User talk:Moduletor

Your edits to Suffrage in Australia

Hello there

While I understand your desire to clarify the previous racial restrictions on voting, I think your your wording was sometimes inaccurate and unnecessarily repetitive. I am happy to discuss the issue on the Talk page of the article. In the meantime, please look at wikipedia policy on discussion and consensus before you revert edit made in good faith. WP:BRD WP:CONSENSUS Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 01:16, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

I must admit, since you reverted my changes in their entirety without discussion twice, I did assume that your reversion of my edits were not in good faith.

I do also think that some repetition is necessary, as at this point in time people are typically either entirely unaware of this information, or actively denying it. Moduletor (talk) 01:55, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

I did not intentionally revert your contributions in their entirety twice. I was adding sourced information which I believe is more accurate and it looks like I saved them without realising you had made further edits or restorations. I apologise for this.

My only intention is to state the facts accurately and from a neutral point of view, citing reliable sources. The problem I have with your edits are:

1) I don't think they are entirely accurate and therefore they replace one misconception with another.

2) You add things in sentences with a previous citation which does not support the added text.

3) You add your own interpretations of legislation which contravenes policy on neutral point of view.

My understanding of the facts are that, as at 1902:

NSW, Victoria, SA and Tasmania had no racial restrictions on voting.

Queensland excluded 'Aboriginal natives of Australia, India, China or the South Sea Islands'.

WA excluded: Indigenous Australians, Asians and Africans unless they met a property qualification. (This effectively excluded almost all Indigenous Australians).

The Cth excluded "natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands (other than New Zealand)" unless they were already enrolled to vote in an Australian state.

Everyone was excluded unless that were natural born British subjects over the age of 21 and resident in Australia for six months. So most jurisdictions did not have race based exclusions, and the Cth only excluded those non-Europeans who didn't already have the vote. So definite statements that "most" non-Europeans who met the British subject, age and residency criteria were exclicity excluded from voting needs much more analysis. Such analysis is not in the article. The article also gets a lot of facts wrong and is repetitive and badly written. It needs a thorough rewrite.

So no one is denying that the intention was to prevent as many non-White British subjects from voting as possible but we need to be more careful with the wording. I think "effectively excluded most non-Europeans" is better for a general summary in the lead.. Readers can get the details in the body of the article. I will try to clean up the article over the next few days and will be happy to discuss wording on the talk page so we can come up with something we can both live with. Other editors might also want to comment. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 03:01, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Some of your criticisms are valid too.

You have highlighted for me that there are multiple sources of legislation that need to be referenced here, as it is the combination that resulted in both explicit and and effective racial restrictions on voting.

For example, see the Australian nationality law sections:

- "Discriminatory policies against Indigenous Australians and non-European migrants" for ways that voting rights were limited and withheld before Federation (which flowed on to whether people could vote after federation),

- "Post-federation policies" for how people were denied the right to vote after Federation. This second section includes the sentence "Migrants of non-European ancestry were effectively barred from permanent residency and naturalisation until 1957." which also means they were denied the right to vote.

The White Australia policy also details ways that non-European people were denied permanent residency and naturalisation, which also denied people the right to vote.

I still disagree that "effectively excluded most non-Europeans" is adequate, since a large amount of the exclusion was explicit, as per those wiki articles above, and the Franchise act 1902 as already referenced. Something along the lines of "effectively, and in most cases explicitly, excluded most non-Europeans" would be more accurate. Moduletor (talk) 06:42, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's better. Or perhaps simply: most non-Europeans were explicitly or effectively excluded from the franchise. I'll have another think when I've looked through the whole article in detail. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 06:45, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

There were also separate state acts that declared that wards of the state couldn't vote and other acts that gave public servants the power to declare any Aboriginal person a ward of the state. So it's quite complicated. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 06:51, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

That phrasing sounds good to me too. Although I worry that the word "franchise" hasn't been defined well enough in this article yet, so depending on the rest of the paragraph might inadvertently obscure the meaning of the sentence. Maybe "most non-Europeans were explicitly or effectively excluded from the franchise, and so were excluded from suffrage". Or maybe "most non-Europeans were explicitly or effectively excluded from voting" is most direct and clear.

Very complicated, yes!

I'm grateful this turned into a productive discussion. Thank you! Moduletor (talk) 07:27, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello again

As previously discussed, your changes regarding voting rights for women are not accurate and indeed are quite misleading. The article makes it very clear that there were racial restriction on voting rights in some jurisdictions and accurately summarises these restrictions. It is not true to say that only "some" women were granted the Franchise in South Australia and federally. The vast majority of women were granted the franchise. Nor is it correct to say that "European" women were granted the franchise. This would mean that all women in France, Germany etc would have the right to vote in Australia. The franchise was restricted to:

1) British subjects

2) Resident in Australia or the relevant colony for at least 6 months

3) Age 21 or over

All democracies have nationality and residency requirements for elections and there is nothing unusual about these.

Some Australian jurisdictions, however, also had racial restrictions. These were Queensland, Western Australi and the Commonwealth. There were no racial restrictions in South Australia and your statement that there were is simply wrong. I am happy to discuss this further on the Talk page of the article. In the meantime, please read policy on consensus and disruptive editing.

Thank you Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 10:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

My apologies, I added the "some" to the South Australian sentence by mistake.

However I'm unclear on how you think that "Some women won the vote in Western Australia in 1899, with racial restrictions" is incorrect. It says within the sentence that there were racial restrictions, which means that saying "women" at the beginning of that sentence is incorrect and misleading as it implies "all women". This applies anywhere that "women" is said when only a specific category of women were actually included. Having the "with racial restrictions" tacked on at the end of the sentence minimises the fact that only a very specific category of women gained the right to vote. I am unclear on how you would like this specific category of women to be referred to.

I'm also unclear on why you reverted the entire sentence "European women won the right to vote in the other states after federation, although racial restrictions for both men and women were introduced with the same legislation (discussed below)." Again, I am unclear on how you would like this specific category of women to be referred to. Also the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 did introduce racial restrictions for both men and women, so I'm unclear why you have a problem with this part of the sentence.

I would also like to point out that you are also making changes to the the page without discussing them on the Talk page first. You have also once again reversed my edits without prior discussion. I am doing my best to follow your example with these edits. It seems to me that you keep taking actions, and then telling me off for taking similar actions.

Relevant parts also posted on the Talk page of the article Moduletor (talk) 11:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)