Excerpt from The American Historical Review, Vol. 5: October, 1899, to July, 1900 The question of the origin of the use of lots in elections need not detain us long. When the towns first began to use them it is impossible to say. It may be that the introduction of the lot and of indirect election was coincident, but if we assume, as seems likely, ' that the indirect election preceded the lot, we may assume that the indirect election, while it did away with some of the vio lence and corruption incident to direct elections, did not entirely remedy the evil. Bribery and corruption, intimidation and violence still continued, and the further step to the choice of electors by lot was introduced. Where the idea of using the lot in elections came from is a question that needs little investigation. The practice of casting lots is as old as the world's history, and when the necessity of a new system of choosing electors arose, the communes must have found on all sides references to this ancient system, the adop tion of which seemed to point to a remedy for the evils from which they were suffering. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.