|
Two-thirds Majority
A supermajority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority rules in a democracy can help to prevent a majority from eroding fundamental rights of a minority, but can also hamper efforts to respond to problems and encourage corrupt compromises at times when action is taken. Changes to constitutions, especially those with entrenched clauses, commonly require supermajority support in a legislature. In consensus democracy the supermajority rule is applied in most cases. __TOC__ History The first known use of a supermajority rule was in juries during the 100s BC in ancient Rome. In some cases, two thirds of jurors had to confirm they were ready to take a decision before the matter went to a simple majority vote. Pope Alexander III introduced the use of supermajority rule for papal elections at the Third Lateran Council in 1179. In the Democratic Party of the United ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Majority
A majority is more than half of a total; however, the term is commonly used with other meanings, as explained in the "#Related terms, Related terms" section below. It is a subset of a Set (mathematics), set consisting of more than half of the set's elements. For example, if a group consists of 31 individuals, a majority would be 16 or more individuals, while having 15 or fewer individuals would not constitute a majority. A majority is different from, but often confused with, a Plurality (voting), plurality, which is a subset larger than any other subset but not necessarily more than half the set. See the "#Related terms, Related terms" section below for details. Majority vote In parliamentary procedure, a majority always means precisely "more than half". Other common definitions (e.g. the frequent 50%+1) may be misleading #Common errors, (see "Common errors" below). Depending on the parliamentary authority used, there may be a difference in the total that is used to calculat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1936 Democratic National Convention
The 1936 Democratic National Convention was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from June 23 to 27, 1936. The convention resulted in the nomination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Vice President John N. Garner for reelection. Changes to rules At the 1936 Democratic Convention, the rule requiring candidates for president and vice president to have a majority of two-thirds of the delegates votes to win nomination, which had existed since 1832, was abolished. Roosevelt had long pushed for the rule's abolition, in part due to past deadlocks: for example, the 1924 convention had required 103 ballots over roughly two weeks to nominate John W. Davis. The conventioneers provided that a simple majority of delegates would be required to win nomination, allowing for candidates to more easily be nominated and thus produce less balloting. In this regard, only one Democratic Convention after 1932 has required multiple ballots (that of 1952, which required three). This also beg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abstention
Abstention is a term in election procedure for when a participant in a Voting, vote either does not go to vote (on election day) or, in parliamentary procedure, is present during the vote but does not cast a ballot. Abstention must be contrasted with "none of the above, blank vote", in which a voter casts a ballot willfully made invalid by marking it wrongly or by not marking anything at all. A "blank voter" has voted, although their vote may be considered a spoilt vote, depending on each legislation, while an abstaining voter has not voted. Both forms (abstention and blank vote) may or may not, depending on the circumstances, be considered to be a protest vote (also known as a "blank vote"). Abstention is related to political apathy and low voter turnout. An abstention may be used to indicate the voting individual's ambivalence about the measure, or mild disapproval that does not rise to the level of active opposition. Abstention can also be used when someone has a certain pos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Da Capo Press
Da Capo Press is an American publishing company with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. It is now an imprint of Hachette Books. History Founded in 1964 as a publisher of music books, as a division of Plenum Publishers, it had additional offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Emeryville, California. The year prior, Da Capo Press had net sales of over $2.5 million. Da Capo Press became a general trade publisher in the mid-1970s. The name "Da Capo" is an Italian musical term that means "from the beginning," often used in sheet music to indicate that a piece should be repeated from the start. It was sold to the Perseus Books Group in 1999 after Plenum was sold to Wolters Kluwer. In the last decade, its production has consisted of mostly nonfiction titles, both hardcover and paperback, focusing on history, music, the performing arts, sports, and popular culture. In 2003, Lifelong Books was founded as a health and wellness imprint. When Marlowe & Company became ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Grand Jury
