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Ballot
A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th century. Each voter uses one ballot, and ballots are not shared. In the simplest elections, a ballot may be a scrap of paper on which each voter writes in the name of a candidate, but governmental elections use printed ballots to protect the secrecy of the votes. The voter casts their ballot in a box at a polling station. In British English, this is usually called a "ballot paper". The word ''ballot'' is used for an election process within an organization (such as a trade union "holding a ballot" of its members). Etymology The word ballot comes from Italian ''ballotta'', meaning a "small ball used in voting" or a "secret vote taken by ballots" in Venice, Italy. History In ancient Greece, citizens used pieces of broken pottery to scratch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secret Ballot
The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's identity in an election or a referendum is anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. This system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy. Secret ballots are used in conjunction with various voting systems. The most basic form of a secret ballot uses paper ballots upon which each voter marks their choices. Without revealing the votes, the voter folds the ballot paper in half and places it in a sealed box. This box is later emptied for counting. An aspect of secret voting is the provision of a voting booth to enable the voter to write on the ballot paper without others being able to see what is being written. Today, printed ballot papers are usually provided, with the names of the candidates or questions and respective check boxes. Provisions are made at the polling place for the voters to record the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lex Gabinia Tabellaria
The ballot laws of the Roman Republic (Latin: ''leges tabellariae'') were four laws which introduced the secret ballot to all popular assemblies in the Republic.Yakobson (1995), p. 426. They were all introduced by tribunes, and consisted of the ''lex Gabinia tabellaria'' (or ''lex Gabinia'') of 139 BC, applying to the election of magistrates; the ''lex Cassia tabellaria'' of 137 BC, applying to juries except in cases of treason; the ''lex Papiria'' of 131 BC, applying to the passing of laws; and the ''lex Caelia'' of 107 BC, which expanded the ''lex Cassia'' to include matters of treason. Prior to the ballot laws, voters announced their votes orally to a teller, essentially making every vote public. The ballot laws curtailed the influence of the aristocratic class and expanded the freedom of choice for voters. Elections became more competitive.Yakobson (1995), p. 437. In short, the secret ballot made bribery more difficult.Yakobson (1995), p. 441. Background Political conte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ballot Box
A ballot box is a temporarily sealed container, usually a square box though sometimes a tamper resistant bag, with a narrow slot in the top sufficient to accept a ballot paper in an election but which prevents anyone from accessing the votes cast until the close of the voting period. A ballot drop box allows voters who have received a ballot by mail to submit it for counting in a self-service fashion. In the United States, ballot boxes are usually sealed after the end of polling, and transported to vote-counting centers. History In the Roman Republic, each voter initially gave his vote orally to an official who made a note of it on an official tablet, but later in the Republic, the secret ballot was introduced, and the voter recorded his vote with a stylus on a wax-covered boxwood tablet, then dropped the completed ballot in the ''sitella'' or ''urna'' (voting urn), sometimes also called '' cista''. Paper ballots were used in Rome to some extent as early as 139 BCE. In ancient ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instant-runoff Voting
Instant-runoff voting (IRV; ranked-choice voting (RCV), preferential voting, alternative vote) is a single-winner ranked voting election system where Sequential loser method, one or more eliminations are used to simulate Runoff (election), runoff elections. When no candidate has a majority of the votes in the first round of counting, each following round eliminates the candidate with the fewest First-preference votes, first-preferences (among the remaining candidates) and transfers their votes if possible. This continues until one candidate accumulates a majority of the votes still in play. Instant-runoff voting falls under the plurality-based voting-rule family, in that under certain conditions the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, making use of secondary rankings as contingency votes. Thus it is related to the Runoff election, two-round runoff system and the exhaustive ballot. IRV could also be seen as a single-winner equivalent of Single transferable vote, sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polling Station
A polling place is where voters cast their ballots in elections. The phrase polling station is also used in American English, British English and Canadian English although a polling place is the building and polling station is the specific room (or part of a room) where voters cast their votes. A polling place can contain one or more polling stations. In Australian English and New Zealand English, "polling place" and "polling centre" are used. Americans also use the term voting precinct in some states. Since elections generally take place over a one- or two-day span on a periodic basis, often annual or longer, polling places are usually located in facilities used for other purposes, such as schools, churches, public libraries, sports halls, Gym, Post office, Community centre, Retirement home, local government offices, Metro and Railway Stations or even private homes, Hotel, Bank, Restaurants, Fitness centres, Private Shops, and may each serve a similar number of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voting
