The recent Sunday I had an argument about the flaw of voting.

     The two particular points posed as challenge to me were.

     • It is possible that voting is necessary for democracy, given in opposition to my claim that voting was a mere particular application of democracy and that democracy can be practiced with voting.

and

     • Can I produce an example of democratic ruling without voting.

     First the former point.

   Hard to admit as a logician, but I am ignorant of my Modal Logic.  Be as that may, I understand the meaning in ordinary language what they were arguing. The claim is there exists the possible case that voting is necessary for democracy. As I recall days later, I feel that the force of their verbal utterance included another modal quantifier, in that I (mis-)heard them as saying, it is necessary that it is possible that voting is necessary for democracy. Regardless, my response to the second point will nullify either claim.

     Let me confess here and now in writing that I am no longer a fan of democracy. I favour the idea of some meritocratic fascism. Those who know me well may suspect what aspect of merit I value most. Of course, William F. Buckley, Jr.’s famous quote comes to mind, “I rather be ruled by the first hundred people in the New York [telephone directory] than by the Harvard faculty.” Although I agree with the sentiment as most read that statement, I know that Buckley comes from Yale and his remark was not just commentary on United States President Kennedy’s administration but a double entendre against Harvard as Yale’s rival school and Harvard’s Liberal (i.e. political left-of-center) faculty. Buckley could have easily chosen his alma mater Yale which according to him was equally Liberal but he did not.

     In reaction to the controversial 2000 U.S. presidential, a math graduate student friend of mine and I had a lengthy discussion about voting that extended hours after Berkeley’s afternoon Math Tea. In effect, our philosophical and mathematical examination of voting schemas derived the same conclusion made decades earlier by Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.

     Since that afternoon, I had sought alternatives to voting but yet preserving democratic rule. I thought of a solution.

Years earlier to that afternoon discussion on voting, I had watched on the then Sci[ence]-Fi[ction] channel a cinematic adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s story “Harrison Bergson”. Among other things, a take away idea I had was using a lottery system to select government representative officials.

     Democratic rule, as defined as the people ruling themselves, is still preserved.

     Instead of voting on who is to represent the U.S. people, we have a lottery system or similar such system that is used to select citizens for jury duty. Whatever concerns anyone has about the ability or knowledge that selected people should have may be addressed through defining required criterion or through some post-selection filtering process.

     To me, not a new solution. But why I did not recall this idea in the heat of the moment during the argument I shall never know.

P. S. Of course, now that I think about there are dozens of alternative schemas for practicing democracy, including selection by geography, last names, letters that appear in last names, selected birth dates, and many more.