Approval voting apparently used in Greece 1864-1926.

Warren D Smith

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Jan 12, 2016, 1:16:07 PM1/12/16

to electionscience, Steven Brams

Allegedly, a version of approval voting was used to elect
the members of parliament in Greece during 1864-1926.
(The phrase "a version of" may be too cautious; it *might* be correct to say
it was straight-up approval voting in districts, with no weasel words needed.)

The method used allowed even illiterate people to vote:
for each candidate there was an APPROVE urn and a DISAPPROVE urn.
Each voter was given a marble, which he could place in one of those two urns
in a private manner (secret ballot).

With standardized marbles this would also allow tallying the votes by weighing
the urns, although I do not know whether they did that.

This whole claim was made by Svante Janson, who by doing so was merely repeating
a claim he attributed to
Klaus Kopfermann:
Mathematische Aspekte der Wahlverfahren : Mandatsverteilung bei Abstimmungen,
Wissenschaftsverlag, Mannheim, 1991 (287 pages).
Library of Congress catalog # = JF1001 .K66 1991.
NY public library (offsite storage request) catalog # = ReCAP 11-32868.
ISBN-10: 3411149019
ISBN-13: 978-3411149018

I have not seen the Kopfermann book and would appreciate it if anybody
sent me just what Kopfermann said about this and his sources.

Anyhow, the obvious questions now are
1. what happened to Greece during those years?
2. what happened about parties in parliament -- was there 2-party
domination, or what?
3. why was the approval system then abandoned?

Attempted answers, mainly stolen from wikipedia:

GREEK HISTORY:
The reign of King George I of Greece (reigned 1864-1913, born 1845, died 1913;
actually originally a Danish prince born in Denmark)
began with Greece's enacting a democratic Constitution in 1864.
It abolished senate, kept the lower house ("Vouli"), enfranchised all
adult males,
and demanded ballot secrecy.
The King reserved the right to convoke ordinary and extraordinary
parliamentary sessions, and dissolve Parliament at his discretion, as
long as the Cabinet signed and endorsed the dissolution decree. But
as far as I know that never happened.
By the 1890s Greece was virtually bankrupt. Declared insolvency 1893.
Poverty was rife and alleviated only by large-scale emigration to the USA.
Athens staged the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896, a great success.

Initially, the royal prerogative in choosing his prime minister
remained and contributed to governmental instability, until the
introduction of the "dedilomeni" principle of parliamentary confidence
in 1875 by the reformist Charilaos Trikoupis who had founded the
"fifth party"
and in 1875 became prime minister now as the leader of the
"modernist/reformist party" which evolved out of the fifth party.
Dedilomeni required the king to appoint the leader of the party with a
plurality of parliamentary seats as the Prime Minister.
The dedilomeni principle may have contributed to Greece quickly
becoming a two-party state as smaller parties merged in an effort to
form a plurality.
Those 2 parties were:
(1) Trikoupis's "modernist/reformist party" and
(2) the "nationalist" party which was the conservative side,
originally led by Alexandros Koumoundouros and later by Theodoros
Deligiannis, who famously stated that he "was against everything
Trikoupis was for."
Initially observed by convention, the dedilomeni has been
incorporated into all subsequent Greek constitutions and ushered
Greece into modern parliamentary politics.

