I know that among the many many contributions to human thought for which I will get credit long after I die, the use of random selection for political bodies will be one for which I will get credit.
What is interesting is how I first generated the idea of using random selection in political life.
I was doing a
difficult study in a State Assembly district in San Francisco where
the Democratic candidate was black in 1964. The district was about
70% Democrat. I wanted to determine if the anti-black racism was
sufficient to defeat a black Democrat.
My solution was to do an exhaustive survey with detailed notes. I took 100 precincts and divided them among three other marketing research friends. We pursued each of our 25 names in our samples for two weeks, with up to six knocks on the front door.
We then sat at a table with each other and went over each questionnaire to give a final conclusive answer: would this person vote and would they vote against a black Democrat. Our conclusion was that no amount of money could sway these voters because there was no perceptible anti-black political sentiment. The black candidate was Willie Brown and he won handily.
What I learned from my
long personal interviews in the homes of real people, was that a
cross section of my fellow Americans are intelligent, thoughtful and
have well thought-out coherent views on the world. I still believe
that, even though I rant against the political ideology of Lefties.
About 11 years later, driving with one of my many brilliant girl-friends, we were discussing why our local Board of Supervisors were so out of touch with reality, my girl friend asked what I would do to fix the Board. At that point I came up with random selection because I had so much faith in ordinary people.
Ordinary people must be the basis for representative government. Random selection is the way to do that. Institutions must also be represented but not necessarily by random sampling.