Key takeaways from this chapter

A Citizen Governance Website would be associated with each Federal Council except those in the judicial branch. Each Citizen Governance Website would be a "mini legislature" allowing the people to make governing decisions for that department, committee, or organization and its area of responsibility. Combined, all of the Citizen Governance Websites would be a distributed legislative system of mini-legislatures of the people.

Executive branch

In our Collaborative Democracy, a Federal Council would replace each of the following.

• The President – there would be no vice president

• Each of the department heads – the 15 cabinet-level secretaries

• Department executives such as deputy secretaries, assistant secretaries, and directors

• Executives over federal government agencies

• Other executives or managers appointed by the president – however, many political appointees would become permanent staff positions

• Many independent boards, commissions, and committees are already the equivalent of Federal Councils – all would become Federal Councils using random selection from their own pools of candidates

• Ambassadors

Legislative branch

The two chambers of the Legislature would be combined into one chamber and redundant or duplicate committees would be combined into one. Committees or subcommittees that overlap in function or were intended to provide governing law over specific executive departments would be eliminated. Instead, laws would be made through the Citizens Governance Website of those executive departments. A new Recall Council would be added to handle all Federal Council recall requests.

The Legislative Council, each remaining committee and subcommittee, and other organizations in the Legislature would be Federal Councils. Each council would facilitate citizens in creating new laws and budgets through its Citizen Governance Website for its area of responsibility.

Judicial branch

Supreme Court justices would serve for 9 years with a replacement randomly selected each year from the pool of the 179 appellate judges. Each court outside of the Supreme Court would have its own pool of qualified candidates. All judges would serve for 9 years.

The Federal Reserve

The members of the Board of Governors would be randomly selected from a qualified pool instead of being appointed.