Elections in the Roman Republic

A 63 BCE coin depicting a Roman casting a ballot

Elections in the Roman Republic were a central element of its governance. During the Roman Republic citizens would elect almost all officeholders annually.

Sources

Elections were a central element to the history and politics of Rome for some 500 years, and the major historians such as Livy and Plutarch make frequent references to them. What does not exist is a comprehensive account on how elections worked. Historians have reconstructed details from scattered accounts from different eras, but much is still uncertain and there is scholarly debate over several elements.

Sallust gives a valuable account of Marius' first consul campaign of 107 BCE in the Jugurthine War. The most important sources are writings by Cicero. While his major works touch on elections, his daily life was immersed in late Republican politics, and his surviving letters and orations are the most valuable. Two important ones are Pro Murena and Pro Plancio, both legal speeches to defend candidates accused of bribery.

The most comprehensive surviving source is the Commentariolum Petitionis (Little Handbook on Electioneering) by Quintus Tullius Cicero. It is a how-to guide on running for consul, written by Quintus for his brother's campaign in 64 BCE. Unfortunately there are many doubts as to its authenticity, accepted by some as authentic to the period, others date it a century later to an author who would not have direct knowledge of election realities.

Structure

Main article: Legislative assemblies of the Roman Republic

At the origin of the Republic the only elected positions were the two consuls; over the course of the Republic new public offices were added, and by the end of the Republic 44 public offices were elected. All were elected annually to one-year terms, excepting the censor whose term covered a lustrum of five years. The only public offices which were not elected positions were the dictator and his deputy the Master of the Horse, who were appointed, but only in emergency circumstances.

The office holders were elected by different assemblies. The Centuriate Assembly elected the highest offices of consul, praetor, and censor. This assembly divided all adult male citizens in 193 centuries. Its organization was descended from that of early Roman Army, and the centuries were organized into tiers rank and property with cavalry equites at the top and unarmed and unpropertied at the bottom. Quaestors, and curule aediles were elected by the Tribal Assembly, while tribunes and plebeian aedilea were elected by the Plebeian Council. These were divided into 35 tribes, geographical units of voters. The membership of the two is almost identical, with the only difference that patricians were excluded from the Plebeian Council.

The Centuriate Assembly voted at the Campus Martius. Originally the other two assemblies voted at the Forum, but later also moved to the Campus Martius. Voting was by group, a version of the modern first past the post. A majority of 97 of the 193 centuries or 18 of the 35 tribes was needed to be elected. The groups varied greatly by population, with the wealthy centuries having far fewer voters per century than the poorer ones. The tribes were also unbalanced with the four urban tribes having far more possible voters.

For the Centuriate voting was in descending order by class. The first property class would divide itself first into their 35 tribes, and then split each tribe by age forming the iuniores (juniors) and the seniores (seniors). This would form 70 centuries, each with a vote. The iuniores would vote first, and one of them would be chosen by lot. This group, known as the centuria praerogativa, would be the first to vote, and it would have its results announced before every other century voted. Cicero put great weight on the ability of this first announced result to sway other voters. After the centuria praerogativa the other 34 iuniores would have their results announced simultaneously. Next the 35 seniors and the 18 equites would cast their ballots. The first property class and the equites combined for 98 votes, and if they were unanimous a candidate would be declared elected and no other centuries would vote. If no majority was reached, balloting would continue through the lower property classes until a majority was reached.

The Tribal Assembly did not have a similar order of precedence. Each of the 35 tribes voted simultaneously. The results were then counted and announced in an order determined by lot. Once a candidate had reached a majority of 18 tribes, counting would stop.

Voting itself was originally oral. Voters would line up before a rogator who would record their votes on a wax tablet. After 139 BCE the Lex Gabinia shifted voting to a secret ballot. Each voter was given a small wax tablet and would write the initials of their candidate on it. They would then ascend a podium and drop it into an urn known as a cista.

Campaigning

A campaign would begin when the election day was announced by the magistrate in charge of elections. In 98 BCE the Lex Caecilia Didia set the campaign length between 17 and 25 days.

