having a single, generalist legislature such as the United States Congress, the legislative function would be fulfilled by many different single-issue legislatures (each one focusing on, for example, just agriculture or health care). There might be 20 or 25 of these single-issue legislatures, perhaps borrowing existing divisions in legislative committees or administrative agencies: agriculture, commerce and consumer protection, education, energy, health and human services, housing and urban development, immigration, labour, transportation, etc.

“These single-issue legislatures would be chosen by lottery from the political jurisdiction, with each single-issue legislature consisting of 300 people. Each person chosen would serve for a three-year term. Terms would be staggered so that each year 100 new people begin, and 100 people finish. All adult citizens in the political jurisdiction would be eligible to be selected. People would not be required to serve if selected, but the financial incentive would be significant, efforts would be made to accommodate family and work schedules, and the civic culture might need to be developed so that serving is seen as a significant civic duty and honour. In a normal year-long legislative session, the 300 people would develop an agenda of the legislative issue or two they would work on for that session, they’d hear from experts and stakeholders with respect to those issues, there would be opportunities for gathering community input and feedback, and they would eventually vote to enact legislation or alter existing legislation.

“Single-issue focus is essential to allow greater learning and engagement with the particular problems, especially given the range of backgrounds that members would bring to the institutions, and the fact that these individuals would be amateurs at the particular task of creating legislation. Lottery-chosen representatives would have more time to learn about the problems they’re legislating than today’s typical representatives, who have to spend their time learning about every topic under the sun, while also constantly travelling, claiming credit, and raising funds to get re-elected. In the lottocratic system representatives will be — at least over a long enough run — descriptively and proportionately representative of the political community, simply because they have been chosen at random. But they will not have in mind the idea that they are to represent some particular constituency. Instead, they will be like better-informed versions of ourselves, coming from backgrounds like ours, but with the opportunity to learn and deliberate about the specific topic at hand.”

This all sounds great, but has he considered what might go wrong?

“No pure lottocratic system has ever existed, and so it’s important to note that much could go wrong. Randomly chosen representatives could prove to be incompetent or easily bewildered. Maybe a few people would dominate the discussions. Maybe the experts brought in to inform the policymaking would all be bought off and would convince us to buy the same corporate-sponsored policy we’re currently getting. There are hard design questions about how such a legislative system would interact with other branches of government, and questions about the coherence of policymaking, budgeting, taxation, and enforcement of policy. That said, it’s worth remembering the level of dysfunction that exists in the current system. We should be thinking about comparative improvement, not perfection, and a lottocratic system would have a number of advantages over the current model.”

What would be the potential advantages of such a system?

“The most obvious advantage of lotteries is that they help to prevent corruption or undue influence in the selection of representatives. Because members are chosen at random and don’t need to run for office, there will be no way for powerful interests to influence who becomes a representative to ensure that the only viable candidates are those whose interests are congenial to their own. Because there is no need to raise funds for re-election, it should be easier to monitor representatives to ensure that they are not being bought off.

“Another advantage of lotteries over elections is that they are likely to bring together a more cognitively diverse group of people, a group of people with a better sense of the full range of views and interests of the polity. Because individuals are chosen at random from the jurisdiction, they are much more likely to be an ideologically, demographically, and socio-economically representative sample of the people in the jurisdiction than those individuals who are capable of successfully running for office. As a point of comparison, 44 per cent of US Congresspersons have a net worth of more than $ 1 million; 82 per cent are male; 86 per cent are white, and more than half are lawyers or bankers. Recent empirical work by Scott Page and Lu Hong has demonstrated that cognitively diverse groups of people are likely to produce better decisions than smarter, or more skilled, groups that are cognitively homogenous.”

Read the rest of the interview here.

