A Simple Plan for True Representative Government
by Dave Brown
Return to the Pilgrims' landing page
This article presents an idealistic model for representative governments that could be applied in any nation. It is based on the major premise that virtually all governments are corrupted by those who do self-serving things to obtain and retain power, which includes most politicians today. It is also based on a second premise that true representation can only come from a random sample of qualified and good people who wish to serve. By definition, a random sample would assure that a representative cross section is selected, so the majority would not be able to stampede its will over the minorities.
God’s Preference for our Nations
It is God who saves us, and He wants us to serve Him as individuals, not just comply with the rules of some organization (religious, governmental or otherwise). He does not use nations to enforce His spiritual rule over us – either we come to Him out of our own free will or we do not come at all (Heb. 11:6). This is the essence of his plan of salvation for each of us individually. Our eternal destines are not dependent on our form of government, nor who might be in control of them at any time. Thus, the parties or persons who rule our nations are of no consequence to our salvation.
But Christians have responsibility to try to make our societies as righteous as possible, as indicated by Proverbs 14:34: “Righteousness exalts a nation; But sin is a reproach to any people.” It is clear that if we establish governments that promote and facilitate our obedience to God (righteousness), it will benefit ourselves individually, our families, our communities, our nation, and the world. This does not mean that the government mandates any particular religion; but neither do they stand in the way of those who would peacefully teach what they believe to be the truth of God’s righteousness (Romans 1:16-17). The purpose of this article is to propose an alternative to the current methods for selecting leaders that generally exist today in order to avoid their inherent and inevitable corruption.
The Problem with the Current Model
There is no reason for detailed explanation here. The only people who would not see the corruption of our current system of government are those who are so caught up in it that they are blind to their flaws. The main problem in the U.S. and most free countries is the amount of money that it takes to get someone elected. This is the ultimate fault of the masses, since they allow money-funded commercials and other financial inducements (free cell phones?) to dictate their votes. Rarely, if ever, is the full truth revealed, and money plays a tremendous part in covering up the full truth.
For example, what proportion of the general voting public understands that the National debt will fall on our children and grandchildren? Pose the question to Google: “If each of these 81,890,189 federal taxpayers were given responsibility for paying off an equal share of the entire federal debt of $15,885,854,755,351.47, they would each need to pay about $193,989.72 (as of July 12, 2012).” It is hard to believe that all of the good voters in this country do not care that they are enslaving future generations. They would care if they were confronted with the truth. But major efforts are made to conceal this and other critical information from the voting public. The numbers are so big as to be unbelievable, as are many truisms in our Nation’s capital.
At the same time, major issues that should be given rational thought are exploited for political purposes and rarely considered objectively. Trivial non-issues are given front and center media attention hiding the real issues that should be considered. And while one party might be worse than the other, there is plenty of blame to go around. Further, once someone is elected the “money people” are at the door again to get favored for their past “contributions” and to bargain further for the next election. Corruption feeds on itself.
The truism that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” was known well before it was articulated by Lord Acton in 1887. Israel’s Kings Saul and David were initially quite humble men before they were corrupted by their power, seemingly feeling that they were above the laws of God and untouchable by the courts of man. These examples demonstrate the causes of corruption of individuals who at one point in their lives were good and honest people with integrity. So, let us not belabor the point – if you do not recognize this trait in the majority of our government officials today (regardless of party affiliation), it is only because you are either not looking or you are caught up in the power game yourself. Exceptions notwithstanding – they only prove that it is possible to resist being overcome (as indicated in 1 Corinthians 10:13), but this does not establish any general rule. We all know what holds in general; so let’s not kid ourselves.
In brief, as long as the big money people control who is elected, there is no hope for improvement. Recent election financing reform efforts in the US were a joke, and they may well have made things even worse, thus proving our point that the current system is irretrievable because it is controlled by those who will never give it up voluntarily. This will continue to be the case as long as the solution depends on those in power passing laws that erode their own power. From their perspective, the system is working quite well, and they see no reason to change it.
Any Valid Solution Must Eliminate the Problem
As long as the masses can be deceived into thinking that the politicians in a given party have their best interests in mind, the system will continue to be corrupt. It is critical to understand the big money interests and how they are ultimately in control. In many cases we see them contributing to both parties at the same time. And for that matter, with the computerization of the voting process, the victory may well go to the party that has purchased the superior hackers.
A “third party” candidacy is the worst of all worlds in that it steals votes away from the main party that has a similar (although typically not as radical) ideology as the third party. The inevitable result is that the winner is the one who supports a minority view. Common sense would dictate that there should be a run-off between the top two candidates – we will allow you to speculate on why that has not happened, knowing that it certainly would if it did not serve some interests to have minority rule. But these minor tweaks in the system do not address the true cause of the problem, which is that voting produces anything but representative government.
