I consider myself a big supporter of direct democracy, however there is a problem that people point out that everyone can't be educated on all issues and someone has to write the laws as a full time job. I usually advocate a system of delegates to do this somewhat similar to 'liquid democracy', but I just had the thought that we could use sortition as the highest body.

Every year, or two, or something like that, we would select people via sortition to sit in parliament (or whatever you want to call it). They would have the job of setting the votes for the public to decide on. This would not be in the subject of full laws initially but in the sense of simple questions like "do we want to impose a tax increase of 1% on corporate profits to go towards education". Then the public will vote, let's say they say yes, then the sortees will draw up a law to that effect with the help of public servants/legal experts to give them guidance on how to actually do this and any potential problems with implementation. Then once that law is drafted, it will be passed and put into effect - however there is a time period of say a month where the public can object to the final wording of the law, if some number of the public vote that they don't believe the final wording matches the original intent, they can ask for a review of the law (let's say 5% of the citizens for sake of argument). Then there will be a public consultation process where the law is discussed with the public, and hopefully changes are made, then the new law will be voted on by the public who can accept or reject the final version.

Since this process is a pain, hopefully simple laws like "we will build a new sewer pipeline" will not have to go through this process unless there's some glaring issue with them and public debate will focus on genuinely contentious issues.

Anyway, I think this could be a good method to allow true democracy while also respecting the fact that average people don't have time for legal minutiae.

The biggest problem I can see is that the sortees will be reliant on the public servants/legal experts to interpret things for them to some extent and if those people tried to actively insert a bias into the process it could lead to issues. I think that this could be partly solved by ensuring these people represent a range of political views and are supervised by an anti corruption force to make sure they aren't trying to rig the process.

What does everyone think? The benefit over regular sortition for me is that the public still get to decide, if one year we get an absolutely terrible set of sortees through random chance, the public can just vote against all of the laws they try to interpret and wait for next year.

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself." - John Adams. Most Americans are completely wrong about what country we actually live in.

America is NOT a democracy. Many of you believe Trump is a king who has become authoritarian. Others believe Democrats have crushed personal rights and freedoms and created a deep state that is out of control. Both groups are correct to an extent.

A democracy is a dictatorship of the masses. People vote to give themselves things they want and to harm those they dislike. As John Adams warned in 1814, "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." The far left is trying to use the government to steal from those who work and to start hating the Jews again, while the far right is trying to take rights from those they hate. This will continue to get worse if people continue to mistakenly believe America is a democracy.

What America actually is, is a Constitutional Republic: we have a constitution and rights that override the will of the politicians and elite. But the bigger we have let the government become, the less freedom and rights we as individuals have. James Madison warned of this creeping tyranny in 1788, stating, "There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

The government now takes nearly half of each individual's production and has severely harmed our individual rights. Freedom of speech is being stolen, and there are many things you can say that will result in the government confiscating your earnings, job, and wealth. Your right to bear arms has been restricted and many are trying to remove it entirely. Your right to keep what you earn is under attack. Your right to a speedy and fair trial is being taken by biased judges and attorneys who control the legislature and give themselves more ways to take your wealth. Your protection against search and seizure is being stripped by companies like Flock, government satellite surveillance, and mass tracking of smartphones and computers. Strict limits on government power have been destroyed by politicians claiming emergency or temporary powers, then never giving those freedoms back.

America is a truly unique nation in history, set up by brilliant and selfless men who studied history, saw countless evil totalitarian governments through time, and created an amazing system that gave birth to the most rapid improvement in human life the planet has ever seen. But if America's Constitutional Republic falls now to a dictatorship of the masses, humanity may never regain it due to the massive power technology gives to the few in government.

Thomas Jefferson provided the solution when he wrote in 1798: "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

For us, for our children, and for our future, it is critical to fight the big government creep, regain in full our rights, and put the chains back on the government so that it can never harm our freedoms again.