Clientelism and frequent electoral upheavals however remained the norm
in Greek politics, and frustrated the country's development.
Constitution revision in 1911.
Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922); the Greeks lost.
The Greek election of 1923 was held to form a National Assembly with
powers to draft a new constitution. Following a failed royalist
Leonardopoulos-Gargalidis coup attempt, the monarchist parties
abstained, leading to a landslide for the Liberals and their allies.
King George II was asked to leave the country, and on 25 March 1924,
Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaimed the Second Hellenic Republic,
ratified by the Greek plebiscite of 1924 a month later.
However, the new Republic was built on unstable foundations. The
National Schism lived on, as the monarchists, with the exception of
Ioannis Metaxas, did not acknowledge the Venizelist-sponsored
Republican regime...
In June 1925, General Theodoros Pangalos launched a coup and ruled as
a dictator for a year until a counter-coup by another General,
Georgios Kondylis, unseated him and restored the Republic. In the
meantime, Pangalos managed to embroil Greece in a short-lived war with
Bulgaria precipitated by the Incident at Petrich and make unacceptable
concessions in Thessaloniki and its hinterland to Yugoslavia in an
effort to gain its support for his revanchist policies against Turkey.
In 1928, Venizelos returned from exile. After a landslide victory in
the Greek election of 1928, he formed a government. This was the only
cabinet of the Second Republic to run its full four-year term, and the
work it left behind was considerable. Alongside domestic reforms,
Venizelos restored Greece's frayed international relations, even
initiating a Greco-Turkish reconciliation with a visit to Ankara and
the signing of a Friendship Agreement in 1930.
The Great Depression hit Greece, an already poor country dependent on
agricultural exports, particularly hard...

HELLENIC PARLIAMENT AND PARTIES:
I would prefer to have data on the party composition of every Hellenic
parliament.
But for now, without it, it seems clear that, to a good approximation,
(1) Approval voting did NOT cause 2-party domination during 1864-1875 during
the period where the King chose the PM.
Before 1864, the parties were to a large extent puppets of foreign
powers: the Russian Party, the English Party, and the French Party.
After 1865 there was a fluid
period with a lot of parties without established "brand" identities.
(2) But during 1880-1926, with the didolomeni, 2-party domination took over
as the other parties merged into the Modernist and Nationalist parties.
They had pretty stable 2-party domination thru the 1880s and 1890s.
But Nationalist
leader Theodoros Deligiannis was assassinated in 1905 by a gambler who was
outraged at Deligiannis's proposal to curtail gambling. With
Deligiannis's death, the Nationalist Party began to splinter. Many of
the conservative leaders followed
Dimitrios Gounaris' so-called "Japanese Group", which later coalesced into the
"People's Party" which won power in 1920 with Gounaris as PM.
But then Gounaris was executed for treason in 1922.

So if you want to know: "Does approval voting yield 2-party domination?"
The answer PROVIDED there is a "top party gets to choose the PM"
rule, seems based on Greece to be "yes"!

That's contrary to the hopes of some that approval
would get rid of 2-party domination! I had argued previously based on
the empirical "nursery effect," that approval was a bigger risk than
range=score voting
for yielding 2-party domination. Evidently, my fears were correct!
(And would the US president play an analogous
role, or would his election, since considerably independent of
congress's, not play that role and instead act like the King
appointing PM? I do not know. And in the USA the closer analog of the
PM might be the House Speaker.)
And without such a didolomeni rule, it isn't clear.

--
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)

Warren D Smith

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Jan 12, 2016, 3:58:36 PM1/12/16

to electionscience, Steven Brams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Greece

describes the present-day Greek system, which is totally different than
during 1864-1926.

Clay Shentrup

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Jan 12, 2016, 6:24:39 PM1/12/16

to The Center for Election Science

This is an amazing find, Warren. Looks like it's this book?

https://books.google.com/books?id=zhmWnQEACAAJ&dq=Mathematische%20Aspekte%20der%20Wahlverfahren&source=gbs_book_other_versions

It's for sale for 46$ on Amazon.

Warren D Smith

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Jan 12, 2016, 8:10:55 PM1/12/16

to electio...@googlegroups.com, Steven Brams

>This is an amazing find, Warren. Looks like it's this book?

https://books.google.com/books?id=zhmWnQEACAAJ&dq=Mathematische%20Aspekte%20der%20Wahlverfahren&source=gbs_book_other_versions

It's for sale for 46$ on Amazon.

