Talk:General ticket

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As this is new info to me, I'm a little confused. The discriptions I have found seem to indicate that the candidates were elected as a bloc, from a single party, in the same way that the President and Vice President are elected nowadays. But a few descriptions seem to suggest that the highest vote-getters were elected, more like original method for choosing the President and Vice President. I guess a overly-complex table will better illustrate my question:

Example, with 3 seats up for grabs:

Scenario A:

Dem-Reps 100,000 votes
Smith
Smithson
Schmidt

Federalists 200,000 votes
Johnson
Johnssen
Johns

Thus, the three seats would go to Johnson, Johnsen, and Johns.

Scenario B:

Dem-Reps
Smith 50,000 votes
Smithson 25,000
Schmidt 25,000

Federalists
Johnson 70,000
Johnssen 30,000
Johns 100,000

Thus, the three seats would go to Johns, Johnson, and Smith.

I hope my question makes some sense to someone, because I want to be sure how this worked, and the article needs to clarified about it. Xyzzyva 14:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General ticket vs. Plural district vs. At-large

This discussion was moved on 16:28, 14 August 2007 (UTC) from User talk:Stilltim#general tix for early congresses.

In many of the early U.S. Congresses, some Reps are listed as being elected At-large on a general ticket. This looks right to me. However, I'm not confident in the sources. I'll see this in both the "United States congressional delegations from FOO" tables and in "FOOth United States Congress." In the tables, an asterisk is used.

Can you give me a reliable source for those early Reps? Preferably one easy-to-access source for all states? I'd like to be sure exactly when each delegation went to and from at-large representation.

What I'd like to do is modify the tables in the "… delegations…" articles to reflect that those reps were elected at-large by a general ticket. See, for example, the work I've done with early New Hampshire Reps at United States Congressional Delegations from New Hampshire#1789-1793: Three members At-large.

—Markles 14:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Sure. The references I give on all the congress articles- Prof Martis. These are completely reliable and used by the Congress itself for its accounting. The books even map the data. I found one in the University of Delaware library, I'm sure there are several copies in the Boston area. (If that's where you are). Alas, I've never seen it on-line and it costs $700 to buy. Too much for me today.
  • Your project is an ambitious one. Figuring out how to display at-large congressmen in the same format as district ones is not easy because there is no real first/second/third seat. Nor can one be said to suceed another. I commend you for trying to fgure it out, and the NH example you gave is sure a good shot. In any case you can absolutely rely on the accuracy of the rendering in the ordinal congress articles as I have rechecked it many times from the source noted below. (but watch for less careful subsequent editing) Good luck.
Martis, Kenneth C. (1989). The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. 
Martis, Kenneth C. (1982). The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. 

stilltim 12:33, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

  • You know I was hoping you wouldn't cite Martis. That book weighs a ton and my library hates when I take it out.
  • I know this is ambitious, but so are most projects on WP. My goal is to correct the idea (perhaps originally perpetrated by me) that there were X number of districts when, in fact, there were fewer districts which doubled up. See, e.g., Maryland.
  • I've recenly done new work on general tickets with United States Congressional Delegations from New York over the weekend. Frankly, I think I need to pull back a little. I might have gone overboard with calling some seats "At-large" (see, e.g., Category:Obsolete United States Congressional districts).
  • —Markles 12:45, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Right, it does, but it has all the answers. I've tried to use Martis' terminology as best I understand it. "At-large" referring only to statewide districts, and "plural" districts refering to multi member districts that are not state wide. I suppose "general ticket" can refer to either, but it seems to be applied mostly to "at-large" situations. Naturally Martis gives a long and excellent description of these and other terms, that we really need to understand to do this right.

stilltim 16:15, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Plural means 2+ members elected at large from a district? And General ticket means 2+ elected at large from the entire state? I'll try to get Martis, but it takes a while for interlibrary loan.—Markles

Just inserting my thoughts as I've been following this discussion and am also working on congressional districts, mainly historical boundaries through the Official Congressional Directory. I've checked out Martis Political Parties through interlibrary loan here in North Dakota, and am waiting for delivery (if at all). No local copies are available. My general understanding of districts was that a state could have more than one at-large district, but the district wasn't necessarily elected on a "general ticket." For example, South Dakota had two at-large districts from statehood until the 1910 Census, when it got three. Each at-large seat was elected separately (individual elections), so I would argue they are separate districts, albeit with the same geographic boundaries. However, this does raise questions of succession, but that could be fairly simple to work out.

