title: Education in the United Kingdom

text: T Levels are a technical qualification being introduced between Autumn 2020 and 2023. They are intended to provide the knowledge and experience needed for learners to progress to skilled employment, further study or a higher apprenticeship.


title: Education in the United Kingdom

text: Research by Education Support Partnership suggests that 75% of school teachers and college lecturers suffer from work-related stress. Increased work pressure from marking and exam targets lead some teachers to work 12 hours a day. Many are leaving the profession due to stress. The government has missed its targets for recruiting secondary school teachers seven years in a row. Notably too few maths, science, physics, chemistry, computing and foreign language teachers were recruited. Department of Education figures show in 2019 there were 85% of the secondary school teachers required. Schools recruited 43% of the physics teachers needed in 2019 after 47% in 2018, 64% of maths teachers needed were recruited in 2019 after 71% in 2018. 29,580 postgraduate trainees were recruited in England in 2019, a rise of only 365 further teachers, although secondary-school pupils will increase rapidly over the coming few years. The DfE expects a rise of almost 15% in secondary school pupils by 2027, adding roughly 400,000 pupils in English state secondary schools. Kevin Courtney of the National Education Union said, “Pupil numbers in state-funded secondary schools have already risen by almost 150,000 since 2014 and will rise by a further third of a million pupils over the next five years. Even where trainee targets have been met, recruitment to initial teacher training courses is just the very start. New teachers need dedicated support to help them develop into competent professionals. Once we have invested in their skills, we must not lose their passion and experience.” Courtney maintains not enough is done to retain newly recruited teachers and a third leave the profession within five years.


title: Education in the United Kingdom

text: In 2018 "The Guardian" commented that successful schools tend to choose pupils from high–achieving backgrounds. Pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, and challenging pupils, tend to be concentrated in schools that do less well in inspections. Also that children from prosperous backgrounds are more likely to be in good or outstanding schools while disadvantaged children are more likely to be in inadequate schools. The inequality gap as of 2015 is closing with more students in good or outstanding schools from all social backgrounds. On the other hand, reports have also shown that during the 2010–2020 decade, the spending gap between state and private schools doubled.


title: Education in the United Kingdom

text: A 2016 report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission said that racial inequality exists in the Great Britain education system. It was found that 6% of Black school leavers went on to attend a Russell Group university, compared with 12% of mixed race and Asian school leavers, and 11% of white school leavers. In 2009, it was found that white students' predicted A-Level grades were 53% accurate, whilst Black students' received predicated grades that were 39.1% accurate. Black students are also the most likely to receive under-predicted grades by their teachers. It was found that 7.1% of Black students received higher actual grades compared to 6.6% of White students, 6.5% of Asian students and 6.1% of Mixed students. In 2018, of all teachers in state-funded schools in England, 14.1% were from BAME groups. 33.5% of primary school and 31.3% of secondary school pupils in England were from BAME groups. In 2021 it was claimed that white school pupils who are eligible for free school meals do less well than the overall figure for pupils so eligible.


title: Education in the United Kingdom

text: Mental health problems among young people in UK schools are increasing; social media, pressure from schools, austerity and gender expectations are blamed. Teachers' leaders say they feel overwhelmed and cannot cope. Sarah Hannafin of the headteachers' union NAHT, said, "There is a crisis and children are under increasing amount of pressure … Schools have a key role to play and we are doing what we can, but we need more funding." Louise Regan of the National Education Union stated, "Teachers are overwhelmed by the sheer number of students showing signs of mental health problems." She added counsellor and pastoral support had been seriously reduced, though money for children's wellbeing was desperately needed, she said, "There is more focus on attainment measures rather than overall concern about the wellbeing of a child." Norman Lamb said the UK was in an "intolerable crisis", children had just one childhood and one education. "When it's gone, it's gone, and that will leave a lifetime of damage … We are failing an entire generation of young people." There were calls for a change in school culture with a switch of focus from exams to wellbeing. All pupils will be taught about mental and physical wellbeing from 2020.


title: Education in the United Kingdom

text: In 2015/16, the UK spent £3.2 billion on under-5s education, £27.7 billion on primary education, £38.2 billion on secondary education and £5.9 billion on tertiary education. In total, the UK spent £83.4 billion on education (includes £8.4 billion on other categories).


title: Education in the United Kingdom

text: Schools and universities in Britain are popular destinations for students of other nations. The country’s universities and colleges have educated many heads of state and government around the world, rivalled only by the United States.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. A remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, it is the largest of many salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. It is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is known for land speed records at the Bonneville Speedway. Access to the Flats is open to the public.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: The Flats are about 12 miles (19 km) long and 5 miles (8 km) wide, with a crust almost 5 ft (1.5m) thick at the center and less than one inch (2.5 cm) towards the edges. It is estimated to hold 147 million tons of salt, approximately 90% of which is common table salt.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: Geologist Grove Karl Gilbert named the area after Benjamin Bonneville, a U.S. Army officer who explored the Intermountain West in the 1830s. In 1907, Bill Rishel and two local businessmen tested the suitability of the salt for driving by taking a Pierce-Arrow onto its surface.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: A railway line across the Flats was completed in 1910, marking the first permanent crossing. The first land speed record was set there in 1914 by Teddy Tetzlaff.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: Entertainment filmed at the Flats include portions of "Walking with Dinosaurs Special - The Ballad of Big Al", "Knight Rider", "Warlock", "Independence Day" (1996) and , "SLC Punk", "Cremaster 2" from "Cremaster Cycle", "The Brown Bunny", "The World's Fastest Indian", "Gerry", "The Tree of Life", "Top Gear" and "". Furthermore, the Pontiac Bonneville (former flagship sedan of the Pontiac motor division), the Triumph Bonneville motorcycle, and the Bonneville International media company are all named for the Flats.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: The Bonneville Salt Flats hosts the annual US Flight Archery Championships. The goal of flight archery is to shoot arrows from bows at the greatest distance possible without regard to hitting a target, and so the vast flat plane of the flats serves as an ideal location to measure the linear distance traveled by arrows without geographic interference. Both the 1977 (archer Don Brown) and 1982 (archer Alan Webster) world records were set there; while the current world record, achieved in 1987 (archer Don Brown), was set at the salt flats near Smith Creek, Nevada.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: The thickness of salt crust is a critical factor in racing use of the salt flats. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has undertaken multiple studies on the topic; while a 2007 study determined that there was little change in the crust's thickness from 1988 to 2003, more recent studies have shown a reduction in thickness, especially in the northwest area where racing occurs. The flats' overall area has contracted significantly over the past several decades. The cause or causes of this remain unclear, but many believe adjacent evaporative potash mining is the primary factor.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: Collaboration between racing organizations, the potash mine, and the BLM led to a pilot program begun in 1998 to release excess brine onto the salt flats during winter. Plans to increase the volume of brine returned to the salt flats are hoped to halt loss of crust thickness, or possibly restore it where it has become too thin to sustain human use.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: Motorcar racing has taken place at the salt flats since 1914. Racing takes place at part of the Bonneville Salt Flats known as the Bonneville Speedway. There are five major land speed events that take place at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Bonneville "Speed Week" takes place mid-August followed by "World of Speed" in September and the "World Finals" take place early October.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: These three events welcome cars, trucks, and motorcycles. The "Bub Motorcycle Speed Trials" are for motorcycles only. World records are contested at the Mike Cook ShootOut in September. The Southern California Timing Association and the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association organizes and plans the multi-vehicle events, but all event promoters contribute to prepping and maintaining the salt. "Speed Week" events in August were canceled in 2015 and 2022, due to the poor condition of the salt in certain parts of the flats. The salt flats had been swamped by heavy rains earlier in the year, as usual, but this year the rains also triggered mudslides from surrounding mountains onto a section of the flats used for the land-speed racing courses.


