I was wondering what people would think of a ballot that grants even more freedom that traditional closed ballots?
An example of such a system might be the following:
At the local level, all eligible voters are to fill in let's say nine names of ay other eligible voter in the same local community to form the local government every year. The names are all added up, and the nine names that appear most frequenty form the nine members of the local government. With modern technology, the ballot could be an electronic one, thus letting a computer do all the adding up.Sinse all eligible voters would also be candidates (voter-candidates, essentially), there would e no need for an election campaign or politicking. People would be voted in in a similar manner as to jurors for juror duty. There's no guarantee that the people voted in want the position, but ae simply the ones whom the community believe to be most qualified for the job. Certainly they could legally turn down the position for special reasons, but essentially must recognize that the community has chosen them, and so turning down the positionwould be ke turning down the community.
At the national level, the local governments could vote for the national government in the same way.
I believe that one advantage of such a system is that it allows qualified candidates who might simply be turned off by politics to be chosen even if they didn't run (which itself can be an indication of power-hunger for those who do run). That should elevate the quality of candidates. It could also break the party system. And it could promote more decentralization of power. This would essentially through FPTP, STV, MMP, and other right back into the dark ages. What would be your thoughts on such a system?