We the people can severely limit the power and scope an individual can have in government by forcefully switching our representatives out practically each term using a form of random ballot.
For those unaware of what random ballot is, it is essentially throwing all the ballots in a large hat and one lucky ballot is drawn determining the winner. The candidate with the most ballots is the more likely winner, but it is never a 100% certainty.
So what does this solve exactly?
Lottery Election solves False Representation
Revolving representation is a direct result of lottery elections. If the district is split between two candidates A with 75% and B with 25% then you can expect the representative to change along those same percentage lines. In the current system representative A will invariable always take the office if A has more than 50% of the votes for the lifetime of representative A. However, In a lottery election even those who vote candidate B can at least expect 25% of the time that they will receive the representative of their choice because B would actually win.
Lottery Election solves Forever Incumbents
Are you tired of the same people being in office? A Random ballot ensures that no one person will have a stranglehold over the office they’re voted into every election cycle. We can expect that representatives would cycle among the top candidates according to the percentage of votes they get.
Lottery Election solves the Two Party System
In the current system of voting, people mostly choose between two parties with very little alternates. In a lottery election this opens the case for a third (or a fourth, or fifth, etc) party that has actual potential to take office giving real meaning to a true alternate party system.
Lottery Election solves Throwing Away Votes
Similarly, in the current two party system, some people decide that withholding a vote is better than giving their vote to any candidate. Again, a robust alternate party system allows those people more room to vote for candidates that they align with.
Lottery Election solves Gerrymandering
District lines are continuously redrawn to oust opponents or usher in party members. Generally this is seen as disenfranchising voters at the whim of which party is in the Governor’s office at the time. With revolving representation it would make no sense to go through costly court battles at taxpayer expense to redraw district lines.
Lottery Election solves Lobbying
Power is accumulated by long years of sitting in a seat of power. A lawmaker who cannot retain their seat contiguously is of very little use to powerful corporations or lobbying groups. Instead with a constantly shifting body of representatives lobbyist would have to appeal to the majority group of representatives as a whole.
Lottery Election solves Earmarks
Very few clean bills are passed. Earmarks are inserted at the behest of party leaders in order to poison a bill or inserted for some sort of gain or advantage. Revolving representation severely limits a party leaders ability to have that sort of stranglehold since they, and their party base, are subject to rotational representation.
Lottery Election solves Buying Elections
The amount of money spent to gain an advantage In votes for a candidate is staggering. In rotational representation a seat is less certain so the money PACs raise and spend on a single candidate would have to come down considerably because no one candidate is a sure thing and the field of viable candidates that would be available because of true third party alternative available to voters.
Caveats
Dropping every ballot into a hat isn’t practical as no hat would be big enough. A system would need to be devised where a set of candidates are available and some fair system that produces a winner (such as lottery balls, hence the name “Lottery Elections” as it could never be a true “Random Ballot”). Also The system would have to select who can be a representative candidate as having individuals just voting for themselves, or for their friends, isn’t a practical solution either.
I had only envisioned this for parliamentary bodies, like Congress, and maybe Senate, but not for office of leadership such as President for various reasons but people may disagree.
Lottery elections is about allowing good legislation to float to the top since legislation would have to appeal to a wide variety of shifting representatives of a true voter base and wouldn’t be drowned out due to the shenanigans of party leadership.