Talk:One man, one vote

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Might be nice to mention the Terry Pratchett parody: Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

Or from random ballot: "The random ballot voting method takes the one person one vote principle to an extreme by only counting the vote of one person. In an election or referendum, the ballot of a single voter is selected at random, and that ballot decides the result of the election."

Contents 1 Political Emancipation 2 Origins of phrase 3 Proposed move 4 Northern Ireland - Some perspective, please 5 OMOV as an argument against voting systems other than plurality

[edit] Political Emancipation

The wiki page Political_emancipation could also use some attention. Currently it is only a stub. Particularly the explanation of the term 'political emancipation' entailing 'equal status of individual citizens in relation to the state, equality before the law, regardless of religion, property, or other “private” characteristics of individual persons' is construed to be an 'opinion' and 'not delivering a neutral point of view.' Does anyone have more information on the word 'emancipation' also being used in the political context of establishing (or any step moving towards) equality in light of the law? Inserting the Voting Rights Act as such a step of political emancipation, for instance, was repeatedly erased.

The question one could pose, is: When there have been only 3 African-American Senators in modern times (out of more than the 1500 Senators in total), would you say that political emancipation has been achieved?

I don't know who you are (you should sign your name) or why you're making these comments here, but what are you talking about? Any of us can vote and any of us can run and what more do you want? You want to say that, if my people are 12% of the populashun that we need to get 12% of the senators? And if we do that for senators, then why not teachers, firemans, police, presidents, and NBA players? Is that what you want? The Real Rodney King 19:42, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origins of phrase

These introductory comments are simply wrong, and appear to me to be original research. The origins of OMOV are correctly alluded to later in the article. 216.199.161.66 18:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Much better now. 216.199.161.66 19:35, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed move

I strongly recommend moving this page to "One man, one vote." In practical terms, it will make no difference, since redirects exist already and can exist the other way as well. But I tell you what—I came across this page only by hitting "random article", and was very confused at first. As a sometimes-student of political science (admittedly, it's been a few years), I've never heard anyone say "O-M-O-V" (though I've seen it written a couple of times). Look, people who are into this topic say "one man, one vote." Period. It's not even as easy to say "OMOV" as it is to say "one man, one vote". I'll await comments before making the move. Unschool 03:13, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Northern Ireland - Some perspective, please

What does this mean?

*When Northern Ireland came into being, it adopted the same political system which was in place at that time in Westminster. However, whilst the British parliament updated its system some years after Northern Ireland had set up its devolved government, the system in the province remained the same.

To those of us not intimately familiar with the subject, the above entry does absolutely nothing to clarify matters. It is so vague, so broad, as to approach the quality of a non sequitur. Without some clarification, it will need to be deleted. Unschool 23:07, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The article as a whole is messy because this is a statement that means different things in different parts of the world. In the US it seems "One man, one vote" is a bit of a misnomer as the focus is on apportionment - perhaps "one man, one vote, one value" is what is meant (although many would argue that a vote in an ultra marginal constituency has more "value" than one in a rock solid safe seat). But apportionment is a very different thing from franchise entitlement.

In the UK "One man/person, one vote" has historically meant that every citizen should be entitled to vote and to have an equal number of votes. Historically the Westminster Parliament was elected by those with a sufficient interest in the counties, boroughs and universities entitled to send members (in the counties it was to hold property worth 40 shillings freehold, the borough franchises were all over the place and the universities had a graduate franchise) and those who qualified for the franchise for more than one constituency (e.g. owners of business premises or university graduates) were entitled to vote in all of them. (This was somewhat tempered as travel limited the number that one could physically get to, whilst many constitencies were not contested in elections.)

As time went on the focus of attention moved from places being enfranchised to the electorates and many argued that a citizen should only be able to vote for one representative. Successive changes to both the Westminster (completed 1948) and local government franchise (completed around the same time, bar the Corporation of London) have moved to a system whereby entitlement to vote is based solely on one's place of residence. (It does create the interesting problem that many people who work outside their district of residence, particularly those in suburbs and commuter towns, have no say in elections to local government bodies who make major decisions impacting on them. This is the reason why the Corporation of London, which adminsters an area with less than 10,000 residents but huge financial resources, retains the business franchise.)

When Northern Ireland was created in 1921 it retained the same ratepayer franchise for local government that was then in common use in the rest of the UK. However unlike the rest it didn't change to a "one person, one vote" system in the 1940s. It was alleged that this gave a bias to Unionists as Protestants were more likely to qualify for extra votes than Catholics, although it seems the practical effect of this on control of councils was limited - see [1]. However it gave the Civil Rights movement one of the best slogans for their reform demands - "One man, one vote". Timrollpickering 15:36, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OMOV as an argument against voting systems other than plurality

This text was removed:

In Alaska, when instant runoff voting was being proposed, League of Women Voters President Cheryl Jebe said, "It appears to compromise the well-established principle of one person, one vote, established by the United States Supreme Court."^[1]

However, it appears to still be useful information. OMOV is frequently used as a rationale against implementing voting systems other than plurality (e.g. approval voting, instant-runoff voting, cumulative voting, etc.) Perhaps we can present those arguments and their rebuttals? 129.174.2.205 (talk) 16:25, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

The above edit was indeed by a blocked user, and it was removed by another blocked user. I've verified the source, and the edit is useful. I reverted it back.--Abd (talk) 18:40, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't really explain what she means though. There's a lot of crap talked about Alternative Vote (and the article is poorly researched - the "Lord Mayor of London" is not directly elected and the Mayor of London is elected by Supplementary Vote which is different), with some people claiming it gives some voters more than others when it doesn't - it just transfers their single vote if their initial choice of candidate is utterly unsuccessful. Every voter has the same voting power in determing the final outcome in the seat. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:06, 29 March 2008 (UTC)