Can Ancient Greece teach us how to dump bad politicians?

If the ancient practice of negative voting is revived today, how would Karnataka MP Prajwal Revanna, he of the thousand sex-tapes allegations, fare? (Image via X)

India is in the midst of electing its political representatives for the next five years. But what if we emulated the “negative” elections of Ancient Greece when people voted to send the political leaders they most detested into exile for 10 years as a way to neutralize those deemed to have become too powerful? It would instantly curb the zeal to stand for elections cutting down the number of candidates, which has risen five-fold since 1952.

In the earliest form of democracy around 508 BC, male landowners voted each year to send "candidates" they didn’t favour into exile. The cut off was usually 6,000 votes, with those receiving the highest number above that, being packed off. In lieu of ballot papers, the Greeks used broken pieces of pots on which they wrote their choice. These pots, called ostraka in Greek, led to the current word ostracize, which means disallowing somebody from becoming a member of a social group.

Which of the candidates standing for elections in the on-going polls are most likely to bag that dubious distinction? Karnataka MP Prajwal Revanna, he of the thousand sex-tapes allegations, would certainly be in the race unless his party expels him before that. But he won’t be the only one. Voters in Singhbhum, for instance, may also like to give their candidates a piece of their mind.

Indeed, in the earliest phases of democracy, voters did more than just vote; they used the occasion to pass clear judgements on the candidates. Thus, in the 13th century, the Venetians used the elections to put many of their leaders in place. As the maritime state grew in power and influence, the residents elected a 40-member Great Council to manage their affairs. But to choose the Council members they implemented "approval voting" – a democratic system where the voters got to play the field. Each elector could give one vote of approval to every candidate they wanted (voters could approve as many candidates as desired) and none to those they didn’t. When the final counting was done, the winner who got the most approving voters claimed the coveted seat on the Council.

While elections in our times are standardized toward plurality and majority models, through history there has been a fascinating diversity of procedures to elect leaders.

The most complex form is universally accepted to be the Borda Count & Ranked Voting system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference, with candidates, for each ballot, getting a number of points corresponding to the number of those ranked lower. First proposed in 1435 by Nicholas of Cusa, a German Catholic cardinal and polymath, it is named after the 18th-century French mathematician and naval engineer Jean-Charles de Borda who devised the system in 1770. Its variant is currently used by the National Assembly of Slovenia, as also Iceland and Kiribati, in some form.

Though elections in India, the US, and many other countries throw up their outlandish moments, the title of truly weird is reserved for ecclesiastical elections in the past. Some medieval papal conclaves and abbey elections are believed to have used a bizarre method where the dead members were "represented" by their decomposing corpses being present for the vote.

Of course, the best and most conclusive system of elections was the one that was practiced by many cultures including the Batavians, Heruli, and Irish Celts early in the last millennium. They decided leaders through ritualized combat or duels. Presumably, the winner was the last man standing.

The practice is still common in some countries including one currently at war with Ukraine.