election by jury for the administrative state
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Paul Melman
Feb 27, 2025, 7:31:25 PMFeb 27
to election by jury
You know, given what's going on with the Trump administration and DOGE and the degree to which it is a reaction to understandable frustration with the opacity and unaccountability of the administrative state, it may serve as a way to promote the idea of election by jury. Most people are unhappy with the recklessness of Trump's cuts, but they weren't exactly happy with the status quo either. The administrative state is plagued by corruption, inefficiency, and bureaucratic bloat. Its constitutional power sits in a weird limbo between the executive and legislative branch, the secretaries of the agencies are much more salient names than people's own local representatives. Obviously it isn't a realistic near term political goal, but it could be a way to get attention since most people care far more about national politics than local politics. Maybe this could be the subject of an op-ed or something.
Rajiv Prabhakar
Mar 1, 2025, 1:40:13 PMMar 1
to election...@googlegroups.com
Where would you suggest submitting/publishing the op-ed? Did you have a magazine/newspaper in mind, or self publishing on our website?
Regards,
Rajiv
Rajiv
On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 7:31 PM Paul Melman <pmel...@gmail.com> wrote:
You know, given what's going on with the Trump administration and DOGE and the degree to which it is a reaction to understandable frustration with the opacity and unaccountability of the administrative state, it may serve as a way to promote the idea of election by jury. Most people are unhappy with the recklessness of Trump's cuts, but they weren't exactly happy with the status quo either. The administrative state is plagued by corruption, inefficiency, and bureaucratic bloat. Its constitutional power sits in a weird limbo between the executive and legislative branch, the secretaries of the agencies are much more salient names than people's own local representatives. Obviously it isn't a realistic near term political goal, but it could be a way to get attention since most people care far more about national politics than local politics. Maybe this could be the subject of an op-ed or something.
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Paul Melman
Mar 2, 2025, 12:28:33 AMMar 2
to election by jury
Probably start with the highest profile and then move down the list if they reject. I'll write up a draft and post it here.
A friend who has published some gave me these tips for pitching op-eds:
- Which outlets would be interested?
- Which editors?
- Opinion editors specifically
- Websites often have editor contacts
- Sometimes you have to sleuth
- Search LinkedIn, Twitter
- Email verification tool
- Email finding services (eg rocket reach)
- Title with colon (eg “Submission: Your Title Here”) in your email
- Usually better to email individual editors rather than the generic op ed email (there are exceptions)
- Short (1-2 sentences) about your thesis and possibly hook
- Then a couple sentences to establish credibility/authority
- Explicitly ask if they're interested
- Copy and paste the article below the pitch rather than attaching it as a document
- Bonus points for HED/DEK or even multiple possible options
- 3 options for each between pitch and article
- Remember: editors want clicks
- Fast response also very valued
- Establishing relationship with editors is good. More likely to publish you again in the future
- If not confident, may add “open to edits”
- Pitch multiple editors at once if uncertain
- Pitching multiple editors at the same outlet at once generally not advised but can be done
- Rank your desired outlets into tiers, pitch top tier first
- May follow up in 2-3 days
A friend who has published some gave me these tips for pitching op-eds:
- Which outlets would be interested?
- Which editors?
- Opinion editors specifically
- Websites often have editor contacts
- Sometimes you have to sleuth
- Search LinkedIn, Twitter
- Email verification tool
- Email finding services (eg rocket reach)
- Title with colon (eg “Submission: Your Title Here”) in your email
- Usually better to email individual editors rather than the generic op ed email (there are exceptions)
- Short (1-2 sentences) about your thesis and possibly hook
- Then a couple sentences to establish credibility/authority
- Explicitly ask if they're interested
- Copy and paste the article below the pitch rather than attaching it as a document
- Bonus points for HED/DEK or even multiple possible options
- 3 options for each between pitch and article
- Remember: editors want clicks
- Fast response also very valued
- Establishing relationship with editors is good. More likely to publish you again in the future
- If not confident, may add “open to edits”
- Pitch multiple editors at once if uncertain
- Pitching multiple editors at the same outlet at once generally not advised but can be done
- Rank your desired outlets into tiers, pitch top tier first
- May follow up in 2-3 days
Rajiv Prabhakar
Mar 3, 2025, 6:36:10 AMMar 3
to election by jury
I've never tried this myself, but love the ambition. Let me know if I can help in any way.