title: Bonneville Salt Flats

text: In 2004, the "Stardust" spacecraft released its sample-return capsule for a landing in the Bonneville Salt Flats after its flybys of asteroid 5535 Annefrank in 2002 and comet Wild 2 in 2004.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The ruble or rouble () was the currency of the Soviet Union, introduced in 1922, replacing the Imperial Russian ruble. One ruble was divided into 100 kopecks ( – "kopeyka", "kopeyki"). Soviet banknotes and coins were produced by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise (or Goznak) in Moscow and Leningrad.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In addition to regular cash rubles, other types of rubles were also issued, such as several forms of "convertible ruble", transferable ruble, clearing ruble, Vneshtorgbank cheque, etc.; also, several forms of virtual rubles (called "cashless ruble", ) were used for inter-enterprise accounting and international settlement in the Comecon zone.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Soviet ruble continued to be used in the post-Soviet states, forming a "ruble zone", until it was replaced with the Russian ruble in September 1993.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The word "ruble" is derived from the Slavic verb , "rubit<nowiki>'</nowiki>", i.e., 'to chop'. Historically, a "ruble" was a piece of a certain weight chopped off a silver ingot (grivna), hence the name.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The word "kopeck" or "copeck" (in Russian: "kopeyka") is a diminutive form of the Russian "kop'yo" ()—a spear. The reason for this is that a horseman armed with a spear was stamped on one of the faces of the coin. The first kopeck coins, minted at Novgorod and Pskov from about 1534 onwards, show a horseman with a spear. From the 1540s onwards the horseman bears a crown, and doubtless the intention was to represent Ivan the Terrible, who was Grand Prince of all Russia until 1547, and Tsar thereafter. Subsequent mintings of the coin, starting in the 18th century, bear instead Saint George striking down a serpent.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The Soviet currency had its own name in all the languages of the Soviet Union, often different from its Russian designation. All banknotes had the currency name and their nominal printed in the languages of every Soviet Republic. This naming is preserved in modern Russia; for example: Tatar for 'ruble' and 'kopeck' are ("sum") and ("tiyen"). The current names of several currencies of Central Asia are simply the local names of the ruble. Finnish last appeared on 1947 banknotes since the Karelo-Finnish SSR was dissolved in 1956.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The name of the currency in the languages of the fifteen republics, in the order they appeared in the banknotes:


title: Soviet ruble

text: Note that the scripts for Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Turkmen and gradually Kazakh have switched from Cyrillic to Latin since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Moldovan has switched to Latin and is once again referred to as Romanian.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The first ruble issued for the Soviet government was a preliminary issue still based on the previous issue of the ruble prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. They are all in banknote form and started their issue in 1919. At this time other issues were made by the white Russian government and other governing bodies. During that time, the Russian economy suffered from hyperinflation.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Denominations were as follows: 1-, 2-, 3-, 5-, 10-, 15-, 25-, 50-, 60-, 100-, 250-, 500-, 1,000-, 5,000-, 10,000-, 25,000-, 50,000-, and 100,000 roubles. Short-term treasury certificates were also issued to supplement banknote issue in 1,000,000-, 5,000,000-, and 10,000,000 roubles. These issue was printed in various fashions, as inflation crept up the security features were few and some were printed on one side, as was the case for the German inflationary notes.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Banknotes: In 1918, state credit notes were introduced by the RSFSR for 1-, 3-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, 100-, 250 Rbls, 500 Rbls, 1,000 Rbls, 5,000 Rbls, and 10,000 roubles. These were followed in 1919 by currency notes for 1-, 2-, 3-, 15-, 20-, 60-, 100-, 250-, 500-, 1,000-, 5,000-, and 10,000 roubles. In 1921, currency note denominations of 5-, 50-, 25,000-, 50,000-, 100,000-, 1,000,000-, 5,000,000-, and 10,000,000 roubles were added.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Upon launch of the New Economic Policy in 1921 came efforts to revive as currency and accounting unit the pre-war gold standard ruble, equal to of a chervonets (with Rbls 10. equal to 8.602 g of 90% fine gold, then equal to US$5.14). The gold ruble existed in parallel with the paper ruble of 1917–1922, which continued to depreciate versus the former, climbing to 50 billion paper rubles per gold ruble in March 1924.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Coins: The first coinage after the Russian civil war was minted in 1921–1923 according to pre-war Czarist standards, with silver coins of 10 kop, 15 kop, 20 kop minted in 50% silver, 50 kop ("poltinnik" or Rbl ) and Rbl 1 in 90% silver, and Rbls 10 (chervonets) in 90% gold. These coins bore the emblem and legends of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) and depicted the famous slogan, "Workers of the world, Unite!". These coins would continue to circulate after the RSFSR was consolidated into the USSR with other Soviet Republics until the discontinuation of silver coinage in 1931.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The third Soviet ruble was issued equal to 1,000,000 paper rubles of 1917–1922, simply to handle the unwieldiness over the number of digits in the first currency. Again it continued to depreciate versus the gold ruble until the latter climbed to Rbls 50,000 in 1924. Only paper money was issued, in the form of state currency notes in denominations of 50 kopecks and 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1,000, 5,000, and 10,000 roubles.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In early 1924, just before the next redenomination, the first paper money was issued in the name of the USSR, featuring the state emblem with six bands around the wheat, representing the languages of the then four constituent republics of the Union: Russian SFSR, Transcaucasian SFSR (Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Georgian), Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR. They were dated 1923 and were in denominations of Rbls 10,000, Rbls 15,000, and Rbls 25,000.


