People's Diviner

People's Diviner is a position (or committee) in a fair number of governments in New Hakan that is held by powerful diviners. The role typically uses collective-consciousness spell variants of Commune, Divination, Vision, etc, to divine the will of the people (or church believers, in the case of clerics) for voting purposes on scheduled elections or major referendums.

Originally proposed by Binderopalman Lassage, the use of People's Diviner started in highly democratic regions when governments realized it streamlined a great deal of the voting process. Defenders of the technique noted the tangible economic savings by avoiding the multiple voting holidays each year. They further tout the process as having less opportunity for abuse than the inconsistent regional voting approaches.

Such magical techniques have proven to increase the efficiency of democratic processes, but, as with all governing approaches, there have been plenty of accusations of bias and misuse. Some Diviners have been accused of purposely misreading the mental ballots, but only in one documented case was the misreading so bad as to lead to subsequent riots (see Twice Fall of Gbyranthem).

It is standard practice to require a third party Zone of Truth or Discern Lies to confirm any election or referendum results reported from the Diviner. Even in cities progressive enough to use People's Diviners, there frequently is a check in place to require physical ballots to be cast for major elections every other election cycle.