[Election-Methods] Venice & Sparta used range voting

[Warren Smith]

(a) Both of these city-states used range voting (RV):
Venice using {-1, 0, +1} range, and Sparta using a continuum score-range.

(b) Both were, at their peak, arguably the most powerful countries in Europe.

(c) Both arguably lasted longer than any other substantially
democratic government
ever.

(d) Hardly anybody knows these facts.

http://www.rangevoting.org/SpartaBury.html
http://www.rangevoting.org/BPSparta.html
http://www.rangevoting.org/VenHist.html

Any further information would be appreciated.  A great deal is known
about Venice
[my local university library has over 5 meters thick worth of books on
the subject and almost
certainly most of the old records are preserved]
but it is hard to dig out of that mass of information, clear conclusions about
range voting.  Example questions I'd like answered:
  1. Venice elected Doges with range voting.  But what other positions
did they also
elect with RV?  [I suspect essentially all, but see no clear-enough
description to
be sure.]
  2. Can a list be made of RV elections and their winners, losers, and
vote counts?
In which cases do the results seem somehow wrong?  [I have listed two elections
which were unusual in the VenHist page.]
  3. Can a better assessment be made of how democratic their govt was?
[For example, in what ways did the non-rich have power, and how were all the
far-territories governed?]

In contrast, little is known about Sparta. [For example: during what
year range(s) did they
use RV and have a democratic govt?  This is especially unclear in the
years when it
was a semi-autonomous Roman province.]

-- 
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse"
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and
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