Everything new is old again.

February 26th, 2018 at 7:53:35 AM permalink
Nareed
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 346
Posts: 12545
The Roman republic had three assemblies, which fulfilled important functions like passing laws, conducting trials, and above all else electing magistrates.

The vote was rather peculiar. Even after secret ballots were introduced (and the reason for that is rather interesting), voting was done by tribe and in order. This is bets explained with an example. Suppose Julius and Caesar are running for Praetor. Well, then, the members of first tribe would vote, each casting their ballot as they saw fit. The ballots were counted, and if there was a majority for Julius, that would mean one vote, by the tribe, for Julius. Then the second tribe would vote in the same fashion.

This continued not until all tribes voted, but until there was a majority for one candidate. Suppose there were 35 tribes in an assembly. The moment 18 tribal votes were cast for one candidate, say Caesar, then that candidate was declared the winner and voting stopped.

If this sounds very much like the US electoral college, it's because it is. In the example above there are 35 "electoral" votes, with 18 such required to win.

To be sure, there were different standards used. In the US, the votes are distributed geographically and weighed somewhat by a state's population. In Rome it was different (I'm not certain how the tribes were constituted). The Romans voted in Rome only, at a meeting of the assembly. So voters living outside the city had to travel to Rome to vote.
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