“The gold standard for democracy has always been one person one vote”: it’s much more complicated than that. At least for US legal history, the idea of “who has

“The gold standard for democracy has always been one person one vote”: it’s much more complicated than that. At least for US legal history, the idea of “who has the right to vote” has changed significantly, from land owning white males to citizens who haven’t committed felonies (and a few other exceptions like residents of Puerto Rico or citizens who live abroad and a few more). If you look even further back, Athens, the creator of democracy, would generally view our government as oligarchy (rule by the few) as popular vote elections were viewed as possible to be games/bought by the wealthy or connected. You can see echoes of that in today’s politics with dynastic families (Clintons, Bushes). To solve the problem, the Athenians employed the concept of “sortion” or essentially a civil service lottery where the ruling council of the city was chosen at random from all eligible citizens. A modern example of something close to sortition today is Jury Duty.