The worst people run for office, but there might be a better way.
The lifeblood of a democracy is the active participation of the people. There is nothing more democratic than offering each and every citizen an equal opportunity to lead. |
 | | Photo illustration by Boris Zhitkov/Getty Images |
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In schools, most elections are a popularity contest. Students don't vote for the most qualified peers or the strongest servant leaders. They usually vote for the coolest kids. |
A few years ago, two schools in Bolivia experimented with an alternative approach. They started selecting student leaders at random and rotating them every three or four months. The lottery welcomed a wider range of students into leadership and brought new solutions to old problems. The vast majority of students ended up preferring the lottery to voting —and recommended it for other schools. |
In my essay this week, I asked: What if we did something similar for the selection of public officials? |
Our elections suffer from a host of biases. If you're not rich, it's hard to get your foot in the door. Voters overwhelmingly favor candidates who are tall and male and white. We also have a bad habit of attracting and electing candidates with tendencies known as the dark triad of personality: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. If we turned to a lottery, we'd open the door to a broader selection of candidates. And research suggests that they'll feel less entitled to using their power in self-serving ways, because they know they didn't earn it. |
As I clarified in my own newsletter, my aim isn't to replace elections with lotteries. After all, random selection has many disadvantages. Although a lottery could be an intriguing experiment for Congress, I'm not even sure if I would support it there, and I definitely wouldn't want it for the Oval Office. My goal was to use a provocative idea to highlight the serious flaws in our existing system of choosing leaders — and to invite readers to imagine alternative approaches. |
I believe that the people who assume the mantle of public office shouldn't only have popular policy positions. They should also have the competence to govern effectively and the character to lead responsibly. If you were going to design an electoral process that elevated the best candidates rather than the worst, what would it look like? |
| READ ADAM'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
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