--Yes, that is the book. Probably, however, it references other sources.
Evidently if about 5 American Political Science Professors think they
invented something important (approval voting)... they didn't. :)
I wonder what Greek did invent it? Conceivably they even were
inspired by the ancient Spartan range voting system (or maybe that is
a total fantasy)?

Certainly any Greek scholar could tell us much. Also, quite likely even without
going to Greece, you could learn everything you wanted to know from
New York City libraries; perhaps it would help if you spoke Greek (or
had a Greek grad student :) --
I mean, there likely are enough Greek newspapers, books on Greece,
etc in NY libraries to tell you, e.g. what the party composition of
every Greek parliament was, what exactly the rules were, all election
results, etc. If not, then certainly libraries or govt records in
Athens would have it.

Looks to me like the main lesson is, approval will not necessarily
save you from 2-party domination (2PD); my fears on that were entirely
justified.
I think that is quite a blow.
However it is possible that range voting, which should be better than
approval re 2PD,
still might not have been enough to stop Greek 2PD after they made
their dedilomeni
rule.

And I think, by the way, that was a bad rule. If, say, party A
gets 34% of seats, parties B,C get 33% each, then it is an outrage that A should
appoint the PM while B&C (who might be highly aligned) do not. Same
problem as plurality voting but in new setting. And so to overcome
this problem of course
there was high motivation for every party to merge into 2 giant parties.
Thus illustrating the huge damage just one stupidly designed rule can
cause. From the
"great Greek reformer" Charilaos Trikoupis.

Clay Shentrup

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Jan 12, 2016, 8:47:42 PM1/12/16

to The Center for Election Science

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 5:10:55 PM UTC-8, Warren D. Smith (CRV cofounder, http://RangeVoting.org) wrote:

Looks to me like the main lesson is, approval will not necessarily
save you from 2-party domination (2PD); my fears on that were entirely justified.

That dedilomeni thing gave a HUGE incentive for parties to consolidate. I cannot see how Score Voting would have fared appreciably better. What an insane rule.

Clay Shentrup

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Jan 12, 2016, 10:09:09 PM1/12/16

to The Center for Election Science

His Wikipedia entry:

Among his first acts was the reform of election law and the establishment of the "dedilomeni principle" (αρχή της δεδηλωμένης): the "declared [confidence of Parliament]", obliging the king to appoint the leader of the party with a plurality of parliamentary votes as the Prime Minister. The dedilomeni principle may have contributed to Greece quickly becoming a two-party state as smaller parties merged in an effort to form a plurality. Initially observed by convention, the dedilomeni has been incorporated into all subsequent Greek constitutions and ushered Greece into modern parliamentary politics. The opposing party to Trikoupis's Modernist Party was the conservative Nationalist Party led by Alexandros Koumoundouros.

Warren D Smith

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Jan 14, 2016, 11:30:59 AM1/14/16

to electionscience, Steven Brams

Encyc. Brittanica, 13th ed (1926):
The King of Greece (George I, began reign 1864)
got that way because of the decision of the "Conference of London" in
August 1863,
which decided Greece was to be rules by a male-hereditary monarch, wose
son, by the way, would be called the "Duke of Sparta."
Also Greek Kings were required to be members of the Greek Orthodox
church, except
a special exception was made for George I, who was Lutheran.
In recompense for his services the King was to receive 4000 pounds
annually from each of England, Russia & France, plus 1125000 drachmas
extracted from Greece on
day 1 to buy (I suppose) several palaces; plus 200000 drachmas annually.
Meanwhile, the constitution enacted October 1864 said the
unicameral house was to consist of males age>=30 (voters were males
ages>=21) who get each paid travel expenses plus were allowed to vote
themselves 1800 drachma per session, a session being part (3-6 months)
of a year. In 1898 the house had 298 members but in 1906 only 177.
Thus the entire house combined earned somewhat fewer drachmas than 2
or 3 kings. Each house member represented a district with about 12000
to 16000 in population (depending on the year we are speaking of)
during the George I era.

