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View Full Version : DM Help Fantasy Democracy: Electoral College or Direct Voting?



Steampunkette
2015-08-09, 12:30 AM
So I am putting together a medieval to early renaissance era democracy for a campaign setting that is moderately high magic. Magic weapons and armor, healing and the like are still rare, but convenience magic is fairly commonplace. Heatstones provide warm bathwater, sending stones allow for long range communication, cantrips designed to copy text allow for mass printing... things like that.

So I can't help but ask whether a generally good society would use widespread minor magic to do direct polling or whether they would do a councilor election with learned men and women making the final decision.

On the one hand, councils allow for closer monitoring of election numbers for fraud and lower the amount of information dissemination required to get an informed vote for the position in question. On the other, they provide a second layer where fraud can exist and a barrier between the constituents and the candidates.

The society is specifically egalitarian. No racism or sexism, homophobia or other nonclass biases. There is one state religion which accepts worship of many lesser deities and does not shun or attack other churches.

There is some significant class based bias between the different social and economic classes because of recent revolution and change to the democracy from bureaucratic governance with no central figure and appointments made by the individual bureau's head, and the wealthy still have significant influence on their side to sway the revolutionary council that currently holds power until the elected officials are installed.

On that point I lean towards electors, but I'm not 100% certain. What do you think?

NRSASD
2015-08-09, 12:43 AM
Personally, I think it depends on a couple factors. How spread out is the nation in question? Does it have lots of colonies abroad? Was it originally several different groups who've all agreed to be unified under one banner? Is the main government really decentralized, with cities and provinces wielding comparable power? If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, I'd say they probably vote with an Electoral College. The Electoral College, and Republics in general, usually exist because a direct count would be impractical; not necessarily due to the number of voters, but due to the distance the results have to be transported so that all of the nation knows the outcome of the election at the same time.

On the other hand, if the nation has a history of overthrowing tyrants/the upper class, has a notably patriotic populace, is rather small in size, or very centralized (the president is an elected dictator effectively), I'd say direct voting is going to be preferred.

Hope this helps!

Vitruviansquid
2015-08-09, 01:11 AM
Reasons for Electoral College:

1. Founders of the state don't believe some classes will vote responsibly for whatever reason, but those classes are still included in the democracy. For example, if the founders of the state believed uneducated people would be unlikely to understand issues being voted upon, or if the founders of the state believed merchants to be inherently corrupt and self-serving.

2. The state is too large or too heterogeneous, so people feel like their voice isn't being heard on issues they vote for, so it is much more palatable to vote for an elector to a council, as that would be a smaller pool of votes.

3. Tradition, or they tried direct voting, and it didn't work out for one reason or another, but now people are all against it.

Reasons for Direct Voting:

1. Classes of people believed unfit for decision-making have already been excluded from citizenship, leaving a small citizenship where each person's vote matters. Alternately, everybody is believed to be fit for affecting decision-making within the state.

2. The state is small enough and homogeneous enough that everybody feels like their voice is heard and their interests are represented.

3. Tradition, or they tried electoral college, and it didn't work out for one reason or another, but now people are all against it.

Steampunkette
2015-08-09, 02:09 AM
The kingdom is one large city (40,000ish people) with a half dozen smaller towns (800-1500 people, each) and a couple of dozen outlying villages with between 30 and 100 people.

Geographically speaking it is coastal, abutting the Eastern sea, with a difficult to traverse mountain range to the west a few leagues from the water. The city was built to guard the pass against invasion, several hundred years ago, but recently it became a hub of commerce, as the Eastern seas were charted and foreign nations contacted.

The bureaucracy was slow, ungainly, and corrupt. The locals overthrew it and cast down the worst of the lot, but many of them were farmhands traveling to the city. There are dwarven, elven, and goblin villages and towns within the kingdom who mostly got together to overthrow the humans and institute a more egalitarian government to allow for better representation and trade relations with the foreign powers.

So it isn't sprawling, roughly the size of Rhode Island. But that is what allows such rapid communication through magic, too. Barring social issues, would the extant magic communication network make direct polling better?

Though the thought of using local councilmen and women to make communal votes does sound more attractive base on the second reply...

Anonymouswizard
2015-08-09, 02:15 AM
You said that there's class based prejudice?

Direct voting, laws regulating who gets the vote, e.g. only landholders are citizens, only those who have done (very expensive church rite) can vote etc. Strangely, the lower class doesn't qualify.

Steampunkette
2015-08-09, 02:25 AM
Couldn't that also work with an electoral college?