Regards,
Rajiv
Rajiv
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/election-by-jury/735e1918-dd15-4068-af95-82d0fdfefa26n%40googlegroups.com.
Paul Melman
Mar 14, 2025, 11:40:27 AMMar 14
to election by jury
OK here's a draft, what do y'all think?
Why Electing Bureaucrats by Jury Can Save Our Administrative State
The ongoing DOGE fiasco has laid bare the paradox facing our democracy: elected leaders increasingly crave authority but fear accountability. The demand for harsh cost cutting didn't materialize from nothing. Congress and the presidency have perfected a sleight of hand, delegating ever more of their power to an expanding administrative state. This allows them to sidestep direct blame for unpopular decisions, hiding behind a veil of unelected agency heads. The result? Our elected officials are detached from actual governance, leaving a growing bureaucracy powerful yet politically insulated. So who could be surprised at the growing public animosity towards the administrative state?
The recent, aggressive cuts vividly illustrate the critical role administrative agencies play in our daily lives—from ensuring clean air and safe food to maintaining financial stability. But these debates also underscore legitimate public grievances: agencies sometimes seem disconnected, unresponsive, or even hostile to the citizens they serve. This tension reveals a core dilemma: how do we preserve the indispensable expertise of these agencies while addressing their democratic deficit?
A bold yet practical solution exists: the appointment of administrative agency heads not by Congress or the president, but by juries composed of ordinary citizens. This method, known as Election by Jury, would reinvigorate accountability, ensure true representativeness, and enhance the deliberative quality of appointments—areas where our current process sorely lacks.
Attaining statistical precision and representation even at the scale is not particularly difficult. A jury of 384 randomly selected citizens can represent a population of many millions with 95% confidence and only a 5% margin of error between the demographic proportions of the jurors vs. the general population. Random selection ensures a jury demographically mirrors society—diverse in age, race, gender, and income—far better than a Congress skewed toward elite and partisan interests. Because the jury is a representative sample of Americans, its incentives would naturally align with those of the American public.
The deliberative quality of such juries would be transformative. Unlike Congress, whose confirmation hearings often descend into political theater or backroom trading of favors, jurors have one responsibility: deliberate deeply on the merits of candidates. By focusing exclusively on a single appointment, these juries would not suffer the cognitive overload that undermines many legislative decisions. Structured deliberations, supported by expert evidence and cross-examinations of nominees, would foster informed, nuanced, and less polarized outcomes. In practice, the process would work more like a job interview rather than the political circus that is the current appointment process.
Critically, Election by Jury addresses pervasive biases inherent in our current confirmation process. Today, agency heads frequently owe their positions to partisan allegiances, making decisions heavily influenced by political heuristics rather than expertise or public welfare. Jurors, however, guided by curated evidence and structured deliberation, are far less prone to biases such as partisan confirmation bias. The presence of diverse viewpoints in a jury encourages moderate, consensus-driven selections, ultimately reducing the divisive binaries dominating mass elections and congressional votes.
Moreover, juries inherently strengthen accountability. Candidates nominated for these crucial positions would face rigorous cross-examination, compelled to substantiate claims with evidence under oath. This mechanism would significantly deter misinformation and superficiality, common pitfalls in politicized hearings. The heightened scrutiny would compel candidates to articulate clear, fact-based positions, elevating discourse and reinforcing public trust.
Implementing Election by Jury is feasible. Our existing jury system already summons over half a million citizens annually; integrating this practice into administrative appointments would not be a significant financial or logistical burden, as it would require only a few thousand additional jurors once every four years. Additionally, the randomized nature of jury selection makes the system highly secure against corruption. Jury proceedings occur in controlled environments, and jurors are not known to lobbyists and special interests ahead of time, limiting external influence and enhancing the integrity of selections.
