The City of London is a unique place.

It's the city in a city, in a country in a country, that runs its government with perhaps the most complicated elections in the world,

involving medieval guilds, modern corporations, mandatory titles, and fancy hats, all of which are connected in this horrifying org chart.

Why so complicated?

Though the new skyscrapers might make you think the city of London is relatively young,

it's actually the oldest continuous government on the island of Great Britain.

The city of London predates the empire that Victoria ruled, the kingdoms and United, and the Magna Carta that John reluctantly signed.

While the London which surrounds the city only got to electing its first mayor in 2000,

the list of mayors who've governed the city of London is almost 700 people long, going back more than a thousand years.

The city of London's government is so old that there's no surviving record of exactly when it was born.

There are only documents like the Magna Carta which mention the pre-existing powers the City of London already had at that point in time.

So while a government like the United States officially gets its power from the people and Parliament gets its power from the Crown, which in turn gets it from God,

the City of London gets its power from Time immemorial, meaning that the city is so old it just is.

And that age brings with it unusual and complicated traditions.

The most notable of these perhaps is that in City of London elections, companies get votes.

Quite a lot, actually. About three-fourths of the votes cast in city elections are from companies with the remaining one-fourth from residents.

The way it works is that the bigger a company is, the more votes it gets from the City of London.

The companies then give their votes to select employees who work but do not live within the city,

and it's these employees who do the actual voting at election time.

The result is that the Common Council, the bureaucratic beating heart of the city of London,

has about 20 common councillors elected by residents of the city, and about 80 elected by companies of the city.

The reasoning behind this unusual tradition is that for every one person who lives in the city of London,

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