General tickets, on the other hand, I understand to be where the representatives are elected as a group in one election, i.e. a slate of candidates wherein a vote for one means a vote for all. Kind of like the way most states choose presidential electors. But a plural ticket would be two or more members representing a district, but each being elected individually instead of a group. A modern example of a plural district would be the state legislatures in the Dakotas, where there are two Representatives elected from each district. Each compete in separate elections even though both represent the same geographic area. Figuring out whom succeeded whom in the South Dakota case, was surprisingly simple in most cases, particularly if one member from a district served multiple years, while his district-mate changed every session.

Again, just my thoughts. This is a worthy project, and I'd be willing to lend a hand in any way I can. Dcmacnut 02:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Doest At-large always mean general ticket?

I question whether states with multiple at-large districts automatically were elected on a "general ticket.” This article describes general tickets as a way for a "single party to control the entire delegation," which implies one voted by party, and not by candidate, or the candidates all ran against each other, similar to elections to the South Dakota House of Representatives, where all candidates run on one ticket and the top two vote-getters are elected.

However, it appears that some at-large seats were contested as separate elections. Take South Dakota's two at-large seats, for example. These are referred to as being on a general ticket, but according to the 1890 edition of the Congressional Directory for the 51st Congress.[1]

  • Oscar Sherman Gifford: Elected to the Fifty-first Congress, as a Republican, receiving 54,135 votes against 22,153 votes for S. M. Booth, Democrat
  • John A. Pickler: Elected to the Fifty-first Congress as a Republican, receiving 53,873 votes against 23,242 votes for L. A. Jeffries, Democrat.

I read this description as two separate elections on two separate tickets. If this were a general ticket election all four candidates would be running against each other (or both parties running against each other), so Jeffries and Booth would have come in 3rd and 4th, respectively, and it would not be listed as Gifford-Booth and Pickler-Jefferies.

Alabama is another example. The state received two additional seats after the 1870 census, which were allocated at-large until 1877. This is how the two seats are described in the Congressional Directory for 1876.[2]

  • William Henry Forney: Elected to the Forty-fourth Congress as a Democrat, receiving 106,080 votes against 89,909 for C. C. Sheets, Republican.
  • Burwell Boykin Lewis: Elected to the Forty-fourth Congress as a Democrat, receiving 106,023 votes against 90,938 votes for A. White, Republican.

In this situation as with South Dakota in 1889, the top two vote-getters were elected. However, the specific mention of separate opponents indicates to me these were not elected on a general ticket. I would refer to them as At-large 1 and At-large 2, but would count them as separate districts.

I agree that is some cases, some elections were general tickets, particularly when the record shows one single district (other than at-large) with more than one representative. I just think we should be clearer in how we define a general ticket to ensure that only true general tickets are counted. I think the way Markles is doing the Georgia congressional delegations is the right way. Count them as at large, but list them as "1st seat, 2nd seat, 3rd seat, and so on." But they should only be listed as a general ticket if that is indeed how the seats were filled.Dcmacnut 15:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I have found an interesting article regarding general tickets title A History of One-Winner Districts for Congress by Nicolas Flores. It appears to be a student thesis, so by itself does not meet Wikipedia's standard as a reliable source, but Flores exensively cites other reliable sources. One thing I find interested is the author equates the "general ticket" as equal to the "at-large" ticket. Whether that remains accurate, I do not know. But several sources of interest for further reading on the subject appear to be worthwhile.

  • Congressional Quarterly's Guide to US Elections; 1994
  • Rosemarie Zagarri, The Politics of Size (Cornell University Press, 1987)
  • Choosing an Electoral System (Arend Lijphart and Bernard Grofman, eds., Praeger, 1984).

I've also found Hinds' Precedents of the House[3] which has a section on the 1842 Appropriation Act, and the subsequent seating of several representatives at-large in violate of that act. I reviewed the Congressional Globe proceedings, and may representatives referred to the members as elected on a "general ticket." The relevent pages are 170-174 for the 1842 cases. There is also discussion of a California case from 1860 where the state elected three at-large members when it was only allocated two (the apportionment act giving California three seats would not official take effect until 1863, but California jumped the gun). The notes on the subject (Page 184) indicate them elected as a "general ticket." This CRS Document provides a summary.Dcmacnut 03:08, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

