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]   |
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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]   |
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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]   |
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Robert's Rules Of Order
''Robert's Rules of Order'', often simply referred to as ''Robert's Rules'', is a manual of parliamentary procedure by U.S. Army officer Henry Martyn Robert (1837–1923). "The object of Rules of Order is to assist an assembly to accomplish the work for which it was designed [...] Where there is no law [...] there is the least of real liberty." The term ''Robert's Rules of Order'' is also used more generically to refer to any of the more recent editions, by various editors and authors, based on any of Robert's original editions, and the term is used more generically in the United States to refer to parliamentary procedure. It was written primarily to help guide voluntary associations in their operations of governance. Robert's manual was first published in 1876 as an adaptation of the rules and practice of the United States Congress to suit the needs of non-legislative societies. ''Robert's Rules'' is the most widely used manual of parliamentary procedure in the United States. I ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electoral Systems
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, Suffrage, who is allowed to vote, Nomination rules, who can stand as a candidate, Voting method, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on Campaign finance, 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 membe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Clubs And Societies
Club may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Club'' (magazine) * Club, a '' Yie Ar Kung-Fu'' character * Clubs (suit), a suit of playing cards * Club music * "Club", by Kelsea Ballerini from the album '' kelsea'' Brands and enterprises * Club (cigarette), a Scottish brand of cigarettes * Club (German cigarette), a German brand of cigarettes * Club Med Club Med SAS, commonly known as Club Med and previously known as Club Méditerranée SA, is a French travel and tourism operator headquartered in Paris, specializing in all-inclusive holidays. Founded in 1950, the company has been primarily ow ..., a holiday company Food * Club (soft drink) * Club Crackers * Club sandwich * Club (biscuit), a brand of biscuits manufactured by Jacob's (Ireland) and McVitie's (UK) Objects * Club (weapon), a blunt weapon * Golf club * Indian club, an exercise device * Juggling club * Throwing club, an item of sport equipment used in the club throw * Throwing club, an alternative name ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Quorum
A quorum is the minimum number of members of a group necessary to constitute the group at a meeting. In a deliberative assembly (a body that uses parliamentary procedure, such as a legislature), a quorum is necessary to conduct the business of that group. In contrast, a plenum is a meeting of the full (or rarely nearly full) body. A body, or a meeting or vote of it, is quorate if a quorum is present (or casts valid votes). The term ''quorum'' is from a Middle English wording of the commission formerly issued to justices of the peace, derived from Latin ''quorum'', "of whom", genitive plural of ''qui'', " who". As a result, ''quora'' as plural of ''quorum'' is not a grammatically well-formed Latin-language construction. In modern times a quorum might be defined as the minimum number of voters needed for a valid election. Quorums are often required by traditional handbooks of parliamentary procedure such as Robert's Rules of Order. However, quorums have been criticized by s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Travellers Club
The Travellers Club is a private gentlemen's club situated at 106 Pall Mall in London, United Kingdom. It is the oldest of the surviving Pall Mall clubs, established in 1819, and is one of the most exclusive. It was described as "the quintessential English gentleman's club" by the ''Los Angeles Times'' in 2004. Purpose The original concept for the club, conceived by Lord Castlereagh and others, dates from the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. They envisaged a club where gentlemen who travelled abroad could meet and offer hospitality to distinguished foreign visitors. The original rules from 1819 excluded from membership anyone "who has not travelled out of the British islands to a distance of at least five hundred miles from London in a direct line". Membership The members of the club's first Committee included the Earl of Aberdeen (later Prime Minister), Lord Auckland (after whom Auckland, New Zealand is named), the Marquess of Lansdowne (who had already served as Chance ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Textfiles
Textfiles may refer to: *Text file A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flat file) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In ope ...s, computer files of text * textfiles.com, an archive of text files {{disambiguation ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Masonic Service Association
Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizations in history. Modern Freemasonry broadly consists of three main traditions: * Anglo-American style Freemasonry, which insists that a "volume of sacred law", such as the Bible, Quran, or other religious text be open in a working lodge, that every member professes belief in a supreme being, that only men be admitted, and discussion of religion or politics does not take place within the lodge. *Continental Freemasonry or Liberal Freemasonry which has continued to evolve beyond these restrictions, particularly regarding religious belief and political discussion. * Women Freemasonry or Co-Freemasonry, which includes organizations that either admit women exclusively (such as the Order of Women Freemasons and the Honourable Fraternity of Anci ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Incidental Motion
In parliamentary procedure, a motion is a formal proposal by a member of a deliberative assembly that the assembly take a particular action. These may include legislative motions, budgetary motions, supplementary budgetary motions, and petitionary motions. The possible motions in a deliberative assembly are determined by a pre-agreed volume detailing the correct parliamentary procedure, such as Robert's Rules of Order; The Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure; or Lord Citrine's '' The ABC of Chairmanship''. Motions are used in conducting business in almost all legislative bodies worldwide, and are used in meetings of many church vestries, corporate boards, and fraternal organizations. Motions can bring new business before the assembly or consist of numerous other proposals to take procedural steps or carry out other actions relating to a pending proposal (such as postponing it to another time) or to the assembly itself (such as taking a recess). Purpose A motion is a forma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |