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Okay, political what if. Here's your required reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Lets posit that the United States incorporates demarchic ideas into the Constitution, either during the initial drafting or later on. Essentially, the states send panels of randomly selected citizens to Washington to act as a third house of Congress to vote up or down on legislation passed by both traditional houses, before being sent off to the President if it passes the panels. Anything that the panels cannot come to a vote on is sent back to Congress. A few caveats and details below:

First, these panels would likely be suspended during a state of declared and active war, to expedite wartime readiness.

If this were a modern day invention, I imagine it being a monthly affair; each month, the panels are sent to review the previous month's legislation. If it existed in the early days of the Republic, I'd see it as an annual affair (something like 1-2 months in winter to vote on the previous year's legislation), since the pace of the federal government was much slower back then.

The other question is should the panels be proportionate like the House, or equal like the Senate. If they're equal like the Senate, I imagine each state's panel (each composed, ultimately, of some larg-ish odd number, like 25) would vote on the matter, and it would take a majority of states to approve legislation. If its proportionate (each panel composed of some number proportionate to their representation in the House), then the panels could be combined, and legislation would have to garner support of a majority of the citizens.

Votes should be done completely in secret, to minimize political pressure on these citizens.

What effects might this have, beyond just making legislation slower and more deliberate?
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