title: Soviet ruble

text: After Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power following the death of Lenin, a final redenomination occurred which replaced all previously issued currencies. The fourth Soviet ruble was equal to 50,000 rubles of the third issue, or 50 billion paper rubles of the first issue, and began at par with the gold ruble ( chervonets). It built on the stability in the exchange value of the third ruble which happened towards the end of 1923.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Coins began to be issued again in 1924, while paper money was issued in rubles for values below 10 rubles and in chervonets for higher denominations. No chervonets were issued in gold, just decrees on the parity of circulating rubles with the gold ruble, which already failed to take hold as early as 1925.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In 1924, copper and silver coins were again minted to pre-war Czarist standards, in denominations of  kop, 1 kop, 2 kop, 3 kop, and 5 kop (copper), 10 kop, 15 kop, and 20 kop (in 50% silver), and 50 kop, and Rbl 1 (in 90% silver). From this issue onward, the coins were minted in the name of the USSR (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics). The "Workers of the World" slogan was carried forward. Coins issued 1921–1923 representing the gold ruble continued to circulate at par with this post-1924 ruble.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Copper coins were minted in two types; plain edge and reeded edge, with the plain-edged types being the fewest in number. The 1 Rbl coin was only issued in 1924, the poltinnik (or Rbl ) was issued 1924–27, and the denga (or kopeck) was issued 1925–28. In 1926, smaller aluminium-bronze coins were minted to replace the large copper 1 kop, 2 kop, 3 kop, and 5 kop coins, but were not released until 1928. The larger coins were then melted down.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Stalin failed to maintain the ruble's value versus the gold ruble as early as 1925, and by 1930 its value even struggled to stay above the melt value of the silver 10-, 15-, and 20 kop coins. Soviet authorities scapegoated "hoarders" and "exchange speculators" as responsible for the shortages, and confiscatory measures were taken. In 1931, the remaining silver coins were replaced with redesigned cupro-nickel coins depicting a male worker holding up a shield which contained the denominations of each. All silver coins were to be returned and melted down.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In 1935, the reverse of the 10-, 15-, and 20 kopeck coins were redesigned again with a simpler Art Deco inspired design, with the obverse of all denominations also redesigned, having the "Workers of the world, unite!" slogan dropped. The change of the obverse designs did not affect all 1 kop, 2 kop, 3 kop, and 5 kop coins immediately, as some 1935 issues bore the "Workers of the World" design while some bore the new "CCCP" design. The state emblem also went through a series of changes between 1935 and 1957 as new soviet republics were added or created, this can be noted by the number of "ribbons" wrapped around the wheat sheaves. This coin series remained in circulation during and after the monetary reform of 1947 and was finally discontinued in 1961.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In August 1941, the wartime emergency prompted the minting facilities to be evacuated from the Neva district in Moscow and relocated to Permskaya Oblast as German forces continued to advance eastward. It only became possible to resume coin production in the autumn of 1942, for one year the country was using coins made before the war. Furthermore, the coins were made of what had suddenly become precious metals – copper and nickel, which were needed for the defense industry. This meant many coins were being produced in only limited quantities, with some denominations being skipped altogether until the crisis finally abated in late 1944. These disruptions led to severe coin shortages in many regions. Limits were put in place on how much change could be carried in coins with limits of 3 Rbls for individuals and 10 Rbls for vendors to prevent hoarding as coins became increasingly high in demand. Only high inflation and wartime rationing helped ease pressure significantly. In some instances, postage stamps and coupons were being used in place of small denomination coins. It was not until 1947 that there were finally enough coins in circulation to meet economic demand and restrictions could be eased.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In 1924, state currency notes were introduced for 1-, 3-, and 5 gold rubles (рубль золотом). These circulated alongside the chervonets (чрв) notes introduced in 1922 by the State Bank in denominations of 1 чрв, 3 чрв, 5 чрв, 10 чрв, and 25 чрв. State Treasury notes replaced the state currency notes after 1928. In 1938, new notes were issued for Rbl 1, Rbls 3, and Rbls 5, dropping the word "gold".


title: Soviet ruble

text: Following World War II, the Soviet government implemented a confiscatory redenomination of its currency (decreed on December 14, 1947) to reduce the amount of money in circulation. The main purpose of this change was to prevent peasants who had accumulated cash by selling food at wartime prices from using this to buy consumer goods as the postwar recovery took hold. Old rubles were revalued at one tenth of their face value. This mainly affected paper money in the hands of private individuals. Amounts of Rbls 3,000 or less in individual private bank accounts were not revalued, while salaries remained the same. This revaluation coincided with the end of wartime rationing and efforts to lower prices and curtail inflation, though the effects in some cases actually resulted in higher inflation. Unlike other reforms, this one did not affect coins.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In 1947, State Treasury notes were introduced in denominations of Rbls 1, Rbls 3, and Rbls 5, along with State Bank notes for denominations of Rbls 10, Rbls 25, Rbls 50, and Rbls 100. The State Bank notes depicted Lenin while the Treasury notes depicted floral artistic designs. All denominations were colored and patterned in a similar fashion to late Czarist notes.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In 1957, all these notes were reissued with the old date but modified design: because of the abolition of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, the number of ribbons on the state emblem was reduced from 16 to 15, and the nominal in Finnish was removed from the obverse.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The 1961 redenomination introduced 1 new ruble equal to 10 old rubles and restated all wages, prices and financial records into new rubles. It differed from the confiscatory nature of the 1947 reform when banknotes were reduced to th of their value but wages and prices remained the same. Its parity to the US dollar underwent a devaluation, however, from US$1 = 4 old rubles (0.4 new ruble) to US$1 = 0.9 new ruble (or 90 kopecks). It implies a gold parity of Rbls 31.50 per troy ounce or Rbl 1 = 0.987412 gram of gold, but this exchange for gold was never available to the general public. Banknotes and coins of this series were designed by Ivan Dubasov.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The 1958 pattern series: By 1958, plans for a monetary reform were underway and a number of coin pattern designs were being experimented with before implementation. The most notable of these was the 1958 series, in denominations of 1 kop, 2 kop, 3 kop, and 5 kop in copper-zinc, and 10 kop, 15 kop, 20 kop, and 50 kop, and Rbl 1, Rbls 3, and Rbls 5 in copper nickel. These coins all had the same basic design and became the most likely for release. Indeed, they were mass-produced before the plan was scrapped and a majority of them were melted down. During this time, 1957 coins would continue to be restruck off old dies until the new coin series was officially released in 1961. This series is considered the most valuable of Soviet issues due to their scarcity.


