Facts about elections

• Elections can be traced to the times of ancient Greece and Rome, and were used frequently in the Medieval period to select rulers

• The modern ‘election’, which consists of public elections of government officials, didn’t emerge until the beginning of the 17th century when the idea of representative government took hold in North America and Europe. • Switzerland is the first country to implement people’s rights system of government, also called direct democracy, involving the constitutional initiative (public petitions) and referendum. A hundred thousand Swiss can make the demand, via referendum, for the revision of the Constitution.

• United Kingdom is one of the few developed countries in the world without a written constitution.

• The US Constitution has 4,400 words. It is one of the shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world.

• In 1791, Americans added a list of rights to the Constitution. The first ten amendments became known as The Bill of Rights

• Established on November 26, 1789, the first national ‘Thanksgiving Day’ was originally created by George Washington in the US as a way of ‘giving thanks’ for the Constitution.

— Compiled by Sana Kaleem