Puck’s Tina Palmeri captured the mood last week with a metaphor President Biden understands well: “Capitol Hill Democrats have started to watch Rehoboth Beach for plumes of white smoke." As the Democrats need to anoint their next leader, comparing their situation to papal elections seems fitting as they head into their conclave in Chicago. Despite Kamala Harris being endorsed, a vote is still needed, leaving the door open to uncertainty and chaos. There is an old saying about conclaves and how tricky they can be: “He who enters the conclave as pope, leaves it as a cardinal.” The truth is Biden’s delegates are now free to support anyone they like, and the Democratic Party must figure out something the College of Cardinals figured out eight centuries ago: how does a body elect a broadly agreed on figure, orderly and quickly, when each delegate can nominate anyone in the world?

Now that President Biden is off the ticket, the Democrats still must vote for a new candidate in an open election, whether on the floor or virtually. The question that seems to bewilder the media and party leaders is, “how to do that, exactly?” In America, we have essentially two kinds of elections: elections between a Republican or Democrat, and elections between people (primaries or nonpartisan city elections). However, in both types, the rules are the same—you can only pick one candidate. While that makes the most sense with a binary Republican/Democratic choice, it makes less sense when electing one person out of many you largely agree with.

With this "choose one" rule it’s likely that no candidate, even a front-runner, could reach the necessary majority of delegate votes in the first round, especially if it is contested by many candidates. This could take many rounds, even days, of voting to select a candidate, and the fight for the ultimate nomination could get very ugly. In the 13th century, the College of Cardinals had an even higher standard to be elected God's representative—two-thirds of all votes. Yet, they did it for centuries, arguably with starker differences in dogma, language, and culture than American Democrats. How?

In 1292, the pope died, necessitating a new election. At that time, selecting a new pontiff could take several months, but this particular election seemed especially impossible, lasting two years as political and theological rivalries led to a voting deadlock. The representatives of the Church had the same problem that the Democratic delegates will have now—multiple candidates, one powerful seat, and voters only allowed to select one choice. In 1294, out of desperation, they picked someone who didn’t want the job. He would retire later that year, returning them all to their impossible situation.

The cardinals reviewed the rules to end election chaos and quickly reveal a broadly accepted figure. Whether divinely inspired or thoughtfully conjured, they came up with a simple rule change—allow the delegates to the College of Cardinals to support multiple people on their ballot. This idea was not necessarily new—in Venice they had elected their leaders this way for many years by this point—but the impact was radical. This type of voting, called “approval voting” today, worked. Within a single day, the new pope was elected with two-thirds approval in December 1294. The College of Cardinals used this method to elect 41 popes over the next 300 years, with the Venetians using the method until they were conquered by Napoleon in 1797.

This method had multiple benefits that medieval Europeans noticed, and that we need today. Approval voting was simple and cheap to implement. It essentially used the exact same systems they already had but just let voters select more options. It was easy to count and follow: the person who was approved by the most voters and who met the threshold won. Most importantly, it found a winner that the most people could accept. In approval voting, the winner can only be the candidate who has the broadest approval.

The Democrats are staring down a potentially grueling convention where rivalries threaten to throw the country into more chaos and deadlock. The Democrats should consider changing the rules, just like the cardinals, to approval voting. The modern version is fast and transparent (there are no rounds or runoffs needed). Used in St. Louis, MO, and Fargo, ND, since 2020, there have been over 30 races where the method was used, without a hitch, to select broadly accepted candidates out of large fields with the results available on election night.

The approval voting process had a different name in medieval times - “scrutiny.” As one of the major parties in our democracy, faced with a major decision, that is exactly what the country needs the Democrats to use now. The old, choose one rule can get a nominee, but is likely to inflame the country with a chaotic process where people are sure to walk away angry. Or, we can let the delegates scrutinize each candidate individually, and grant support to each of the candidates they think are worthy of being their representative. If they want to pick the best candidate that has the broadest support of the party, quickly, it may be time to innovate by turning to history, and use the time-tested method of approval voting.