title: Soviet ruble

text: On 1 January 1961, the currency was revalued again at a rate of 10:1, but this time a new coinage was introduced in denominations of 1 kop, 2 kop, 3 kop, and 5 kop in aluminium-bronze, and 10 kop, 15 kop, 20 kop, and 50 kop and 1 Rbl in cupro-nickel-zinc. Like previous issues, the front featured the state arms and title while the back depicted date and denomination. The 50 kop. and Rbl 1 coins dated 1961 had plain edges, but starting in 1964, the edges were lettered with the denomination and date. All 1926–1957 coins were then withdrawn from circulation and demonetized, with the majority melted down.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Commemorative coins of the Soviet Union: In 1965, the first circulation commemorative ruble coin was released celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany, during this year the first uncirculated mint-coin sets were also released and restrictions on coin collecting were eased. In 1967, a commemorative series of 10 kop, 15 kop, 20 kop, 50 kop, and Rbl 1 coins was released, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution and depicted Lenin and various socialist achievements. The smaller bronze denominations for that year remained unchanged. Many different circulation commemorative 1 Rbl. coins were also released, as well as a handful of Rbls 3 and Rbls 5 over the years. Commemorative coins from this period were always slightly larger than general issues, 50 kop and Rbl 1 coins in particular were larger, while the 1967 series of the small denominations were the same circumference but thicker than general issues.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Initially, commemorative rubles were struck in the same alloy as other circulating coins until 1975, when its composition was changed to higher-quality copper-nickel with zinc excluded. Its specifications (31 mm diameter, 12.8 grams) were nearly identical to those of the 5-Swiss franc coin (31.45 mm, 13.2 g, cupronickel) worth approx. €4.39 or US$5.09 as of August 2018, resulting in the large scale use of (now worthless) Soviet commemorative coins to defraud automated vending machines in Switzerland years after they have been demonetized.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Starting in 1991 with the final year of the 1961 coin series, both kopeck and ruble coins began depicting the mint marks (М) for Moscow, and (Л) for Leningrad.


title: Soviet ruble

text: Banknotes were issued by the USSR State Treasury (Государственный казначейский билет, "Gosudarstvenny kaznacheyskiy bilet") in denominations of Rbl 1, Rbls 3 and Rbls 5, and by the USSR State Bank (билет Государственного банка, "Bilet gosudarstvennogo banka") in denominations of Rbls 10, Rbls 25, Rbls 50 and Rbls 100. Colors are similar to the previous series but notes were much smaller in size.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The Monetary Reform of 1991 was carried out by Mikhail Gorbachev and was known also as the Pavlov Reform. It was the last of such in the Soviet Union and began on January 22, 1991. Its architect was Minister of Finance Valentin Pavlov, who also became the last prime minister of the Soviet Union. The details included a brief period to exchange old 1961-dated Rbls 50. and Rbls 100 notes for new 1991 notes — for three days from 23 to 25 January (Wednesday to Friday) and with a specific limit of no more than Rbls 1,000 per person—the ability to exchange other notes considered in the special commissions to the end of March 1991. See Monetary reform in the Soviet Union, 1991.


title: Soviet ruble

text: In late 1991, a new coinage was issued as direct obligations of the USSR State Bank in denominations of 10 kop and 50 kop, and Rbl 1, Rbls 5, and Rbls 10. The 10 kop coin was struck in brass-plated steel, the 50 kop coin, and Rbl 1 and Rbls 5 coins were in cupro-nickel. The Rbls 10 coin was bimetallic with an aluminium-bronze centre and a cupro-nickel-zinc ring. The series depicts an image of the Kremlin on the obverse rather than the Soviet state emblem. However, this coin series was extremely short-lived as the Soviet Union ceased to exist only months after its release. It did, however, continue to be used in several former Soviet republics including Russia and particularly Tajikistan for a short time after the union had ceased to exist out of necessity.


title: Soviet ruble

text: New 1991-dated banknotes were all issued as USSR State Bank notes (including the 1-, 3-, and 5 rouble denominations), with nearly identical colours and size for all denominations, but included more colour and heightened security features. The 25 Rbl note was omitted from this series, but still remained legal tender; all 1961 notes apart from the demonetized Rbls 50 and Rbls 100 denominations remained in circulation. An important modification of the design included the removal of the texts in languages of other Soviet republics (i.e. all texts were in Russian only) in the 1992 issues; all 1991 notes (in exception to the 2nd 1991 Rbls 100 banknote) contained all Soviet languages. In this series, Rbl 1. notes were issued on 27 June 1991, Rbls 3 notes on 3 November 1991, Rbls 5. notes on 5 July 1991, Rbls 10 notes on 10 July 1991, Rbls 50 and Rbls 100 notes on 23 January 1991, Rbls 200 notes on 29 October 1991, and Rbls 500 notes on 24 December 1991. Rbls 1,000 notes were issued in March 1992, after the Soviet collapse.


title: Soviet ruble

text: New 1992-dated notes, similar in appearance to the 1991 issues, were printed in denominations of Rbls 50–1,000. bearing the Soviet state emblem and name. A notable exception was that the more-colourful Rbls 100. note of this series was still dated 1991 unlike the others.


title: Soviet ruble

text: After the breakup of the Soviet Union, many newly independent republics chose to continue circulating Soviet rubles even after the introduction of the new Russian ruble in 1992.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The Soviet Union ran a planned economy, where the government controlled prices and the exchange of currency. Thus the Soviet ruble did not function like a currency in a market economy, because mechanisms other than currency, such as centrally planned quotas, controlled the distribution of goods. Consequently, the ruble did not have the utility of a true currency; instead, it more resembled the scrip issued in a truck system. Soviet citizens could freely purchase a set of goods from state shops with rubles, but choice was limited and prices were always political decisions, having no direct connection to manufacturing cost. Bread and public transport were heavily subsidised, but wages were low and there were shortages of manufactured consumer goods, implementing hidden taxes. It was common to hold large savings in rubles in the state savings bank because credit was not available. Special rubles used in accounting were not exchangeable to cash, and were effectively different currency units pegged to the ruble. The currency was not freely exchangeable and its export was illegal. In bilateral trade, a separate, non-convertible "clearing ruble" credit was used. There were separate shops (Beriozka) for purchasing goods obtained with hard currencies. However, Soviet citizens could not legally own foreign currency. Thus, if they legally received payment in foreign currency, they were forced to convert it to Vneshposyltorg cheques at a rate set by the government. These cheques could be spent at a Beriozka. The sudden transformation from a Soviet "non-currency" into a market currency contributed to the economic hardship following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.


