Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 July 3

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July 3

Vote or votes?

Hi hi. I'm working a bit on Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Party_of_Revolutionary_Communism, a question here that I'm unsure of is the use of plural or singular on 'vote'. If there is a group of people, with each individual possessing one vote, is it correct to say 'ten delegates with decisive vote' or 'ten delegates with decisive votes'? I feel that in the latter case its implied that delegates could cast more than one vote each. -- Soman (talk) 13:18, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

"Ten delegates with decisive vote" is not standard English, at least for me. Votes are typically one per person per election; where that's not the case (such as when you can select multiple choices for things like city council or whatever), the details are usually described specifically. However, the full situation you're working on is already unusual; you're using "decisive" to (I think) only refer to those votes that were actually counted towards the result, in contrast with what you're calling "consultative votes". I don't know the details of what you're describing, but it sure seems odd: the whole point of voting is for it to count towards the result. It might be better to re-word the section to explicitly describe the situation. In standard English, all votes count towards the decision, so the term "decisive vote" means a special case where the results are tied and it's up to a small number of people (usually one) to cast the "decisive" vote that makes the decision. Matt Deres (talk) 14:21, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

In the context, some delegates only have an "advisory vote"; the regular votes of other delegates are called "decisive votes". I don't know how advisory votes are counted, if at all; in any case, the term "decisive vote" usually has a different meaning. ("Senator John McCain of Arizona, who just this week returned to the Senate after receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, cast the decisive vote to defeat the proposal, joining two other Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in opposing it."^[1])  --Lambiam 19:33, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Lenin allowed voting??? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:59, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

I have the impression that it took some time for Lenin to fully consolidate his power. There weren't really any meaningful popular votes, but intra-Party votes might have been important for a while. It's not my field; maybe someone who knows more about it could weigh in. --Trovatore (talk) 21:10, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

What does Lenin have to do with the issue?  --Lambiam 22:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

The issues relate to the Party of Revolutionary Communism of 1918–20, which subsequently merged into Lenin's Bolshevik Party, the leading but far from only Party participating in governing Russia (soon to become the Soviet Union) at that time. Intra-party factions and splits, and inter-party disputes and merges were rife, and it was all done by committees, so votes in various contexts could be very important. Lenin was not an all-powerful dictator from the outset. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 151.227.226.178 (talk) 02:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

I'd stress here that the words for 'vote'/'voice' are the same in many languages. And the terms 'decisive vote' and 'consultative vote' where used in the English-language materials of the Communist International. The statues of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed candidate members to participate in party meetings with consultative vote, not decisive vote ([2]). And so forth. But my question was, should it be 'ten delegates with decisive vote' (vote in singular) or 'ten delegates with decisive votes' (votes in plural)? --Soman (talk) 12:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

@Soman: You're forgetting the articles; so is your question "should it be 'ten delegates with a decisive vote' (vote in singular) or 'ten delegates with decisive votes' (votes in plural)"? As a British English speaker, I'd go for the first (singular) version if you're treating the ten voters as a group (for example, they belong to a political grouping). If you're simply talking about ten unconnected people who each happen to have a decisive vote, then probably the second, although it looks a bit strange as I can't envisage how that would happen. Bazza 7 (talk) 12:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Note that "decisive vote" does not mean what it usually means. The meaning in this context is more like "first-class". Some delegates have first-class votes; these carry more weight than the votes of other delegates. So would you say, 'ten delegates with a first-class vote' or 'ten delegates with first-class votes'? I think the latter, also if these delegates belong to the same political faction.  --Lambiam 14:53, 6 July 2024 (UTC)