Miscellany
In a 1985 election for the Victorian Legislative Council in Australia, candidates Bob Ives and Rosemary Varty tied at 54,281 votes each. Ives won the seat with a casting vote provided by an official who drew Ives’ name from a hat. The Court of Disputed Returns voided the result after determining that forty-four votes had not been counted. Varty won a subsequent special election.
Miscellany
A cuneiform tablet dating to around 1950 bc describes residents of the Assyrian merchant colony of Kanesh, situated in what is now central Turkey, resolving conflicts by majority vote. This early example of a protodemocratic decision-making process is a sharp contrast with the consensus-based systems more commonly found in primitive societies, where “the restoration of social harmony is the primary goal,” notes Assyriologist Mogens Trolle Larsen. “This was clearly not a realistic aim for the Old Assyrian merchant society.”