In fact, the electoral college adds two layers where those kinds of shenanigans can occur. Hmm...

I could see how idealistic councilors could accept a pay gate to the polls in exchange for everyone getting a direct vote, while the more corrupt ones use it to silence the poor. Though after the first election it will be fairly obvious when only 10 or twenty votes come from the outlying villages and 20 to 50 come out of the towns...

This definitely requires thought!

NRSASD
2015-08-09, 05:47 AM
Based on that background info, I'd say it depends on what distinction you want to make more obvious in your campaign.

If you want to make the various groups that compose the nation stand out more, I'd go with an Electoral College/Republic. Every ethnic group would send their own representatives, so the "Senate" would be very diverse but the voting blocks would be rather homogenous.

If you want to make the class structure stand out more, go with a direct voting system. Race, religion, etc. would be completely intermixed, because the only thing that would matter would be what political party/voting block they belonged to.

Also, direct voting is a little more susceptible to corruption, because politicians will buy lots of votes outright through bribery, or hire gangs of thugs to harass those voting for opponents.

Satinavian
2015-08-09, 07:00 AM
Electorial College is extremely rare and even existing examples consist primarily not of democracies. What is left is the USA and some transitionary gouvernments influenced by the USA. The latter got ususlly rid of the system in one generation.

The only compelling reasons for electorial colleges are rooted in logistics. A city state with some outposts is not big enough to need it. With communication magic and printing there are even less reasons to do so.


So : Direct voting. There are a lot of other ways to bring a bias into the voting system and avoid the trouble with electors and their own agendas.

Anonymouswizard
2015-08-09, 08:32 AM
Electorial College is extremely rare and even existing examples consist primarily not of democracies. What is left is the USA and some transitionary gouvernments influenced by the USA. The latter got ususlly rid of the system in one generation.

The only compelling reasons for electorial colleges are rooted in logistics. A city state with some outposts is not big enough to need it. With communication magic and printing there are even less reasons to do so.


So : Direct voting. There are a lot of other ways to bring a bias into the voting system and avoid the trouble with electors and their own agendas.

The classic 'these two areas are one constituency linked by a single house' ploy above all. Also First Past The Post, Proportional Representation, Alternative Vote, Single Transferable Vote, and other systems will bias the government in different ways (e.g. true PR often causes weak coalitions with many members).

GloatingSwine
2015-08-09, 12:19 PM
To be honest, any kind of standard medieval/renaissance fantasy democracy is almost certainly going to have a very limited franchise.

Quite simply because the list of documented citizens of the realm is going to basically consist of "people who own land and property". Who knows who anyone else is, nobody writes anything down about them centrally because they don't pay their dues to central government, they pay it to their lord who pays his taxes to the king, so as far as voting is concerned they don't even exist.

So what you're probably getting is direct voting for a city state or parliamentary representation for a nation (the early renaissance was when Parliament really got started), but with a franchise limited to property owners (and most people won't be property owners, they'll be tenants of a noble, landlord, or guild who votes "on their behalf").

Feel free to include some rotten boroughs for fun.

VoxRationis
2015-08-09, 01:43 PM
Direct voting. A republican system of some sort is irrelevant for a tiny, centralized state, though of course it could come about through one method or another.

Nifft
2015-08-09, 03:04 PM
IMHO the deciding factor would be education levels and literacy rates among the population.

If everyone can read and write, and has enough free time to do research on issues, then direct voting is viable.

If literacy is rare, and most people are too busy with labor to watch debates / go to meetings / do research on their own, then some kind of representative government makes sense. Electoral College is one (very unusual) form of representative government; electing a local minister (or member of parliament) who then meets with all the other ministers and forms a government is another form (much more common) -- basically, you elect one local official, then all the officials get together and vote for a prime minister.

Anonymouswizard
2015-08-09, 03:35 PM
IMHO the deciding factor would be education levels and literacy rates among the population.

If everyone can read and write, and has enough free time to do research on candidates, then direct voting is viable.

If literacy is rare, and most people are too busy with labor to watch debates / go to meetings / do research on their own, then some kind of representative government makes sense. Electoral College is one (very unusual) form of representative government; electing a local minister (or member of parliament) who then meets with all the other ministers and forms a government is another form (much more common) -- basically, you elect one local official, then all the officials get together and vote for a prime minister.