The current mindset we have been taught from our youth up is that representative leaders can only be established by the vote of the people. But the fact that our leaders today are anything but representative of the vast majority of us is an obvious testimony to the fact that this assumption is false. Voting is, in fact, the very problem that it is currently impossible to circumvent.
An Alternative Model for True Representative Government
So is the situation hopeless? Not at all from a conceptual point of view although it will require a MAJOR paradigm shift for the reader to understand it. But we have to start somewhere.
Before presenting the selection model, let us emphasize that this model does not require that any governance structure given in the US constitution will be altered (e.g., president, house, senate, supreme court). In the US this means that the three branches of government would be retained with all of the checks and balances that have kept things from getting totally out of control in the past. The ONLY thing that will change is the selection process – the flawed voting system will be replaced by a system that guarantees totally representative government.
There may be several alternative models proposed – we do not claim this one to be the only one that will work. But here is one very simple alternative model that can work extremely well both at the federal and the local levels:
1. Eliminate voting and thereby eliminate all of the corruption that goes with it: rigging the elections, stuffing the ballot box, hacking the electronic voting machines, buying votes, intimidation at the ballot box, voter ID, deceiving people into thinking they can vote themselves into prosperity without work, etc., etc. ad infinitum.
2. Eliminate all campaign contributions and all campaigning; it is all corrupt, unnecessary and rarely a reflection of reality. Eliminate all lobbying in favor of general open presentation and structured debates that are open to and observed by all.
3. Create a pool of volunteer candidates that is indeed representative of good cross-section of average people throughout the country. This will guarantee representative government like never before, since those who are in this pool will be a statistically valid total representation of the entire population, since …
a. They will all volunteer to serve.
b. The key word here is serve; they will have definitive relatively short term limits (details to be worked out), so they cannot build up powerful committee assignments and financial deals over time that crush their junior counterparts.
c. Their pay will be comparable to the average pay for the entire workforce (or some modest variation so as not to put them at a major economic disadvantage). The only incentive that they should have is to serve, as opposed to any monetary of other corruptive influences.
d. There will be very close scrutiny to assure that they are not receiving bribes (now lightly masked as campaign contributions), personal incentives, favors for their relatives or anything else that could possibly alter their votes on pending bills. The penalties for even the appearance of such will be immediate and severe.
e. There will be a minimum educational requirement to assure that the pool of candidates are generally competent, and are both willing and able to be further trained for the job that they will perform.
4. The pool of candidate will be required to go through an intensive training program that will bring them up to speed on the most recent developments, the bills being proposed, and other red tape type items that they will have to face if/when they are selected. It is expected that some might be washed out at this point – testing will be intense to assure that all candidates are qualified to serve prior to their selection. The training will be monitored by those on both sides of the interests in current legislation to assure that it is objective and unbiased. All volunteers will be compensated for their training time even if they are washed out.
5. The selection process will be done by a computer generated random number where the numbers assigned to the candidates will not be known at the time of the generation. The candidates will be numbered so that the random number generator results points to specific candidates. However, a second process will go on simultaneously that will assign the candidates to their identifying numbers. This dual-randomization process will assure that there is no way to rig the process.
6. Of course, there is no such thing as a fool-proof system, but there will be adequate supervision by objective, technically-competent observers to assure that the selection is in fact as purely random as possible. These observers will only view the process from its technical side, not from the point of view of results. That is, they will be employed to assure that the process is fair, but they will not have any ability at all to manipulate the process. It is technically possible to validate the process without knowing the results or knowing what the results will be.
7. There will be definitive laws against any elected official using his/her office for monetary gain either before, during or after his/her election. Severe mandatory jail terms will be imposed in this regard for all types of corruption (this will be defined in terms of private communications with lobbying agents).
8. Some group must administrate this, and clearly this is another vulnerability in the system. However, that group will be selected and changed before each election by random selection just as the candidates are. This will minimize the chances that the central administration can be corrupted.
9. The president will be elected by the House and Senate putting forth one of their own. While this process could be corrupted, we see the term limits and the random selection of house and senate members to minimize this possibility, and that a compromise candidate be chosen, if necessary. With random selection the current Left and Right will cease to exist, since all persons elected will be trying to advance all citizens and not just pandering to a politically beneficial subset – there will be no reason to do that under this system.