Brittanica does not discuss the claim the elections of the house
members were by approval voting. Starting in 1906 the house members
were prevented from being junior military officers (previously that
had been a large chunk of them).

Brittanica says corruption was rife in the house, and that the main
purpose of political parties in this era was "not for the furtherance
of any cause or principle, but [rather] with the object of obtaining
the spoils of office" and "even the strongest government is obliged to
bargain with its supporters in regard to the distribution of patronage
and other favors."
It simply calls King George I (who had to appoint all public
officials, judges, and the ministers of the 7 departments education,
justice, finance, worship, interior, army, navy)
"personally irresponsible."

Warren D Smith

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Jan 14, 2016, 1:33:47 PM1/14/16

to electionscience, Steven Brams

At first it looked to me like the Greek alleged approval voting era 1864-1926
was a total disaster. Greece was mired in poverty, corruption,
bloated government,
national bankruptcy and huge debt-service loads, most of the country
owned by landlords who rented it to peasants, entire country permeated
by patron-client relationships,
irresponsible king, kept losing wars with the Ottoman Empire, leaders kept
getting assassinated or executed, claimed to have been a lot of
electoral fraud, and were some coups and mutinies.

However, it could be argued Approval Voting actually succeeded quite
well, since toward the end of that era (namely starting in 1910) it
first elected the Liberals under E.Venizilos, regarded as the greatest
Greek leader of the last 200 years. He increased Greece's land area
by +70%, turned it by 1913 into an emerging mediterranean power as
opposed to a helpless client state, and forced abdication of king
Constantine (replaced by his son George II) and then eventually the
abolition of the monarchy entirely.

As for the political properties of Approval as revealed by election
data... well, I have not got most of the data, but have learned
something from some books on Greek history.
First, the 2-party domination era during the 1880s and 1890s was intentionally
striven for by Trikoupis and the didolomeni rule was part of that effort;
as was increasing the size of the election districts. Trikoupis and
his arch-rival
Deliyannis kept alternating power
Trikoupis Deliyannis
1882-3 1885-7
1887-90 1890-2
1890-2 1895-7
and nullifying each others' accomplishments and it was vital due
to the didolomeni rule to merge your party into one
side or the other in this intense close battle.

Trikoupis built a lot of railroads, canals, but Deliyannis said that
all was bad since
it cost taxes.

And that 2-party-domination era was actually supposedly an improvement
versus the preceding era because the governments then were even less stable! --
There were 4 elections and 9 administrations 1870-1875! Note each switch often
caused a massive overturn of a large fraction of all jobs in
government at all levels.
In view of this it is highly understandable why Trikoupis in 1875 wanted
2-party domination to get more stability, and that indeed developed by 1882.

However, unlike in the USA under plurality voting, this 2-party
domination once underway, was reversible. In 1910, an especially
important and larger than usual election because they were electing
those drawing up the 1910 constitutional revision, there were 4
parties winning respectively
A=112, B=67, and C,D seats where C+D=17.
Soon after that, in December 1910, the Liberal Party came from nowhere
and won big (300 out of 462 seats) thus electing Venizilos as PM.

Also, note that approval voting for single winners in districts is NOT
a proportional representation system, a fact which was hammered home
by the Nov.1920 election giving 52% of the vote to the Liberals, but
this threw them OUT of power in terms of seat count.

After 1926 the approval voting, single winner in districts system was eliminated
and replaced with a proportional representation system (then in 1928
by another system which was quite disproportional...): Venizilos &
his Liberals won
with the 1926 PR system getting that November 143 seats
(anti-Venizilists got 127).

In March 1912 under the old disproportional approval system Venizilos,
at that time extremely popular, had gotten 140 of the 181 seats.

Warren D Smith

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Jan 14, 2016, 1:52:27 PM1/14/16

to electionscience, Steven Brams

If it is wondered whether approval or score voting could serve as a
"stepping stone"
to proportional representation, I suppose
that Greece is an example of that. I'm not sure exactly in which Greek
constitution PR was first enacted (and it is made a bit more confusing
by the fact some
of them did not take effect for some years) but if it was the one enacted by
referendum in 1924, then approval voting indeed did pave the way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_republic_referendum,_1924

The subsequent Greek PR-based government did not work so well either, however...