Correction: if everybody in a position to vote is literate and has the free time to research candidates direct voting is viable. If only landowners over the age of 25 can vote, and less than 30% of the population falls into this category (potentially far less) then direct voting is more feasible than if Joe the Tramp has just as much theoretical say as Count Bob of Placeville.

smcmike
2015-08-09, 04:44 PM
I would decide based simply on what role you want politics to play in the campaign.

Direct democracy is not voting for representatives, though. It's voting for legislation. With 40,000 population, you could do that, particularly if the franchise is limited.

Interns of picking an executive, you can do it a lot of ways.

Nifft
2015-08-09, 04:54 PM
Correction: if everybody in a position to vote is literate and has the free time to research candidates It's ironic when someone tries to correct me, yet keeps my only major error.


Direct democracy is not voting for representatives, though. It's voting for legislation. Very good point. Edited my post.

Anonymouswizard
2015-08-09, 05:39 PM
It's ironic when someone tries to correct me, yet keeps my only major error.

Very good point. Edited my post.

Not ironic when I was replying to what you said.

Also, the thread never stated true democracy vs. representative democracy, so candidates is still valid. The thread asked about direct voting (where you vote for your representative) vs electoral college (an idiotic system in the modern world where you vote on somebody who will vote for you, but which makes sense in fantasy empires).

smcmike
2015-08-09, 05:59 PM
Not ironic when I was replying to what you said.

Also, the thread never stated true democracy vs. representative democracy, so candidates is still valid. The thread asked about direct voting (where you vote for your representative) vs electoral college (an idiotic system in the modern world where you vote on somebody who will vote for you, but which makes sense in fantasy empires).

That's true. Just trying to be clear.

Also, there are a lot of possible forms of both direct and indirect voting. The chief executive Ina lot of countries is chosen by the elected representative legislature.

Cealocanth
2015-08-09, 06:11 PM
I would suggest you make an electoral college with a theocratic twist. Essentially every citizen that goes to the temple (or the church, etc.) gets the opportunity to vote on laws, and they do so within their personal religious group. The religious leaders count up their group's votes and make a decision who or what to vote for on the issue based on how their temple votes. This allows for a democratic system through an already-existing institution, making it a little easier to establish. Of course, this does put power in religious hands, but if the majority in the society is okay with a centralized and powerful religious body, that may not be an issue.

Mechalich
2015-08-09, 07:02 PM
Given that the state is small and highly centralized, direct voting makes the most sense, especially if the franchise is limited in anyway. Even an 'adults only' limit like most democracies have excludes a large portion of a pre-industrial population given the age spread. Also, if they are voting in some sort of district system - maybe one representative per 2000 adults - then each individual election will be well within the capacity of a system to handle, you could even vote with tokens rather than ballots.

Are the people voting for just legislative representatives, or do they vote for an executive as well? The system could be different for the different posts is you wanted.

Nifft
2015-08-09, 07:37 PM
Not ironic when I was replying to what you said.

What I said was direct voting vs. representative systems, including electoral college among those systems.

But I messed up a word -- I typed "candidates" instead of "issues".

You made your own point, which wasn't actually related to what I had written, but I commented on it because you couched your post in the language of condescending correction while missing the one mistake that could legitimately have been corrected.

It's nothing important, it's just mildly amusing when someone tries to be condescending and ends up falling on his own sword.

Steampunkette
2015-08-09, 09:09 PM
The current plan for the actual governance is:

Council of Seated Officiates
Council of Lords
Council of the Gods
Authority of the People

The CoSO is going to be your fairly standard Legislative body. Representatives for every 100 people arguing and debating and forming committees who draft laws and attempt to pass them.

The CoL is meant to be entirely antagonistic to the CoSO and be made up of a much smaller number of powerful and wealthy individuals who will play Devil's Advocate to any legislation that crosses their desks. They also act as the High Court for the purposes of Treason and other capitol offenses.

The CotG is there to ensure the legislation doesn't infringe upon religious matters, keeping the state out of the Churches. They also provide judges to the lower courts by training them in both mortal and religious law, to cover all possible issues.

And the Authority of the People is a central elected official who acts as the Authority of the people when it comes to foreign relations, final decisions on legislation, and other things of that nature. At any time the populace can initiate a vote based on a decision the Authority makes and Veto it with a simple majority.

Because the Churches are part of the legislative process, it does make sense to include them as voting and polling centers, which strengthens the nation's religious ties fairly nicely and dovetails into the shifting power center of the Revolution from the Bureaucracy.

And yeah. I realize this essentially creates 3 Bureaus and a head of state, but the people involved just came from a society that had hundreds of bureaus. They're still dividing things into groups, just larger divisions!