***

Guerrero is currently writing a book on this subject and for those who may be interested, he mentions several others who are also engaged in discussing these issues: ”There are also a number of academics who have argued for a role for lotteries in the selection of political officials, including C L R James, Oliver Dowlen, and Peter Stone. Other people whose work you might track down, if you’re interested, include, in the UK (Anthony Barnett, Peter Carty, Oliver Dowlen, Ben Saunders, Peter Stone, Keith Sutherland), in the US (Terrill Bouricius, Ernest Callenbach, Hélène Landemore, Ethan Leib, Neil McCormick, Kevin O’Leary, Michael Phillips, Alex Zakaras), in Canada (Mark Warren and Hilary Pearse), the Australian philosopher John Burnheim, the late Afro-Trinidadian philosopher C.L.R. James, Paul Lucardie in the Netherlands, Yoram Gat in Israel, the French activist Étienne Chouard, the political party Partido Azar in Spain, Belgian MP Laurent Louis and the Youth Parliament of Belgium—all have argued for the use of lottery selection in politics, in various forms and to various degrees.” And, as it turns out, there is also a blog – Equality by Lot – which is dedicated to discussing these issues.

“Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know.” – M. King Hubbert  

disinformation

The Lottocracy Has Arrived: Say Goodbye (and Good Riddance!) to Campaigns, Candidates, and Elections

Q&A: Bolling Isn"t Bullish on Va. Gov. Candidates

Since scratching his own Virginia gubernatorial bid last year, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling has come to think of himself as something of a quiet referee in the contentious race between Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former DNC chairman. Bolling, who has no preferred player in the match-up, largely stays on the sidelines. But some news in state politics this week put a bit of the spotlight on how Bolling would react to those developments: Gov. Bob McDonnell met with prosecutors looking into his relationship with a donor, Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams; and Bolling’s longtime adviser, GOP strategist Boyd Marcus, announced he would back McAuliffe in the race.

The No. 2 officer in the commonwealth spoke with RealClearPolitics about Boyd’s move; the impact of the McDonnell controversy on the race; the Virginia GOP as a microcosm of the national party’s woes; whether he might wage a write-in bid for governor; and why he is “not a big fan” of Cuccinelli.

Why did Marcus switch over to the other side?

There are a lot of Republicans in Virginia who are not happy with the Republican nominee for governor, and there are a lot of Republicans in Virginia who are concerned about the direction of the Republican Party. And a lot of those folks in recent weeks have chosen to endorse Mr. McAuliffe’s candidacy. He did what he thought was right, and I respect that. There are other Republicans who feel the same way he does and have done the same thing in recent weeks. Obviously, McAuliffe is trying to use that to his advantage and it’s a smart strategy on his part.

The Virginia gubernatorial race typically serves as a check or a bellwether. The president’s party tends to loose. McDonnell’s win in 2009 delivered one of the first blows to President Obama, and Republicans took over the House of Representatives the following year. Will it be a bellwether this year? What will it say about the GOP?

I don’t think you’re going to be able to read a lot into the outcome of this election, no matter which way it goes. The Republican Party in Virginia is going through the same challenges that many Republican parties across the country are going through, as you try to obtain the proper balance between traditional Republicans, like myself, and the Tea Party Republicans, and Ron Paul Republicans — are all trying to figure out how to live under the same roof. And that’s a challenge for the party in Virginia and I think it’s a challenge for the GOP nationally.

The Republican Party of Virginia has basically been taken over by the Tea Party folks, and Ron Paul folks, and because of that the party has gone in a direction that concerns a lot of us. It has resulted in the nomination of not just the most conservative ticket but also the most ideologically driven ticket in the history of the state. I think that creates a couple challenges: uncomfortableness for traditional Republicans, and an uncertainty as to how that ticket will be received by voters in the fall.

On the other hand, the other side has not been able to generate a lot of excitement around their candidate either. If you look at the polls, the only folks that seem to be happy with the choices are the partisans in each party.

Virginia is a purple state. You’ve got a block of voters who will always vote for the Republican candidate; you’ve got a block of voters who will always vote for the Democratic candidate. Elections in our state are determined by the 20-25 percent of independent voters, and those voters right now are just scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do.

What do you think those independents will do?

I don’t think either candidate has really reached into that group yet because neither candidate has offered a positive vision for the future of the state. The campaign up until now has become a rapid race to the bottom, with each candidate trying to define the opponent in terms of the lowest common denominator, rather than trying to define themselves.

