5 – Writing a better constitution

You will find here a proposal amongst others for a constitutional process that would, without a doubt, lead to the writing of a better constitution. We can surely do better, and if you wish to participate in the debate, check out the Forum of Plan C

Phase 1: Selecting citizens.

Ever citizen, starting with the age of 18 (?) designates amongst the people he/she knows 3 (?) individuals with qualities compatible with the common interest and greater good. It must not necessarily be skilled individuals.Qualities that would be searched for could be, for example: honesty, bravery, altruism, patience, open to debate, analysis capability etc. We all know such people around us.
In opposition to an election, no one is candidate.
Anyone can be designated with the exception of parliamentarians, government ministers or actual judges.
Important: those who write or vote the Constitution will therefore be not eligible to power for a long time.
At the end of this first step, some individuals will have been numerously designate, some individuals only a few times, others never.We will then have a list of 500.000, 1 million or maybe 2 million individuals, composed of women and men of all origins and of all social status’s and who would be candidate to nothing at all.

Phase 2: Random Draw / Sortition.

From this list of individuals, we discard the high and low values: those who have been designated only a few times and those who have been designated a vaste majority of times. This will prevent designating media personalities/icons, well versed speakers, and the temptation of running for “office”.
From this reduced list (of hundreds of thousands individuals still) will be randomly drawn those who will form the Constitutional Assembly, maybe 577 individuals, for example.
A person that is randomly picked is allowed to refuse this responsibility and if/when he/she does, a new individual is randomly drawn. This sortition process is repeated until an Assembly is formed.
You therefore have created a Constitutional Assembly that has the less interests, that is selfless, and the most representative of the people that can be achieved. The sortition / random draw process will bring the following: many poor, few rich, women and men, beleivers, atheists, business/company leaders, unemployed, farmers, intellectuals…

Phase 3: Writing the constitution, by the people.

The Constitutional Assembly thus formed will have months to prepare and write the text, to hear experts of all domains to shed some light on the debates. By their work, each individual will develop a necessary skill to participate in the discussions and make proposals.
Each article will be submitted to the vote of the Assembly.

Phase 4: Adopting the constitution, for the people.