Nifft
2015-08-09, 11:13 PM
And yeah. I realize this essentially creates 3 Bureaus and a head of state, but the people involved just came from a society that had hundreds of bureaus. They're still dividing things into groups, just larger divisions!

Heh.

"The Revolutionary Committee rejects the triplicate forms of the tyrant oppressors! Therefore we will only file our forms in duplicate!"

One representative per 100 people sounds like a lot of representatives, but maybe I'm over-estimating.

Depending on the level of magic, the churches might have some kind of zones where people can't lie, or where the priest can read the thoughts of the plaintiff and/or defendant, or where coercion can be detected somehow. That would make them very strong judicial contenders, if they were trusted with all that power.

Steampunkette
2015-08-10, 12:23 AM
Zone of truth was my reasoning, yup! And while 1 per 100 mist be a lot, it is kind of meant to be. They want even the smaller communities to have SOME say, even if the capital gets 400 votes and can majority rule over everyone else if they have a monolithic vote.

It probably won't be that many, actually. Considering about a third of the city's population are kids. The revolution cost a lot of lives.

ShaneMRoth
2015-08-10, 01:01 AM
You really only need one spell, but it's a powerful one: Anti-Magic Field.

Nifft
2015-08-10, 01:52 AM
Zone of truth was my reasoning, yup! And while 1 per 100 mist be a lot, it is kind of meant to be. They want even the smaller communities to have SOME say, even if the capital gets 400 votes and can majority rule over everyone else if they have a monolithic vote.

It probably won't be that many, actually. Considering about a third of the city's population are kids. The revolution cost a lot of lives. Makes sense.


You really only need one spell, but it's a powerful one: Anti-Magic Field. That solves a different problem (but it's a potentially important problem).

So, I guess they'd interview people for testimony in several different rooms:
- Anti-Magic
- Zone of Truth
- ... anything else?

AMF would be sufficient for most voting, so long as the voting were secure enough that people couldn't be coerced by non-magical means. Since we haven't discovered how to do that in the real world, I'm not confident that the magical world would have figured that out either. So maybe something more than just AMF for voting, but what?

Anonymouswizard
2015-08-10, 02:18 AM
What I said was direct voting vs. representative systems, including electoral college among those systems.

But I messed up a word -- I typed "candidates" instead of "issues".

You made your own point, which wasn't actually related to what I had written, but I commented on it because you couched your post in the language of condescending correction while missing the one mistake that could legitimately have been corrected.

It's nothing important, it's just mildly amusing when someone tries to be condescending and ends up falling on his own sword.

To clarify, you said nothing wrong, I was clarifying that you just had to consider the voting popul. Plus I've never tried to be condescending, can you please not assume, I occasionally get the written tone wrong because I have autism. I hate it when people try to be high and mighty and yet fails to consider other possible reasons.

Plus in a representative democracy with direct voting, researching the candidates for your representative is as important as researching issues. You had no need to change your post.

In this case direct voting DOES NOT MEAN true democracy. Your post only had sqrt(-1) mistakes, which was why I didn't 'correct' any, just expanded on an idea.

Templarkommando
2015-08-11, 03:46 AM
I don't know if there are any historical democracies that I can think of during the Medieval period. There are a few examples of Republics though:

The Republic of Venice
The Republic of Genoa
The Republic of Amalfi
The Republic of Pisa
The Republic of Ancona
The Republic of Ragusa

The British, at one point, had a system where a Reeve would communicate the wishes of his peasants to higher powers - which is a little like Democracy, though not quite.

The Holy Roman Empire had a system where the major title holders (Dukes and leaders of major cities) of the Empire would cast a vote upon the death of the former Kaiser in order to select a new Kaiser. This is vaguely like an electoral college.

I seem to recall that Scottish Thanes would gather after the death of the King to select a new one on the off-chance that the King's son was unfit, though I may have imagined that.

To get a real democratic system, my thinking is to go back and look at ancient Athens. You'd vote for leaders, you'd vote on legislation etc. You'd vote for innocence or guilt of suspects and then on their sentences if guilty. All this by throwing different colored rocks at a wall.

I don't know if that helps, but I hope it does.

Rainbownaga
2015-08-11, 03:30 PM
Compromise? Each electorate votes for a single, educated, representative and the elected representatives form parliment.

If they're not used to having a single leader, they might not even need a president or PM; if they do, parliment elects its own.

Basically a simplified form of modern democracy.