Warren D Smith

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Jan 14, 2016, 2:10:21 PM1/14/16

to electionscience, Steven Brams

Neal McBurnett

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Jan 24, 2016, 3:32:40 PM1/24/16

to electio...@googlegroups.com, Steven Brams

I wrote a voting expert in Greece about this, and got this response which he was kind enough to let me forward - see below. I've also attached the great picture he sent of the voting equipment they used for "throwing the ball". It seems that for each candidate, voters would reach into a tube with their hand, and drop a ball in the "Yes" or "No" box attached to the end of the tube, thus concealing their vote at the same time. (Though I wonder if the polling place procedures were good enough to prevent them from managing to put multiple balls in for one candidate.)

I've edited the Wikipedia article on Approval Voting to note this, and clean up the intro a bit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Approval_voting&diff=701470460&oldid=693840396

In the process I noticed that it says that England also used approval voting in the 19th century, citing Steven Brams:

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/brams/normative_turn.pdf

Steven, can you shed more light on when and where?

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/

----- Forwarded message from Aggelos Kiayias <agg...@di.uoa.gr> -----

Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 21:26:40 +0200
Subject: Re: Insights on "Approval voting apparently used in Greece 1864-1926"

Hi Neal,

I was glad to get your message. This is indeed an interesting piece of history of the modern Greek state.

So yes indeed, the method of throwing a ball was used. It also produced various expressions related to elections
in modern Greek, such as (freely translated) “i am putting black to the candidate” to stand for downvoting the candidate
(“No” was the black area) or I am voting “bitten” for the candidate, meaning that I am so much in support of the candidate
that i literally bit the small ball before casting it to leave my mark. Many people today are not aware of
the roots of these expressions but they are widely used in elections.

I attach a relevant photograph showing the devices and one of the balls used. Note that in Greek,
“NAI” = YES and “OXI” = NO. There was one of those for each candidate.

Regarding the questions you mentioned I checked the thread you linked and the information stated there
appeared to be historically accurate (based on my limited knowledge of the era)

Aggelos.

----- End forwarded message -----

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Approval_voting&diff=701470460&oldid=693840396

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 02:10:20PM -0500, Warren D Smith wrote:
> Very poor summaries of Greek approval-era elections in wikipedia, mostly
> extracted from
> D.Nohlen & P.Stöver: Elections in Europe: A data handbook (2010)
> ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
> do not make the story sound quite as simple as I (based on history
> books) was saying...
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_legislative_election,_1865
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_legislative_election,_1868

...

greece-approval-voting-ekloges_men_1.jpg

Jameson Quinn

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Jan 24, 2016, 3:53:16 PM1/24/16

to electionsciencefoundation, Steven Brams

Awesome!

What's the copyright status on that photo? It needs to go in Wikipedia, if possible!

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Warren D Smith

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Jan 24, 2016, 4:05:21 PM1/24/16

to electio...@googlegroups.com, Steven Brams

I actually was planning on writing a web page about the Greek approval
experience. I am glad to hear this genuinely happened, now confirmed with
photographic evidence!
If any of you would like to help write said web page, then please do:
the current (highly unfinished) draft is here:
http://rangevoting.org/GreekApproval.html
and just grab the HTML source with "view source" in your browser, then
simply edit it.
It's a question of digging up Greek history, carefully verifying
it, and writing it on the page.
It's a little tough for me since my ability to do Greek history is
somewhat limited. If
JQ still at Harvard he;d have better resources than I (libraries,
etc). But nevertheless I have got a lot of notes which I still have
not written onto that page, so another limiting factor
is just my time.
Warnings: (a) there were two King George's, and there is danger of
getting them confused; (b) a lot of sources disagree about a lot of
stuff, so be careful. It's easy to make errors and I'd like to
figure out what really happened, which is less easy. But obviously
the more of us work on this, the quicker it'll get done.
At first I thought Greece was a total failure, but it's now looking
like it improved quite a lot
during the approval era, and that impression could be backed up with
various facts.

