Communication throughout Pre-technology Civilization

So the districts don’t vote for the Senator? How are they appointed?

 

People from across the empire are allowed to join the army. Should you serve well for a certain number of years, you're eligible for the lowest rank in the senate. The censors appoint who they deem worthy, and make it so the senate doesn't become over-bloated (I haven't figured out the limit, but it won't be higher than three hundred and probably not even two hundred). They try to get people from each province to make the citizens throughout feel like they're equal (emphasis on feel). I suppose it's kind of a meritocracy.

 

Depending on how the censors are selected, they would likely come from powerful or populous political regions, then use their power to favor the regions they came from, or their own political camps.

 

Hm. See, I think that a large part of the reason for regional representatives is because of the inherent communication issue with a national election. Another part, I believe, is the assumption that true democracy will mean that the uneducated rabble will make the wrong choices.

So having a national election in which the uneducated rabble choose the people to choose the representatives feels backward to me. It also feels like the country will really be ruled by the two(?) censors.

 

I see your point. Perhaps I'll make it a general election, but keep the wealth and military requirements?

 

If I were in charge of your world, which I’m not, I’d have:

- requirements for putting oneself up for election
- local elections to choose which of the qualifying candidates wins
- the winners go somewhere and govern
- the winners then vote for the national stuff

Which is, I realize, basically Congress or the House of Commons.

 

Those innovations largely sprang from the Magna Carta I think? They are an important feature of any modern republic, though I expect were the result of various factions opposing the king requiring themselves to have a balance of power. When power has been held by a single source (such as the city of Rome), it is rarely distributed. When it is held by many sources, we see compromises like the modern republic formed. Whether a society has reached that point in political development will depend on its history.

 

But the OP was already distributing power—I think that’s his goal. I’m just suggesting that this is likely to be a more technically feasible way of distributing it.

 

I'm not trying to completely distribute power (there is an emperor after all). I mostly wanted a reasonable way for a vast empire to remain in contact with its provinces, especially during times of war.

 

Pigeons. Really.

From the link above: “Pigeon post was the world’s fastest communication system for all the centuries of the Dark and Middle Ages, and remained so until Samuel Morse’s invention of the telegraph in 1844 and Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of radio in 1895”

Also:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/style/the-hallowed-history-of-the-carrier-pigeon.html

 

There's always semaphores. Or they could tell my ex-wife in confidence, that sort of thing used to get around quickly.

 

Would an Electoral College work?
https://thirty-thousand.org/pages/section_IX.htm

 

@Matt E captured the reason why the Roman Republic collapsed, the inability to extend physical voting beyond the area of Rome. The Romans had the idea of federalism, which the US later implemented in era of pre-technology communication, in that Roman provinces had governors appointed by the Roman Senate, and local Senates that made or managed local laws, but they missed the step of provinces electing representatives to the central (federal) government in Rome, so that there would be an indirect, but participatory, democracy for all for the remote provinces. Communications in the US in 1790 was no faster than in Rome of 2000 years ago, so you could use that as a model for your fictional continental sized body.