A grand jury is a jury empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a person to testify. A grand jury is separate from the courts, which do not preside over its functioning. Originating in England during the Middle Ages, modern examples include grand juries in the United States, and to a lesser extent, Liberia. In Japan, there are citizen Prosecutorial Review Committees which review cases that have been dropped by the prosecution, but they are not required for an indictment like in the previous two. Grand juries perform both accusatory and investigatory functions. The investigatory functions of grand juries include obtaining and reviewing documents and other evidence, and hearing sworn testimonies of witnesses who appear before it; the accusatory function determines whether there is probable cause to believe that one or more persons co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rounding
Rounding or rounding off is the process of adjusting a number to an approximate, more convenient value, often with a shorter or simpler representation. For example, replacing $ with $, the fraction 312/937 with 1/3, or the expression √2 with . Rounding is often done to obtain a value that is easier to report and communicate than the original. Rounding can also be important to avoid false precision, misleadingly precise reporting of a computed number, measurement, or estimate; for example, a quantity that was computed as but is known to be accuracy and precision, accurate only to within a few hundred units is usually better stated as "about ". On the other hand, rounding of exact numbers will introduce some round-off error in the reported result. Rounding is almost unavoidable when reporting many computations – especially when dividing two numbers in integer or fixed-point arithmetic; when computing mathematical functions such as square roots, logarithms, and sines; or whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whole Number
An integer is the number zero ( 0), a positive natural number (1, 2, 3, ...), or the negation of a positive natural number ( −1, −2, −3, ...). The negations or additive inverses of the positive natural numbers are referred to as negative integers. The set of all integers is often denoted by the boldface or blackboard bold The set of natural numbers \mathbb is a subset of \mathbb, which in turn is a subset of the set of all rational numbers \mathbb, itself a subset of the real numbers \mathbb. Like the set of natural numbers, the set of integers \mathbb is countably infinite. An integer may be regarded as a real number that can be written without a fractional component. For example, 21, 4, 0, and −2048 are integers, while 9.75, , 5/4, and are not. The integers form the smallest group and the smallest ring containing the natural numbers. In algebraic number theory, the integers are sometimes qualified as rational integers to distinguish them from the more general a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
One-half
One half is the multiplicative inverse of 2. It is an irreducible fraction with a numerator of 1 and a denominator of 2. It often appears in mathematical equations, recipes and measurements. As a word One half is one of the few fractions which are commonly expressed in natural languages by suppletion rather than regular derivation. In English, for example, compare the compound "one half" with other regular formations like "one-sixth". A ''half'' can also be said to be one part of something divided into two equal parts. It is acceptable to write one half as a hyphenated word, ''one-half''. Mathematics One half is the rational number that lies midway between 0 and 1 on the number line. Multiplication by one half is equivalent to division by two, or "halving"; conversely, division by one half is equivalent to multiplication by two, or "doubling". A number raised to the power of one half is equal to its square root. The area of a triangle is one half its base an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percentage
In mathematics, a percentage () is a number or ratio expressed as a fraction (mathematics), fraction of 100. It is often Denotation, denoted using the ''percent sign'' (%), although the abbreviations ''pct.'', ''pct'', and sometimes ''pc'' are also used. A percentage is a dimensionless quantity, dimensionless number (pure number), primarily used for expressing proportions, but percent is nonetheless a unit of measurement in its orthography and usage. Examples For example, 45% (read as "forty-five percent") is equal to the fraction , or 0.45. Percentages are often used to express a proportionate part of a total. (Similarly, one can also express a number as a fraction of 1,000, using the term "per mille" or the symbol "".) Example 1 If 50% of the total number of students in the class are male, that means that 50 out of every 100 students are male. If there are 500 students, then 250 of them are male. Example 2 An increase of $0.15 on a price of $2.50 is an increase by a fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fraction
A fraction (from , "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight-fifths, three-quarters. A ''common'', ''vulgar'', or ''simple'' fraction (examples: and ) consists of an integer numerator, displayed above a line (or before a slash like ), and a division by zero, non-zero integer denominator, displayed below (or after) that line. If these integers are positive, then the numerator represents a number of equal parts, and the denominator indicates how many of those parts make up a unit or a whole. For example, in the fraction , the numerator 3 indicates that the fraction represents 3 equal parts, and the denominator 4 indicates that 4 parts make up a whole. The picture to the right illustrates of a cake. Fractions can be used to represent ratios and division (mathematics), division. Thus the fraction can be used to ... [...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] |
