Perhaps there is no better solution, all the best solutions are equally bad
in that they all have flaws in one area or another.
Proportional voting is
often touted as a better election system but it suffers flaws, see "Archimedes'
Revenge" by Paul Hoffman (ISBN: 978-044921750-4, previously (my copy)
0-14-012506-X or 978-014-0125606-1) which contains two interesting chapters all
about it - containing some interesting implied accusations regarding the
selection of the apportionment method (which itself is rather flawed, see, for
example, the
Alabama Paradox).
So getting back to the original point, whatever method
is chosen to select Judges, it will have flaws; but as your parent says "Follow
the money" - something that ought to be done when electing representatives (ie
who has paid for their election campaigns and who are they really going to
serve? Or to put it another way, from this side of the pond it seems that the US
elections' victors are those with the best advertising bucks who then repay
their financiers by pushing through laws that they want - DMCA for starters
anyone? I will add that our MPs are not exactly shining examples of being
totally honest in their campaign promises).
It looks [to me] that elections
in the US are rather like elections in AnkhMorpork in Terry Pratchett's
Discworld series of books: "one man one vote; and that one man with the one vote
is the Patrician" - except in the US it's the corporations that are the one man
with the one vote.
I still favour the method Paul Hoffman recommends to
overcome the deficiencies of the popular STV systems of proportional
representation: Approval voting - one man many votes: you vote once for each
candidate that you like and the candidates with the top n votes (when n is the
number of representatives required) are elected.
So to elect Judges, the
relevant electorate of citizens would get a list of the judges and told to vote
for whoever they liked. Then the top n voted candidates would be elected. They
would not have an election campaign as such, but a government (local state or
federal) published statement about them. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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