Testing this approach can start small. Pilot programs at municipal or state levels would allow careful evaluation of outcomes. Municipal judges and city prosecutors are perfect examples of positions which could be elected by jury. Such trials would demonstrate improvements in governance quality, public satisfaction, and trust in government—a crucial step toward broader adoption.
Our current trajectory—maintaining an administrative state distanced from democratic accountability—risks further alienating voters and diminishing trust. DOGE’s drastic cuts have highlighted agency importance, yet also affirmed the need for reform. Election by Jury presents a viable alternative that acknowledges citizens' frustrations while safeguarding expertise essential for effective governance.
It’s time for a democracy upgrade. Convening citizen juries to elect administrative leadership could restore balance, integrity, and public confidence. Rather than passively witnessing governance slip further from accountability, we must boldly reimagine appointments through structured, representative, and deliberative processes. Let's entrust this critical task to juries of informed citizens, reclaiming the democratic spirit that once defined our republic.
Why Electing Bureaucrats by Jury Can Save Our Administrative State
The ongoing DOGE fiasco has laid bare the paradox facing our democracy: elected leaders increasingly crave authority but fear accountability. The demand for harsh cost cutting didn't materialize from nothing. Congress and the presidency have perfected a sleight of hand, delegating ever more of their power to an expanding administrative state. This allows them to sidestep direct blame for unpopular decisions, hiding behind a veil of unelected agency heads. The result? Our elected officials are detached from actual governance, leaving a growing bureaucracy powerful yet politically insulated. So who could be surprised at the growing public animosity towards the administrative state?
The recent, aggressive cuts vividly illustrate the critical role administrative agencies play in our daily lives—from ensuring clean air and safe food to maintaining financial stability. But these debates also underscore legitimate public grievances: agencies sometimes seem disconnected, unresponsive, or even hostile to the citizens they serve. This tension reveals a core dilemma: how do we preserve the indispensable expertise of these agencies while addressing their democratic deficit?
A bold yet practical solution exists: the appointment of administrative agency heads not by Congress or the president, but by juries composed of ordinary citizens. This method, known as Election by Jury, would reinvigorate accountability, ensure true representativeness, and enhance the deliberative quality of appointments—areas where our current process sorely lacks.
Attaining statistical precision and representation even at the scale is not particularly difficult. A jury of 384 randomly selected citizens can represent a population of many millions with 95% confidence and only a 5% margin of error between the demographic proportions of the jurors vs. the general population. Random selection ensures a jury demographically mirrors society—diverse in age, race, gender, and income—far better than a Congress skewed toward elite and partisan interests. Because the jury is a representative sample of Americans, its incentives would naturally align with those of the American public.
The deliberative quality of such juries would be transformative. Unlike Congress, whose confirmation hearings often descend into political theater or backroom trading of favors, jurors have one responsibility: deliberate deeply on the merits of candidates. By focusing exclusively on a single appointment, these juries would not suffer the cognitive overload that undermines many legislative decisions. Structured deliberations, supported by expert evidence and cross-examinations of nominees, would foster informed, nuanced, and less polarized outcomes. In practice, the process would work more like a job interview rather than the political circus that is the current appointment process.
Critically, Election by Jury addresses pervasive biases inherent in our current confirmation process. Today, agency heads frequently owe their positions to partisan allegiances, making decisions heavily influenced by political heuristics rather than expertise or public welfare. Jurors, however, guided by curated evidence and structured deliberation, are far less prone to biases such as partisan confirmation bias. The presence of diverse viewpoints in a jury encourages moderate, consensus-driven selections, ultimately reducing the divisive binaries dominating mass elections and congressional votes.
