A Proposal to Reduce Corruption in Government

I am not particularly surprised that lobbyists have been bribing legislators, but recent events have set me to thinking about solutions to the problem of corruption in Congress. As I see it, one problem is that lobbyists can bribe legislators via campaign contributions that are not clearly quid quo pro for legislative action.

Most reform proposals focus on the money by trying to limit campaign and other contributions or by requiring disclosure of contributions. Limiting contributions runs up against the First Amendment, and disclosure requirements accomplish nothing because of the apathy and stupidity of the electorate.

My solution would be to focus on the campaigns themselves as the source of the evil to be rooted out. If there were no campaigns, there would be no campaign contributions, and any contributions to or for Congresscritters would be clearly bribery. Instead of having elections, let us instead have Congressional lotteries in which every qualified resident of a Congressional district would be subject to random selection as a Congresscritter. No selectee would be compelled to serve, and a new drawing would be had until someone willing to serve was selected. To reduce the incentive for corruption while in office, the Congresscritters would receive a much larger stipend than today. Being selected would, in effect, set you up for life.

But how would such a system insure the selection of capable legislators? It would not, but neither does the present system. There is probably no consensus about what characteristics a “capable” legislator would have, but to the extent that there is, the pool of potential selectees might be improved by including only persons who possess the characteristics at issue, provided that they are measurable and verifiable. Thus, a district might conclude that only high school graduates or non-smokers ought to be in the pool.

It may be desirable to extend this principle to other offices as well. Senators might be selected at random from a pool of former Congresscritters, Governors, General Officers, or other holders of state-wide offices. This would give the Senate a little of the cachet that it once had when Senators were chosen by state legislatures. Come to think of it, the state legislatures (themselves chosen by lot) could go back to picking Senators.

In keeping with recent past practice, the President might be chosen at random from a pool of present and former Governors, the incumbent or former Presidents, current and former Vice Presidents, current and former Senators, and 4 star generals or admirals. The people haven’t elected anyone not in these categories in over a century except for Herbert Hoover whose highest office was as Secretary of Commerce.

The transaction costs associated with selecting officeholders would be reduced to almost nothing, and a great deal of the incentives to corruption would be eliminated.