How to Improve the Process of Picking a Pope by Duncan Mavin read by Catharine Vassilopolos. When Cardinal Jorge Bergogio arrived in Rome for a papal conclave in March twenty thirteen, he brought only one small suit case, the Jesuit from Argentina. Was not expecting to be elected the next pope, but elected he was in a fifth round ballot whose results appeared to reflect the desire for an outsider to reform the papal bureaucracy. Just over twelve years later, Pope Francis's death sets the stage for a new conclave to decide who will shape the Catholic Church's next era. Arcane, anachronistic and hidden behind firmly closed doors, the papal conclave seems like a process etched in stone, yet the rules that govern it have been refined, tweaked, and overhauled for centuries, and with particular vigor in the past few decades. Papal conclave mechanics have made for a best selling novel and an acclaimed movie, But is the process fit for purpose? Andrew Mackenzie, an economist and specialist in mechanism design at Rutgers University says there's still room for improvement. Mackenzie specializes in analyzing elections like the conclave, where the candidates are included among the voters. Other examples include a country electing a president, a board of directors seeking to hire a CEO internally and from the board itself, or an academic department selecting a new department head. He wrote in a twenty nineteen paper titled an Axiomatic Analysis of the Papal Conclave. If the goal is to base the decision on honest opinions about the best candidates, Mackenzie notes, and if there is concerns some selectors will feel pressure to cast their votes in a certain way, a secret ballot with a super majority winner makes sense. That's how the papal process currently works. A conclave begins fifteen to twenty days after a pope's death, when up to one hundred twenty cardinals under the age of eighty are locked in the Sistine Chapel to vote for a successor by secret ballot. If no candidate gets two thirds of the votes, the ballot papers are burned, releasing black smoke, signifying the failure to reach a decision. And another ballot is held. A guiding principle is that electors should be protected from the temptation to defy God. Mackenzie wrote, despite being the living men best trained to let God speak through them, the electors are but men, and therefore sinners, and therefore imperfect instruments through which God may communicate. If the cardinals still haven't selected a winner after thirty four failed ballots, one last round is held, with voting restricted to just the two most popular candidates from the previous round. That final vote requires that two thirds of the cardinals must put their support behind a single candidate, at which pointin a plume of white smoke signals that a new pope has been chosen. Something close to the modern conclave came together in the twelfth and thirteen centuries. Prior to that, the voting game was not even proper. Multiple popes could be elected simultaneously, creating a temporary schism in the church, wrote economists Laslo Kotzi and Ballash Siklai in their twenty fifteen paper Electing the Pope. To eliminate this awful situation, the third Lateran Council eleven seventy nine prescribed a two thirds majority of all voting cardinals, with the aim that no one faction could force through their candidate. But the system was still faulty. For centuries, only a few cardinals were physically able to get to Rome for the vote, and voting could drag out for years. Factions based on location or progressiveness were also likely to vote together under the influence of a handful of powerful voters. Kotzi and Siklai noted one important adjustment came from the sixteen twenty one to sixteen twenty two Laws of Pope Gregory the Fifteenth. Mackenzie describes them as the first thorough constitutions governing the election of a pope written by a pope, which prohibited candidates from voting for themselves. Gregory the Fifteenth sought to ensure each cardinal's choice would be guided by the Holy Spirit, free from self interest and bribery, and from the influence of peers and outsiders such as secular kings. Of course, secret ballots make it impossible to tell if someone voted for himself, but Gregory the Fifteenth had a fix for this too, a ballot that allowed an elector to sign and then conceal his signature. In the exceptional event that an elector received exactly the minimum number of votes required to win, the signatures would be checked to verify that he did not nominate himself. Mackenzie wrote this process, known as achesus, removed the incentive to vote for oneself as it could no longer unger impact the final results. But in nineteen oh four, Pope Pious the Tenth undid Gregory the Fifteenth's efforts to prohibit self nomination, ordering that voter's names once again be excluded from ballots. In nineteen forty five, the controversial Pope Pius the twelfth, critics point out he never condemned the Holocaust, kicked off more back and forth changes. He ordered that the margin of a winning vote must be two thirds plus one, so that even if the winner voted for himself, he'd still have the two thirds majority support. Subsequent popes had differing views, and the required majority swung between a Pious Sine Mackenzie's term two thirds plus one and the simpler Gregorian two thirds. The thirty four ballot limit was also introduced during this back and forth by Pope John Paul the Second in nineteen ninety six in the pursuit of a two thirds or two thirds plus one majority. A final ballot with just two candidates seems like a good way to speed up the decision making process, but in practice it may slow the process down, Mackenzie said, if the cardinals are deadlocked and there is not enough support coalescing behind a single candidate. To this, Mackenzie offers another solution, randomization. The idea is simple. Each cardinal puts his nomination in a jar, then one is selected at random. He says. The prohibition on self voting could be enforced any number of ways, such as by giving the cardinals a deck of cards with the names of all the candidates and requiring them to dispose of their own card before voting. All of the cardinals would also have to pledge to support the winner, no matter whose name is pulled. It would be a radical departure, mackenzie concedes, but could fit the objective of selecting a candidate in accordance with the wishes of a higher power. This system sounds risky, he says, but is it risky if there is faith that the random outcome is the will of God.

