I think suffrage is a bit of a one-dimensional way of measuring a democracy.

Athens puts all modern democracies to shame in who actually held office, and ensuring that those that did had real skin in the game.

I imagine contemporary politics would look very differently if officials that fucked up risked ten years of exile by public vote.

> I imagine contemporary politics would look very differently if officials that fucked up risked ten years of exile by public vote.

Imagine Google hires new developers with one condition: if they fuck up they'll never get another job in America for ten years.

It will virtually guarantee that the only applicants are those with a delusion of grandeur or those who can't get a job elsewhere.

The elegant balance of the system is that everyone eligible to vote in Athens were eligible to be selected for office (through random lot). Officials weren't some distant elite separate from the voters, it could be your neighbor, it could be you next.

This sort of creates an incentive to moderate the use of ostracism to the times someone really fucked up bad.

I don't imagine exile would be as bad today as it would back then. Our national level politicians are fairly wealthy too. Getting exiled as a local level politician would be tough though.

You got to keep in mind most Athenian officials were selected via sortition (i.e. random lot), not elected. If you were eligible to vote, you were eligible for a term in office. Only a small fraction of the officials were elected, including for example generals.

IIRC, you could basically put your name in the lot, or put the name of whoever you thought would make a fit candidate.

Assuming that would be exile relative to the jurisdiction of service - you might have to move to the next town :-)

"Athens puts all modern democracies to shame in who actually held office, and ensuring that those that did had real skin in the game"

Well, unless you were a woman, a slave, or under 30, in which case oh well. Let's not exaggerate the glory of Athens.

Right, but who gets to vote is just one aspect of it. Regardless of the fact more people get to vote in our democracy, our officials almost without exception are from a fairly small socioeconomic elite. This has changed remarkably little since universal suffrage some hundred odd years ago. Despite how a lot of people get to vote, not a lot of people get to rule.

The key difference, in Athens, is most political appointments were by random lot. It was literally a government by the people. No matter who you were, if you were eligible to vote, you could end up with political office. This is just not true with our modern democracies. Most people eligible to vote have no realistic path to political office.

I think you are confusing "eligible" and "get elected to the biggest, most visible positions".

Turns out, even in Athens, for the really big jobs they were kind of picky - dokimasia is an excellent filter to remove those you don't want. (Part of the process was questioning your "moral character", which is a pretty good proxy for "has an in with the powers that be").

And if we exclude high-visibility offices, there's a lot of people who can and do run in the US, for their local offices. School boards, city council members, commissioners, etc.

If we want to debate shortcomings of modern democracy, we might want to focus on the devaluation of local offices to the point of only focusing on national office.

> No matter who you were, if you were eligible to vote, you could end up with political office.

Point is, this was rather small portion of population. And who you were, who parents were, mattered a lot in whether you was eligible to vote.

> This is just not true with our modern democracies. Most people eligible to vote have no realistic path to political office.

There is too many of us eligible.

> Point is, this was rather small portion of population. And who you were, who parents were, mattered a lot in whether you was eligible to vote.

Sure, but what does voting matter if the options basically are the same?

> There is too many of us eligible.

Right, but I'll repeat the criticism you levied above. In modern democracy, who you are, and who your parents are, matters a lot in whether you are de facto eligible to hold office.

"In modern democracy, who you are, and who your parents are, matters a lot in whether you are de facto eligible to hold office."

The same as in Athens. Sure, you could throw your lot in, but... did you have the means to run for the office? Did you have supporters that "discouraged" other candidates from running?

The Athenians in office I can currently recall all came from rich or influential families. (I may well be wrong - my recall is certainly extremely spotty. I'd love pointers if anybody knows of an analysis on Athenian officials & their backgrounds)

> In modern democracy, who you are, and who your parents are, matters a lot in whether you are de facto eligible to hold office.

Exact same in Athens.

They also had non small population of men who were not slaves and not citizens. Had to be born to right parents too. And have wealth I think too.

You needed to be a male citizen landowner. But part in this is because eligibility to vote was eligibility to be assigned political office. Voting wasn't just a right, it potentially came with duties as well.

It's not that illogical to exclude slaves because a slave in office gives their masters influence over an official, exclude people without land because they were susceptible to bribery, and exclude women who could get pregnant.

Aristocracy with no election at all is not _that_ illogical either. But, it takes some seriously twists to call it democracy.

> exclude people without land because they were susceptible to bribery

This however means, Athens dont put other democracies in shame at all.

Why is universal suffrage necessary for democracy?

Because otherwise you decide that segments of the population shouldn't be heard. Democracy is literally "government by the people" - anything but universal suffrage means you consider some part of the population not people.

> I imagine contemporary politics would look very differently if officials that fucked up risked ten years of exile by public vote.

But would be wonderful. You will see an increase in responsability.

Or every 4 years, we just exile the old president. lol

Is this percentage of possible eligible voters? If this is counting children for example then it's pretty useless.

No, you have to count children because the definition of "children" changes over time. In 1788 most USA states had adulthood start at age 25. Now it is age 18. How would you track that change over time, except by counting the whole population? I think so long as you are aware of what the numbers mean, then this is the most accurate way to do it.

It's still useless. How is it relevant that Norways %voters is higher than the US' if the US has 5x the number of people who can't vote because of age? (Numbers are made up) This says nothing about the health of a democracy and is completely to do with demographics.

To illustrate the point lets create 2 fictional countries each with 100M population. In their most recent elections they both had 30M vote. By your measure they have equivalent levels of democracy at 30%.

However if we say that in country 1 half of the country is under the age of 18 and is ineligible to vote and only calculate using eligible voters this becomes 60%.

If in country 2 1/10 of the population is under age 18 and ineligible to vote their number becomes 33%. So country 1 has nearly twice the democracy of country 2.