Neal McBurnett

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Jan 24, 2016, 4:30:26 PM1/24/16

to electio...@googlegroups.com, Steven Brams

Wonderful, Warren!

I agree, Jameson, and I've asked Aggelos to send more info about the image licensing. I also did an image search on it, and found it on some Greek pages, one of which has more pictures and details on this and other ballot boxes and procedures, and isn't so terribly hard to read in google translation:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=el&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F1SG6KQA&edit-text=&act=url

The Ballot Box Of "YES - NO" To The Beads, The Opaque And Transparent Ballots - History Of Ballots

The pellet was established to combated violations of secrecy of vote was on the ballot papers the period of Ottonian period. The pellet was used as a ballot in national elections in 1865 (14-17 May), which won the Messinian Alexandros Koumoundouros. The process voting bead was as follows: In the polling stations there were as many ballot boxes as there are candidates. The ballot of the candidate, metal (of tin), was divided internally into two parts, which stood outside the right and left different color. The left part as we have ahead of us and we had black and wrote NO and the right place was white and wrote YES. At the top of the ballot box was stuck a tube angle from top to bottom inside the ballot box, resulting in a round hole. The voter took the sfairodoti (voithos- was a member of the Election Committee) a leaden bead, lifting it up with his hand to see the members of the Election Committee that only it keeps and not the second and approaching the ballot box, put his hand into the tube and depending wanted - YES or NO threw the ball. The YES vote was positive and not negative. The voter wanted to vote against a candidate threw the ball in place the ballot box in black and from here proverbial phrases came>. It entered the practical matter that the leaden ball falling through would betray the party fell and so the vote so builders used the ballot box inside lining eriouchou fabric. In these elections invented the way marking either voluntarily fanatics candidate voters either katentoli and this was performed by the bite of the bead - leaving thereon the imprint of teeth. By this way came the expression 'I shot the dagkoto!

Clay Shentrup

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Jan 24, 2016, 9:15:07 PM1/24/16

to The Center for Election Science

Neal,

You've outdone yourself.

Warren D Smith

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Jan 29, 2016, 10:33:45 PM1/29/16

to electionscience

Was Approval also used 1844-1864 during the latter part of the reign
of King Otho?

I think there is about a 50-50 chance answer is "yes."
Can your Greek friends provide answers?

Warren D Smith

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Jan 31, 2016, 7:52:01 PM1/31/16

to electionscience

In this book

Greece: The Modern Sequel, from 1831 to the Present
By Giannes Koliopoulos & Thanos M. Veremis

page 64 seems to be claiming that plurality voting with single-district winners
was being used in the years following the new constitution's adoption in 1864.
(It also claims prior to 1864 "absolute majority" was used, not "plurality.")
This is directly contrary to our claims and that photographic evidence.

However, it occurs to me that photo may have been misleading. A YES
and NO box could have been used for some yes/no referendum question,
not general purpose elections with approval. How do we know for sure?

Oho... reading further, on page 66, either approval voting, or Boehm's
"negative voting" system, is being described.

This is available online as a "google book."