Voting is the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representatives by voting. The procedure for identifying the winners based on votes varies depending on both the country and the political office. Political scientists call these procedures electoral systems, while mathematicians and economists call them social choice rules. The study of these rules and what makes them good or bad is the subject of a branch of welfare economics known as social choice theory. In smaller organizations, voting can occur in many different ways: formally via ballot to elect others for example within a workplace, to elect members of political associations, or to choose roles for others; or informally with a spoken agreement or a gesture like a raised hand. In larger organizations, like countries, voting is generally confi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voting System
An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, nonprofit organizations and informal organisations. These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can use multiple types of elections for different offices. Some electoral systems elect a single winner to a unique position, such as prime minister, president or governor, while others elect multiple winners, such as members of parliament or boards of directors. When electing a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2017 Austrian Legislative Election
Legislative elections were held in Austria on 15 October 2017 to elect the 26th National Council, the lower house of Austria's bicameral parliament. The snap election was called when the coalition government between the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) was dissolved in May by the latter party's new leader Sebastian Kurz. The ÖVP took a strong lead in opinion polls after Kurz's confirmation as leader, and emerged as the largest party in the election, with 31.5% of the vote and 62 of the 183 seats in the National Council. The SPÖ finished second with 52 seats, just ahead of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which won 51 seats. NEOS was fourth with 10 seats. The Greens failed to pass the 4% electoral threshold and lost parliamentary representation for the first time since winning seats in the 1986 elections. The Peter Pilz List, which had split from the Greens at the start of the campaign, received 4.4% of the vote and won 8 seat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackballing
Blackballing is a rejection in a traditional form of secret ballot, where a white ball or ballot constitutes a vote in support and a black ball signifies opposition. The system is commonly used where an organization's rules provide that one or two objections, rather than a percentage of the vote (for example, more than 50%), are sufficient to defeat a proposition. Since the seventeenth century, these rules have commonly applied to elections to membership of many gentlemen's clubs and similar institutions such as Masonic lodges and fraternities. The principle of such election rules in a club is that it tends to preserve the current ethos of the club by ensuring that candidates are congenial to (almost) all the existing members. As a public difference of opinions could be divisive, the election is secret. In America, members of fraternal clubs often voted at their meetings without paper ballots as early as the 17th century. In order to progress, votes had to be unanimous in nat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open List
Open list describes any variant of party-list proportional representation where voters have at least some influence on the order in which a Political party, party's candidates are elected. This is as opposed to closed list, in which party lists are in a predetermined, fixed order by the time of the election and gives the general voter no influence at all on the position of the candidates placed on the party list. An open list system allows voters to select individuals rather than, or in addition to parties. Different systems give the voter different amounts of influence to change the default ranking. The voter's candidate choices are usually called preference vote; the voters are usually allowed one or more preference votes for the open list candidates. Open lists differ from mixed-member proportional representation, also known as "personalized proportional representation" in Germany. Some Mixed electoral system, mixed systems, however, may use open lists in their list-PR compon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mixed-member Proportional Representation
Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP or MMPR) is a type of representation provided by some mixed electoral system, mixed electoral systems which combine local Winner-take-all system, winner-take-all elections with a Compensation (electoral systems), compensatory tier with Party-list proportional representation, party lists, in a way that produces proportional representation overall. Like proportional representation, MMP is not a single system, but a principle and goal of several similar systems. Some systems designed to achieve proportionality are still called mixed-member proportional, even if they generally fall short of full proportionality. In this case, they provide semi-proportional representation. In typical MMP systems, voters get two votes: one to decide the legislator, representative for their single-seat electoral district, constituency, and one for a political party, but some countries use Mixed single vote#Proportional systems, single vote variants. Seat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Union Party (United States)
The National Union Party, commonly known as the Union Party, and referred to as the Republican-Union coalition by some sources, was a wartime coalition of Republican Party (United States), Republicans, War Democrats, and Border states (American Civil War), border state Unconditional Union Party, Unconditional Unionists that supported the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln administration during the American Civil War. It held the 1864 National Union National Convention, 1864 National Union Convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln for President of the United States, president and Andrew Johnson for Vice President of the United States, vice president in the 1864 United States presidential election. Following Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln's assassination, Johnson tried and failed to sustain the Union Party as a vehicle for his presidential ambitions. The coalition did not contest the 1868 United States elections, 1868 elections, but the Republican Party continued to u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
