A mood of criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be choosen by chance and against their will, instead of by fraud and against the will of all the rest of us, as now.
But isn't the jury system itself imperfect? Isn't it occasionally disgraced by gross abuse and scandal? ... [The jury system] has its failures and its absurdities, its abuses and corruptions, but taking one day with another manifestly works. It is not the fault of juries that so many murderers go unwhipped of justice, and it is not the fault of juries that so many honest men are harassed by preposterous laws....
"So I propose that our legislatures be chosen as our juries are now chosen- that the names of all eligible men in each assembly district be put in a hat (or if no hat can be found that is large enough, into a bathtub), and that a blind moron, preferably of tender years, be delegated to draw out one. Let the constituted catchpolls then proceed swiftly to this man's house, and take him before he can get away. Let him be brought into court forthwith, and put under bond to serve as elected, and if he cannot furnish the bond, let him be kept until the appointed day in the nearest jail.
"The advantages of this system would offer are so vast and obvious that I hesitate to venture into the banality of rehashing them. It would in the first place, save the commonwealth the present excessive costs of elections, and make political campaigns unnecessary. It would in the second place, get rid of all the heart-burnings that now flow out of every contest at the polls, and block reprisals and charges of fraud that now issue from the heart burnings. It would in the third place, fill all the State Legislatures with men of a peculiar and unprecedent cast of mind- men actually convinced that public service is a public burden, and not merely a private snap. And it would, in the fourth and most important place, completely dispose of the present degrading knee-bending and trading in votes, for nine-tenths of the legislators, having got into office unwillingly, would be eager only to finish their duties and go home, and even those who acquired a taste for the life would be unable to do anything to increase the probability, even by one chance in a million, of their re-election.
"The disadvantages of the plan are very few, and most of them, I believe, yield readily to analysis. Do I hear argument that a miscellaneous gang of tin-roofers, delicatessen dealers and retired bookkeepers, chosen by hazard, would lack that vast knowledge of public affairs needed by makers of laws? Then I can only answer (a) that no such knowledge is actually necessary, and (b) that few, if any, of existing legislators possess it. The great majority of public proplems, indeed, are quite simple, and any man may be trusted to grasp their elements in ten days who may be- and is- trusted to unravel the obfuscations of two gangs of lawyers in the same time. In this department, the so-called expertness of so-called experts is largely imaginary. My scheme would have the capital merit of barring them from the game. They would lose their present enormous advantages as a class, and so their class would tend to disappear ...
H.L. Mencken.