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How did Romans vote?
How did elections work in the Roman Republic?
How were votes counted in Roman assemblies?
How did the electorate change in Rome?
What rights did Roman citizens have?
What were the ballot laws of the Roman Republic?
During the Roman Republic, the citizens would elect almost all officeholders annually. Popular elections for high office were largely undermined and then brought to an end by Augustus, the first Roman emperor (r. 27 BC – AD 14). However, Roman elections did not continue at the local level.
- Posting Issues
- Did Majority Rule?
- Polling Place
- Centuriate Voting Assembly
- Tribal Voting Assembly
- Voting in The Senate
- Roman Government in The Roman Republic
- References
Roman assemblies were called to vote after notice of issues had been publicized. A magistrate published an edict in front of a contio(a public gathering) and then the issue was posted on a tablet in white paint, according to the University of Georgia's Edward E. Best.
Romans voted in a couple of different groupings: by a tribe and by centuria (century). Each group, tribe or centuria had one vote. This vote was decided by majority vote of the constituents of said group (tribe or tribe or centuria), so within the group, each member's vote counted as much as anyone else's, but not all groups were equally important....
Saepta (or ovile) is the word for the voting space. In the late Republic, it was an open wooden pen with probably 35 roped-off sections. It had been on the Campus Martius. The number of divisions is thought to have corresponded with the number of tribes. It was in the general area that both tribal groups and comitia centuriata held elections. At th...
The centuriae may also have been started by the 6th king or he might have inherited and augmented them. The Servian centuriae included about 170 centuriae of foot soldiers (infantry or pedites), 12 or 18 of equestrians, and a couple of others. How much wealth a family had determined which census class and therefore centuriaits men fit in. The wealt...
In tribal elections, the voting order was decided by sortition, but there was an order of the tribes. We don't know exactly how it worked. Only one tribe might have been chosen by lot. There might have been a regular order for the tribes that the winner of the lottery was allowed to jump over. However it worked, the first tribe was known as princip...
In the Senate, voting was visible and peer-pressure-driven: people voted by clustering around the speaker they supported.
The assemblies provided the democratic component of the mixed form of Roman government. There were also monarchic and aristocratic/oligarchic components. During the period of kings and the Imperial period, the monarchic element was dominant and visible in the personage of the king or emperor, but during the Republic, the monarchic element was elect...
"The Centuriate Assembly before and after the Reform," by Lily Ross Taylor; The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 78, No. 4 (1957), pp. 337-354."Literacy and Roman Voting," by Edward E. Best; Historia1974, pp. 428-438."The Origin of Latin suffrāgium," by Jyri Vaahtera; Glotta71. Bd., 1./2. H. (1993), pp. 66-80."Voting Procedure in Roman Assemblies," by Ursula Hall; Historia(Jul. 1964), pp. 267-306Nov 4, 2022 · Roman Elections Gave ‘Prerogative’ to the Rich. The Roman Republic carried over some of the principles of Athenian democracy, but divided up the electorate by class and created a system...
- Dave Roos
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Mar 30, 2023 · As Rome grew, the electorate expanded to include more citizens. However, the right to vote was still a privilege, not a right. The government in the early years of the Roman Republic had three branches—The Consuls, The Senate, and The Assembly. Each branch had various powers.
At Rome adult male citizens had the right to vote to elect the annual magistrates, to make laws, to declare war and peace, and, until the development of the public courts in the late republic, to try citizens on serious charges. But the remarkable feature of the Roman system was that matters were never decided by a simple majority.
2 days ago · In all the assemblies, votes were counted by units (centuries or tribes) rather than by individuals; thus, insofar as a majority prevailed in voting, it would have been a majority of units, not of citizens. Although they collectively represented all Roman citizens, the assemblies were not sovereign.
Before the ballot laws were introduced, votes were conducted by voice. Voters in a certain century or tribe would gather together in a venue and express their preference, one by one, to a teller (rogator). [13] The teller would tabulate the votes and announce the result to the presiding official.
