Schneier, security guru, details the voting system and concludes,

When an election process is left to develop over the course of a couple thousand years, you end up with something surprisingly good.

Well, good enough to elect someone who would say this:

Theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. (speech 22-Oct-96)

But, Pope, if Schneier's observation can be generalized, we could then hypothesize:

When an iteratively complex system of replicators is left to develop over the course of a couple billion years, you end up with something surprisingly good, so good in fact that you might assume in error it represents "a great ontological discontinuity" rather than a "simple epiphenomenon".

Course, that's just me seeing evolution everywhere.