Sortition is when officials were in large part chosen by lottery.
“So, a wee bit like jury duty,” Smith said.
According to Smith’s high school history teachers, this resulted in a “better cross-section of society” and less “narcissistic behaviour,” she said.
“They weren’t power hungry and they were just chosen to do a good job - they also had to do their day jobs.”
Ostracism – negative elections
This was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for 10 years.
“So, basically each year the voters - and it was every year - were asked to vote for the political leader or candidates that they most wanted to be exiled,” Smith said.
Voters wrote their choice on a piece of pottery, or ostraka, which is where the process got its name from.
“Basically you were ostracising them,” Smith said.
“Whoever received the most votes was indeed that - exiled from any powerful position for the next decade.”
Listen below:
This is Sparta! Shouting elections
In ancient Sparta, politicians often came to power through a rather noisy process called shouting elections, Smith said.
“Each candidate would come into the room and the noise of shouting would dictate whether they got in or not - the more shouting, the more likely they were to get elected.”
Unfortunately, this method was “very open to bribery,” she said.
“There’d be a lot of buying drinks for the voters beforehand to make them a bit rowdier to make them shout.”
- Additional reporting from the top of Jane Smith’s head with verification from Wikipedia.