This is a thought experiment about a legislative model that I thought up some time ago. Admittedly I have some deja vu while posting, but it appears I've never created a thread about this topic so whatever.
The foundation of the Comitia is a society where the average voter asks his or her self this question:
"Who do I want representing me in Congress today?"
I italicized the "today", because that really is the crux of it. There is no election day, because it's always election day for someone. There are no districts, just delegates with X or Y number of votes backing them.
Basically, anyone would have a right to sit in the Comitia and vote if, at the start of that business day, 50 backers had their votes delegated to him/her. Some delegates might have 50 backers, while others might have 50,000 or even 50,000,000. There would be no elections with winners and losers, only whales and small fries, constantly bargaining with each other in a bid to form coalitions and swing votes. The number of backers would determine voting power; for example, if a group of delegates backed by a cumulative total of 35,000,000 people voted Yea to Resolution 555, while a group of delegates backed by a cumulative total of 34,999,999 people voted Nay, then the motion would pass, assuming a simple majority sufficed to pass it.
Anyone could re-delegate their vote at any time by visiting either the post office or a permanent voting precinct (or even a mobile app), and voting power in the Comitia would be re-apportioned at the start of the next day to reflect these changes.
The advantages are straightforward. In real life, if a Senator was elected on a moderate conservative Christian platform to a 6-year term and then was videotaped engaging in kinky master-slave roleplay with his black boyfriend, on day 1 of office, then the voters who put him there would have to wait 6 years to remove him. But under a Comitia system, his backers could immediately wash their hands of him and give their votes to somebody else. He wouldn't be removed from the Comitia outright, assuming he had 50 backers who either still supported him or were too lazy to change their vote, but he'd be stripped of his political relevancy and his ex-backers could say they weren't still represented by a guy whose values were at odds with their own.
Put more simply, delegates would have to be very responsive to the wants of their constituents and avoid scandals, because their voting power could tank very quickly if they misstepped. Players and factions could rise and fall, wax and wane, in the span of a week. Having a large number of ordinary citizens with experience as delegates, such as getting together with your relatives and appointing your uncle to the Comitia, could raise popular participation in government at the highest levels of power, and lessen people's sense of alienation and disenfranchisement.
Obviously, this body would need complicated rules regarding committee assignments and allocation of budget for staffers. How that would work is outside the scope of this post, but I'm sure somebody could get it to work.
Anyways, what are your thoughts?