Warren D Smith

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Jan 31, 2016, 8:12:14 PM1/31/16

to electionscience

From
http://www.unc.edu/~asreynol/pdfs/ballot_bjp_submission1.pdf
How the World Votes
The Political Consequences of Ballot Design, Innovation and Manipulation
Andrew Reynolds and Marco Steenbergen
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

"The use of balls and multiple boxes was also a characteristic of
voting schemes which allowed
for both a positive and negative vote. In ancient Athens the dicasts
used balls of stone or metal.
Those pierced or black in color signified condemnation, those
unpierced or white signaled
acquittal – a brass box received the votes and a wooden box the discarded balls.
[CITE Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed, vol. III, p.249]

Greece
brought back a version of this method in 1864 in which candidates
would be allocated tin boxes
split into two, one half with a white sack (for yes) one half with a
black sack (for no). Voters
would drop a ball or leaden bullet in their preferred compartment in each box.
[CITE Charles Seymour and Donald Paige Frary:
How the World Votes: The Story of Democratic Development in Elections
(Springfield,
MA: Nichols Co., 1918, two vols
see, vol.II, p.243 and Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. III, p.251.]
Note their word "each" confirms the view this was approval voting.

Also note Seymour & Frary is online book here:
https://archive.org/details/howworldvotesst04frargoog

In
Massachusetts after 1643 assistant legislators were elected by the
casting of Indian beans or corn
– white for the candidate, black against.
[CITE Seymour and Frary, vol.I, p.217]
In 18th century France a negative vote was possible
although not required, but any candidate receiving an absolute
majority of negative votes cast
was eliminated from the election.
[CITE Seymour and Frary, vol.I, p.316]
Chinese village elections retain the option of a negative vote
today – a circle in the candidate’s box indicates a positive vote, an
X is a negative.

Warren D Smith

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Jan 31, 2016, 8:36:01 PM1/31/16

to electionscience

--But upon checking up on this in Encyc Brittanica 9th ed (1891) vol
III , pages 249 and 251, I find that Reynolds & Steenburgen were full
of shit,
there is nothing there but an article about baking. As in bread and yeast.
On, however, page 288 the article "Ballot" begins.
It discusses methods in several countries, but Greece is not mentioned.

However, R&S were correct about Seymour & Frary,
here is what it says there:

"The polling generally takes place in a school-house, and
lasts from sunrise to sunset on but a single day, which
is always Sunday. The experience of the country [Greece] with
the ballot under the constitution of 1844 demonstrated
that in Greece it was no safeguard whatsoever for the
secrecy of the vote. In 1864 the government adopted a
scheme, long in use under the British protectorate in the
Ionian Isles, which brings to mind the classic days of
ancient Greek democracy. On entering the polling place
one is confronted by a long row of tin boxes, as many in
number as the candidates, each locked with three keys.
The box is divided into compartments in which are two
sacks, one white and one black, and bearing the name of
the candidate to whom the box belongs. This name
appears conspicuously on the outside of the box as well.
To prevent any mistake the outside is painted in a
corresponding black and white, with Nai (yes) on the side
of the white sack and Ochi (no) on that of the black.

As the elector passes down the line, he is given by the
attendant at each box a lead ball, which he drops into
the desired compartment. [WDS COMMENT: note use of word "each."]
The most complete secrecy is
insured by lining the compartments with cloth to prevent
the sound of the falling pellet from being heard. The
voters are admitted by fives and perform their duties
with rapidity, yet with few blunder. The vote by ball
restricts the voter to the choice of one of the candidates
who has an urn. He has not the liberty afforded by the
ballot, of casting his vote for any one of his choice.
[WDS: meaning "write-in" votes, I presume.] The
election is more like ballotage between rigidly prescribed
candidates in other countries. Greece chose to pay this
price, rather than to gain the secrecy of the vote by
political self-restraint or legal penalties. "

This verbatim quote
seems to clearly confirm the view it was approval voting,
and it was adopted starting in 1864, after previous bad experiences
with corrupted elections in earlier years under King Otho.

It also tells us this method had long been used in the Ionian Islands,
so it was NOT invented in mainland Greece 1864, it was earlier.

So, the historical bloodhounds now have a new scent to pursue...
and probably a more difficult one...

Warren D Smith

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Jan 31, 2016, 9:45:56 PM1/31/16

to electionscience

From wikipedia we learn that the Ionian Islands (lying west of Greece)
were in the possession of Venice starting in 1204 --
and which year Venice got ahold of it, depended on the island,
the last ones being acquired in 1502 and 1718.

