
The Monte di Pietà, Florence, established in the late 15th century by Franciscan brothers to make small, interest-free loans to give people an alternative to usurious moneylenders.
2,402 words
The other major use of sortition practiced in the Italian city-states was the “scrutiny,” which to a greater or lesser extent governed Florentine political life for 300 years. Similar schemes were practiced in Orvieto, Siena, Pistoia, Perugia, and Lucca. The scrutiny was different than the brevia. Whereas the brevia used sortition to determine the composition of an electoral college, the scrutiny was an inversion of this, using voting first to create a short-list of acceptable candidates and then applying sortition in the final stage to draw at random a candidate from this pre-vetted pool.[1]
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UKIP:
The Evolution of Closet Racism
Nigel Farage
4,132 words
Opinion polls show that the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is on target to win the most UK seats in the European elections that are due to take place on the May 22, 2014.[1]
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