Randomly selected House?

[fgalkin]

Do you think that reform to a randomly selected House would improve the American Republic? As it stands now the House is really even less representative of the American people than the Senate, a gerrymandered body where districts constantly become more polarized in either direction, and Representatives can easily win elections without serious challenges due to "redistricting" which modifies their districts to create massive Republican or Democratic constituencies. The Senate, though, now popularly elected on a Statewide basis to fixed terms, is representative at least of whole states, if states themselves due to their nature allow for domination of minority viewpoints by populous urban centres.

So - Should we reform the House and eliminate elections for it entirely? What I'm proposing is to randomly select the Representatives for the House of Representatives. We keep the Senate the same, but in the House, the Representatives would be randomly chosen from the whole voting populace. Terms would be reduced to one year, and there would be a one-term limit - This would very much a citizen democracy thing (Though of course you could run for another office afterwards if you wished without restraint).

Any citizen would be eligible who is registered to vote, and presumably computers would do the selecting with a series of cross-checks and protections to insure fairness, along with the necessary amendment allowing for outside monitoring of the process. If we can have electronic ballot machines it's reasonable to think such a process as is this feasable as being insurable and fair. The computers could, of course, simply eliminate those who had already served from consideration when making the next random selection.

I think it has the potential - if we could work it out - to create a genuinely representative People's House; not controlled by politicians at all, but people who rather are required to serve for a year and represent the nation in doing so. Of course, they'd get the same salary the House currently gives itself, which for the average American is a pretty good recompense for a year's work in a plush office! Likewise, the potential oddities of such a House would be balanced out by the fact that the Senate would remain the same.

What do you all think?

Hell no. If Congressmen are selected randomly, then there is every possibility that fundies, neo-nazis, KKK members, Jehovah's Witnesses, Raelians, members of the Westboro Baptist Church, the Anti-Porn guy, and general wackos are going to get in. Would you like Rev. Phelps influencing American policy?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[kojikun]

galkin, precisely the reason i said educated in my response to the question

[Knife]

Sorry Dutchess, I don't think it would work. It would be like the draft in the modern military. Too many untrained people flooding a system not designed to intergrate them.

Term limits don't work well either. What I believe, is that the length of term needs to be extended. These ass clowns spend a majority of their time running around getting money (getting bought) for their campaigns.

House members should get [re]elected every six years, like the Senate. This won't get rid of all coruption, but it will give a good start. Meaningful campaign finance reform must be passed too. No, and I mean NO, corporate cash should be given to campaigns and no federal matching funds either. As always, IMHO.

[Tom_Aurum]

Too easy to corrupt someone who got randomly selected for office. How likely would it be that someone who just got an office in the house would want to milk their influential position for all it is worth? Buying off a Juror would cause only enough trouble to cause a miscarriage of justice. Buying off a member of congress can cause much more trouble. Not like it hasn't been done before, but a random system makes it much easier.