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Alternatives to congress
(lemmy.world)
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A bicameral legislature, one house elected by mixed member proportional system and the other selected at random from the voting age population. Legislation must pass both houses, if it passed one house but not the other it can go to referendum at the same time as the next general election.
You can also have things like citizen initiated referenda. Campaign finance laws similar to those in the UK are also desirable.
Hm, interesting take on the random group. The US has citizen initiated referendum. Just takes signatures. But the money spent on advertising for or against has a massive impact. I had to look up the uk campaign finance laws. They limit 3rd party spending, but I don’t see that as stopping someone from spinning off hundreds of organizations that each buy like one Comercial or something.
I can't say that I'm very familiar with the UK laws in depth other than that they have been in operation for many years and are generally considered effective.
For referenda there's no reason you can't have a publicly funded campaign for yes and no and limit private advertising, we have something like that here in Australia.
Sortition, random selection, when combined with an elected body has a lot of benefits. It has the advantage of having professional politicians with institutional knowledge and relationships while also having a body the that is actually representative of the larger population.
Not sure the US can limit private advertising unless the Supreme Court changes it's interpretation of the 1st ammendment (free speech). I am guessing that in the UK and Australia that free speech doesn't cover advertising. Maybe that is the lynchpin.