title: Soviet ruble

text: The Soviet Union officially valued the ruble in the planned economy at an average of US$1.35 (or Rbl 0.74 per US dollar; see below) from 1971 to 1988. However, as the ruble was not internationally exchangeable and as Soviet citizens could not legally own foreign currency, rubles changed hands in the black market at an average of Rbls 4.14 per dollar in the same period 1971–88. The opening up of the economy in the late 1980s under perestroika resulted in the recognition of more realistic exchange rates for the ruble, as follows:


title: Soviet ruble

text: Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, local currencies were introduced in the newly independent states. Most of the new economies were weak and hence most of the currencies have undergone significant reforms since their introduction. In the very beginning of the post-Soviet economic transition, it was widely believed by ordinary people and monetary institutions (including the International Monetary Fund) that it was possible to maintain a common currency working for all or at least for some of the former Soviet Union's countries. The wish to preserve the strong trade relations between former Soviet republics was considered the most important goal.


title: Soviet ruble

text: During the first half of 1992, a monetary union with 15 independent states all using the ruble existed. Since it was clear that the situation would not last, each of them was using its position as "free-riders" to issue huge amounts of money in the form of credit (since Russia held the monopoly on printing banknotes and coins). As a result, some countries were issuing coupons in order to "protect" their markets from buyers from other states. This also started to cause massive inflation in the formerly high-valued currency. The Russian central bank responded in July 1992 by setting up restrictions on the flow of credit between Russia and other states. The final collapse of the "ruble zone" began with the exchange of banknotes by the Central Bank of Russia on Russian territory at the end of July 1993. As a result, other countries still in the ruble zone (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia) were "pushed out". By November 1993 all newly independent states had introduced their own currencies, with the exception of war-torn Tajikistan (May 1995) and unrecognized Transnistria (1994). Due to ruinous inflation in the former Soviet Republics, most of the successor currencies had to be redenominated at least once, with the notable exceptions of the Armenian dram, Estonian kroon, Kazakh tenge, and Kyrgyz som.


title: Lana Del Ray (album)

text: Lana Del Ray (alternatively written as Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant) is the eponymous debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey. The album was released digitally in the United States via the iTunes Store and Amazon by 5 Points Records on January 4, 2010, when she was known as Lana Del "Ray". The record was eventually pulled from retailers soon afterwards because, according to Del Rey, the label was unable to fund it. Del Rey ultimately bought back the rights to the album. After the release of her major-label debut, "Born to Die" (2012), under her stage name Lana Del Rey, she expressed her wish to re-release the album, though this never ended up happening. The album was never released physically, aside from the many bootleg vinyl pressings.


title: Lana Del Ray (album)

text: Del Rey released a three-track extended play (EP) titled "Kill Kill" through 5 Points Records in October 2008, during which time she was known as Lizzy Grant. David Kahne recorded the album with Del Rey over a period of three months in 2008. "Yayo" would later be re-recorded, released again, on the "Paradise Edition" of "Born to Die". Del Rey stated Kahne "is known as a producer with a lot of integrity and who had an interest in making music that wasn't just pop." Her father, Robert Grant, helped with the marketing of the album, which was available for purchase on iTunes for a brief period before being withdrawn. According to David Kahne, who produced Grant and Label owner David Nichtern, Grant bought the rights back from her label, 5 Points, as she wanted it out of circulation. In an interview, Nichtern stated: "Her and her new manager came in and said, 'We want to get this off the market. We’re going for a completely new deal. We’ll buy you out of the deal'. So we made a separation agreement". In January 2012, upon the release of her major-label album, "Born to Die", Del Rey stated to the BBC that she recently bought back the rights of the album and was planning on re-releasing it in the Summer of 2012. In May 2012, she announced that the album would not be re-released that summer. Del Rey did however re-record and re-release "Yayo" on her "Paradise" EP.


title: Lana Del Ray (album)

text: On his official website, David Kahne wrote about the recording process and the story behind the song "Gramma" stating: "Lizzy's Gramma is so important in her life. While we were recording, Lizzy had a picture of her Gramma holding her on her lap. Lizzy was crying and her Gramma has such a sweet smile on her face, in the sun at the beach.


title: Lana Del Ray (album)

text: Del Rey and producer David Kahne recorded 13 tracks for the album throughout 2008. Instead of immediately releasing the full material, her label put out three of the tracks from the album sessions through a promotional EP titled "Kill Kill" on October 21, 2008, under the name Lizzy Grant. The EP was a critical success, with critics calling it poetic and elegant and the album led to Del Rey being featured as an emerging artist. Between the release of "Kill Kill" and the album, Del Rey expressed the desire to change her name. While on a trip to Miami, Del Rey was speaking Spanish with a few of her friends from Cuba, when they landed on "Lana Del Rey". Inspired by Lana Turner and the Ford Del Rey sedan, the name reminded Del Rey and her friends of what she called the glamour of the seaside. "It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue" she said. Del Rey at the time opted for the alternate spelling, by spelling it R-A-Y.


title: Lana Del Ray (album)

text: The standard album was officially released on January 4, 2010, as a digital exclusive, released only through the iTunes Store and Amazon. During the promotional campaign the album and Del Rey herself would be marketed under three names. At release time, Del Rey and the album were both named "Lana Del Ray" (R-A-Y). However, the album would also be marketed under the name "Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant", which is the title featured on the album cover, with Del Rey also keeping the name "Lizzy Grant". The album was planned to have a physical release, with a minimal number of CDs being pressed to sell at live shows. During the pressing, Del Rey decided to change the spelling of her name from Lana Del "Ray" (R-A-Y) to Lana Del "Rey" (R-E-Y), leading to a small portion of the albums being printed with the new spelling. Eventually, the physical release was cancelled and the CDs were never released.


title: Lana Del Ray (album)

text: "Lana Del Rey" was removed from the market three months after its initial release. Del Rey and her management made a separation agreement with 5 Points Records on April 1, 2010. After the release of her next album, her major-label debut, "Born to Die" (2012), Del Rey expressed her wish to re-release the album.


