Ancient Greeks Voted to Kick Politicians Out of Athens if Enough People Didn't Like Them

Ballots that date more than two millennia old tell the story of ostracism

By Megan Gannon
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
OCTOBER 27, 2020

In the 1960s, archaeologists made a remarkable discovery in the history of elections: they found a heap of about 8,500 ballots, likely from a vote tallied in 471 B.C., in a landfill in Athens. These intentionally broken pieces of pottery were the ancient equivalent of scraps of paper, but rather than being used to usher someone into office, they were used to give fellow citizens the boot. Called ostraca, each shard was scrawled with the name of a candidate the voter wanted to see exiled from the city for the next 10 years.

From about 487 to 416 B.C., ostracism was a process by which Athenian citizens could banish someone without a trial. “It was a negative popularity contest,” says historian James Sickinger of Florida State University. “We're told it originated as a way to get rid of potential tyrants. From early times, it seems to be used against individuals who were maybe not guilty of a criminal offense, so [a case] couldn't be brought to court, but who had in some other way violated or transgressed against community norms and posed a threat to civic order.” Athenians would first take a vote on whether there should be an ostracophoria, or an election to ostracize. If yes, then they would set a date for the event. A candidate had to have at least 6,000 votes cast against him to be ostracized and historical records suggest that this occurred at least a dozen times.

Ostracisms occurred during the heyday of Athenian democracy, which allowed direct participation in governance for the city-state's citizenry, a population that excluded women, enslaved workers and foreign-born residents. Though the number of citizens could sometimes be as high as 60,000, a much smaller group of men was actively involved in Athenian politics. Ostracism could be a guard against any one of them gaining too much power and influence. Nearly all of Athens' most prominent politicians were targets. Even Pericles, the great statesman and orator, was once a candidate, though never successfully ostracized; his ambitious building program that left us the Parthenon and the other monuments of the Acropolis as we know it today was not universally beloved.

Written ballots were fairly unusual in Athenian democracy, Sickinger says. Candidates for many official positions were chosen by lot. During assemblies where citizens voted on laws, the yeas and nays were typically counted by a show of hands. Ostraca, then, are the rare artifacts of actual democratic procedures. They can reveal hidden bits of history that were omitted by ancient chroniclers and offer insight into voter behavior and preferences that would otherwise be lost.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-athenians-voted-kick-politicians-out-if-enough-people-didnt-them-180976138/