By such time as the first order of electors are thus seated, the second
order of electors is drawn, who, with a second copy of the same list,
are conducted into another committee-chamber, by other secretaries
performing the same office with the former.
The like exactly is done by the third and by the fourth orders (or
hands, as the Venetians call them) of electors, by which means you have
the four-and-twenty electors divided according to the four copies of
the same list, by six, into four hands or orders; and every one of these
orders names one competitor to every magistracy in the list; that is to
say, the first elector names to the first magistracy, the second elector
to the second magistracy, and so forth. But though the electors, as has
been shown, are chosen by mere lot, yet the competitors by them named
are not chosen by any lot, but by the suffrage of the whole order for
example, the first elector in the first order proposes a name to
be strategus, which name is balloted by himself and the other five
electors, and if the name so balloted attain not to above half the
suffrages, it is laid aside, and the first elector names another to the
same magistracy and so in case this also fails, another, till one he has
named, whether it be himself, or some other, has attained to above half
the suffrages in the affirmative; and the name so attaining to above
half the suffrages in the affirmative is written to the first magistracy
in the list by the secretary which being done, the second elector of the
first order, names to ‘the second magistracy till one of his nomination
be chosen to the same. The like is done by the rest of the electors of
the first order, till one competitor be chosen, and written to every
magistracy in their list. Now the second, third, and fourth orders of
electors doing exactly after the same manner, it comes to pass that one
competitor to every magistracy being chosen in each order, there be in
all four competitors chosen to every magistracy.
If any controversy arises in an order of electors, one of the censors
(these being at this game the groom-porters) is advertised by the
secretary who brings him in, and the electors disputing are bound to
acquiesce in his sentence. For which cause it is that the censors do not
ballot at the urns; the signory also abstains, lest it should deform the
house: wherefore the blanks in the side urns are by so many the
fewer. And so much for the lot, which is of the greater art but less
consequence, because it concerns proposition only: but all (except the
tribunes and the judges, which being but assistants have no suffrage)
are to ballot at the result, to which I now come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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