title: Lana Del Ray (album)

text: On November 9, 2012, Del Rey released "", a reissue of "Born to Die", which consisted of the fifteen tracks from the deluxe edition of the album, and 9 new songs which were also marketed as a separate EP, titled "Paradise" (2012). One of the tracks featured on "Paradise" was a reworked version of the song "Yayo", the original version of which was the closing track on "Lana Del Ray". As of 2022, "Yayo" is the only song from "Lana Del Ray" to get an official release.


title: Mac Miller discography

text: American rapper and singer Mac Miller released six studio albums, two extended plays, two live albums, thirteen mixtapes, forty-four singles (including fifteen as a featured artist), and sixty-three music videos. After self-releasing several mixtapes, Miller signed with the independent record label Rostrum Records in 2010. He first charted with the release of his debut extended play "On and On and Beyond" in March 2011, entering the US "Billboard" 200 at number 55. His single "Donald Trump", from the 2011 mixtape "Best Day Ever", became his first singles chart entry, peaking at number 75 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, and earned a platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).


title: Mac Miller discography

text: Miller's debut studio album, "Blue Slide Park", topped the "Billboard" 200 upon its release in November 2011, the first independently-distributed debut album to do so since 1995. The album was certified gold in the United States and Canada, and spawned the songs "Smile Back", "Frick Park Market", and "Party on Fifth Ave.", which peaked at number 55, 60, and 64 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, respectively. "Loud", the lead single from his 2012 mixtape "Macadelic", reached number 53 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. In March 2013, he collaborated with Ariana Grande on her single "The Way"; it attained his highest peak in the United States at number 9, the Netherlands at 22, and the United Kingdom at 41, and was certified triple platinum by the RIAA. His second studio album, "Watching Movies with the Sound Off", released in June 2013 to number three on the "Billboard" 200.


title: Mac Miller discography

text: In 2014, Miller left Rostrum and signed with the major label Warner Bros. Records. His first major label release, "", debuted at number four on the "Billboard" 200 in September 2015, and was certified gold in the United States. The single "Weekend", featuring Miguel, became his second song as lead artist to be certified platinum by the RIAA. He followed with the studio albums "The Divine Feminine" in September 2016, and "Swimming" in August 2018, which respectively charted at number two and three on the "Billboard" 200. Miller's death in September 2018 propelled "Swimming" and its single "Self Care" to his highest peaks at the time in various territories, including "Self Care" at number 33 in the United States.


title: Mac Miller discography

text: His sixth studio album, "Circles", was released posthumously in January 2020. It debuted at number three in the United States, and reached his highest peaks in Australia, Canada and the Netherlands at number three, the United Kingdom at number eight, and Switzerland at number nine. The single "Good News" became his highest-charting song as lead artist in the United States at number 17, Australia at 27, Canada at 14, New Zealand at 31, and the United Kingdom at 45.


title: Geodesic

text: In geometry, a geodesic () is a curve representing in some sense the shortest path (arc) between two points in a surface, or more generally in a Riemannian manifold. The term also has meaning in any differentiable manifold with a connection. It is a generalization of the notion of a "straight line".


title: Geodesic

text: The noun "geodesic" and the adjective "geodetic" come from "geodesy", the science of measuring the size and shape of Earth, though many of the underlying principles can be applied to any ellipsoidal geometry. In the original sense, a geodesic was the shortest route between two points on the Earth's surface. For a spherical Earth, it is a segment of a great circle (see also great-circle distance). The term has since been generalized to more abstract mathematical spaces; for example, in graph theory, one might consider a geodesic between two vertices/nodes of a graph.


title: Geodesic

text: In a Riemannian manifold or submanifold, geodesics are characterised by the property of having vanishing geodesic curvature. More generally, in the presence of an affine connection, a geodesic is defined to be a curve whose tangent vectors remain parallel if they are transported along it. Applying this to the Levi-Civita connection of a Riemannian metric recovers the previous notion.


title: Geodesic

text: Geodesics are of particular importance in general relativity. Timelike geodesics in general relativity describe the motion of free falling test particles.


title: Geodesic

text: A locally shortest path between two given points in a curved space, assumed to be a Riemannian manifold, can be defined by using the equation for the length of a curve (a function "f" from an open interval of R to the space), and then minimizing this length between the points using the calculus of variations. This has some minor technical problems because there is an infinite-dimensional space of different ways to parameterize the shortest path. It is simpler to restrict the set of curves to those that are parameterized "with constant speed" 1, meaning that the distance from "f"("s") to "f"("t") along the curve equals |"s"−"t"|. Equivalently, a different quantity may be used, termed the energy of the curve; minimizing the energy leads to the same equations for a geodesic (here "constant velocity" is a consequence of minimization). Intuitively, one can understand this second formulation by noting that an elastic band stretched between two points will contract its width, and in so doing will minimize its energy. The resulting shape of the band is a geodesic.


title: Geodesic

text: It is possible that several different curves between two points minimize the distance, as is the case for two diametrically opposite points on a sphere. In such a case, any of these curves is a geodesic.


title: Geodesic

text: In general, geodesics are not the same as "shortest curves" between two points, though the two concepts are closely related. The difference is that geodesics are only "locally" the shortest distance between points, and are parameterized with "constant speed". Going the "long way round" on a great circle between two points on a sphere is a geodesic but not the shortest path between the points. The map formula_1 from the unit interval on the real number line to itself gives the shortest path between 0 and 1, but is not a geodesic because the velocity of the corresponding motion of a point is not constant.


title: Geodesic

text: Geodesics are commonly seen in the study of Riemannian geometry and more generally metric geometry. In general relativity, geodesics in spacetime describe the motion of point particles under the influence of gravity alone. In particular, the path taken by a falling rock, an orbiting satellite, or the shape of a planetary orbit are all geodesics in curved spacetime. More generally, the topic of sub-Riemannian geometry deals with the paths that objects may take when they are not free, and their movement is constrained in various ways.


title: Geodesic

text: This article presents the mathematical formalism involved in defining, finding, and proving the existence of geodesics, in the case of Riemannian manifolds. The article Levi-Civita connection discusses the more general case of a pseudo-Riemannian manifold and geodesic (general relativity) discusses the special case of general relativity in greater detail.


title: Geodesic

text: The most familiar examples are the straight lines in Euclidean geometry. On a sphere, the images of geodesics are the great circles. The shortest path from point "A" to point "B" on a sphere is given by the shorter arc of the great circle passing through "A" and "B". If "A" and "B" are antipodal points, then there are "infinitely many" shortest paths between them. Geodesics on an ellipsoid behave in a more complicated way than on a sphere; in particular, they are not closed in general (see figure).


