>>Interesting that ostracism involved a process of voting in Ancient Greece.

For anyone under the misapprehension that their democracy was anything like ours, ostracism was one of the few one person one vote things they had, sort of a reverse popularity contest in which they decided who to eject from the polis (city-state) for a set time (usually a year). At least in Athens, it was secret. Mark the name of who you wanted gone on a bit of broken pottery (an ostraka - where we get the word) put it in the jar. Once everyone had done that, the names were tallied.

With a few exceptions there was no voting for positions of power, instead it was by lot, the idea being that the gods controlled chance - so the gods chose who ran things. Before you ask, Pericles was a general in time of war, so one of those exceptions (trivia: his funeral oration has echoes in Lincoln's second inaugural. Thucydides wrote it, making him the earliest speechwriter we know the name of.)