[EM] voting in the Bible?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 10:54 AM 8/7/2005, Warren Smith wrote:
>Can anybody tell me whther any interesting voting methods are mentioned in 
>the Bible?

Well, I can't think of anything, someone else may. But I can say that there 
is a hint in the Qur'an.

I don't have the text in front of me at the moment, and I don't have that 
particular passage by heart, but it is something like "Decide your affairs 
by mutual consultation."

What I've noticed is that, historically, there were two kinds of Islamic 
society: one ran on the strong-leader model, and this is what we usually 
think of when the topic of Islamic government comes up. This is essentially 
a dictatorship; however, one of the modes of creating it was some form of 
election. I don't recall any specific voting method; in fact, voting, per 
se, was probably not used; rather it was simply a matter of the "electors," 
the people who are called in Islamic law, "the people of binding and 
loosing," which means the effective leaders of tribes or similar groups, 
meeting and coming up with some kind of consensus.

Then, once the leader was chosen, obedience was expected. However, the 
leader was also expected to consult the people, and some of them did. And 
some did not....

But there was another model, found more often in Africa than in other 
places, which was more of a tribal model, where the "leader" was really 
just a servant of the group. And it is this model which is far more 
compatible with modern democracy.

And I could literally write a book about this. But not now!