Low-Tech Democracy.

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

No place allows all adults to vote. I don't think inmates or the institutionalized mentally ill can even now.

There are places in Europe where the inmates are allowed a postal vote. Damn fine idea in my opinion.

I'd say that for any really wide spread of the vote you need to have a wide spread of literacy and basic education. A peasant out in his field won't have much interest in anything outside his immediate interests unless he can read about the greater world beyond his village.

And to get that you probably need printing and paper. Both of which were late medieval to early renaissance (GURPS TL 3 to 4) innovations in the real world (at least in Europe) but are so simple in principle that they could have come along much earlier. Availability of pre-printed forms for voting makes the secret ballot work and government bureaucracy more functional.