title: Geodesic

text: A geodesic triangle is formed by the geodesics joining each pair out of three points on a given surface. On the sphere, the geodesics are great circle arcs, forming a spherical triangle.


title: Geodesic

text: In metric geometry, a geodesic is a curve which is everywhere locally a distance minimizer. More precisely, a curve from an interval "I" of the reals to the metric space "M" is a geodesic if there is a constant such that for any there is a neighborhood "J" of "t" in "I" such that for any we have


title: Geodesic

text: This generalizes the notion of geodesic for Riemannian manifolds. However, in metric geometry the geodesic considered is often equipped with natural parameterization, i.e. in the above identity "v" = 1 and


title: Geodesic

text: If the last equality is satisfied for all , the geodesic is called a minimizing geodesic or shortest path.


title: Geodesic

text: In general, a metric space may have no geodesics, except constant curves. At the other extreme, any two points in a length metric space are joined by a minimizing sequence of rectifiable paths, although this minimizing sequence need not converge to a geodesic.


title: Geodesic

text: In a Riemannian manifold "M" with metric tensor "g", the length "L" of a continuously differentiable curve γ : ["a","b"] → "M" is defined by


title: Geodesic

text: The distance "d"("p", "q") between two points "p" and "q" of "M" is defined as the infimum of the length taken over all continuous, piecewise continuously differentiable curves γ : ["a","b"] → "M" such that γ("a") = "p" and γ("b") = "q". In Riemannian geometry, all geodesics are locally distance-minimizing paths, but the converse is not true. In fact, only paths that are both locally distance minimizing and parameterized proportionately to arc-length are geodesics. Another equivalent way of defining geodesics on a Riemannian manifold, is to define them as the minima of the following action or energy functional


title: Geodesic

text: All minima of "E" are also minima of "L", but "L" is a bigger set since paths that are minima of "L" can be arbitrarily re-parameterized (without changing their length), while minima of "E" cannot.


title: Geodesic

text: For a piecewise formula_6 curve (more generally, a formula_7 curve), the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality gives


title: Geodesic

text: with equality if and only if formula_9 is equal to a constant a.e.; the path should be travelled at constant speed. It happens that minimizers of formula_10 also minimize formula_11, because they turn out to be affinely parameterized, and the inequality is an equality. The usefulness of this approach is that the problem of seeking minimizers of "E" is a more robust variational problem. Indeed, "E" is a "convex function" of formula_12, so that within each isotopy class of "reasonable functions", one ought to expect existence, uniqueness, and regularity of minimizers. In contrast, "minimizers" of the functional formula_11 are generally not very regular, because arbitrary reparameterizations are allowed.


title: Geodesic

text: where formula_15 are the Christoffel symbols of the metric. This is the geodesic equation, discussed below.


title: Geodesic

text: Techniques of the classical calculus of variations can be applied to examine the energy functional "E". The first variation of energy is defined in local coordinates by


title: Geodesic

text: The critical points of the first variation are precisely the geodesics. The second variation is defined by


title: Geodesic

text: In an appropriate sense, zeros of the second variation along a geodesic γ arise along Jacobi fields. Jacobi fields are thus regarded as variations through geodesics.


title: Geodesic

text: By applying variational techniques from classical mechanics, one can also regard geodesics as Hamiltonian flows. They are solutions of the associated Hamilton equations, with (pseudo-)Riemannian metric taken as Hamiltonian.


title: Geodesic

text: A geodesic on a smooth manifold "M" with an affine connection ∇ is defined as a curve γ("t") such that parallel transport along the curve preserves the tangent vector to the curve, so


title: Geodesic

text: at each point along the curve, where formula_18 is the derivative with respect to formula_19. More precisely, in order to define the covariant derivative of formula_18 it is necessary first to extend formula_18 to a continuously differentiable vector field in an open set. However, the resulting value of () is independent of the choice of extension.


title: Geodesic

text: Using local coordinates on "M", we can write the geodesic equation (using the summation convention) as


title: Geodesic

text: where formula_23 are the coordinates of the curve γ("t") and formula_24 are the Christoffel symbols of the connection ∇. This is an ordinary differential equation for the coordinates. It has a unique solution, given an initial position and an initial velocity. Therefore, from the point of view of classical mechanics, geodesics can be thought of as trajectories of free particles in a manifold. Indeed, the equation formula_25 means that the acceleration vector of the curve has no components in the direction of the surface (and therefore it is perpendicular to the tangent plane of the surface at each point of the curve). So, the motion is completely determined by the bending of the surface. This is also the idea of general relativity where particles move on geodesics and the bending is caused by gravity.


title: Geodesic

text: The "local existence and uniqueness theorem" for geodesics states that geodesics on a smooth manifold with an affine connection exist, and are unique. More precisely:


title: Geodesic

text: The proof of this theorem follows from the theory of ordinary differential equations, by noticing that the geodesic equation is a second-order ODE. Existence and uniqueness then follow from the Picard–Lindelöf theorem for the solutions of ODEs with prescribed initial conditions. γ depends smoothly on both "p" and "V".


title: Geodesic

text: In general, "I" may not be all of R as for example for an open disc in R. Any extends to all of if and only if is geodesically complete.


title: Geodesic

text: Geodesic flow is a local R-action on the tangent bundle "TM" of a manifold "M" defined in the following way


title: Geodesic

text: where "t" ∈ R, "V" ∈ "TM" and formula_30 denotes the geodesic with initial data formula_31. Thus, "formula_32"("V") = exp("tV") is the exponential map of the vector "tV". A closed orbit of the geodesic flow corresponds to a closed geodesic on "M".


title: Geodesic

text: On a (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold, the geodesic flow is identified with a Hamiltonian flow on the cotangent bundle. The Hamiltonian is then given by the inverse of the (pseudo-)Riemannian metric, evaluated against the canonical one-form. In particular the flow preserves the (pseudo-)Riemannian metric formula_33, i.e.


title: Geodesic

text: In particular, when "V" is a unit vector, formula_30 remains unit speed throughout, so the geodesic flow is tangent to the unit tangent bundle. Liouville's theorem implies invariance of a kinematic measure on the unit tangent bundle.


title: Geodesic

text: The geodesic flow defines a family of curves in the tangent bundle. The derivatives of these curves define a vector field on the total space of the tangent bundle, known as the geodesic spray.


title: Geodesic

text: More precisely, an affine connection gives rise to a splitting of the double tangent bundle TT"M" into horizontal and vertical bundles:


title: Geodesic

text: at each point "v" ∈ T"M"; here π : TT"M" → T"M" denotes the pushforward (differential) along the projection π : T"M" → "M" associated to the tangent bundle.


