Template talk:Somali elections

Why no "non-public elections"?

Number 57 has deleted attempts to add presidential elections by Parliament (dubbed "non-public elections," though I'm not really sure why -- they're not private elections) from this template. What's the rationale here? Is this some Wikipedia-wide policy? It doesn't seem so: for instance, the corresponding template for Greek presidential elections includes links to elections by Parliament.

I could sort of see going by the precedent of, say, South Africa, where the President is elected by Parliament immediately after the general election, and the Presidential choice generally reflects the Parliamentary outcome. However, at the moment Somalia has extremely weak party groupings and the dynamics of the presidential election are fairly complex and of interest in and of themselves, so it makes sense to have the links here in my opinion. --Jfruh (talk) 16:45, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

The main national election and referendum year templates (e.g. this one, {{Greek elections}}, {{Israeli elections}}, {{German elections}} etc) include only direct election and exclude indirect (non-public elections). Where there are a sufficient number of indirect elections, a separate template is created (e.g. {{Greek presidential elections}}, {{Israeli presidential elections}}, {{German presidential elections}} etc). I have now created {{Somali presidential elections}} to resolve this. Cheers, Number 57 18:14, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Clan-based elections in Somalia - Where to draw the line?

The way the elections in Somalia in the 2010s worked at the lowest level was that some clan elders get together and choose a representative to the national and state parliaments. Of course there can be elections with limited franchise, but in Somalia this is restricted to such an extent and in such a manner that it calls into question its "public character". It's hard to verify that such elections actually took place - as can be seen from the existing coverage on Wikipedia (in the 2016 election article and articles on the states) which mostly reference sources citing upcoming *plans* for an election - and impossible to discover who actually participated. In the 2012 election for the national lower house, only 135 clan elders participated. The state-level elections seem to be similar, but really there is no info. In the 2016 national lower house election some 14,000 clan elders (still an electorate of less than 1%, a far smaller proportion than any other state I'm aware of even in the 18th-19th centuries) **theoretically** were able to participate in 275 separate meetings...but how many actually participated? Were these meetings actually held at all?? or were the representatives chosen by a few strongmen as in 2012? Neither the Somali nor the Arabic nor the Western-language press have this info, that I can find. Sladnick (talk) 12:54, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, even those 14,000 are first hand-picked by the 135 clan heads -- it is not the state or the law dictating who can participate, if in fact they participated at all. Sladnick (talk) 13:19, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Based on this, 13,705 voted. I would err on the side of including this – it was a very limited election, but an election nonetheless. Number 57 17:19, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for finding this. I was also leaning toward including it, if only because it was marketed as a transitional step toward a real election. Sladnick (talk) 01:15, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Necessity of two separate templates

@Number 57: I'll raise the same issue that was brought up above -- what is the utility of having two separate navbox templates for presidential elections and general elections? I see that this is the case for Greece and Israel; however, I do not see a rationale for those templates being split in two, either. Are Somali presidential elections not Somali elections? I understand the idea of noting the difference between direct and parliamentary elections, but having them split into two separate templates (rather than separate sections of the same template) does not seem optimal to me. jp×g 22:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I've explained at the TfD page and given some examples, but in summary, there is a longstanding consensus that the national election templates contain direct elections only, hence this edit on the template earlier in the year when it looked like the 2021 presidential election would be indirect. Number 57 22:26, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I see. If that's the way it goes everywhere, I don't really have an issue with it. I am not extremely familiar with the way that election articles work (and I can see you have edited quite a few) so I will defer to your judgment on this. jp×g 01:02, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Number 57: By the way, since it looks like the 2021 parliamentary election isn't going to be direct, should that be removed from the template as well? jp×g 01:03, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

The 2016 ones weren't direct as well, while we're at it. --Aréat (talk) 11:07, 10 February 2021 (UTC)