In an age when a US presidential campaign costs USD 1 Billion and 400 million people are choosing between just 2 candidates, after run-offs between a dozen, it seems there are problems with the mechanics of the election process. Further, when this individual is finally elected the current process can see his or her leadership becoming increasingly symbolic, as any plans die or are overturned in two houses dominated by political maneuvering.

The Greeks, 3000 years ago, were among the first to notice that anyone who stepped forward to lead a country or a mission was generally a bad choice for the job. Self-nomination is a design error in the modern political system. Candidates have to put themselves forward to be a candidate.

Secondly the cost of a campaign, as it ratchets up, excludes candidates from certain segments of society or with minority views. It also leads to candidates taking unspoken IOUs from big donors, in which it is implicit that one favour, campaign funds, will be paid back with another favour, legislation. These funds are needed for the huge media exercise of someone getting to know a candidate they and their friends have never met.

Thirdly parties are the only organisations big enough to organise the complexity of a national campaign and so most major democracies are dominated by large parties. These result in natural tribal tendencies that can lead to battles between parties not in the national interest. The inner workings of the party also rarely throw up the best leaders of a nation but rather the most powerful faction heads within their bitter party dynamic.

Venice, a small coastal city, was for nearly 1000 years the third most powerful commercial and military nation in Europe. The Republic lasted 1500 years, longer than any republic including the Romans. Its influence was completely out of scale to the size of its lands or its populace. This may be partly due to its own unique form of democracy in electing its Doge. A variation of the system still used by the Vatican today on a small scale to elect the Pope.

In Venice there were no specific parties, unlike the Wigs and Tories in the England of the 1600’s. No one nominated themselves or was nominated to be elected as Doge. Anyone of the noblemen, who had the right to vote (some 5000), could vote for anyone else. The process was effectively voting by iterative proxy. A voter would vote for any other voter they admired. Duke A would vote for Duke B. When Duke B voted for Duke C, Duke B would be giving his vote plus the proxy vote of Duke A. So again, whoever Duke C voted for would be receiving 3 votes. In Venice this concept was used to initially elect 41 Grand Councillors, who in turn used the same system to elect the Doge. Those who finished a close 2nd and 3rd etc were appointed to be Signoria, or advisors to the Doge. This system was also used to some extent to elect magistrates. When the Doge was chosen, if he refused to take the role, the punishment was confiscation of 1/3 of his wealth. The complexities of who was allowed to vote, the mechanics of the final speeches of defence, and the changes to the system to strengthen the hand of the aristocrats are not of concern here. We are not interested in the specifics of how the Venetian system evolved or was diluted, but in the concept of iterative proxy voting.

What are the benefits of such a system? Firstly it requires no nomination process, as the registry of candidates and voters are the same. This solves several problems in one go. It deals with the greek adage, anyone who thinks they can govern, by default, most probably shouldn’t. Secondly, as campaigning and parties lose control of the process, due to its iterative nature, and massive range of outcomes, they are far less incentivized to campaign, or rather spend large sums on campaigning. In the US, a fifty/fifty perceived chance of winning in the presidential race, strongly incentivizes campaign funding. If the realistic field of winners is a hundred, such poor odds make funding less inviting. This not only saves the wasted funds, but opens the field to strong leaders with no funding, and perhaps more importantly reduces the obligations any winner may feel to his or her backers. Thirdly proxy voting ensures that, iteratively, you or someone you respect, or someone they respect, in turn respect and know personally the future winner. Or you may have built a relationship through reading their books or seeing them speak on television. The relationship has been built before the election process begins. A candidate is not to be trusted simply because of a slick advert in his favour or slamming his opponent, he or she is an admired friend of a friend of a friend. This chain of references is several years in the making, is upward, and very real rather than the downward sell of a candidate through mass media during an election frenzy. Lastly as with the Signoria, the closest losers can become advisors to the elected President as they are not party affiliated and therefore haven’t spent many years fighting each other in the election and prior to that in the elected houses.

Computers make it possible to calculate this complex iterative process for electorates in the millions. Voters make a second choice, needed to break any circular voting rings. The process involves constantly sorting the list of candidates, then taking the vote or votes of the candidate with the smallest tally and reallocating them to their first choice’s tally before they are removed. Where the chosen candidate is no longer in the race, the chain of choices is followed, first to the voters second choice, then, if necessary back to the person who voted for them, until a candidate is found that is still in the race. For a million people this would be hard to manage manually, but very simple with a computer. Making a process that took a few days to calculate for 5000 noblemen in the 1500s a few seconds for a computer with an electorate in the millions.

One of the most important gifts of the democratic system is not the ability to elect a leader, a process that seems to favour great orators with Hollywood looks over thoughtful leaders. The most lasting gift is term limits. Power is so addictive that few in history have relinquished it voluntarily. Term limits and elections allow politicians a process of leaving office that doesn’t involve being shot. It should be possible to have a permanent referendum on a leader going on all the time. Once more than a certain percentage of the electorate login and register disapproval this can trigger an automatic election.

I like the idea of the leader-elect being disappointed, surprised and terrified at being anointed. A capable individual who understands the burden of leadership rather than a slick orator, surrounded by a team looking for government posts in return for their electoral work, funders looking forward to payback, and furious losers with the power to render the President impotent. But the US might end up with Oprah Winfrey as Doge, perhaps Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, and Warren Buffet as the Signoria. This could be a recipe for brilliance or a disaster, but I think it would be a significantly higher calibre team than John McCain and Sarah Palin or some of the other dynamic duos the party politique of today spits out.