Hacker News Reader

Comment by unglowin | Hacker News Reader

American democracy is already all but dead. The reason being that lies fuel the decision making process: from campaigning to lobbying.

They claim it’s democracy when elected officials vote on bills that are largely against the interests and desires of even the people that elected those voting representatives.

I think we can recover though.

What we need to do is extend the powers of our justice by jury system.

Bills in congress should be voted on by a panel of jurors conducted by a judge.

The elected officials are there to litigate either for or against, but it is the jury’s ultimate decision.

I rarely think I have anything to offer the word of civics as it seems to me to be motivated in ways antithetical to my own desires in governance, but I truly think this is an idea that will have a very positive effect on the current failures of the American system of democracy.

View on HN

My personal twist, if I were building a system in a first-world country, would be to have a bicameral legislature.

Upper house has 4 year terms with term limits (say, 20 years max) and has professional politicians.

Lower house is elected for 4 year terms by lottery, a portion turning over every year, in the same way as jury duty. Then support them with a strong research civil service (e.g. the CBO).

I’m into term limit reform, though I think complexity for the sake of complexity just allows more dark corners for corruption to fester.

But how do term limits solve the misinformation and cult of personality that is currently plaguing contemporary American democracy?

The interesting part, for me, of the introduction of juries in bill voting is having to plead the case to the jury rather than their ephemeral status.

This would immediately remove all of the “carve out diplomacy” that is currently used to get bills passed.

Politicians lie by a matter of course, courts have consequences and checks and balances for lies; imperfect, but at least they are there.

Juries are terrible at offering specialized knowledge, which is becoming increasingly critical in the world.

That's why their primary use in the US (trials) offloads all the specialty requirements onto other parties (adversarial prosecution and defense teams, judges, court staff).

Consequently, in using juries you gain some measure of protection from corruption and responsiveness.

But you lose expert knowledge.

How would that work in your system?

I think I address this in another comment thread.

> The thing is, congress members are rarely experts themselves, but the court system actively encourages expert witness testimony.

You said “lose” but I would argue it’s a “gain” as far as expertise is concerned.

Congress members are rarely experts (but those that are do exist), but their staff usually includes some.

And the problem with expert witness testimony is that it needs to be validated.

If you know nothing about a topic, and I and someone with an opposite viewpoint both put experts in from of you that support our positions, how do you decide?

Better funding and expanding a non-partisan, Library of Congress type resource seems like a better approach to me.

> If you know nothing about a topic, and I and someone with an opposite viewpoint both put experts in from of you that support our positions, how do you decide?

How indeed. How, for instance, would a congress member? What about staffers make them better experts than expert witnesses in a trial? Who are these expert staffers accountable to?

I feel you are being a little unbalanced in your criticism.

I'm all for better "resources", but fail to see how that could be held up as an "either or" replacement for my proposal.

Also, I am confused how it would remedy the ills I am addressing with the proposal. There's a meme online to the effect ~"remember when before the internet we used to think hate was result of lack of access to information".

Your representative will still have their staff and likely even their token experts, but it will still be on them to plead the case to a jury.

I feel those of us with interest in conjuring math in stone with electricity tend toward thinking there is the binary of right and wrong. That, "if only we had more data everyone would agree", but humans and human societies are much more complex and often an argument can be made for both sides of an debate regardless of how sure I am of my side of it.

The point is how do you ensure the argument with better evidence is the one we use to determine policy.

While only using existing tools from our current system I would argue the best way we have is trial by jury.

Jon Stewart addressed something along the lines of my proposal, namely that it seems the courts are the only bastion of "objective reality" remaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuDcTyCq8nc

how are the jurors chosen? I'd expect this would be too small a sampling of people to be really representative, and I think it's often easy to confuse jurors who are (by definition) not experts.

Not that I think they system as it is is great, but I'm not sure this helps / doesn't have its own significant failure modes.

Same way they already are for trial.

I welcome court and jury selection reform.

I am just also advocating for extending where those powers are used.

> jurors who are (by definition) not experts.

Untrue, an expert can be a juror but I know what you are trying to say.

The thing is, congress members are rarely experts themselves, but the court system actively encourages expert witness testimony.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com