A core campaign activity was canvassing in the Forum. The candidate would walk to the forum surrounded by a group of supporters, to meet another cluster of allies in the Forum. At the forum the candidate would work the shake hands with the eligible voters. Whispering into the ear of some candidates would be a nomenclator, a slave who had been trained to memorize the names of all the voters, so that the candidate could greet them all by name. The person running for office would wear an especially whitened toga, known as the toga candida. It is from this term that we get the modern word candidate. Some candidates may have extended their canvassing to the rural markets around Rome, once those outside the city were allowed to vote.

Political rallies were not permitted in Roman elections. To attract voters candidates instead held banquets and gave away free tickets to the games. To pay for these either a candidate had to be wealthy, or rely on the sponsorship of wealthy friends. There are cases of people going ruinously into debt to fund their campaigns. There were no attempts to restrict who could donate or how much, but there were several laws passed attempting to limit candidate spending on banquets and games.

Corruption

Main article: Ambitus

The expansion of the electoral and the more lucrative benefits of high office lead to more competitive elections, and regular reports of corruption in the later Republic. Candidates were frequently accused of breaking the laws restricting spending, and also of directly bribing voters. Electoral crimes were known as ambitus, and there was a long series of laws passed trying to eliminate it, seemingly to little effect. In the consular election of 59 BCE, both Julius Caesar and his rival Bibulus committed to large bribes. In the election of 54 BCE two candidates promised the vast sum of the 10 million sesterces to the centuria praerogativa for its vote.

Representation

Scholarly consensus has long been that elections during the Roman Republic were dominated by the oligarchic elite. The structure of voting in the centuriate gave disproportionate influence to the elites. The Tribal Council on its surface was most equitable, but with most voters living outside of Rome the rural tribes would have been dominated by the elites able to travel to the city to attend the election. The Roman system clients and patronage also ensured that votes of the lower classes were tied to an elite.

While voting was more open, running for office was much more restricted. Being a candidate had more stringent property tests, and required ten years of military service. Through the entire history of the Republic running and winning office was dominated by the elite families.

Electorate and turnout

Voting for most offices was open to all full Roman citizens, a group that excluded women, slaves and originally those living outside of Rome. In the early Republic the electorate would have been small, but as Rome grew it expanded. The Lex Julia of 90 BCE extending voting rights to citizens across Italy greatly expanded the franchise. By the final Republican census of 70 BCE there were 910,000 possible electors.

One unknown is how the Romans kept track of who was eligible to vote. Debates over the franchise were frequent, and differentiating voters from non-voters must have been done. One possibility is that as voters gathered as a tribe the members would be well known enough to each other that an outsider could be spotted, but as populations grew this would have been difficult. Historians have proposed that a central voters list was kept or that citizens were given some form of voter identification, but no sources or archaeological evidence survives for either.

Another debated issue is turnout. No contemporary source indicates how many cast ballots in an election. One clue to an approximate number is the size of the voting area. As consul Julius Caesar began the construction of a structure on the Campus Martius to hold the population while voting. The size of the structure, if completely filled with voters could have held between 30,000 and 70,000 people. This is almost certainly a high estimate, as open spaces for conducting to polling itself would at the least have been required. Cicero mentions in one work that the voting for a single consul in 45 BCE took 5 hours, with the equites and the first and second classes voting. From what we know of how the voting was structured historians have estimated that at most between 6,000 and 16,800 could have voted in that election. With an electorate of 910,000, even the most generous guesses put voter turnout below 10%.

Abolition

How open elections came to an end with the Roman Empire is uncertain. It seems likely that elections continued under Augustus, but with the candidates pre-screened by the Senate so that races were no longer competitive. They were then finally abolished at the national level by Tiberius. There is evidence that elections continued at the municipal level for some time after outside of Rome. The remains of Pompeii found several graffiti inscriptions lauding one candidate or another, indicating that contested elections were still underway there in 79 CE.