It’s not that these guys haven’t talked about issues. They have. And there are big differences between them on issues. But the problem is their discussion has been totally drowned out by the million of TV ads that they’ve already run.

Independent voters are not moved by negative campaigns. They’re moved by candidates who are able to present come sort of a positive vision. And at this point, neither one of them has been able to do that. If they don’t, then I think there’s a likelihood that these independent voters could stay home on Election Day and we could be looking at one of the lowest voter turnouts in the history of the state.

You haven’t endorsed Cuccinelli. Do you plan to endorse anyone before Election Day?

I don’t plan to. That could change. But I don’t have any plans to do so. I’m a Republican. I’ve been clear to say that I have concerns about Cuccinelli’s ability to effectively and responsibly govern our state, and because of those concerns, I have not been comfortable endorsing his candidacy. But I’m a Republican, and because of that I’m not comfortable endorsing the other guy’s candidacy either.

Whether the voters like it or not, one of these two guys is going to be the next governor of Virginia.

Or could the next governor be you?

That’s not a viable option. I wanted to be the Republican candidate for governor. That didn’t work out. The governing body of the Republican Party of Virginia was essentially taken over by the Tea Party folks and the Ron Paul folks and they changed the nomination from a primary to a convention and that just made it very difficult for me to win. I considered an independent candidacy but I feel for a lot of reasons that wasn’t the right way to go. And I feel that a write-in campaign is just a very long shot and at this point is not something I have any intention of pursuing.

What I think we have to do is just choose very carefully to make sure we have a governor who can lead our state effectively, responsibly and in a mainstream way.

What’s your relationship like with Cuccinelli?

I’m not a big fan of Mr. Cuccinelli’s. There are issues on which I agree with him, and others on which I disagree. My main concern is the types of issues he has tended to focus on through his career, and his leadership style and demeanor, and his ability to effectively and responsibly lead the state. It’s not personal — I’m just not convinced he has the skill set that’s necessary to be an effective governor. He is a smart guy, a very principled guy, and a very hardworking guy. I respect all of that. I just worry about the kind of governor he would be.

I think the challenge McAuliffe faces is that a lot of voters still don’t know him. He has not been actively involved in Virginia life in the past. The challenge McAuliffe faces is he has to define himself to the voters. The challenge Cuccinelli faces is he has to redefine himself to the voters. Many voters in Virginia feel he is just too extreme, so he is trying to redefine himself as a more mainstream political candidate.

What specifically gives you pause about Cuccinelli?

I worry about the kinds of issues he would focus on as governor. I worry about his ability to build the consensus that’s necessary to solve problems and get things done.

He has tended to be a rigid ideologue who thrives on conflict and confrontation and tends to be drawn to the more controversial and divisive issues of the day. They fire up the Tea Party base, I’m just not sure they’re the right skill set for someone who wants to be governor.

Is it possible for him to redefine himself?

I think it will be very hard for Cuccinelli to redefine himself with voters who know anything about him. But, there are a lot of voters who know nothing about Cuccinelli or McAuliffe, so with those voters he could potentially redefine himself.

It’s going to be a low turnout race, as off-year elections are. I think this could be a 30-35 percent turnout.

Who benefits from a lower turnout?

I think Cuccinelli would love that. I think he likes the current direction of this campaign, because it’s turning off a lot of voters and that means they may stay home. The lower the voter turnout, the better the chance Cuccinelli has of winning. McAuliffe, I think his strategy is, he has to drive people to the polls. He’s got to boost voter turnout. I don’t think he can do that by attacking Cuccinelli. I think he also has to offer some sort of positive vision that encourages people to vote for him, not just against the other guy.

For “mainstream” Republicans like yourself, would it be better or worse if McAuliffe were governor?

I’m not going to respond to that one.

What kind of an impact is the McDonnell controversy having on this race?

It just makes Republicans look bad, and it reminds voters that Mr. Cuccinelli has his own Star Scientific problems. As a result of his relationship [with Williams], he encountered a conflict of interest in at least two cases in which he has had to assign to outside firms, which will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The situation involving Gov. McDonnell and Star Scientific is certainty not helpful, in fact it is harmful.

What’s going to happen with McDonnell? Any chance of him resigning?

