Intro:

Or just skip to the method below, because that is the fun part!

As Churchill puts it: "...democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried..."

Accountable government is a key aspect of successful states. If our current leaders do a bad job, we would like to be able to remove them. Likewise, the threat of being removed motivates them to do a good job.

However, there are many problems with democracy. For one, most people don't have enough time to develop the relevant expertise to vet most political issues. Nor can any one person develop all the relevant expertise needed to manage a modern country. Therefore, what we are looking for when we select a candidate is largely someone with good temperament, good managerial skills, prudence, and good judgement. The problem here is that this selection process, when it comes in the form of national elections, easily falls victim to demagoguery. Moreover, wealth, and thus the ability to buy media coverage, becomes a determining factor in who can be a viable candidate for high office.

To be sure, Barack Obama did not come from a privilege background, nor have many people in high office. However, becoming a viable candidate for high office does require courting the wealthy, as well as party insiders. This allows a small group, whose interests at times diverge from the rest of the country, to wield undue influence over politics.

In summary, elections face two issues: demagoguery and the influence of wealth on who can become a viable candidate for office. The first leads to bad candidates and divisive politics, the second leads to a great deal of good candidates being ruled out from consideration.

Exponential Assembly Selection of Electors (EASE)

Here is my solution to the first problem, and it is EASEY! Crowds, large groups, are vulnerable to manipulation, Manichean narratives, etc. Diverse groups of people are capable of showing respect for one another in small group settings and carefully considering a set of issues. Large groups tend to split into factions and the quality of debate degrades. So, what if we could choose our leaders using small groups?

Imagine this: every eligible voter can sign up to take part in the selection process for a president (we shall stick to just the president now to keep things simple). From this pool, groups of 7-9 people are formed from all the eligible voters. For the US electorate (about 140 million), this would mean 20-15.6 million groups.

The groups would be assigned based on zip-code, so that, initially, people would tend to meet with their neighbors. For those with social anxiety or disabilities (or who hate their neighbors), online groups would also be an option.

In preparation for the first (s)election day," every person can put together a brief essay on why they think they would be a good representative for picking a president and submit a resume. These are shared ahead of time (maybe videos can be shared too). On the day of the event, the group votes for one of their number to go on to the next group and represent the interests of the 7-9 people in their group (we will use 7 from here on for simplicity). All voting throughout the process is ranked choice voting. This will tend to pull selections towards the median preference. Ties, if they occur, will be broken by a revote between the tied candidates until two remain. In the event of repeat ties, a random selection is made from the remaining electors.

So, the first elector selected represents 7 people. They go to another meeting, where again, one of the 7 is selected to represent 49 people. This continues, with a single elector representing 343, 2,401, 16,807, 117,649, 823,543, 5,764,801, 40,353,607, and then finally all the people.

Obviously, at the point we reach a single elector representing 117,649 people, we need to deepen the process. We now have just 1,190 groups, just 8,330 people involved. 117,649 people is not a huge amount of people, so these people still likely live quite close to one another, meaning it won't be too expensive to have them meet somewhere for a short period.

At this point, the debate can go on for longer. The national elections agency will double check that all people are eligible to be electors (they might do this a rung earlier), do some basic background checks to make sure electors haven't blatantly lied on any documentation they've sent in (doing so won't disqualify them, but the results of the checks are shown to the group). Now the groups have time to make speeches, canvas each other, etc. Facilitators will help lead them through a discussion of a few broad topics (topics and scripts will be given to the public ahead of time to avoid allegations of bias), and the facilitator makes sure everyone has time to speak.

For the last two levels, you can do more vetting and allow people more time. At this point, you will want to start televising the meetings (although I doubt too many people watch) and letting everyone know which elector represents them. This is now a small group and for each topical area discussed you can start sending in fairly senior, relevant government staff to answer questions (GS-14/15s say, or a colonel).

With the penultimate selection, you could even have an election day where the people being represented by each of the 7 groups (1/7th of the electorate for each group of 7) get to cast a vote for who they want representing them. This counts as 2 or 4 votes, depending on how much you preference deliberation over public input.

The last 343 folks from the final 3 rounds stick around on paid leave to help select the president, with the final group of 7 being the final approvers, while the lower groups vote on which candidates get sent up to the final group.

