Post-democratical political system

Question

Question: how will this idea fail?

Preferably in a way that is fundamental, and can't be easily fixed with small changes. And politically based, being unable to respond to problems because of the political system I describe

Currently, democracy works like this: you decide who or what you vote for, and you vote for that.

I offer to change it this way: during a vote you get assigned to a random partner, with whom you need to come to a common decision. If you manage to do so, your group vote is counted. If not, your group vote is ignored.

I imagine that this system could be set up as a response to increasingly divisive politics, with either existing parties becoming more extreme, or new extreme parties rising in popularity. Idea is that this method weakens all of the extreme views, as they are unable to find a common decisions with other people that don't share their view.

Another way for this system to be set up is for increased public education, as a way to show what politics is, a process of finding compromises. Assumption is that with such an experience people will be able to be more effective in many other fields as well as in their politics.

And one more option I see is a way to collect more and better data. Polls are unreliable in a sense that it can't measure the extent to which people are ready to go in order to get what they want. While measuring amount of not agreeing groups is easy and reliable, because not agreeing has a cost, that vote wont be counted. Assuming that people want their vote to be counted.

Why a random partner? Because bringing a friend will change nothing, even a person with most extreme views will have some agreeing friends.

Why just two people and not more? Because an average voter will have problems with even that. We used to vote alone, bringing consensus group size from 1 to 2 is already a large enough step. Only after this experience is fully tested I can imagine implementing larger groups.

Why ignore the vote of pairs that don't agree? Because otherwise there is no point. People will just vote the old way, and the new system will have no effect. There must be a profit in agreeing compared to not agreeing.

What if there is no common language? Internet translation, use friends who know the language or give up. Any sort of selection, like language, will allow people to break the system and vote the old way, from the comfort of their agreeing friends nearby.

What about fraud, violence, vote buying, loss of privacy in voting, intimidation? It can be solved with separate decision submission from each person. One doesn't know what another one have sent. But only if they match they will be counted.

What about increased costs? Properly selected government can change the GDP by a few percents, equal to about ten working days per year. If the vote is limited to a few hours spent by the voters to make a decision together, additional cost might be smaller than benefits of better politics.

Answer 1

It will only work in a 2 party system

Let's go Angela Merkel style !

Q: "could be set up as a response to increasingly divisive politics"

Yes, I tend to agree, but when you have more than 2 parties, there may be an issue

Two-party system: moderates and independents will profit

If you have a random voting partner, not only the moderate people mostly agree and vote. Additionally, lots of people whose party affiliation differs will take moderate stands and vote moderate candidates together, many will want to reach a compromise, because they will want their vote to count. Independents and middle-of-the-road politicians would like it, I guess..

Suppose you'd do this.. in the current US, a two-party system you'd may get Joe Mansion for president, or Amy Klobuchar, or Mitt Romney,

Republican + Republican => Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham

Republican + Democrat => Mitt Romney, Joe Mansion, Larry Hogan

Democrat + Democrat => Stacey Abrams, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar

Independent + Democrat => Angus King, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Mansion

Independent + Republican => Angus King, Larry Hogan, Mitt Romney

A multi-party version of this could pose a problem

In a multi-party system, you'll meet some issues. There are one-topic parties, and parties based on specific religions. Chance is there is rarely agreement between the voting partners, only a small part of the population will take part in democracy. When there are only two parties, you'd have a 50-50 chance of meeting a partner with the same preference. In multy-party systems, that chance is far less.. the left and right parties will get wiped out. Which is in fact the current German system. In Germany, a multi-party system exists, but to get into parliament, a party should have a minimal percentage of the votes.

(EDIT) Another challenge that could make this fail: participation

The system could fail, when participation reaches a point, where people don't feel represented anymore. When you have had 2 of these elections, your government could be colorless, politics uninteresting. The system could also fail on participation, when voters are not prepared to meet the other person. The latter issue is a psychological one, it may be a challenge in many free, western countries, to make random people meet each other!

Answer 2

Who controls the agenda?

You describe "making a decision" with a random partner. What decision? Are you talking about a vote on a bill? Who wrote the bill?

