Article One of the Constitution of the United States establishes the legislative branch of the federal government, the United States Congress. Under Article One, Congress is a bicameral legislature consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Article One grants Congress various enumerated powers and the ability to pass laws "necessary and proper" to carry out those powers. Article One also establishes the procedures for passing a bill and places various limits on the powers of Congress and the states from abusing their powers.
Article Two of the United States Constitution establishes the executive branch of the federal government, which carries out and enforces federal laws. Article Two vests the power of the executive branch in the office of the president of the United States, lays out the procedures for electing and removing the president, and establishes the president's powers and responsibilities.
The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides the procedure for electing the president and vice president. It replaced the procedure in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, under which the Electoral College originally functioned. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 9, 1803, and was ratified by the requisite three-fourths of state legislatures on June 15, 1804. The new rules took effect for the 1804 presidential election and have governed all subsequent presidential elections.
The Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution moved the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March 4 to January 20, and of members of Congress from March 4 to January 3. It also has provisions that determine what is to be done when there is no president-elect. The Twentieth Amendment was adopted on January 23, 1933.
In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years for the sole purpose of voting for the president and vice president. The process is described in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Each state appoints electors under the methods described by its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation totaling 535 electors. A 1961 amendment granted the federal District of Columbia three electors. Of the current 538 electors, a simple majority of 270 or more electoral votes is required to elect the president and vice president. If no candidate achieves a majority there, a contingent election is held by the House of Representatives to elect the president and by the Senate to elect the vice president. Federal office holders, including senators and representatives, cannot be electors.
The University of Dublin, corporately designated the Chancellor, Doctors and Masters of the University of Dublin, is a university located in Dublin, Ireland. It is the degree-awarding body for Trinity College Dublin. It was founded in 1592 when Queen Elizabeth I issued a charter for Trinity College as "the mother of a university", thereby making it Ireland's oldest operating university. It was modelled after the collegiate universities of Oxford and of Cambridge, but unlike these other ancient universities, only one college was established; as such, the designations "Trinity College" and "University of Dublin" are usually synonymous for practical purposes.
A quorum is the minimum number of members of a group necessary to constitute the group at a meeting. In a deliberative assembly, a quorum is necessary to conduct the business of that group. According to Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, the "requirement for a quorum is protection against totally unrepresentative action in the name of the body by an unduly small number of persons." In contrast, a plenum is a meeting of the full body. A body, or a meeting or vote of it, is quorate if a quorum is present.
A supermajority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than 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 they 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. Parliamentary procedure requires that any action of a deliberative assembly that may alter the rights of a minority have a supermajority requirement, such as a two-thirds vote. In consensus democracy the supermajority rule is applied in most cases.
Parliament of Sierra Leone is the legislative branch of the government of Sierra Leone. It is principally responsible for making laws. The Sierra Leone parliament consists of 149 members, of which 135 members are directly elected from across Sierra Leone's 16 districts, while 14 are paramount chiefs appointed from the 14 rural districts. The parliament is led by the Speaker of the House; the position is currently held by Abass Bundu of the Sierra Leone People's Party. The current elected 135 ordinary members of parliament are composed of members of the All People's Congress and the Sierra Leone People's Party which are the two largest political parties in Sierra Leone.
The Habeas Corpus Act 1640 was an Act of the Parliament of England.
The right of non-citizens to vote in the United States has historically been a contentious issue. Since 1997, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 has prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections, with the threat of fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility and deportation. Exempt from punishment is any noncitizen who, at the time of voting, had two natural or adoptive U.S. citizen parents, who began permanently living in the United States before turning 16 years old, and who reasonably believed that they were a citizen of the United States. At one point or another before 1926 40 states had non-citizens voting in elections. While federal law does not prohibit noncitizens from voting in state or local elections, no state has allowed noncitizens to vote in statewide elections since Arkansas became the last state to outlaw noncitizen voting in state elections in 1926. As of December 2022, at least thirteen local jurisdictions allow non-citizen voting, namely Winooski and Montpelier in Vermont, and eleven in Maryland near Washington, D.C. In 2023, D.C. itself started allowing local non-citizen voting. Additionally, the U.S. territories of American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands allow non-citizen US nationals to vote, a status granted to all persons born in American Samoa. All persons born in the Northern Mariana Islands automatically become US citizens at birth, as opposed to becoming US nationals at birth. Guam and Hawaiʻi, by contrast do not allow non-citizen US nationals to vote.
The Piracy Act 1721 (c.24) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain.
The Forfeiture Act 1870 is a British Act of Parliament that abolished the automatic forfeiture of goods and land as a punishment for treason and felony. It does not apply to Scotland, which did not fully abolish forfeiture until the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1949. Prior to the Act being passed, a person convicted of treason or felony automatically and permanently forfeited all of his lands and possessions to the Crown. The old offence of praemunire, which was also punished with forfeiture, was only a misdemeanour, and so the Act did not apply to it.
The president-elect of the United States is the candidate who has presumptively won the United States presidential election and is awaiting inauguration to become the president. There is no explicit indication in the U.S. Constitution as to when that person actually becomes president-elect, although the Twentieth Amendment uses the term "president-elect", thus giving the term "president-elect" constitutional justification. It is assumed the Congressional certification of votes cast by the Electoral College of the United States – occurring after the third day of January following the swearing-in of the new Congress, per provisions of the Twelfth Amendment – unambiguously confirms the successful candidate as the official "president-elect" under the U.S. Constitution. As an unofficial term, president-elect has been used by the media since at least the latter half of the 19th century, and was in use by politicians since at least the 1790s. Politicians and the media have applied the term to the projected winner, even on election night, and very few who turned out to have lost have been referred to as such.
Proposition 8 of 1911 was an amendment of the Constitution of California that introduced, for the first time, the recall of public officials. This allows the governor, state senators and assemblymen, and other elected officials to be removed from office early by a public vote. It was approved by voters in a referendum held as part of a special election on 10 October. On the same day voters approved two other major political reforms, Proposition 4, which granted women the vote, and Proposition 7, which introduced the initiative and the optional referendum.
The Presentation of Benefices Act 1605 was an Act of the Parliament of England.
The Public Companies Act 1767 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that prohibited shareholders voting in public companies, unless they had held shares for six months. It was intended to stop vote splitting, so as to retain greater equality among members of companies.
The Oxford University Act 1854, also known as the Oxford University Reform Act 1854 or the University Reform Act 1854, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which regulates corporate governance at the University of Oxford, England. It established the Hebdomadal Council, the leading body in the university's administration, stating that most members of full-time academic staff were to have voting rights over it. In the year 2000, the Hebdomadal Council was replaced by the University Council, which is responsible to the Congregation of staff members.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA) is a United States federal law that added to procedures set out in the Constitution of the United States for the counting of electoral votes following a presidential election. In its unamended form, it last governed at the time of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count. The Act has since been substantially amended by the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022.
The Constitution Alteration Bill 1988, was an unsuccessful proposal to alter the Australian Constitution to enshrine the principle that each elector's vote should have equal value in Australia, also referred to as one vote, one value, including in states and territories. It was put to voters for approval in a referendum held on 3 September 1988.
