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To: stuartcr

Another interesting point about the Athenian way: they used random selections, to give the G-ds an opportunity to intervene. For many decisions each voter (and the franchise was limited) wrote his selection on a pottery shard, or had someone write it for him. The shards were placed in one of several (say 12) urns. A single pottery shard was selected from an urn with the numbers 1 through 12 in it. The selected urn was kept, and all other votes were discarded. The selected urn had its votes distributed among the other urns, and again, one urn was selected, and the votes in the non-selected urns again discarded. This continued until the single vote was selected.

It is obvious that anyones vote could be counted, but hardly anyone's actually was!

It is hard to get inside the head of the ancient Greeks. So much good sense, mixed with so much other.


12 posted on 02/28/2005 12:08:13 PM PST by donmeaker (Burn the UN flag publicly.)
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To: donmeaker
It actually worked - What did not work was that it did not present a check on the people or minority rights but the system worked in operating the state. Even after Athens fell to Rome right up until Constantine - the Athenians used the lot system to run their local affairs.

The problem with democracy - if you think in terms of a car engine - is that democracy can get the car engine going turbo charged but it tends to over heat. A republic is slow ans steady like a desiel truck engine.

16 posted on 02/28/2005 12:13:20 PM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting johnathangaltfilms.com and jihadwatch.org)
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To: donmeaker

And the fact that they are dead, doesn't make it any easier either.


62 posted on 02/28/2005 4:52:11 PM PST by stuartcr
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