The Venetian government was quite a complex representative democracy of sorts (representative for the nobility anyways). The nobles trusted each other not much. They had an elaborate system of layers of government that prevented the Doge (head dude) from becoming a monarch. The one time that a Doge tried to take over the government he lost his head in this square right above! They removed all references to him in artwork from the time. His legacy was erased, and his family name was taboo from that point on. No joke! These people didn’t mess around. And they didn’t trust ANYONE as far as vote counting goes. At one point a child under 8 has to basically pick votes out of a container to record the votes. In other words you need to be a 7 year old with incredible slight-of-hand trickery to get past that step of the very elaborate voting process. (Something like that anyways. Also double check Dan’s history of the world against Wikipedia before quoting).
The Doge Palace is quite ornate, and quite large. It had to be because it would house about 1500 Venetian nobles for government events! If you were a noble over 25 you could vote about many important issues for the Venetian Empire.
