Here’s an idea I’ve been turning over (probably not an original one, but worth writing down):
What if every election ran quickly, entirely online, structured like a tournament bracket? Say a country has 45 million eligible voters. Split everyone into groups of 3. Each group of 3 picks one person to advance — that’s the entire first round.
- Round 1: ~15 million voters remain
- Round 2: ~5 million
- Round 3: ~1.5 million
- Round 4: ~500,000
- Round 5: ~150,000
- Round 6: ~50,000
- Round 7: ~15,000
- Round 8: ~5,000
- Round 9: ~1,500
- Round 10: this is where members of parliament get selected — ~500 people
- Round 11: ~150
- Round 12: ~50
- Round 13: this is where ministers get selected — ~15 people
- Round 14: ~5
- Round 15: the final round selects a single head of state
The whole cycle repeats every two years. Each round takes about 10 minutes: you read a short prepared statement from the other two people in your group of 3, then pick one (you can’t vote for yourself). The numbers above are rough — the point is illustrating roughly how many rounds it would take to narrow 45 million people down to one. For other government roles, other voters could be assigned proportionally to the role’s importance. No party politics or populism involved — the actual mechanism is that you have to convince two people directly, in person (in writing), based on substance. And since match-ups are effectively anonymous and random each round, nobody can threaten or pressure anyone into a specific vote — you don’t know who will end up in your group ahead of time.
One real downside: this system would struggle to converge on a single, coherent national political direction. A single election cycle could flip the entire slate of officials from one ideological lean to the opposite one, essentially at random. So it might only make sense in a smaller, more culturally homogeneous population — maybe a smaller city rather than an entire country. But in a genuine sense, this is about as close as you could get to literal self-governance by the people.
A possible refinement: hold elections every 2 years, but only replace a third of officials each cycle (staggered terms), cap anyone at a maximum of 6 years total, and don’t allow someone previously elected to run again afterward.
This system would be about as close to “government of, by, and for the people” as you can literally construct. That said — I’m honestly not confident this would actually lead to better outcomes. My faith that “the public will reliably choose what’s good, true, and wise” (even without populist politicians distorting things) isn’t very strong anymore.
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