During Renaissance Florence, mobs were both common and influential. Families were pitted against each other in a constant struggle for power. Politically, double-crossings and betrayals were not uncommon, sometimes even within families. Despite political violence, factionalism and corruption, Renaissance Florence did experiment with different forms of citizen government and power sharing arrangements. In order to reconcile the warring factions and families, a complex electoral system was developed as mechanism for sharing power. Incumbent officers and appointees carried out a secret ballot every three or four years. They committed the names of all those elected into a series of bags, one for each sesto, or sixth, of the city. One name was drawn from each bag every two months to form the highest executive authority of the city, the Signoria. The selection scheme was controlled to ensure that no two members of the same family ended up in the same batch of six names.