notes-groupDecisionMaking-votingMethods-singleSampleWriteIn

Single-sample write-in (indirect sortition)

One issue with representative legislatures is, how do you get outsiders or other people with novel points of view into the legislature? In sufficently repressive situations, the Powers That Be have ample opportunity to intimidate and attack outsider candidates. For example, the incumbents may raise legal challenges to the elgibility of candidates, may intimidate them with threats of violence, may exert de-facto control over electoral nomination procedures, or may make it difficult for unapproved candidates to conduct a successful election campaign. Using such methods, The Powers That Be might allow a token opposition but in actuality hold a de-facto veto over the membership of the opposition.

One solution to this is sortition, that is, randomly select voters to serve as representatives. With sortition, representatives can be elected without having to run for election, which denies the Powers That Be an opportunity to silence the opposition through making it difficult to run. An obvious disadvantage is that this method selects people without regard for their perceived suitability as legislators. Here i present a simple method that, barring vote-counting fraud, allows minority candidates to be elected without running for election, while still ensuring that they are perceived by at least a small number of people as being a suitable legislator. There is one free parameter, N, which is the minimal number of people who must consider a candidate suitable.

Each voter submits one write-in candidate via secret ballot.

One of these ballots is randomly selected. todo N todo

When N=1 this method is similar to ordinary sortition, but different if you consider the need to deny chosen reprentatives the option not to serve. todo

(note: another form of indirect sortition, similar to the "deliberative polling" form of direct democracy, is convened-sample suffrage ( http://www.grputland.com/2015/01/convened-sample-suffrage-reclaiming-democracy.html ) (which i call 'stochastic preselection' with convening); the difference between single-sample write-in and convened sample is that (a) in convened-sample, you take a representative sample, but in single-sample write-in, you take only a SINGLE sample for each seat; the statistical variance is treated as a feature rather than as a bug to be eliminated by a representative sample, and (b) in convened-sample, the representative sample voters meet and deliberate, but in single-sample write-in, there is no deliberation; this prevents peer pressure or coercion from being applied to voters)