In a careless implementation, the whole process will get dominated by bigoted spam from a tiny extremist group. You and your partner get a 500-page manifesto about why some group of people ought to be jailed or exterminated. In an exceptionally careless implementation, you'll have to read all 500 pages very carefully in order to try to figure out whether no action is accomplished by voting Yes or voting No.

Answer 3

Lack of trust in the randomizing process

How was it set up? What keeps it random? How can the people who do so be trusted?

Once the conspiracy theories start to fly that the supporters of policy X are all being "randomly" assigned to apathetic souls who won't even try, or psychopathic griefers, the government will lose legitimacy in the eyes of too many people to survive.

Answer 4

Add two minor twists/embellishments to your country:

• There are two types of votes. One type is supposed to have a result in all cases, so the outcome is decided by the majority of the valid votes. Even if most pairings are deadlocked. Examples include budgets, appointments, or other things which cannot simply pause for a year.
  The other type is allowed to have no result if there is no consensus. The question simply gets postponed until somebody brings it to the ballot again. To make those pass, there must be a majority of the voter-pairs for it. Examples include changes to laws and especially the constitution (supermajority required?).

• People are reqired to participate in the system. They cannot simply stay home. (This requirement seemed a good idea, when it became clear that voting would take significant time.) But the requirement is fulfilled if the voter shows up, says "hello," writes "irreconcilable differences" on the form, and leaves ...

Now imagine that there are 10% each with strong opinions on two sides, 10% each with moderate opinion on those sides, and 60% who are disgusted with the process or just don't have the time and energy to worry. Year to year, little changes in the two side could yield wild swings in the budget and appointments, while almost nothing happens to change laws -- or the way laws can be changed.

Answer 5

The proposed system does not address any of the problems associated with democracies. Most importantly it does nothing to solve these 3 major issues:

1. Imperfect knowledge of politicians and voters;
2. Decisions and solutions based on majority rule are not necessarily the best decisions and solutions;
3. Inherent instability due to frequent political changes.

This is not the place to discuss these shortcomings in detail, so I will not elaborate on this. Interested people can do their own research.

In addition to not resolving problematic aspects of democracy, the proposed voting method is:

• undemocratic

  Democracy is based on a principle that all votes are equal and independent. The proposed voting method predicates the validity of one vote on another. It can be seen as just one more way to disqualify votes and disenfranchise voters.

• based on an assumption that politics is all about compromises

  Compromise is just one of the possible political strategies. However, it is just one of many strategies that can be used to achieve political goals. Doing nothing and/or blocking actions of a political opponent can be a very effective and valid strategy as well. A good example of this the GOP in the US Senate: By doing nothing and blocking the majority of Democratic proposals they achieve their goal of keeping the status quo.

The proposed voting method also does not do anything to increase political participation, especially, in countries where voting is a right and not a duty. It may also discourage participation because not everyone is thrilled about talking to unfamiliar people or people who disagree with them. For example, according to the Pew Research Center survey conducted in September 2021, 59% of US adults find conversations with people who disagree with them on politics as stressful and frustrating. Forcing people to talk to others and achieve consensus in order to get their votes counted is a very unreasonable and unnecessary burden.

I also do not think that this method of reconciling differences will be effective in cultures where compromise can be achieved in a form of 'agree to disagree' or in countries where political affiliation shows a tendency to merge with cultural identity (this is the case in the US).

Answer 6

Because a lot of people are stupid and/or lazy:

No, seriously try and see how much the average joe cares about elections. A lot of people don't show up to vote and those who do often only have the faintest of clue what their favourite party wants to do.

Your system would mean people would need to have a decent idea of all politicians. That ain't gonna happen which means a lot of votes will;

A): Be wasted as no compromise was reached. (Which will breed resentment)

or

B): Be given to the first guy they can sorta agree on even if said person is as incompetent as they get. A likeable person does not necesarrily equal a competent person after all.

In Belgium we have a lot of politicians that regularly get elected (due to our complicated state structure) and are absolutely god awfull.

A lot of people don't vote with facts, they vote on the first politician they sorta like even if said like is based on a single television interview or habit. I know for example a woman who keeps voting liberals despite not liking their current way of doing stuff because she has been voting on them from the start and her parents did the same before her.