Ranked Voting Comes to Maine and the Best Form of Democracy?

News that Ranked Choice Voting has come to Maine is making a bit of (small time) political news. Ireland has it. Alas, I know Ireland only too well. Oh, I'm fine with Maine trying it, and I wouldn't mind some states trying a unicameral legislature (as Nebraska has, only note that it is also "nonpartisan") only on the British Parliamentary model. The states are supposed to be "laboratories of democracy". after all. Go for it.

That said, Ranked Choice Voting is a disaster because it gives us a mish-mash of professional politicians, making for crazy-quilt, small party legislatures in which the embedded, unextractable Bureaucrats are the only ones to rule.

If you want TRUE democracy, (as the Ancient Greeks found, who tried just about every form of "people rule" possible) chose legislatures by lottery, much as you'd chose juries. I.e., choose by lottery people who passed certain basic qualifications (no criminal record, etc.) to represent districts. As William F. Buckley famously put it, "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

For the simple truth is, AS LONG AS YOU HAVE "professional" politicians, you'll have a class of buffoons who only look out for their re-election. They "represent" only themselves. It's as simple as that.