Talk:Non-voting members of the United States House of Representatives

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject U.S. Congress, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the United States Congress on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.U.S. CongressWikipedia:WikiProject U.S. CongressTemplate:WikiProject U.S. CongressU.S. Congress articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is about one (or many) thing(s).

Leadership

Despite not being that important of a position in congress, is the office allowed to be Speaker of the House if the holder of the office fits the qualifications? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirius85 (talk • contribs) 17:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The speaker of the house doesn't actually have to be a congresscritter. 67.243.48.138 (talk) 23:15, 2 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming the article

To non-voting members of the United States house of representatives to be inclusive of delegates and Resident commissioners. Thoughts? --Shabidoo | Talk 02:22, 3 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's rather a long name for any Wikipedia article, and seems unnecessary. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:48, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article name at the time of the above post, November 2014, was Delegate (United States Congress), and was changed soon thereafter to the suggested title. Drdpw (talk) 00:33, 27 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps take out one dash... see below. Maybe it should not be Delegate (United States Congress) because a similar article exists Delegate (American politics). I don't know.The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 13:25, 27 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A different proposal for renaming the article

In American English the spelling "non-voting" is deprecated in favor of nonvoting, without the hyphen. Both Merriam-Webster and Wiktionary, among a number of other dictionaries, have an entry only for the unhyphenated version. The Oxford dictionary listed at OneLook [1] distinguishes between UK usage, preferring the hyphen, as opposed to US usage omitting the hyphen. Since the article itself pertains to an American political institution, US spelling should properly be used throughout. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:31, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Milkunderwood:, @Drdpw: I see that. FYI, there is still non-voting stock. In the 1920s (see Harvard Law Review article in the External links) and even now its still spelled with the dash (and without too, I think).

But for this article, we c/should move it to "Nonvoting... 1 character less in the long name. But also, we'd then have to update all the instances of the word here and here

But also what about the "s" on members? Maybe the new article name c/should be Nonvoting member of the United States House of Representatives, along the same lines as Member of parliament which is not named Members of parliament. The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 13:25, 27 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't thought until now to check Wiktionary -- it can be useful, but I'm always leery of it because unlike Wikipedia which requires sources, and unlike dictionaries such as Oxford, Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, or a few other dictionaries that are assembled by professional lexicographers, its entries mostly give the impression of being either plagiarism or original research, or both. But Wikt:non-#Usage_notes does help explain when to use the hyphen, or omit it, primarily on whether it's British or American English. (For much the same reason, but also because we're talking about a very small special group rather than normal Representatives with voting rights, I disagree with the suggestion for using the singular.)

As you point out, there may be a number of other articles in American English with the same problem; and in any case I'm not sure that I have either the time or sufficient enthusiasm or dedication to involve myself in making a bunch of edits. The last time I tried that, with over 100 separate edits in an article, I was immediately reverted. Even here in this present post I'm technically in violation of that same policy, which I personally believe is generally useful but phrased too strictly, and can easily lead to unnecessary confusion for readers when an official title such as Speaker or Representative loses its sense of being an official title and unique position when required to be in lower case, simply because anyone can be a speaker or a representative in many different circumstances. See MOS:JOBTITLES, to which I had been pointed. Milkunderwood (talk) 08:54, 28 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to delegate powers

@Tcr25: I suggest that the edit of 13:50, 29 August 2022 has made this unnecessarily verbose. It adds a lot of words while revealing very little about the changes that have occurred.

The pre-existing text already told me that the powers could be weakened (though I presume the powers could also be restored), but I'm really getting no additional info with the new phrasing, there's just now more text to wade through. Fabrickator (talk) 18:07, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Fabrickator: Feel free to improve. In my edit I moved up information that felt out of place and tried to make the situation clearer (as well as address multiple citation needed tags). To me, the prior language seemed to introduce more questions than it answered and didn't flow naturally from paragraph to paragraph. I also ended up at this article as part of correcting edits at Northern Mariana Islands that had confused delegate voting rights in committees with the Committee of the Whole. My edit here was intended to make clear the distinction. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:28, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Tcr25: Thanks for your encouraging reply. It seems I too often elicit negative comments. It's likely I won't get around to actually revising this anytime soon, but I can always tag it with a suggestion about how it might be improved. Fabrickator (talk) 18:51, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I just put the suggestion here... comments are welcome but not required...

(pre-existing content) ... this legislation stipulates that "...the right to vote in the committee shall be provided by the Rules of the House." Hence, the House majority could, without consulting the Senate or the president, weaken the delegates.

(current content) ... this legislation stipulates that "...the right to vote in the committee shall be provided by the Rules of the House." Under Article I, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution, the House establishes its operating rules, which allows a majority of the House to change the powers of delegates. Since the 1970s, delegates have served on Congressional committees with the same powers and privileges as members of Congress, including the right to cast votes, but since 1993 their ability to vote on the floor of the House has changed several times.

In each case, the gist of the latter part of the explanation is that the House can change the rules that currently allow delegates to vote in committees. The updated explanation indicates this has changed over time. I am unclear about voting "on the floor of the House", unless this specifically refers to the "Committee of the Whole". The information that it's "changed several times" is, so to speak, frustrating. It's either too little or too much... I think what I need to know is that, although the delegates get to vote in the Committee of the Whole, they can't affect the outcome (as I read it). So I would basically take the first version and add that particular point, thereby dropping out the more verbose explanation about how the House derives its power to do this from the Constitution along with the historical dates when the rules changed. Fabrickator (talk) 21:13, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you're looking at this paragraph in isolation and not reading on to the next one, which goes into detail about the "changed several times." The pre-existing version seemed confusing or vague to me with the "without consulting the Senate or the president" line, which seems out of place; of course the Senate and president aren't involved because Article I, Section 5 makes it clear that the House sets its own rules. The pre-existing language is also misleading in that it only mentions weakening delegates' ability to vote, but the same mechanism can increase their rights and responsibilities.

The rest of the new language replaces the somewhat mangled "Delegates have always had the right to vote in House and conference committees(see House Rule III, 3[b])[cn] (temporary bodies comprised of members from both chambers and charged with reconciling conflicts between House and Senate versions of the same bill[cn]." that had previously been a third paragraph in the section. Again the goal was to make clear that delegates have, since 1970 (because it wasn't the case prior to then), consistently had the right to vote, call witnesses, etc., in committees. What's changed several times since then is their right to vote in the Committee of the Whole, which is frequently referred to in the press as voting "on the floor of the House" (as opposed to in committee hearing rooms).

The bit you've identified as frustrating (changed several times), along with clarity about the Committee of the Whole, is in the next paragraph and, I would argue, is more complicated than can be crammed into the first graph. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 21:29, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]