[Astro_Bot]

Originally Posted by Renato1

Sorry, but I don't understand what your proposal really addresses.

It addresses, mostly:
(1) that MPs represent their party's centralised viewpoint (and vote in a block) rather than represent their constituents views directly - a common complaint of first-term MPs is that their party whip gives them no freedom in how to vote. IMHO, there are not enough independents that survive the "two party" dominated system to make a difference.
(2) that MPs are sometimes unduly influenced, either directly or indirectly.
(3) that the current system can be easily subverted through control of (or at the very least, heavy influence over) candidate selection.
(4) lack of engagement by most of the electorate.
Edit: It also partially addresses (5) that policy "debate" mostly occurs in back rooms and party rooms, invisible to the public.

The vast majority of us (>98%) have no say in who the candidates are in the current system. We can, now, in the main, only vote for candidates selected for us by party heavyweights and have little, if any, influence on policy formulation. Occasionally, there's an independent who gets elected, but they are very few and far between. The parties distort our system and restrict effective representation of each electorate's views.

I've covered more in previous comments, but would like to re-iterate this:

Originally Posted by Astro_Bot

Because it's not the election that is the problem; it's the candidates and everything that goes with them in our current system - political parties, fundraisers, donations, lobbying, private forums, vested interests, lucrative jobs for ex-politicians, branch stacking, mouthpiece think-tanks, poor representation of constituents (which often manifests as utter disdain for the electorate-at-large) and, dare I say it, occasional episodes of corruption.

To continue ...

Originally Posted by Renato1

It seems to limit who can stand for election, and has a jury of people selecting nice guys and gals to stand for election, on the basis of unknown criteria.

My proposal randomly selects a pool of people (the "jury"), in each seat, for each election - a protected process that cannot be gamed or influenced - then down-selects (the "jury" members rank each other, that is, each is effectively judged by a jury of his/her peers) for the job of representing that electorate. (I initially suggest 25 down-selected to 5, but those numbers are just the starting point for debate). The process is fairly robust, because it only selects the top 5 who then become the candidates at an otherwise bog-standard election. That is, down-selection is a coarse filter (with plenty of room for error), with the fine filter being the election itself.

There are no particular criteria in down-selection, just as there are no particular criteria at an election in our current system.

Keep in mind that MPs aren't the experts and, for the most part, simply vote on Bills - in my proposal, that vote is informed by the MP's electorate's views rather than party instructions.

So a whole bunch of individuals are elected without any unified goal to work towards - sort of like he government of Iraq.

Actually, Iraq has political parties like us. But they also have deep ethnic and religious divisions and nowhere near our level of education and free political communication. Plus, they prefer to assassinate each other physically, rather than verbally. It's hardly a fair comparison.

As for other comments, as tempting as it may be, please refrain from mentioning contemporary politics (specific parties, personalities, current policies or issues, etc.) in this thread.