I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know what kind of conversation the governor and his attorneys have had.

My hope is that the federal prosecutors will determine that nothing the governor did rose to the level of illegal activity. That’s my hope. But I just don’t know. The facts I know are the facts I read in the media reports, so I don’t know what discussions have taken place between the federal prosecutors and the governor, so we will just have to see how this plays out. It would benefit us all to get this behind us one way or another. 

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Q&A: Bolling Isn"t Bullish on Va. Gov. Candidates

Q&A: Bolling Isn"t Bullish on Va. Gov. Candidates

Since scratching his own Virginia gubernatorial bid last year, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling has come to think of himself as something of a quiet referee in the contentious race between Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former DNC chairman. Bolling, who has no preferred player in the match-up, largely stays on the sidelines. But some news in state politics this week put a bit of the spotlight on how Bolling would react to those developments: Gov. Bob McDonnell met with prosecutors looking into his relationship with a donor, Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams; and Bolling’s longtime adviser, GOP strategist Boyd Marcus, announced he would back McAuliffe in the race.

The No. 2 officer in the commonwealth spoke with RealClearPolitics about Boyd’s move; the impact of the McDonnell controversy on the race; the Virginia GOP as a microcosm of the national party’s woes; whether he might wage a write-in bid for governor; and why he is “not a big fan” of Cuccinelli.

Why did Marcus switch over to the other side?

There are a lot of Republicans in Virginia who are not happy with the Republican nominee for governor, and there are a lot of Republicans in Virginia who are concerned about the direction of the Republican Party. And a lot of those folks in recent weeks have chosen to endorse Mr. McAuliffe’s candidacy. He did what he thought was right, and I respect that. There are other Republicans who feel the same way he does and have done the same thing in recent weeks. Obviously, McAuliffe is trying to use that to his advantage and it’s a smart strategy on his part.

The Virginia gubernatorial race typically serves as a check or a bellwether. The president’s party tends to loose. McDonnell’s win in 2009 delivered one of the first blows to President Obama, and Republicans took over the House of Representatives the following year. Will it be a bellwether this year? What will it say about the GOP?

I don’t think you’re going to be able to read a lot into the outcome of this election, no matter which way it goes. The Republican Party in Virginia is going through the same challenges that many Republican parties across the country are going through, as you try to obtain the proper balance between traditional Republicans, like myself, and the Tea Party Republicans, and Ron Paul Republicans — are all trying to figure out how to live under the same roof. And that’s a challenge for the party in Virginia and I think it’s a challenge for the GOP nationally.

The Republican Party of Virginia has basically been taken over by the Tea Party folks, and Ron Paul folks, and because of that the party has gone in a direction that concerns a lot of us. It has resulted in the nomination of not just the most conservative ticket but also the most ideologically driven ticket in the history of the state. I think that creates a couple challenges: uncomfortableness for traditional Republicans, and an uncertainty as to how that ticket will be received by voters in the fall.

On the other hand, the other side has not been able to generate a lot of excitement around their candidate either. If you look at the polls, the only folks that seem to be happy with the choices are the partisans in each party.

Virginia is a purple state. You’ve got a block of voters who will always vote for the Republican candidate; you’ve got a block of voters who will always vote for the Democratic candidate. Elections in our state are determined by the 20-25 percent of independent voters, and those voters right now are just scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do.

What do you think those independents will do?

I don’t think either candidate has really reached into that group yet because neither candidate has offered a positive vision for the future of the state. The campaign up until now has become a rapid race to the bottom, with each candidate trying to define the opponent in terms of the lowest common denominator, rather than trying to define themselves.

It’s not that these guys haven’t talked about issues. They have. And there are big differences between them on issues. But the problem is their discussion has been totally drowned out by the million of TV ads that they’ve already run.

Independent voters are not moved by negative campaigns. They’re moved by candidates who are able to present come sort of a positive vision. And at this point, neither one of them has been able to do that. If they don’t, then I think there’s a likelihood that these independent voters could stay home on Election Day and we could be looking at one of the lowest voter turnouts in the history of the state.

You haven’t endorsed Cuccinelli. Do you plan to endorse anyone before Election Day?

