What role do the people of Rome play in the election of a pope? Everett Ferguson, in Church History, I, 20.I, describes the process for papal election set down in the Lateran decree of 1059 (In nomine Domini) as follows:


  The election of the pope was to be by the cardinal bishops, confirmed by the cardinal presbyters and deacons [...], and ratified by the people of Rome. [emphasis added]


I'm wondering what that "ratification" looked like.  Was it a formal process by which the people of Rome had ballots and a voting booth?  (I assume not)  Was it just assumed that if a bunch of people were cheering nearby that the people had ratified the election?  Or does "people" have some technical meaning here?

The Catholic Encyclopedia says that the election should not be understood as a "popular vote of the Romans," but I'm not sure if the process has changed over the years.

What role did the people of Rome play in papal elections, according to the Lateran decree of 1059, and do they play the same role today?
I'm not knowledgeable about papal elections in 1059 or today, but Edward Gibbon's history has the following remark:


  The freedom of elections subsisted long after the legal establishment of Christianity, and the subjects of Rome enjoyed in the church the privilege which they had lost in the republic, of choosing the magistrates whom they were bound to obey. As soon as a bishop had closed his eyes, the metropolitan issued a commission to one of his suffragans to administer the vacant see, and prepare, within a limited time, the future election. The right of voting was vested in the inferior clergy, who were best qualified to judge of the merit of the candidates; in the senators or nobles of the city, all those who were distinguished by their rank or property; and finally in the whole body of the people, who on the appointed day flocked in multitudes from the most remote parts of the diocese … it was everywhere admitted, as a fundamental maxim of religious policy, that no bishop could be imposed on an orthodox church without the consent of its members. The emperors, as the guardians of the public peace, and as the first citizens of Rome and Constantinople, might effectually declare their wishes in the choice of a primate; but those absolute monarchs respected the freedom of ecclesiastical elections, and, while they distributed and resumed the honours of the state and army, they allowed eighteen hundred perpetual magistrates to receive their important offices from the free suffrages of the people.