How to Improve the Process of Picking a Pope by Duncan Mavin read by Catharine Vassilopolos. When Cardinal Jorge Bergogio arrived in Rome for a papal conclave in March twenty thirteen, he brought only one small suit case, the Jesuit from Argentina. Was not expecting to be elected the next pope, but elected he was in a fifth round ballot whose results appeared to reflect the desire for an outsider to reform the papal bureaucracy. Just over twelve years later, Pope Francis's death sets the stage for a new conclave to decide who will shape the Catholic Church's next era. Arcane, anachronistic and hidden behind firmly closed doors, the papal conclave seems like a process etched in stone, yet the rules that govern it have been refined, tweaked, and overhauled for centuries, and with particular vigor in the past few decades. Papal conclave mechanics have made for a best selling novel and an acclaimed movie, But is the process fit for purpose? Andrew Mackenzie, an economist and specialist in mechanism design at Rutgers University says there's still room for improvement. Mackenzie specializes in analyzing elections like the conclave, where the candidates are included among the voters. Other examples include a country electing a president, a board of directors seeking to hire a CEO internally and from the board itself, or an academic department selecting a new department head. He wrote in a twenty nineteen paper titled an Axiomatic Analysis of the Papal Conclave. If the goal is to base the decision on honest opinions about the best candidates, Mackenzie notes, and if there is concerns some selectors will feel pressure to cast their votes in a certain way, a secret ballot with a super majority winner makes sense. That's how the papal process currently works. A conclave begins fifteen to twenty days after a pope's death, when up to one hundred twenty cardinals under the age of eighty are locked in the Sistine Chapel to vote for a successor by secret ballot. If no candidate gets two thirds of the votes, the ballot papers are burned, releasing black smoke, signifying the failure to reach a decision. And another ballot is held. A guiding principle is that electors should be protected from the temptation to defy God. Mackenzie wrote, despite being the living men best trained to let God speak through them, the electors are but men, and therefore sinners, and therefore imperfect instruments through which God may communicate. If the cardinals still haven't selected a winner after thirty four failed ballots, one last round is held, with voting restricted to just the two most popular candidates from the previous round. That final vote requires that two thirds of the cardinals must put their support behind a single candidate, at which pointin a plume of white smoke signals that a new pope has been chosen. Something close to the modern conclave came together in the twelfth and thirteen centuries. Prior to that, the voting game was not even proper. Multiple popes could be elected simultaneously, creating a temporary schism in the church, wrote economists Laslo Kotzi and Ballash Siklai in their twenty fifteen paper Electing the Pope. To eliminate this awful situation, the third Lateran Council eleven seventy nine prescribed a two thirds majority of all voting cardinals, with the aim that no one faction could force through their candidate. But the system was still faulty. For centuries, only a few cardinals were physically able to get to Rome for the vote, and voting could drag out for years. Factions based on location or progressiveness were also likely to vote together under the influence of a handful of powerful voters. Kotzi and Siklai noted one important adjustment came from the sixteen twenty one to sixteen twenty two Laws of Pope Gregory the Fifteenth. Mackenzie describes them as the first thorough constitutions governing the election of a pope written by a pope, which prohibited candidates from voting for themselves. Gregory the Fifteenth sought to ensure each cardinal's choice would be guided by the Holy Spirit, free from self interest and bribery, and from the influence of peers and outsiders such as secular kings. Of course, secret ballots make it impossible to tell if someone voted for himself, but Gregory the Fifteenth had a fix for this too, a ballot that allowed an elector to sign and then conceal his signature. In the exceptional event that an elector received exactly the minimum number of votes required to win, the signatures would be checked to verify that he did not nominate himself. Mackenzie wrote this process, known as achesus, removed the incentive to vote for oneself as it could no longer unger impact the final results. But in nineteen oh four, Pope Pious the Tenth undid Gregory the Fifteenth's efforts to prohibit self nomination, ordering that voter's names once again be excluded from ballots. In nineteen forty five, the controversial Pope Pius the twelfth, critics point out he never condemned the Holocaust, kicked off more back and forth changes. He ordered that the margin of a winning vote must be two thirds plus one, so that even if the winner voted for himself, he'd still have the two thirds majority support. Subsequent popes had differing views, and the required majority swung between a Pious Sine Mackenzie's term two thirds plus one and the simpler Gregorian two thirds. The thirty four ballot limit was also introduced during this back and forth by Pope John Paul the Second in nineteen ninety six in the pursuit of a two thirds or two thirds plus one majority. A final ballot with just two candidates seems like a good way to speed up the decision making process, but in practice it may slow the process down, Mackenzie said, if the cardinals are deadlocked and there is not enough support coalescing behind a single candidate. To this, Mackenzie offers another solution, randomization. The idea is simple. Each cardinal puts his nomination in a jar, then one is selected at random. He says. The prohibition on self voting could be enforced any number of ways, such as by giving the cardinals a deck of cards with the names of all the candidates and requiring them to dispose of their own card before voting. All of the cardinals would also have to pledge to support the winner, no matter whose name is pulled. It would be a radical departure, mackenzie concedes, but could fit the objective of selecting a candidate in accordance with the wishes of a higher power. This system sounds risky, he says, but is it risky if there is faith that the random outcome is the will of God.