Moreover, juries inherently strengthen accountability. Candidates nominated for these crucial positions would face rigorous cross-examination, compelled to substantiate claims with evidence under oath. This mechanism would significantly deter misinformation and superficiality, common pitfalls in politicized hearings. The heightened scrutiny would compel candidates to articulate clear, fact-based positions, elevating discourse and reinforcing public trust.
Implementing Election by Jury is feasible. Our existing jury system already summons over half a million citizens annually; integrating this practice into administrative appointments would not be a significant financial or logistical burden, as it would require only a few thousand additional jurors once every four years. Additionally, the randomized nature of jury selection makes the system highly secure against corruption. Jury proceedings occur in controlled environments, and jurors are not known to lobbyists and special interests ahead of time, limiting external influence and enhancing the integrity of selections.
Testing this approach can start small. Pilot programs at municipal or state levels would allow careful evaluation of outcomes. Municipal judges and city prosecutors are perfect examples of positions which could be elected by jury. Such trials would demonstrate improvements in governance quality, public satisfaction, and trust in government—a crucial step toward broader adoption.
Our current trajectory—maintaining an administrative state distanced from democratic accountability—risks further alienating voters and diminishing trust. DOGE’s drastic cuts have highlighted agency importance, yet also affirmed the need for reform. Election by Jury presents a viable alternative that acknowledges citizens' frustrations while safeguarding expertise essential for effective governance.
It’s time for a democracy upgrade. Convening citizen juries to elect administrative leadership could restore balance, integrity, and public confidence. Rather than passively witnessing governance slip further from accountability, we must boldly reimagine appointments through structured, representative, and deliberative processes. Let's entrust this critical task to juries of informed citizens, reclaiming the democratic spirit that once defined our republic.
Rajiv Prabhakar
Mar 14, 2025, 2:53:41 PMMar 14
to election...@googlegroups.com
I love most of it. Nice!
Just one suggestion regarding the following:
> elected leaders increasingly crave authority but fear accountability. The demand for harsh cost cutting didn't materialize from nothing. Congress and the presidency have perfected a sleight of hand, delegating ever more of their power to an expanding administrative state. This allows them to sidestep direct blame for unpopular decisions, hiding behind a veil of unelected agency heads. The result? Our elected officials are detached from actual governance, leaving a growing bureaucracy powerful yet politically insulated
This IMO seems unfair, controversial, and distracts from the main point of the article. I like the alternate framing you used later on: "confirmation hearings often descend into political theater or backroom trading of favors". I recommend doubling down on that.
Regards,
Rajiv
Rajiv
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/election-by-jury/fda473e3-8e8e-4d2a-9d89-f5d9ba55aab2n%40googlegroups.com.
Paul Melman
Mar 14, 2025, 7:47:48 PMMar 14
to election by jury
Yeah I think you're right. I ended up removing the first paragraph and updating the second paragraph to this:
"The recent, aggressive cuts made by the Trump administration vividly illustrate the critical role administrative agencies play in our daily lives—from ensuring clean air and safe food to maintaining our system of national parks and forest reserves. But these debates also underscore legitimate public grievances: agencies sometimes seem disconnected, unresponsive, or even hostile to the citizens they serve. Over the past several decades, largely out of a desire to avoid accountability for day-to-day governance and policy decisions, elected members of Congress have increasingly delegated their authority to administrative agencies, leaving a growing bureaucracy powerful yet politically insulated. This tension reveals a core dilemma: how do we preserve the indispensable expertise of these agencies while addressing their democratic deficit?"
Btw this op-ed was largely the work of the new GPT-4.5 beta, though I went through and made edits. It seems to be a step up in writing quality from older models, though Claude sonnet-3.7 did a decent job as well.
What I did was use OpenAI deep research to create a guide for writing an op-ed tailored to major publications. Then I distilled the main talking points from the EBJ website into a bulleted list. I fed both the writing guide and the EBJ points into a prompt and gave it my thesis for the piece, as well as specific points to cover (in this case, the administrative state, its unaccountability, the recent DOGE cuts, etc.). I used the prompt for a bunch of models (Grok3, Gemini 2.0 Pro, sonnet 3.7, o1, and 4.5), picked the best one (they were all bad except 4.5 and sonnet lol), then made edits and re-wrote parts I didn't like.
