To prevent vote rigging, the process for electing the doge consisted of an almost-comically-complicated, ten-step procedure. First, the names of thirty members of the Great Council were drawn from an urn. Then, these thirty names were returned to the urn for another blind draw in which nine names were selected. These nine people would then nominate forty other members of the Great Council. These forty were reduced to nine and these nine would then put forward another twenty-five names. And so on, until, eventually, a single person was selected. And we think the U.S. electoral college is
...more

