Terry Bouricius wrote:
Although it may be off-topic for a VOTING method list, I have long advocated a greater use of sortition (the selection by lot) to select legislators (perhaps one chamber of a bicameral legislature?) Having served ten years as a state legislator in Vermont, USA, I can assure you all that legislators are not more qualified, nor wiser, as Burke hoped, but rather simply less-representative and more egotistical, than average people. The experience and excellent work of the Citizen Assembly established by the provincial parliament in British Columbia a few years ago is compelling evidence that elections may not be the key to genuinely representative democracy.
While it is useful to discuss voting methods, better yet would be make the question of the best voting method irrelevant. If that's a possibility, then discussing voter-free methods would still be on topic.
The central question at that level is whether random selection (or a voter-free method) would be better than even the best voting method. There may be differing opinions - the Greeks thought that elections were inherently aristocratic - and I think the answer depends on the situation.
---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