    • Martis is quite clear on all this terminology, although I and others may be confused understanding it. I think his definitions should be consistently used. I have used the term "general ticket" only when Martis does and so am quite confident that it meets the GT description given above: two or more seats contested statewide, with the collective candidates receiving the highest votes elected. Of course, there are instances where there are individual elections for seats elected statewide, although I can only recall one instance before 1900, Georgia- 2nd Congress. I just treated them as though they were seperate districts, but footnoted the situation. Neither do I remember Martis having a particular name for this situation, but it is certainly NOT a "general ticket." I have intented to use "at-large," perhaps too casually, as synonomous with "general ticket" and never in "plural district" situations.
    • I have understood (from Martis) that "plural districts" are rather like general tickets for a portion of the state. There obviously must be instances where the election of the multiple seats is held seperately, but frankly I cannot recall Martis pointing out any before 1900, which he certainly would have. Neither can I recall a special name used for this situation. Clearly I need to go do some more reading on this, but I would suggest that since, while important, it is largely semantics, we agree to use one scholar's terminology throughout and that Professor Martis be the one. Fortunately, I have a copy of his work readily available, so will try to read over this again soon. stilltim 10:53, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
      • I have no objections to using Martis as the source on what seats were "general tickets." He obviously spent more time studying the issue than we could ever do, and it will allow us to be more consistent. However, does he state that each general ticket was in the form of "candidates with th ehighest votes are the individual(s) elected"? This distinction isn't that important for the ordinal congress articles and the state congressional delegation lists, since differentiate in the manner of election. However, my chief concern is that without further clarificaiton somewhere, our current definition of "general ticket" implies "two (or more) at-large seats = general ticket = equals candiates with highest votes are elected," when that may not be entirely accurate. Answering that question may require delving deeper into state-by-state electoral statistics to understand just how the elections were handled. That is a task for refining the General ticket article, and we can still use Martis to refine the district articles. I'm interested in what you find out.Dcmacnut 17:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
        • OK, I have Martis in front of me. He uses "General Ticket" to "identify the electoral and representative system of those states electing their entire state congressional delegation in a statewide manner." Presumably he means only when the state has two or more congressmen. He identifies each instance of this and I will build a table in the General ticket article with this information. He uses "plural districts" when there is a "multimember, geographically defined defined district," presumably covering less than the entire state. He also identifies all of these and I will build such a table. Finally he uses the term "at-large" to refer to individual seats elected statewide when most of the seats are elected from single member districts. It would appear I/we are using this term too loosely, and I will begin correcting this in the early congresses. stilltim 03:12, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Upon further research through Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, it appears that Martis's definition of general ticket is correct. It gives election results for each house seat in every state back to 1824, and shows the majority of at-large seats were general tickets, where the candidates with the highest number of votes were elected, depending on the number of seats being contested. It uses the same for those multi-member districts, such as Maryland's 5th District from the mid-19th Century. The two examples I used above (South Dakota in 1889 and Alabama in 1876) are listed in CQ as being general ticket elections.

However, it also shows that not all general tickets are created equal, and not all states with more than one at-large seat were elected on a general ticket. For example, it shows New Mexico using the general ticket system from statehood in 1911 to the elections of 1960 to elect its at-large representatives (two from 1943). However, CQ shows both New Mexico at-large seats were contested as separete elections from in 1962, 1964, adn 1966 until districts were established for the 1968 election. This appears to be a small exception to the rule.

Another example of the general ticket in CQ was used by New Hampshire and other New England states in the 19th Century. Those states had a "popular majority" requirement, where the top candidates weren't elected unless they also received a majority of the popular vote as if they were elected separately. For example, if there are 6 seats in the state, and a total of 72,000 votes were cast in the general election, then each candiate would need a majority of 6,001 out of 12,000 votes (72,000 ÷ 6) to win election. If a candidate did not achieve that minimum level, he was not elected even if he came in 5th or 6th based on total votes. CQ says this happened in one New Hampshire election where only 5 of the 6 top candidates received the required popular majority, leaving the 6th seat vacant until a special election could be held.

Again, these distinctions don't affect listing the winners under the general ticket, but is an alternate general ticket method that we should explain in the main General ticket article. I'll work on putting a paragraph or two together after I've had a chance to review CQ's descriptions in more detail. I recommend we use Martis to determine which seats were under general tickets, and then use the CQ Guide as a secondary source to confirm the status of the election.Dcmacnut 19:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Connecticut 1789-1837

Looking at the detailed results, the elections involved individual candidates running on a multi-member, statewide basis. The required number of candidates, with the most individual votes, were elected. I do not know how many votes each elector had, but it may be as many as there were vacancies to fill. Is this sort of election what is meant by general ticket? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary J (talk • contribs) 12:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Yes, exactly.—Markles 14:37, 17 September 2007 (UTC)