h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why do you suggest that the plural of a gerund must end with "s" rather than "a"? Latin does not have a plural in "s". The appropriate plural of a Latin gerund whose nominative ends in "um" would end in "a". If we wish to adopt "referendum" completely into English then its plural would be "referendums", but that would have nothing to do with whether it were a gerund or a noun.

I must be missing something. Why, in your view, must the plural of a gerund have an "s"?

Probably because in my experience the several choices are referred to as referendums in common speech. upon further research you are correct that referanda is preferred and has been changed. If you are interested though do a google for referendums, you may be surprised at how many hits you get.

I'm quite content with either "referendums" or "referenda". I just don't understand whence the idea came that gerunds (gerunda?) necessarily form a plural in "s".

This entry looks good, and is ready to roll IMO. The Sub-Editor can take care of any referedingualaritaciousness, it doesn't matter one way or the other to me.

Don't be so quick to give the work to the subbie. It's what PR is for and that's why the subbies love us

Here is the main issue I see with this entry as it stands:

The vast majority of the entry pertains only to federal elections, and not to state or local elections. However, this is not really made clear in the title or introduction. There is some information given on state/local election issues, but this is pretty difficult to be accurate with on a national level, because every jurisdiction has completely different rules and policies about elections. Oh, and local elections aren't just city elections. I vote in city and county elections, as well as school district elections, utility district elections, port authority elections, hospital district elections, all sorts of stuff.

My suggestion would be to retitle this to something like "Voting in Federal Elections in the United States", and focus solely on federal elections.

Even for federal elections, there is a huge deal that varies from state to state.

"You may also be asked if you wish to declare yourself a member of a political party, if you choose a party you will be allowed to vote in their primary election 3 . This is not a requirement in all states however."

What should be made more clear here is that some states allow everyone to vote in the primaries, regardless of their party affiliation (or lack thereof). I think that may be what you're last sentence there is trying to say, but it's not clear.

A nitpick:

It's not the "Libertarianism movement", it's the "Libertarian movement". Libertarian is the name of the party, Libertarianism is the name of the philosophy. Even more correct would be to simply say that the Libertarian party is gaining support, rather than to refer to it as a movement.

Oh, and in most places, you don't have to actually be away to use an absentee ballot. In every state I've lived in, I've been able to mark on my voter registration that I always want an absentee ballot, and they mail them all to me.

I would also add some info about polling places -- everywhere I've lived, they've usually been schools, churches, or community centers. There are laws about them having to be handicapped accessible and whatnot. There are also rules about how the people running the polling place can and can't help disabled people who need assistance in voting. And in most states I've lived in, the state is required to provide the ballot in languages other than English upon request.

Voter registration -- I would point out that you are given (usually via mail) a voter registration card, which you are expected to bring with you along with a driver's license or other official photo ID in order to vote. If you don't have your voter registration card with you, they usually give you an alternative method of proving who you are and where you live, and you sign something saying you really are registered to vote in that district. It makes things much easier on the polling place people if you have your card, though.

Oh, and the people running the polling places. In some states these people are paid, in others they are volunteers (and sometimes a mix, like a head is paid and the rest are volunteers). Here in Washington, at least, there are also rules on how many people from which parties can be helping to run the polling place -- essentially to keep an eye on each other and make sure no one is helping their side cheat. Here in Washington, because the Libertarians have done well in the last election, they are now also granted spots at the polling places along with the Republicans and Democrats.

may have more later, but this is more than enough for now, I'm sure.

My suggestion would be to retitle this to something like "Voting in Federal Elections in the United States", and focus solely on federal elections. >

I'm sorry, but I totally disagree with you, the vast majority of the entry applies to all elections, The only sections that apply only to "Federal Elections" is the sections on the conventions and electoral college which I point out are because they are the only national candidates in the country. Actually my main point is that there is no such thing as a "Federal Election", only Federal candidates in local elections.




I tried to point this out in both "The Elections" and the "Voter Registration" sections. Perhaps I should list other possible offices in the elections section?



I thought I said that.

<"You may also be asked if you wish to declare yourself a member of a political party, if you choose a party you will be allowed to vote in their primary election 3 . This is not a requirement in all states however."

What should be made more clear here is that some states allow everyone to vote in the primaries, regardless of their party affiliation (or lack thereof). I think that may be what you're last sentence there is trying to say, but it's not clear. >

I clarify that point in the section on primary elections, if you think it would fit better here that may be possible.



