People's Diviner

Note:

This topic is pending approval and should not be used.

People's Diviner is a position (or committee) in a fair number of governments in New Hakan that is held by powerful clerics, psions, or mages. The role typically uses collective-consciousness spell variants of Commune, Divination, Vision, and Psionic Divination, 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.

Such magical techniques have proven to increase the efficiency of democratic processes, but, as with all governing approahces, 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 (citation needed).

Even in cities progressive enough to use People's Diviners, there frequently is some check in place to require physical ballots to be cast for major elections every other election cycle. Almost all such governments have laws requiring a third party Zone of Truth or Discern Lies to confirm the results reported from the Diviner.