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Notes -
After finishing my question, I realized I forgot to say what advantage my proposal has over representative democracy. The problem with our current system I'm seeking to address is "ballot access." Quoting from ballotpedia.org,
For an up-and-coming politician, getting your name on the ballot is the biggest hurdle to starting a career in politics. In my home state, you either have to submit a petition with 10,000 signatures or win the nomination of a political party. For this year's Senate race, two people actually did get the necessary 10,000 signatures to appear on the ballot as independent candidates, (they have both since withdrawn from the race,) but in both cases they are already established politicians who have previously held political office. For an up-and-comer without name recognition, the only way to get on the ballot is to enter a primary election for a political party. Primary elections in the US are well-known for being flawed. Searching around just now, I found what looks to be a good analysis of the topic, which I'll link here.
My proposal is an alternative system for determining whose name appears on the ballot during an election, which seeks to diminish the control political parties have over ballot access. It starts with the citizens' assembly. For somebody who might be interested in becoming a career politician, having the good fortune to win a seat in an assembly jumpstarts their career in politics without the need to join a political party. Alternatively, for an up-and-comer determined to run for office who wasn't lucky enough to win the lottery, they can start their career just by winning support from members of the assembly. Instead of needing 10,000 signatures to appear on the ballot and millions of votes to win an election, all they need is to convince 100 to 200 people to support them. And to run for national office, all they need is the support of 10 to 20 state legislators. In effect, the assembly and the state legislature replace the current primary election system and take on the role of nominating candidates for office. The method they use to nominate and elect candidates is intended to produce a diverse assortment of representatives from across the political spectrum, which will give the general public a wide range of options on the ballot whom they can pledge support to.
Now, you may be wondering, couldn't this system be tweaked slightly so that the assembly and the state legislature merely nominate candidates for the general public to vote on, rather than electing candidates which citizens must then choose to pledge their support to? Well, yes, that is a similar system that could also be proposed. The difference is, a system like that would work better if the states were smaller so that each state elected exactly one representative. My proposed system is intended to allow for larger states that vary in size and each elect multiple representatives. I like the voting system where the legislature nominates multiple candidates and each nominee competes for a fraction of the legislature, because I think it would produce greater diversity of political loyalties. If the legislature merely nominated candidates and let the general public vote on them, the result would be that all the representatives would occupy roughly the same position on the political spectrum, reflecting the average political leaning of their state. It would produce less diversity, unless you divided up the country into a bunch of tiny states. The state legislatures are supposed to govern affairs within their state borders, in addition to electing national representatives, and to that end it is probably better to let them be a bit larger instead of making each state the size of a congressional district.
Ballot access is a fake problem - most US states make it unnecessarily difficult because the rules are made by partisan-elected Secretaries of State and State legislatures, who all come from the two pre-existing big parties. But other countries have much easier ballot access for non-Presidential elections and it doesn't cause problems.
For example, in the UK, you need 10 signatures and £500 to stand as a candidate in Westminster elections, so you could run a full slate of candidates for about £350,000 (compared to a minimum budget of about £5 million to run a nationwide campaign). In Ireland you need 300 members (only 150 of whom need to be registered voters) to register a political party to stand in Dail elections, which then gives you automatic nationwide ballot access.
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