Okay, I just copied the title of the referenced entry



I did say "unable to go the polls" perhaps I should add "or unwilling"



I believe I said that in the second sentence under "Voting Precincts"

<There are laws about them having to be handicapped accessible and whatnot.

That is true and part of the ADA, I didn't think it necessary to point out but perhaps it is.

< There are also rules about how the people running the polling place can and can't help disabled people who need assistance in voting.>

See first paragraph in "The Actual Voting Process"



Yes but only certain languages are recognized in certain areas.



Around here you had better have a picture I.D. they rarely even look at your voter I.D. but I can mention that they exist.



Tried to cover this in the second paragraph of "The Actual Voting Process" let me know what more you desire.



Fair enough, I have probably spent almost as much time on this reply as I did on the original entry

But if we still disagree on your first point we may have to agree to disagree.

There is *far* more in this entry that only applies to elections for federal-level positions than just the bits on conventions and the electoral college.

For example:

"On the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November on even numbered years citizens across the United States go to the polls to cast their votes. With campaign workers and their signs kept a respectable distance from the entrance, Americans enter to elect their leaders."

This is when elections for President/US Senator/US Rep occur, but it is not necessarily when other types of elections occur.

"The Constitution sets the term length for all members of the house of representatives at two years, therefore there is an election held in every even numbered year. The president and vice president serve four year terms and run in years that are divisible by four ie 2000, 2004, etc. Senators serve six year terms with one third up for election every two years."

You say "the Contsitution", but what you actually mean is the US Constitution. Each state has its own constitution, with rules that vary quite widely. You talk about senators (although not respresentatives, for some reason), but what you're talking about is only US Senators -- how state senators are handled again, varies from state to state.

"Other offices only require citizenship either by birth or naturalization."

Again, this is only a small part of the story. There are also residency requirements for almost all elected positions outside of the presidency and vice presidency -- i.e., you must reside in the area you are wanting to represent. The rules regarding residency (how defined, length, vary from place to place). In some jurisdictions, there are also educational/training requirements for some elected positions (judge, coroner).

"You will be required to provide the signatures of a certain number of registered voters and pay a filing fee. If all is in order your name will appear on the ballot."

Not all elected positions in all areas require signature lists or filing fees -- some only require one or the other, some actually require neither.

"As well as a national committee each party will have state and local committees to help guide the process. With very few exceptions these are all volunteer positions."

I'm not sure how you define "very few" here, but it is far from what I would consider "very few". Even the 3rd party parties tend to have at least 1-3 paid staff people per state, and the Democrats and Republicans have many severals of times more than that. The number of paid staff members increases even more sharply in election years. A small percentage, yes, but when you add them all up across the parties, it can easily be in the 20-40 range even in a mid-sized state.

"These are called referenda or in some states such as California they are called propositions."

And in other states they are called propositions until they qualify for the ballot and referendums after that. And in other states what they are called depends on whether they were proposed from within the legislature or from the populace. And rules regarding voting sometimes differ by whether they were proposed from within or without the legislature. Referendums and propositions often require more than a majority vote to pass, as well.

"If any citizen or group wishes to place an issue on the ballot as a binding referendum they can create a petition and circulate it to acquire signatures, similar to the process for candidates described above. If enough valid signatures are obtained and the filing fee is met by a specified date the issue will appear on the ballot in the general election. These are known as ‘grass roots movements'."

Again, this is far from a universal truth. This is how it works in most state elections, but not necessarily for all local elections, where the means to get something on the ballot are sometimes quite different.

"There is no requirement for anyone to register."

This is blatantly false. There are definitely categories of people who cannot register to vote -- convicted felons are the most obvious. In one state, I remember being told that those committed to the state mental hospital weren't allowed to vote -- personally, I doubt that was actually a law, but I do remember that no arrangements were made to allow the patients to vote.

And to register to vote in state or local elections, you need to have a valid residential address in the area -- in some areas, you are required to prove your address with something like a utility bill or drivers license in order to register. Historically, homeless people have had an easier time voting in presidential elections than in local elections, because of difficulties involved in not having an actual permanent address. There are organizations aimed specifically at dealing with barriers to voting in the homeless population.

In state and local elections, primaries are not necessarily to pick the top person from each party, as you have implied. They are often used when there are a large number of candidates for a position (especially with non-partisan positions), in order to narrow down the field to 2 or 3 candidates for the actual election day.

"Under no circumstance may you vote for more than one party in a primary."

This isn't true across the country either. In some places there's just a single primary ballot, and you can vote in the Republican primary for one position, and in the Democratic primary for another position, etc. There have been recent court cases about the legality of different primary systems, and this is an area where there's a lot of change going on at the moment.