This process reflects the original ideals of writers of the US Constitution, which had in mind that ordinary people would “go to Washington” and serve for a relatively short period of time after which they would return to their normal occupation activities (and not as filthy rich aristocrats). It will be perfectly representative to the extent that all subcultures of our society participate in the proportion that they exist in society. All will be encouraged to participate, and some initial method of randomly eliminating volunteers will be instituted, e.g., based on one of the central digits of the population social security number.
Let us conclude this section by saying that we are not so naive as to think that the current power structure is going to consent to anything like this model. (We do not want you to think we are stupid.) However, we believe that if they truly had the best interests of our countries in mind, they would create and approve such a system. And perhaps some major event in the future will provoke them or others to act in this regard. But as for now, it is not our intent to overthrow the current power structure, nor to promote any type of change (see the next section). Our intent in this article is only to demonstrate to any objective person that IT CAN BE DONE! This is a necessary first step.
Our Responsibility to Our Current Governments
This is defined for all Christians in Romans 13.
Romans 13:1-5
13:1 Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the (powers) that be are ordained of God.
2 Therefore he that resists the power, withstands the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment.
3 For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And would you have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same:
4 for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil.
5 Wherefore (ye) must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience' sake.
Christians must subject themselves to their governments up until the point at which the government requires us to do something that violates God’s law. As indicated in Acts 5:29: “But Peter and the apostles answered and said, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’”
Whether your government is relatively good or evil is not a qualifier to the above commands – there could be no government any worse than that of Rome – that they allowed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and other atrocities are matters of historical certainty. So there should be nothing in this article that is in any way urging anarchy or the overthrow of any government – such would be contrary to clear bible teaching. It could even be argued that if Romans 13 were only to be obeyed when there was “good” government, it would not apply to any governments in existence today, back in the first century, or at any time in the history of humankind.
Why would God allow His people (Christians) to be dominated by evil governmental powers? One answer is that our temporal life here is relatively of minor importance compared to our life with God after our short stay on this earth is over. If it were Jesus’ mission to create better governments, we would have better governments. We cannot answer the questions as to the reason that God allows the various governments as they now stand – but we know that He does have a good reason (Romans 8:28). And, we know that He can and does raise them up and throw them down as He sees fit. Jeremiah 18:7: “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to break down and to destroy it; …” So God is in control (Revelation 4 and 5), and our faith in God should be sufficient to enable us to be satisfied on this earth in whatsoever state we find ourselves -- Philippians 4:11: “for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.”
Jesus gives his conditions for salvation: God's Plan of Salvation
Companion Pilgrims article: "Give Us A King"
Return to the Pilgrims' landing page
God’s Preference for our Nations
It is God who saves us, and He wants us to serve Him as individuals, not just comply with the rules of some organization (religious, governmental or otherwise). He does not use nations to enforce His spiritual rule over us – either we come to Him out of our own free will or we do not come at all (Heb. 11:6). This is the essence of his plan of salvation for each of us individually. Our eternal destines are not dependent on our form of government, nor who might be in control of them at any time. Thus, the parties or persons who rule our nations are of no consequence to our salvation.
But Christians have responsibility to try to make our societies as righteous as possible, as indicated by Proverbs 14:34: “Righteousness exalts a nation; But sin is a reproach to any people.” It is clear that if we establish governments that promote and facilitate our obedience to God (righteousness), it will benefit ourselves individually, our families, our communities, our nation, and the world. This does not mean that the government mandates any particular religion; but neither do they stand in the way of those who would peacefully teach what they believe to be the truth of God’s righteousness (Romans 1:16-17). The purpose of this article is to propose an alternative to the current methods for selecting leaders that generally exist today in order to avoid their inherent and inevitable corruption.
The Problem with the Current Model
There is no reason for detailed explanation here. The only people who would not see the corruption of our current system of government are those who are so caught up in it that they are blind to their flaws. The main problem in the U.S. and most free countries is the amount of money that it takes to get someone elected. This is the ultimate fault of the masses, since they allow money-funded commercials and other financial inducements (free cell phones?) to dictate their votes. Rarely, if ever, is the full truth revealed, and money plays a tremendous part in covering up the full truth.
For example, what proportion of the general voting public understands that the National debt will fall on our children and grandchildren? Pose the question to Google: “If each of these 81,890,189 federal taxpayers were given responsibility for paying off an equal share of the entire federal debt of $15,885,854,755,351.47, they would each need to pay about $193,989.72 (as of July 12, 2012).” It is hard to believe that all of the good voters in this country do not care that they are enslaving future generations. They would care if they were confronted with the truth. But major efforts are made to conceal this and other critical information from the voting public. The numbers are so big as to be unbelievable, as are many truisms in our Nation’s capital.
