Postby Loreweaver » Fri Feb 12, 2016 1:29 pm
Every adult citizen (that is, those who pay the citizenship taxes for a particular city) has the right to vote on their representative for the city council. The council's main role is to provide the city leadership (two of the Lords of Imphras II) with proposals on local ordinance and insight into the needs of the people. Proposals, of course, must pass Tyrran scrutiny before they can be implemented.
In Sarshel, any citizen can register as candidate but the final election roster always consists of the seven current council members (or their appointed successors) and up to five others. If there are more than five new candidates, there will first be an election to lower this number. Unlike the official election, this one's organization is not paid for by city funds but rather the costs are split between the 6+ candidates.
The elections themselves are day-long public affairs, organized in several locations across the city. Based on their name and address, citizens will have some rough idea of when and where they are expected to show up. At the location, a list of names is read aloud and in the pause between them the named citizen can call out the name of their preferred representative in reply. If they are absent or indecisive, the vote is lost. The other people gathered for their own turn are used to verify the identity of the speaker - if they start making noise, the proceedings are halted until the reason for the disturbance can be identified.
Elections are organized once a year, which in real time would be anywhere between 1-4 times a year depending on how active this aspect will be.
The present council, as most before them, consists almost exclusively of representatives for the various narnath collected under the Threespires laern. In fact, many people consider the elections a jostling for primacy and self-importance amongst the local guilds rather than an honest attempt to select the best aldermen. It will not be surprising, then, to learn that the city council's main interest lies with improving the city's economy and the position of the hard-working craftsman. They can be considered a powerful lobby, but do not make the final decisions.