Choosing politicians by jury has huge advantages over choosing them by popular vote.
If politicians continue to be chosen by popular election"
If politicians continue to be chosen by popular election, despite the problems with that approach, there are two ways juries can be used to make popular elections much more democratic.
How to democratically decide election rules
Election rules need to be decided independently from politicians and political parties, because fair and democratic decision-making requires that those who decide do not have a conflict of interest. In much the same way that juries could decide the rules under which juries choose politicians, juries could also decide the rules governing popular elections. This would put the deciding of election rules on the highly democratic basis of informed rule by the people, independent from politicians, political parties, and special interests.
Why juries are better than money vouchers for publicly funding elections
According to Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig and Yale law professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, vouchers should be used for the public funding of elections. In this approach, which will be implemented in Seattle in 2017, each citizen gets a money voucher they can donate to political candidates. Unfortunately, vouchers amount to a form of popular vote, and suffer from the same serious flaws as popular election voting.
The "vote of the vouchers" will be just as poorly informed as election voting, probably even more so, as voters are better informed by election-day than earlier in the process when voucher money would be donated. Far from providing a level playing field for candidates, the competition for vouchers will heavily favor candidates who get a lot of media coverage and are backed by powerful interests, such as the establishments of the two main parties. It is also safe to predict that the portions of the public underrepresented among those who vote, will also be underrepresented among those who use their vouchers.
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