At the same time, major issues that should be given rational thought are exploited for political purposes and rarely considered objectively. Trivial non-issues are given front and center media attention hiding the real issues that should be considered. And while one party might be worse than the other, there is plenty of blame to go around. Further, once someone is elected the “money people” are at the door again to get favored for their past “contributions” and to bargain further for the next election. Corruption feeds on itself.
The truism that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” was known well before it was articulated by Lord Acton in 1887. Israel’s Kings Saul and David were initially quite humble men before they were corrupted by their power, seemingly feeling that they were above the laws of God and untouchable by the courts of man. These examples demonstrate the causes of corruption of individuals who at one point in their lives were good and honest people with integrity. So, let us not belabor the point – if you do not recognize this trait in the majority of our government officials today (regardless of party affiliation), it is only because you are either not looking or you are caught up in the power game yourself. Exceptions notwithstanding – they only prove that it is possible to resist being overcome (as indicated in 1 Corinthians 10:13), but this does not establish any general rule. We all know what holds in general; so let’s not kid ourselves.
In brief, as long as the big money people control who is elected, there is no hope for improvement. Recent election financing reform efforts in the US were a joke, and they may well have made things even worse, thus proving our point that the current system is irretrievable because it is controlled by those who will never give it up voluntarily. This will continue to be the case as long as the solution depends on those in power passing laws that erode their own power. From their perspective, the system is working quite well, and they see no reason to change it.
Any Valid Solution Must Eliminate the Problem
As long as the masses can be deceived into thinking that the politicians in a given party have their best interests in mind, the system will continue to be corrupt. It is critical to understand the big money interests and how they are ultimately in control. In many cases we see them contributing to both parties at the same time. And for that matter, with the computerization of the voting process, the victory may well go to the party that has purchased the superior hackers.
A “third party” candidacy is the worst of all worlds in that it steals votes away from the main party that has a similar (although typically not as radical) ideology as the third party. The inevitable result is that the winner is the one who supports a minority view. Common sense would dictate that there should be a run-off between the top two candidates – we will allow you to speculate on why that has not happened, knowing that it certainly would if it did not serve some interests to have minority rule. But these minor tweaks in the system do not address the true cause of the problem, which is that voting produces anything but representative government.
The current mindset we have been taught from our youth up is that representative leaders can only be established by the vote of the people. But the fact that our leaders today are anything but representative of the vast majority of us is an obvious testimony to the fact that this assumption is false. Voting is, in fact, the very problem that it is currently impossible to circumvent.
An Alternative Model for True Representative Government
So is the situation hopeless? Not at all from a conceptual point of view although it will require a MAJOR paradigm shift for the reader to understand it. But we have to start somewhere.
Before presenting the selection model, let us emphasize that this model does not require that any governance structure given in the US constitution will be altered (e.g., president, house, senate, supreme court). In the US this means that the three branches of government would be retained with all of the checks and balances that have kept things from getting totally out of control in the past. The ONLY thing that will change is the selection process – the flawed voting system will be replaced by a system that guarantees totally representative government.
There may be several alternative models proposed – we do not claim this one to be the only one that will work. But here is one very simple alternative model that can work extremely well both at the federal and the local levels:
1. Eliminate voting and thereby eliminate all of the corruption that goes with it: rigging the elections, stuffing the ballot box, hacking the electronic voting machines, buying votes, intimidation at the ballot box, voter ID, deceiving people into thinking they can vote themselves into prosperity without work, etc., etc. ad infinitum.
2. Eliminate all campaign contributions and all campaigning; it is all corrupt, unnecessary and rarely a reflection of reality. Eliminate all lobbying in favor of general open presentation and structured debates that are open to and observed by all.
3. Create a pool of volunteer candidates that is indeed representative of good cross-section of average people throughout the country. This will guarantee representative government like never before, since those who are in this pool will be a statistically valid total representation of the entire population, since …
a. They will all volunteer to serve.
b. The key word here is serve; they will have definitive relatively short term limits (details to be worked out), so they cannot build up powerful committee assignments and financial deals over time that crush their junior counterparts.
c. Their pay will be comparable to the average pay for the entire workforce (or some modest variation so as not to put them at a major economic disadvantage). The only incentive that they should have is to serve, as opposed to any monetary of other corruptive influences.
d. There will be very close scrutiny to assure that they are not receiving bribes (now lightly masked as campaign contributions), personal incentives, favors for their relatives or anything else that could possibly alter their votes on pending bills. The penalties for even the appearance of such will be immediate and severe.
e. There will be a minimum educational requirement to assure that the pool of candidates are generally competent, and are both willing and able to be further trained for the job that they will perform.