"Although the parties limit themselves to a single candidate there is no limit on how many parties or independent candidates may run."

Again, this is true for presidential elections, but not true for all state and local elections. Not all states use a primary system for all elections, and it's not unheard of to actually have 2 Republicans up against each other on election day.

Also, in the presidential conventions section, you make it sound as if the vice presidential nomination as well as the presidential nomination comes solely from delegation votes, which is clearly not the case. It's not like the presidential candidate is the one with the most votes and the vp candidate is the one who comes in 2nd -- often as not, the vp candidate actually was quite a ways down (or in some cases, historically I believe, hadn't even run in the presidential primaries), but is selected to "balance out" the candidate.

I don't have a general problem with the broad brush Florida Sailor has used on the state & local sections. They each surely merit their own entry, but there's no reason to not give the total novice reading this for the first time some keywords and phrases that they can then use for further research, if those particular specific elections appeal to them. Given how slowly the Edited Guide acquires knowledge (compared to the sum total of it), this is an excellent compromise, unless someone promises to cover all 50 states in detail right now.

I do think you should read the entry more carefully, Mr. Hummingmouse. Florida Sailor has addressed several of your points quite clearly, based on how I read it. It's possible I have missed your point. If you would like to help, you may need to be even more specific as to just what you are objecting to elsewise, because in most cases I can't tell what you are talking about.

1st Tuesday: FS has covered this elsewhere.
State Senators: alluded to elsewhere.
Committees: yes, there are paid positions here in CA, but given how many counties we have, and how many members each committee has, FS's statement that most positions are unpaid is mathematically true. My mom is even more political than I am and has actually been to a national convention as a delegate for the Democrats, and you would not *believe* just how many thousands more volunteers than paid people are involved in this. Perhaps you are confusing the administrative apparatus of the national and state parties with the local committes, but even so, FS is still so close to correct as to not matter.
poll workers: in California, some pollworkers are paid a pittance, some are volunteers, but noone is there officially on behalf of her party. I personally have kicked nosy people who aren't voting out of the voting area and called the police on them. What you have asserted is not more true than what FS has written.


Requirements to register: This is mostly a valid point. We work hard to prevent the homeless from voting in California. (Off Topic) I strongly sympathise with this, because it's easy to get a friend who wouldn't house you to take your mail. If you can't do this, it's just as well you're not voting. State Supreme Court rulings in Calfornia are very friendly to the mentally retarded or otherwise loony person voting, so with absentee ballots, it's not much of a restriction. FS could omit this, and not be too wrong.

"State Supreme Court rulings in Calfornia are very friendly to the mentally retarded or otherwise loony person voting"


If they can be President they should be allowed to vote.



(BTW: speaking as the parent of a "mentally retarded" child who is not in any way "loony", I'm a little concerned about your phrasing, Sea Change.)

I deeply apologize, anhaga.

There are other kinds of mental problems and diseases, such as depression, schizophrenia and autism, which may or may not have anything to do with retardation, and these kinds of people have the right to vote, and got this right much sooner than the mentally retarded did. Some of them aren't loony. Some of them clearly *are* loony, but not mentally retarded, and some of them are mentally retarded and loony, and I didn't mean to connect any of these quite distinct categories together in any way other than to assert that the right to vote in California is very broad.

The apology didn't really have to be too deep, and it's certainly accepted.

The thing about granting or not granting someone the franchise based on "mental retardation" is that (at least in my jurisdiction) mental retardation is simply a description of someone who scores below a certain mark on an IQ test. Now, should IQ tests be administered to prospective voters? In some ways I could imagine it being a good idea, but I don't really have much trust in IQ tests being a true measure of anything.

As for the various illnesses . . . I just don't know what to think.
(Did I mention that my spouse is presently in a mental hospital facing ECT? That's not a joke.)


Are we far enough off the topic yet?

I am relieved. I was debating Yikesing my own entry.

There are three Mensa folks I know, who absolutely shouldn't be anywhere near a voting booth. I thank the goddesses that two of them are sufficiently condescending (but nevertheless buy into popular culture to the extent that they are keen on the idea of 'not being political') to the idea of democracy that they won't vote.

Who can and can't vote is quite On Topic. Mikey brought it up, and it's valid.

I've read some stuff recently about ECT that implies there really are some modern situations in which it can be useful, in ways that medical science still doesn't understand. It really destroyed my aunt, who was caught with a married man and who went a little wonky when she got shunned by her small mountain community. But this was a long time ago, and besides, the wench is dead. Gods and goddesses bless your spouse, I hope it works out as it should.

