nominated for election to the next year's Great Council, but since there was no alternate slate of candidates, the names chosen were also elected. The "somewhat haphazard" election process placed enormous power on the hands of the very few electors, who were constrained only by force of custom to not abuse their position. In addition, certain office-holders, such as the ducal councillors or members of the Council of Forty, were members ex officio, and they outnumbered the elected members by a considerable margin. As the historian Frederic C. Lane puts it, "one can say that the Great Council contained all the most important people who were available in Venice and a sprinkling of others named to it because someone thought they were potentially important". of the Great Council As the Great Council elected people to the various offices of the Venetian government, it "had become the gatekeeper for power and prestige in Venice". During the 13th century, this gave rise to a political struggle between reformers, who wanted to open membership to the Great Council, and thus to the political elite, up to newcomers, and conservatives, who wished to preserve the patriciate's dominance. While the names of noble families predominate during the 13th century, commoners were still included in the rolls. But even among the nobility there were dissensions. A rising population and wealth meant that more and more citizens sought admission to the Great Council, but the traditional patrician families of the Rialto resisted the addition of these nouveau riche to the Council. Likewise complicated was the issue of foreigners, nobles from Venice's nascent colonial empire in the East or from Dalmatia, or Venetian expatriate families returning to the metropolis after decades of absence, due to the fall of the Crusader states in the Levant in the late 13th century. These men were counted as Venetian citizens, but were culturally foreign to the mother city. There were proposals for reform, notably in October 1286, when the heads of the Council of Forty proposed that only those whose ancestors had been members would automatically have the right to be considered for membership, and that all others would have to be approved by the Doge, the Minor Council, and by the Great Council itself. This proposal failed to pass, as did another, which proposed the election of new members be approved by a majority of the sitting Great Council. Matters came