I don’t plan to. That could change. But I don’t have any plans to do so. I’m a Republican. I’ve been clear to say that I have concerns about Cuccinelli’s ability to effectively and responsibly govern our state, and because of those concerns, I have not been comfortable endorsing his candidacy. But I’m a Republican, and because of that I’m not comfortable endorsing the other guy’s candidacy either.

Whether the voters like it or not, one of these two guys is going to be the next governor of Virginia.

Or could the next governor be you?

That’s not a viable option. I wanted to be the Republican candidate for governor. That didn’t work out. The governing body of the Republican Party of Virginia was essentially taken over by the Tea Party folks and the Ron Paul folks and they changed the nomination from a primary to a convention and that just made it very difficult for me to win. I considered an independent candidacy but I feel for a lot of reasons that wasn’t the right way to go. And I feel that a write-in campaign is just a very long shot and at this point is not something I have any intention of pursuing.

What I think we have to do is just choose very carefully to make sure we have a governor who can lead our state effectively, responsibly and in a mainstream way.

What’s your relationship like with Cuccinelli?

I’m not a big fan of Mr. Cuccinelli’s. There are issues on which I agree with him, and others on which I disagree. My main concern is the types of issues he has tended to focus on through his career, and his leadership style and demeanor, and his ability to effectively and responsibly lead the state. It’s not personal — I’m just not convinced he has the skill set that’s necessary to be an effective governor. He is a smart guy, a very principled guy, and a very hardworking guy. I respect all of that. I just worry about the kind of governor he would be.

I think the challenge McAuliffe faces is that a lot of voters still don’t know him. He has not been actively involved in Virginia life in the past. The challenge McAuliffe faces is he has to define himself to the voters. The challenge Cuccinelli faces is he has to redefine himself to the voters. Many voters in Virginia feel he is just too extreme, so he is trying to redefine himself as a more mainstream political candidate.

What specifically gives you pause about Cuccinelli?

I worry about the kinds of issues he would focus on as governor. I worry about his ability to build the consensus that’s necessary to solve problems and get things done.

He has tended to be a rigid ideologue who thrives on conflict and confrontation and tends to be drawn to the more controversial and divisive issues of the day. They fire up the Tea Party base, I’m just not sure they’re the right skill set for someone who wants to be governor.

Is it possible for him to redefine himself?

I think it will be very hard for Cuccinelli to redefine himself with voters who know anything about him. But, there are a lot of voters who know nothing about Cuccinelli or McAuliffe, so with those voters he could potentially redefine himself.

It’s going to be a low turnout race, as off-year elections are. I think this could be a 30-35 percent turnout.

Who benefits from a lower turnout?

I think Cuccinelli would love that. I think he likes the current direction of this campaign, because it’s turning off a lot of voters and that means they may stay home. The lower the voter turnout, the better the chance Cuccinelli has of winning. McAuliffe, I think his strategy is, he has to drive people to the polls. He’s got to boost voter turnout. I don’t think he can do that by attacking Cuccinelli. I think he also has to offer some sort of positive vision that encourages people to vote for him, not just against the other guy.

For “mainstream” Republicans like yourself, would it be better or worse if McAuliffe were governor?

I’m not going to respond to that one.

What kind of an impact is the McDonnell controversy having on this race?

It just makes Republicans look bad, and it reminds voters that Mr. Cuccinelli has his own Star Scientific problems. As a result of his relationship [with Williams], he encountered a conflict of interest in at least two cases in which he has had to assign to outside firms, which will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The situation involving Gov. McDonnell and Star Scientific is certainty not helpful, in fact it is harmful.

What’s going to happen with McDonnell? Any chance of him resigning?

I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know what kind of conversation the governor and his attorneys have had.

My hope is that the federal prosecutors will determine that nothing the governor did rose to the level of illegal activity. That’s my hope. But I just don’t know. The facts I know are the facts I read in the media reports, so I don’t know what discussions have taken place between the federal prosecutors and the governor, so we will just have to see how this plays out. It would benefit us all to get this behind us one way or another. 

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Q&A: Bolling Isn"t Bullish on Va. Gov. Candidates