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Public: Politics: Party
Demos party   (+1, -1)  [vote for, against]
Candidates selected by lottery

The Demos party aims to undercut Western so-called Democracy by applying the principles of ancient democracy to the modern political system.

The party stands candidates in an election. However the aim of the party's internal organisation and constitution is to try and emulate as much as possible the citizen's lottery aspect of ancient democracy.

So the party identifies the maximum number of constituencies or candidates it can legally contest. Then it purchases the published electoral roll for the country, and it selects the required number of candidates at random from the list of citizens.

It then submits those citizens names as its candidates.

The party infrastructure campaigns by extolling the virtues of a randomly-selected citizen assembly as the primary legislative body for a country, and incites the electorate to vote for the Demos Party candidate whoever that happens to be, taking no account of the suitability or otherwise of that individual to hold high office.

If elected, individual Demos Party candidates are free to do whatever they want. They do not have to take their seat, they do not have to acknowledge or follow the party in any way.

The "leader" of the party and any other legislative officials required by the system e.g.deputy leader or whatever, is randomly selected from the elected candidates. They are obliged to follow the strict party line when discharging their duty as that officer; otherwise they are free to do whatever they want as in all other elected candidates.

Issues that need discussed:

How long does the random lottery selection last? Is there a fresh lottery every election? Or could a "summons" last for two or three electoral cycles, so as to potentially allow some continuity of expertise and experience? Is it a good thing in this kind of random summons system, for there to be a clean sweep every few years, or is it better to allow some continuity?

Is it legal for a person to be stood as a candidate and elected against their will? I think the law may vary from country to country. In cases where the randomly selected candidate can legally strike down their selection, the party should have a reserve list so that eliminated candidates can be immediately replaced by the next randomly selected citizen from the list.

There are jurustictions where the vote is cast for a "party list" rather than a named candidate. Thsi requires a slightly different setup.

I think that the party constitution and rules should be custom-tailored to the legal and procedural requirements of each jurisdiction in which it operates.

The party constitution and rules should be incredibly robust and focussed on the mission - being, to game the system to try and inject functional ancient-style random citizen selection type democracy into modern day politics and legislature.

How is the party funded and organised? Presumably it has paying members, donors, etc. but there must be strong constitutional rules and processes to stop mission creep or entryism.
-- pocmloc, Jun 22 2020

You like lotteries like I like luxury apartments.
-- chronological, Jun 22 2020


[kdf] can you give examples of modern (say 20th century) political parties standing in modern representative democracies on the kind of ticket outlined here?
-- pocmloc, Jun 22 2020


The invention is the method of revival.
-- pocmloc, Jun 22 2020


If you wish.
-- pocmloc, Jun 23 2020



random, halfbakery