Word: voting
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...home ownership in the U.K. makes any slump more difficult to shoulder. The roots of this love affair with property go deep. For centuries, a house of one's own gave an Englishman not just privacy and status; until 1832, those in the countryside had no right to vote without property of a certain value. Small wonder, suggests Stuart Lowe, a housing expert at the University of York, that the English dream of home ownership has become "a deep cultural issue...
...Already, though, Kennedy's current absence is being felt on Capitol Hill. Votes through the end of the week looked uncertain as Democrats scrambled to tally support on amendments to two key pieces of legislation before the chamber. Every vote will count in the Senate's attempt to override President George W. Bush's veto of the farm bill and on a number of controversial provisions, including a measure to expand education assistance to military veterans, in the emergency war supplemental bill, which primarily provides funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...
...controversial initiative was forced by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), which put up the poster that unsettled Nesim and has collected the obligatory 100,000 signatures required under Swiss law to put a constitutional amendment to a national vote. It seeks to overturn a 2003 Federal Court ruling that deemed ballot box votes on naturalization an infringement on the rights of would-be citizens. The decision was handed down after residents of the town of Emmen in central Switzerland repeatedly voted to reject citizenship applications from non-Western European nationals living in their midst...
...apply for naturalization at the beginning of 2009, direct democracy is a double-edged sword. He worries that the new law might open the floodgates to subjective and harsh judgments. "What if someone doesn't like the fact that I am a Muslim?" he asks. "He or she will vote against me based on their personal bias...
...says Christian Girard, a 19-year-old high school senior who is the vice-president of SVP's youth section in Geneva and supports the initiative. "Direct democracy has been a Swiss tradition for 150 years and we know how to vote responsibly," he says. "Naturalization must be a political, not an administrative process. And in a political process, people should be the ones to decide...