Thanks for the good wishes, Sea Change. I won't pursue the subject any further, as it would just be completely off topic, but thank you.

First of all, sea change, I'm not, and never have been, Mr Hummingmouse. I'm Mikey, I'm a girl, and not a Mr by any means.

Second, I *have* read the entry carefully. That was why I brought up all those points. While there *are* places where the author addresses some of these issues, there are other places where the author appears to contradict earlier statements. For example, at the very beginning of the entry, the author mentions that convicted felons can't register to vote. And yet in the section on voter registration, the author falsely claims that there are no requirements other than meeting the voting age in order to register.

There are many other instances of problems like this -- correcting a problem at the other end of an entry doesn't fix the fact that it's unclear in a completely different place.

And nowhere did I say that this entry needed to cover the exact specifics of every locality. I just pointed out that the entry should either a) focus on elections for federal level positions only (which are much more standardized from place to place), or b) make it explicitly clear which bits of the entry only apply to certain types of elections, and avoid the degree of overgeneralization that the entry currently employs regarding state and local elections.

And no, I don't agree that it's an "excellent compromise" to put an entry into the EG that contains incorrect information, misleading statements, and extremely broad overgeneralizations. I think an excellent compromise would be for an entry to cover things that *are* true everywhere, and either a) leave it at that, or b) make it explicitly clear that it is only describing how *some* things happen in *some* places, *some* of the time.

I have *not* asserted anywhere that the exceptions that I've pointed out are universal, that wasn't the point. The point was that the entry appears to claim that its generalizations *are* universal, when very clearly they are not. The exceptions I detailed were solely to point out that the overgeneralizations are flawed. I made it clear that these things only happen in some places. The current entry incorrectly asserts that all sorts of things happen *everywhere* in the US, when they very obviously do not.

Mikey, if you wish to quote please do it in context; the full quote is;

"On the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November on even numbered years citizens across the United States go to the polls to cast their votes. With campaign workers and their signs kept a respectable distance from the entrance, Americans enter to elect their leaders. Actually this is only a small step in the process of voting in the United States."

The last sentence is intended, as explained in the rest of the text, that this is not to only time Americans vote, only the one most publicized in the international press. This is also the introductory paragraph intended to grab the interest of readers, not be the definitive point of the whole entry.

I have rewritten the section on "The Election" to go into far more detail than originally intended. If anyone thinks this is a good change I will go through the rest to eliminate what are now double references and try to address some of the other complaints.

"The last sentence is intended, as explained in the rest of the text, that this is not to only time Americans vote, only the one most publicized in the international press. This is also the introductory paragraph intended to grab the interest of readers, not be the definitive point of the whole entry."

That may be what you intended the last sentence in the paragraph to do, but I really don't see it working that way. The last sentence says "Actually this is only a small step in the process of voting in the United States." While someone could interpret that as meaning that there are other elections on other dates in the US, they could also interpret that to mean that you're just referring to what happens before an election -- how candidates get on the ballot, primaries, etc.

It's not until the 4th paragraph down that you make it clear that elections also happen on other dates. And while the introductory paragrpah isn't supposed to be the "definitive point" of the whole entry, it *is* supposed to introduce what the entry is going to be about. As it stands, this paragraph really only seems to be an introduction to the big even-numbered year November election.

The changes that I've seen so far look like a considerable improvement to me. It's not like I think this entry is awful by any means, I just think there's still some things that need work before the entry is ready to be picked. That's what Peer Review is for, after all.

Sorry folks, i got really lost in the backlog, but I love that there's so mouch going on in this conversation thread.

I like the article, but the criticisms and comments I've seen have been mostly legit. . .

off for another read,

Friar

Posted the latest update. Have at it

My 2¢ - the first paragraph saying "on even numbered years" colored the rest of the article for me, and I certainly did not see the rest of that paragraph or the article as a whole as clarifying a point that is just patently incorrect. In fact it was difficult for me to read the rest of the article seriously, seeing as it opens with a confusing and misleading statement.

Here in NJ we have elections every year. There is no differentiation between odd and even numbered years (although they are often referred to by the press as "off-year elections"), and some very important votes come in the odd-numbered years, including state governor. The same is true in many states.

I suggest dropping the "on even numbered years" unless you really want people to have the same reaction as I did. Or you have to grant Mikey's point and say that this article applies in particular to federal elections.