How do we get candidates for president?

By application, like a city manager post. This solves the second problem.

"But then everyone will apply."

I doubt this becomes too much of an issue. You would have to submit a bunch of documentation, references, fill out a security clearance/background check form. Those are a pain; you'd have to be serious to do it. Further, there would be a fee based on one's income that would be calibrated to make the fee meaningful, even for the very rich, but not prohibitive (there can be a hardship process for people whose past income doesn't match their circumstances). I doubt you get more than 20,000 people. Plenty will be easy to drop too.

You could also have a basic text on the laws of the land and the duties of the president. You can administer this like the GRE. This won't help you select candidates but it will weed out the grossly unqualified who have no idea what the job actually is.

You will need professional reviewers to weed down the crop, but I think this can be done in a fair way. Every candidate will be ranked on a rubric, with previous leadership roles being quite important. Reviewers are randomly assigned and each person gets 3 reviewers. All scoring is public and subjected to analysis to check for bias. You could even have an appeals process for reviews, since they will start long before the final committee is seated. This process cuts down the candidate pool to 343 people, plenty to choose a good leader from (you can easily go bigger by involving another level of selection).

This leads to 7 candidates going to each of the 49 groups that are left from the third tier. They are seeded based on their scores so that all the best candidates don't end up in one group (obviously prior to this the reviewers will need to also do a seeded selection process when picking the top 343).

Now we have time to do in depth interviews with each candidate and careful deliberation. We can also have academics and former/current government leaders brought in to ask questions of the candidates. Each group picks their two top candidates, and then the next level evaluates 14 candidates (98 total). The same thing happens again, and we end up with 14 candidates going to the final selection committee. Then we drop half of them by vote and are left with a final 7.

Then comes the last ranked choice vote. Again, here you probably want a national election (this is only the second), and for popular opinion to count for a good amount of the total vote share. But, instead of vitriol and propaganda, the voters have been watching a bunch of people they helped select have an in-depth, reasoned debate about who is best suited to lead! Political influence, parties? It will be impossible to tell who ends up on the final committees a year ahead of time. There will be no time to form parties or use wealth to influence the electors to a great degree.

Imagine, a leader chosen based on reasoned debate and professional qualifications.... (Hell, if you really want more democracy, you could just elect the president from the final 7 based on ranked choice voting, they should all be good).

What next?

Now the final 7 electors stick around for a full-time job. They get to act as representatives to the people who picked them and can remove the current president with a 5/2 vote. To avoid all the time this process takes, there could also be an option to give a popular leader a second term without restarting the process provided: 5/2 of the committee back it and a national electoral majority agrees. That said, under no condition can the original 7 extend their stay in office by doing this; the 7 electors must get switched out every term (otherwise you have a horrible incentive to keep bad leaders). To keep good, experienced leaders eligible, the incumbent can be automatically added to the final pool of 14 if they are on their third term or didn't win the 5/7 vote to skip a new selection process.

Against criticisms

Now, a common argument against this isthat it is undemocratic. But is it really less democratic than the current system? Or, there is the claim that it would be biased against the poor. But would it be more or less biased? Currently, millionaires have super majorities in both chambers of Congress. Congress had one (1) tradesperson working in it last I checked, and very few people under age 55. This seems more likely to reflect general preferences. I would be willing to be this process has way more middle and lower class people in the final 343 electors than are in Congress.

The other argument is that it takes too long. To be sure, it takes longer, but we already spend billions on elections, it's just that most of the spending is on propaganda. For most people, the process will mean 1-3 meetings that last a few hours and a few hours preparing their materials and reading others'. The cost will probably still be less than the monstrous sums spent on the current system.

But people won't take it seriously? People already don't take voting seriously. It's much harder to act totally disinterested in a small group, and even if one group of 7 just picks a friend based on them being a friend? What chance does that person have of getting to represent 49, or even 343 people if that is all they have going for them, let alone 117,000?

Anyhow, that's the president. Picking a legislature this way is easier, because you don't need applicants, you just pick representatives using the group system. You could even tweak it to have state or regional based representation.

Personally, I like it just for the fact that it gets citizens way more involved in politics, in a good way, not as entertainment/religion.