Socialist Lessons from the Serene Republic of Venice
By: Joey Jones
Tags: Italy, Politics, Voting, Socialism, History

Even if we take incompetence and reluctance to be serious objections, the solution to these problems can be seen in the way the Venetian Doges were elected.

Doge of Venice — Super Furet

Venice used various forms of democratic selection from 742 until they were conquered by Napoleon in 1797. Existing continuously for 1055 years is longer than any currently existing democratic body. The Isle of Man’s parliament claims to be the oldest current parliament, but for most of that history House of Keys members were selected by the existing oligarchs of the House, rather than from external electorate. The Icelandic Althing may be even older — over a thousand years — but its continued existence has been patchy, with monarchy ruling for most of the period after it was formed.

Similar to the limitations of the Athenian parliament, the electorate for the Doge was limited to one person from each of the merchant families that formed the city. This Grand Council amounted to between 200 and 2000 men, the amount steadily growing in the early decades before plateauing. After state capture by oligarchs and struggles against nepotism while using a simpler electoral system, the Venetians eventually developed a complex system that would select leaders with minimal corruption.

The Election of a Doge, Venice — J. Costello

All the electors of the Grand Council would have their name on a ball put into a huge urn. The first boy that the youngest member of the inner council of state happened to see after leaving church on the day of the election was roped into being the ball-boy, or balotino (the Italian word for ball is where we get the English word ‘ballot’). The balotino would randomly pick the balls from the urn. Thirty of them were golden, the rest silver. The 30 who were given golden balls would stand aside and then be given another round of randomly selected balls: 9 golden, 21 silver.

Those with the 9 golden balls would become the first college of electors.

The ten rounds of the Doge election, cycling between lot and election.

These 9 electors would then select a new college of electors to randomly draw from, consisting of 40 people. Each person had to be approved by seven out of nine of the electors. The balotino would draw 12 balls from this forty at random, creating 12 new electors.

These 12 electors would elect a new college of 25, with 9 out of 12 approval needed. Then a random draw from these 25 would select 9 new electors. These 9 would pick a new college of 45, which would be randomly drawn down to 11, and these 11 would pick the final 41 electors.

After the election, the young balotino would take part in the grand procession next to the Doge.

Each of these final 41 would put a name on a piece of paper and put it into an urn. Then a name would be pulled out at random and the electors would discuss whether they wanted that person as their Doge. If at least 25 agreed, that would be their next leader. If not, a new name was pulled out. Any of these 41 voters could lodge an objection against a selection, and call the person to be elected into the room to answer the objections. In none of the rounds could any of the electors vote for anyone that was a member of their current electoral college.