Re: POLI: Random democracy

Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Tue, 18 Feb 1997 12:27:43 -0800


Robin Hanson writes:
>You could now run for office on a platform that if elected, you
>will replace yourself with a randomly selected member of your
>electorate. Since people do not now run on such platforms, I
>suspect that voters do not in fact trust such a random person to
>do as well.

This is bad evidence, because legislators cannot replace themselves
with whomever they like. In the US federal House of Representatives,
a legislator can resign at will, but the replacement is chosen by
a special election called by the executive authority of the state
from which the legislator was elected. Similar schemes are in effect
in most other polities with representative legislatures.

--
Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/ 
Q: What is the meaning of life?              A: You're soaking in it!