:Many societies in the past have denied people the right to vote on the basis of race or ethnicity. Examples of this include the exclusion of people of African descent from voting, in the pre-Civil Rights Era American South, and in apartheid-era South Africa. :Most societies today no longer maintain such provisions, but a few still do. For example, Fiji reserves a certain number of seats in its Parliament for each of its main ethnic groups; these provisions were adopted in order to discriminate against Indians in favour of ethnic Fijians. Many countries have laws that give national minorities representation in Parliament (for example national minorities parties don't need to pass 5% limit to get into Sejm). --Taw |
See http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=democracy which defines democracy as "Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives" (American Heritage Dictionary).
Maybe I was being a bit accusatory and hasty in my original statement, and if so I do apologise. But my point remains that a lot of people (me and the American Heritage Dictionary) included do not take democracy to mean "direct democracy" and republic to mean "indirect democracy"; they take democracy to mean "democracy, either direct or indirect", and republic to mean "not a monarchy, be it democratic or un-democratic".
So maybe I am wrong to think it is solely some particular minorities view on the meaning of the word democracy, but I still maintain that the meaning I give it is the more common one. And I think articles should reflect words as they are most commonly used. -- Simon J Kissane
I think it s not true that "The right to vote is normally denied to prisoners". It maybe true for the USA but not true in continental Europe.
Also someone changed [citizen-initiated referenda]? to read [referenda on popular demand]?. Why? -- SJK
Many countries have laws that give national minorities representation in Parliament (for example national minorities parties don't need to pass 5% limit to get into Sejm). --Taw