Although Venice had its ups and downs as far as its possession
of mainland Greece was concerned, it did not have downs with the Ionian
islands, only ups.

"The islands thus became the only part of the Greek-speaking world to
escape Ottoman rule, which gave them both a unity and an importance in
Greek history they would otherwise not have had. Corfu was the only
Greek island never conquered by the Turks.
Under Venetian rule, many of the upper classes spoke Italian (or
Venetian in some cases) and converted to Roman Catholicism, but the
majority remained Greek ethnically, linguistically, and religiously."

The Ionians stayed under Venice's control all the way
until the end of Venice when in 1797
Venice was taken over lock stock and barrel by Napoleon.

Apparently the Governor of the Islands was elected, at least sometimes, under
the Venetians.

Napoleon didn't last too long before the British creamed him, so then
the Ionians were
under British "protection" albeit set up to have some autonomy,
until the British handed them all over to Greece in 1862-4
as part of the enthronement of King George I.
During this British protection period, the Ionians had their own constitution
and elected a 40-member assembly which
"advised the British High commissioner."
This constitution took force starting in 1817 although it was later revised.
It was often called the "Maitland constitution" after
Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Maitland GCB GCH (1760-1824),
the British High Commissioner.

Maitland believed the Ionians were all corrupt bastards and he wrote the
constitution so he had all the power and the assembly was indeed
merely advisory. Maitland controlled public appointments, the
Assembly, the police, the treasury, the justice system and the press.
And he could dissolve the legislature at any time.

"The British greatly improved the islands' communications, and
introduced modern education and justice systems. There were extensive
public works providing prisons, hospitals, marsh clearance, a road
network and a water-supply system that still operates in Corfu Town.
The islanders welcomed most of these reforms, and took up afternoon
tea, cricket and other English pastimes..."
There were British naval bases there.

So was this assembly elected via approval voting?
I do not think so. Apparently instead, Maitland chose the candidates, and
each district got to vote to decide between two of them. So it was simple
majority votes. Only 29 of the assembly members were elected in this
way, the remaining 11 just being picked directly by Maitland. And
only 1% of the population
was eligible to vote.
However, Maitland did not abuse his autocratic power, and
later High Commissioners had more liberal views
and wanted to give the Islanders more say.

The Ionian constitution of 1817 is available online here:
http://www.modern-constitutions.de/nbu.php?page_id=02a1b5a86ff139471c0b1c57f23ac196&viewmode=pages&show_doc=GR-II-1817-05-02-en&position=1

If the implication
from Seymour & Frary is taken at face value, the Ionians used approval
voting, but I do not know for what purpose and at what times. In
1864 when Greece's constitution
was written, there presumably were some still living from the period
of Venetian
control of the Ionians, and an important Greek leader
Ioannis Kapodistrias (1776-1831) came from there. The Ionians in 1864
were the best part of Greece, economically speaking.
So the memory must have remained.

And presumably the idea for THAT, traces back to Venice's own use of approval
(or 3-level score) voting.

So this explains how Greece got its system, it all fits; but the
details of what happened
in the Ionians and when, I do not know. They presumably all still are
available including pretty full records of everything that happened during
the Venetian period...

Clay Shentrup

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Jan 31, 2016, 10:43:47 PM1/31/16

to The Center for Election Science

Warren,

This is all as fascinating as anything I have ever read in the annals of voting theory. It's like reading a sequel to Gaming the Vote.

I hope you'll consolidate this all into a page that's gradually reworked as more information becomes available. I think this could make a fascinating historical account. At this point, I think you could actually make a pretty interesting book about the appearance and disappearance of Approval Voting throughout history.

Warren D Smith

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Feb 1, 2016, 9:14:42 AM2/1/16

to electio...@googlegroups.com

Plainly, there is much I do not know. I hope others can help. I probably
am not capable by myself of finding out what happened in the Ionian Islands.

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