"The recent, aggressive cuts made by the Trump administration vividly illustrate the critical role administrative agencies play in our daily lives—from ensuring clean air and safe food to maintaining our system of national parks and forest reserves. But these debates also underscore legitimate public grievances: agencies sometimes seem disconnected, unresponsive, or even hostile to the citizens they serve. Over the past several decades, largely out of a desire to avoid accountability for day-to-day governance and policy decisions, elected members of Congress have increasingly delegated their authority to administrative agencies, leaving a growing bureaucracy powerful yet politically insulated. This tension reveals a core dilemma: how do we preserve the indispensable expertise of these agencies while addressing their democratic deficit?"
Btw this op-ed was largely the work of the new GPT-4.5 beta, though I went through and made edits. It seems to be a step up in writing quality from older models, though Claude sonnet-3.7 did a decent job as well.
What I did was use OpenAI deep research to create a guide for writing an op-ed tailored to major publications. Then I distilled the main talking points from the EBJ website into a bulleted list. I fed both the writing guide and the EBJ points into a prompt and gave it my thesis for the piece, as well as specific points to cover (in this case, the administrative state, its unaccountability, the recent DOGE cuts, etc.). I used the prompt for a bunch of models (Grok3, Gemini 2.0 Pro, sonnet 3.7, o1, and 4.5), picked the best one (they were all bad except 4.5 and sonnet lol), then made edits and re-wrote parts I didn't like.
I can share the writing guide and EBJ bullet points if anyone wants to replicate this process.
I need a line for the author bio when I pitch it though. We don't really have titles do we? How should I describe my relationship to EBJ? Should I just call myself a "board member" or something?
Rajiv Prabhakar
Mar 15, 2025, 6:55:55 AMMar 15
to election by jury
Wow, genAI is better than I thought! Seems like my writing skills will become obsolete very soon, haha.
Your prompting process sounds very good as well. I'd definitely like to play with it too, if you don't mind sharing it.
I'll talk to Clay and discuss what title would be best for your bio.
Regards,
Rajiv
Rajiv
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/election-by-jury/fcc011cc-010a-4b7d-9ccb-b05ded25b753n%40googlegroups.com.
Paul Melman
Mar 18, 2025, 1:12:48 PMMar 18
to election by jury
Sure, here are some docs with my resources.
First, the EBJ talking points. We may want to consider hosting these somewhere in a repository that is easy to modify and access. Basically, I wanted a list of talking points that would be useful to an LLM. This document isn't necessarily meant for humans, so it's not written in a style adapted for human readers.
First, the EBJ talking points. We may want to consider hosting these somewhere in a repository that is easy to modify and access. Basically, I wanted a list of talking points that would be useful to an LLM. This document isn't necessarily meant for humans, so it's not written in a style adapted for human readers.
Here is the full output of my chatGPT deep research query, plus the addendum from the follow up question about contacting editors.
Finally, here is the extracted op-ed structure guide with links removed, which I used for the article prompt along with the EBJ talking points and my directions.
My directions:
Uses the following writing guide [writing guide] and use these talking points (not necessarily all of them, use your discretion): [EBJ talking points]
to write me an 800 word op-ed about why we should use election by jury for the administrative state. Point out that congress and the presidency use the administrative state to delegate authority in a way to minimize political liability for themselves. our elected officials are increasingly disinterested in the actual practice of governance. DOGE's overly aggressive cuts of administrative agencies highlight their importance, but also there are legitimate grievances that the public has with the unaccountable administrative state. Therefore, we should explore an alternative: instead of congress confirming the heads of executive agencies, perhaps we should convene deliberative elector juries to do it. one for each secretary. they would carefully research and deliberate on each candidate and vet them thoroughly, which congress often doesn't bc so many appointments are political favor trading. Include those points. Make it well-written.
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