A recall election is a procedure by which, in certain polities, voters can remove an elected official from office through a referendum before that official's term of office has ended. Recalls appear in the constitution in ancient Athenian democracy. Even where they are legally available, recall elections are only commonly held in a small number of countries including Peru, Ecuador, and Japan. They are considered by groups such as ACE Electoral Knowledge Network the most rarely used form of direct democracy.
Home rule is government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own administrative area that have been decentralized to it by the central government. Home rule may govern in an autonomous administrative division; in contrast, though, there is no sovereignty separate from that of the parent state, and thus no separate chief military command nor separate foreign policy and diplomacy.
In the politics of the United States, the process of initiatives and referendums allow citizens of many U.S. states to place legislation on the ballot for a referendum or popular vote, either enacting new legistation, or voting down existing legislation. Citizens, or an organization, might start an initiative to gather a predetermined number of signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. The measure is placed on the ballot for the referendum, or actual vote.
The government of Maryland is conducted according to the Maryland Constitution. The United States is a federation; consequently, the government of Maryland, like the other 49 state governments, has exclusive authority over matters that lie entirely within the state's borders, except as limited by the Constitution of the United States.
Most U.S. states and territories have at least two tiers of local government: counties and municipalities. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the U.S. Census Bureau terms county equivalents in those states. Civil townships or towns are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
The Constitution of the State of Texas is the document that establishes the structure and function of the government of the U.S. state of Texas, and enumerates the basic rights of the citizens of Texas.
Massachusetts shares with the five other New England states a governmental structure known as the New England town. Only the southeastern third of the state has functioning county governments; in western, central, and northeastern Massachusetts, traditional county-level government was eliminated in the late 1990s. Generally speaking, there are four kinds of public school districts in Massachusetts: local schools, regional schools, vocational/technical schools, and charter schools.
The Constitution of California is the primary organizing law for the U.S. state of California, describing the duties, powers, structures and functions of the government of California. California's constitution was drafted in both English and Spanish by American pioneers, European settlers, and Californios and adopted at the 1849 Constitutional Convention of Monterey, following the American Conquest of California and the Mexican–American War and in advance of California's Admission to the Union in 1850. The constitution was amended and ratified on 7 May 1879, following the Sacramento Convention of 1878–79.
A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural council, village council, or board of aldermen.
The government of Texas operates under the Constitution of Texas and consists of a unitary democratic state government operating under a presidential system that uses the Dillon Rule, as well as governments at the county and municipal levels.
The Plano City Council is the governing body of the City of Plano, Texas, United States. The council operates using the council-manager government. They hold regular meetings at the Plano Municipal Center on the second and fourth Monday of every month at 7 p.m. During the month of July, the meeting dates are revised.
Proposition 218 is an adopted initiative constitutional amendment which revolutionized local and regional government finance and taxation in California. Named the "Right to Vote on Taxes Act," it was sponsored by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association as a constitutional follow-up to the landmark property tax reduction initiative constitutional amendment, Proposition 13, approved in June 1978. Proposition 218 was approved and adopted by California voters during the November 5, 1996, statewide general election.
In the United States, the meaning of village varies by geographic area and legal jurisdiction. In many areas, "village" is a term, sometimes informal, for a type of administrative division at the local government level. Since the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government from legislating on local government, the states are free to have political subdivisions called "villages" or not to and to define the word in many ways. Typically, a village is a type of municipality, although it can also be a special district or an unincorporated area. It may or may not be recognized for governmental purposes.
The state of Michigan is largely divided in the same way as many other U.S. states, but is distinct in its usage of charter townships. Michigan ranks 13th among the fifty states in terms of the number of local governmental entities.
The government of Virginia combines the executive, legislative and judicial branches of authority in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The current governor of Virginia is Glenn Youngkin. The State Capitol building in Richmond was designed by Thomas Jefferson, and the cornerstone was laid by Governor Patrick Henry in 1785. Virginia currently functions under the 1971 Constitution of Virginia. It is Virginia's seventh constitution. Under the Constitution, the government is composed of three branches: the legislative, the executive and the judicial.
Home Rule in the United States relates to the authority of a constituent part of a U.S. state to exercise powers of governance; i.e.: whether those powers must be expressly delegated to it by the state or are generally implicitly allowed unless specifically denied by state-level action.
The Philadelphia Home Rule Charter reform campaign is a campaign in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to rewrite the city's 1951 Home Rule Charter. The campaign began in response to several local political scandals, the most recent being City Council members' participation in DROP, a Deferred Retirement Option Plan originally intended for civil service.
The U.S. state of Texas has a total of 254 counties, many cities, and numerous special districts, the most common of which is the independent school district.
The administrative divisions of Ohio are counties, municipalities, townships, special districts, and school districts.
In the systems of local government in some U.S. states, a general-law municipality, general-law city, code city, or statutory city is a municipality whose government structure and powers are defined by the general law of its state. This is in contrast to a charter city or home-rule city, whose government structure and powers are defined by a municipal charter.