4. The pool of candidate will be required to go through an intensive training program that will bring them up to speed on the most recent developments, the bills being proposed, and other red tape type items that they will have to face if/when they are selected. It is expected that some might be washed out at this point – testing will be intense to assure that all candidates are qualified to serve prior to their selection. The training will be monitored by those on both sides of the interests in current legislation to assure that it is objective and unbiased. All volunteers will be compensated for their training time even if they are washed out.
5. The selection process will be done by a computer generated random number where the numbers assigned to the candidates will not be known at the time of the generation. The candidates will be numbered so that the random number generator results points to specific candidates. However, a second process will go on simultaneously that will assign the candidates to their identifying numbers. This dual-randomization process will assure that there is no way to rig the process.
6. Of course, there is no such thing as a fool-proof system, but there will be adequate supervision by objective, technically-competent observers to assure that the selection is in fact as purely random as possible. These observers will only view the process from its technical side, not from the point of view of results. That is, they will be employed to assure that the process is fair, but they will not have any ability at all to manipulate the process. It is technically possible to validate the process without knowing the results or knowing what the results will be.
7. There will be definitive laws against any elected official using his/her office for monetary gain either before, during or after his/her election. Severe mandatory jail terms will be imposed in this regard for all types of corruption (this will be defined in terms of private communications with lobbying agents).
8. Some group must administrate this, and clearly this is another vulnerability in the system. However, that group will be selected and changed before each election by random selection just as the candidates are. This will minimize the chances that the central administration can be corrupted.
9. The president will be elected by the House and Senate putting forth one of their own. While this process could be corrupted, we see the term limits and the random selection of house and senate members to minimize this possibility, and that a compromise candidate be chosen, if necessary. With random selection the current Left and Right will cease to exist, since all persons elected will be trying to advance all citizens and not just pandering to a politically beneficial subset – there will be no reason to do that under this system.
This process reflects the original ideals of writers of the US Constitution, which had in mind that ordinary people would “go to Washington” and serve for a relatively short period of time after which they would return to their normal occupation activities (and not as filthy rich aristocrats). It will be perfectly representative to the extent that all subcultures of our society participate in the proportion that they exist in society. All will be encouraged to participate, and some initial method of randomly eliminating volunteers will be instituted, e.g., based on one of the central digits of the population social security number.
Let us conclude this section by saying that we are not so naive as to think that the current power structure is going to consent to anything like this model. (We do not want you to think we are stupid.) However, we believe that if they truly had the best interests of our countries in mind, they would create and approve such a system. And perhaps some major event in the future will provoke them or others to act in this regard. But as for now, it is not our intent to overthrow the current power structure, nor to promote any type of change (see the next section). Our intent in this article is only to demonstrate to any objective person that IT CAN BE DONE! This is a necessary first step.
Our Responsibility to Our Current Governments
This is defined for all Christians in Romans 13.
Romans 13:1-5
13:1 Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the (powers) that be are ordained of God.
2 Therefore he that resists the power, withstands the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment.
3 For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And would you have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same:
4 for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil.
5 Wherefore (ye) must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience' sake.
Christians must subject themselves to their governments up until the point at which the government requires us to do something that violates God’s law. As indicated in Acts 5:29: “But Peter and the apostles answered and said, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’”
Whether your government is relatively good or evil is not a qualifier to the above commands – there could be no government any worse than that of Rome – that they allowed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and other atrocities are matters of historical certainty. So there should be nothing in this article that is in any way urging anarchy or the overthrow of any government – such would be contrary to clear bible teaching. It could even be argued that if Romans 13 were only to be obeyed when there was “good” government, it would not apply to any governments in existence today, back in the first century, or at any time in the history of humankind.
Why would God allow His people (Christians) to be dominated by evil governmental powers? One answer is that our temporal life here is relatively of minor importance compared to our life with God after our short stay on this earth is over. If it were Jesus’ mission to create better governments, we would have better governments. We cannot answer the questions as to the reason that God allows the various governments as they now stand – but we know that He does have a good reason (Romans 8:28). And, we know that He can and does raise them up and throw them down as He sees fit. Jeremiah 18:7: “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to break down and to destroy it; …” So God is in control (Revelation 4 and 5), and our faith in God should be sufficient to enable us to be satisfied on this earth in whatsoever state we find ourselves -- Philippians 4:11: “for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.”
Jesus gives his conditions for salvation: God's Plan of Salvation
Companion Pilgrims article: "Give Us A King"
Return to the Pilgrims' landing page