And he was amused, but not surprised, when they got up one morning and she said, Lets put it to a vote.
So Art talked to the Swiss and the Dorsa Brevia scholars, and the Swiss proposed to the congress that they vote on the version of the constitution currently on the table, voting point by point as they had promised in the beginning. Immediately there was a spasm of vote-trading that made Terran stock exchanges look subtle and slow. Meanwhile the Swiss set up a voting sequence, and over the course of three days they ran through it, allowing one vote to each group on each numbered paragraph of the draft constitution. All eighty-nine paragraphs passed, and the massive collection of explanatory material was officially appended to the main text.
After that it was time to put it to the people of Mars for approval. So on Ls 158,1 October 11th, M-year 52 (on Earth, February 27th, 2128), the general populace of Mars, including everyone over five M-years old, voted by wrist on the resulting document. Over ninety-five per cent of the population voted, and the constitution passed seventy-eight per cent to twenty-two per cent, garnering just over nine million votes. They had a government.