Laypeople's vetoes

With the papers speculating on who'll be the next Pope, and even declaring who should or shouldn't (in the article I linked below, Dershowitz says quite rightly that as a Jew he has a right to speak out against the possible election of an anti-Semite), we should be aware that this isn't some modern trend, that laypeople, influential or otherwise, have only lately begun to dare to voice their opinions on this.

For a long time, in fact:

Three leading Catholic heads of state claimed the power of veto: the King of France, the King of Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor (the Emperor of Austria after the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire). This was rarely exercised; however, no candidate against whom the veto was claimed had ever been elected Pope in that same conclave.  (Wikipedia)

 The veto was last used by Austria in 1903. That conclave ended up electing Pius X, who promptly abolished the veto though he owed his election to it.

Even earlier , a mob crashed the conclave of 1378 yelling (at least as I've read in other sources): "Lo volemo Romano!", saying they'd only accept a Pope from their own city. The cardinals threw a white cloak on one of them who came from a Roman family and forced him out on the balcony to mislead the crowd. It didn't say what happened when people found out there actually was  no election, and later that they now had a Pope from a place called Itri.

So let them hold forth in the papers, it's nothing to the way it once was.