Subject: Re: [EL] A different kind of electoral college ...
From: Jon Roland
Date: 4/7/2011, 10:51 PM
CC: "conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu" <conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu>, Election Law <election-law@mailman.lls.edu>
Reply-to:
"jon.roland@constitution.org"

There is a fundamental problem with electing the president by any kind of popular vote, even a vote for electors. It is simply not the best way to get the best persons for that role. I have drafted a constitutional amendment to do it better:

Selecting electors for president and vice-president
The electors for president and vice-president shall be selected in each state by the following procedure:
  1. An initial panel of citizens qualified to vote in that state equal to one hundred times the number of electors to be selected from that state shall be selected at random, in a process that shall be supervised by a randomly-selected grand jury specially empaneled for that task;
  2. Members of this initial panel shall take an examination in which each shall recite from memory 20 randomly selected clauses of this Constitution, and shall receive a score of one for each clause he or she is able to recite without error;
  3. A second panel shall be selected from the first, consisting of ten times the number of electors to be selected, with the odds of selecting each weighted by the score he or she received in the examination, and with exclusion of any who scored zero;
  4. Members of the second panel shall meet, and each shall rank all the others in descending order of civic virtue, giving a score indicating the rank consisting of the number of panelists for the highest down to one for the lowest;
  5. The electors shall then be selected from this second panel at random, but weighted by his or her average rank from the previous round of peer assessments.

-- Jon

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