epistemic status: just about the minimum level of confidence needed to think that something is worth talking about on tumblr
So, here’s the plan: both houses of Congress are run on a completely anonymous basis.
I mean, we still vote for specific named individuals, who campaign in the normal way. But all votes are secret ballots, such that even the legislators themselves don’t know what anyone else voted for. Only the final tallies are revealed.
Even more importantly, there is a legal ban on revealing the source of any given piece of legislation. Bills are brought to the floor by professional reciters who just read whatever’s handed to them. There’s no way to tell, or at least no way to confirm, whether a particular bill comes from a Republican or from a Democrat or from the President, or what.
*****
Obviously this plan is 100% anti-democratic. Its main function is to make legislators less accountable for what they do, to make it harder for voters and politicos alike to connect actions and consequences.
Right now, given the political problems that we’re facing in this country, I’m pretty sure that I’d take obfuscation over accountability. Corruption is a real danger, but…it sure looks like there’s more of a danger in being totally unable to compromise, or to ideologically-downshift for the Greater Good, because you can never stop mugging for the camera. And there’s yet further danger in knowing that it’s always better for you to trample and defeat the Enemy’s agenda, no matter what it is, because letting the Enemy get credit for anything good will cement Enemy control.
Thoughts?
This is basically government by lobbyists, isn’t it? They’d draft the bills themselves and buy the votes themselves, much moreso than today. It seems like if you want to go that route, you might as well just formalize it rather than having a fig leaf of representative government.
Yeah, there is a good chance that you end up with government-by-lobbyists. No question.
The question is: are you more afraid of lobbyists getting whatever additional influence they’d get from secrecy (over what they have already), or more afraid of politicians being straitjacketed by partisan politics and the need to pander to the base?
That’s not me being glib. That is a real question. I don’t know my own answer. But, the more I pay attention to US politics, the closer I edge to the latter.
(Also, worth noting: there is at least an argument that it’s harder to institute a vote-buying system when it’s impossible to verify that anyone’s vote was in fact successfully bought.)