title: Geodesic

text: More generally, the same construction allows one to construct a vector field for any Ehresmann connection on the tangent bundle. For the resulting vector field to be a spray (on the deleted tangent bundle T"M" \ {0}) it is enough that the connection be equivariant under positive rescalings: it need not be linear. That is, (cf. Ehresmann connection#Vector bundles and covariant derivatives) it is enough that the horizontal distribution satisfy


title: Geodesic

text: for every "X" ∈ T"M" \ {0} and λ > 0. Here "d"("S") is the pushforward along the scalar homothety formula_39 A particular case of a non-linear connection arising in this manner is that associated to a Finsler manifold.


title: Geodesic

text: where "a" and "b" are constant real numbers. Thus apart from specifying a certain class of embedded curves, the geodesic equation also determines a preferred class of parameterizations on each of the curves. Accordingly, solutions of () are called geodesics with affine parameter.


title: Geodesic

text: An affine connection is "determined by" its family of affinely parameterized geodesics, up to torsion . The torsion itself does not, in fact, affect the family of geodesics, since the geodesic equation depends only on the symmetric part of the connection. More precisely, if formula_41 are two connections such that the difference tensor


title: Geodesic

text: is skew-symmetric, then formula_43 and formula_44 have the same geodesics, with the same affine parameterizations. Furthermore, there is a unique connection having the same geodesics as formula_43, but with vanishing torsion.


title: Geodesic

text: Efficient solvers for the minimal geodesic problem on surfaces posed as eikonal equations have been proposed by Kimmel and others.


title: Geodesic

text: A Ribbon "Test" is a way of finding a geodesic on a physical surface. The idea is to fit a bit of paper around a straight line (a ribbon) onto a curved surface as closely as possible without stretching or squishing the ribbon (without changing its internal geometry).


title: Geodesic

text: For example, when a ribbon is wound as a ring around a cone, the ribbon would not lie on the cone's surface but stick out, so that circle is not a geodesic on the cone. If the ribbon is adjusted so that all its parts touch the cone's surface, it would give an approximation to a geodesic.


title: Geodesic

text: Mathematically the ribbon test can be formulated as finding a mapping formula_46 of a neighborhood formula_47 of a line formula_48 in a plane into a surface formula_49 so that the mapping formula_50 "doesn't change the distances around formula_48 by much"; that is, at the distance formula_52 from formula_48 we have formula_54 where formula_55 and formula_56 are metrics on formula_47 and formula_49.


title: Virus classification

text: Virus classification is the process of naming viruses and placing them into a taxonomic system similar to the classification systems used for cellular organisms.


title: Virus classification

text: Viruses are classified by phenotypic characteristics, such as morphology, nucleic acid type, mode of replication, host organisms, and the type of disease they cause. The formal taxonomic classification of viruses is the responsibility of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) system, although the Baltimore classification system can be used to place viruses into one of seven groups based on their manner of mRNA synthesis. Specific naming conventions and further classification guidelines are set out by the ICTV.


title: Virus classification

text: A catalogue of all the world's known viruses has been proposed and, in 2013, some preliminary efforts were underway.


title: Virus classification

text: Species form the basis for any biological classification system. Before 1982, it was thought that viruses could not be made to fit Ernst Mayr's reproductive concept of species, and so were not amenable to such treatment. In 1982, the ICTV started to define a species as "a cluster of strains" with unique identifying qualities. In 1991, the more specific principle that a virus species is a polythetic class of viruses that constitutes a replicating lineage and occupies a particular ecological niche was adopted.


title: Virus classification

text: In July 2013, the ICTV definition of species changed to state: "A species is a monophyletic group of viruses whose properties can be distinguished from those of other species by multiple criteria." These criteria include the structure of the capsid, the existence of an envelope, the gene expression program for its proteins, host range, pathogenicity, and most importantly genetic sequence similarity and phylogenetic relationship.


title: Virus classification

text: The actual criteria used vary by the taxon, and can be inconsistent (arbitrary similarity thresholds) or unrelated to lineage (geography) at times. The matter is, for many, not yet settled.


title: Virus classification

text: The currently accepted and formal definition of a 'virus' was accepted by the ICTV Executive Committee in November 2020 and ratified in March 2021, and is as follows:


title: Virus classification

text: The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses began to devise and implement rules for the naming and classification of viruses early in the 1970s, an effort that continues to the present. The ICTV is the only body charged by the International Union of Microbiological Societies with the task of developing, refining, and maintaining a universal virus taxonomy. The system shares many features with the classification system of cellular organisms, such as taxon structure. However, some differences exist, such as the universal use of italics for all taxonomic names, unlike in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants and International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.


title: Virus classification

text: Viral classification starts at the level of realm and continues as follows, with the taxonomic suffixes in parentheses:


title: Virus classification

text: Unlike the system of binomial nomenclature adopted in cellular species, there is currently no standardized form for virus species names. At present, the ICTV mandates that a species name must contain as few words as possible while remaining distinct, and must not only contain the word virus and the host name. Species names often take the form of "[Disease] virus", particularly for higher plants and animals. In 2019, the ICTV published a proposal to adopt a more formalized system of binomial nomenclature for virus species names, to be voted on in 2020. However, some virologists later objected to the potential naming system change, arguing that the debate came while many in the field were preoccupied due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Virus classification

text: As of 2019, all levels of taxa except subrealm, subkingdom, and subclass are used. Four realms, one "incertae sedis" order, 24 "incertae sedis" families, and three "incertae sedis" genera are recognized:


title: Virus classification

text: It has been suggested that similarity in virion assembly and structure observed for certain viral groups infecting hosts from different domains of life (e.g., bacterial tectiviruses and eukaryotic adenoviruses or prokaryotic Caudovirales and eukaryotic herpesviruses) reflects an evolutionary relationship between these viruses. Therefore, structural relationship between viruses has been suggested to be used as a basis for defining higher-level taxa – structure-based viral lineages – that could complement the ICTV classification scheme of 2010.


title: Virus classification

text: The ICTV has gradually added many higher-level taxa using relationships in protein folds. All four realms defined in the 2019 release are defined by the presence of a protein of a certain structural family.


title: Virus classification

text: Baltimore classification (first defined in 1971) is a classification system that places viruses into one of seven groups depending on a combination of their nucleic acid (DNA or RNA), strandedness (single-stranded or double-stranded), sense, and method of replication. Named after David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, these groups are designated by Roman numerals. Other classifications are determined by the disease caused by the virus or its morphology, neither of which are satisfactory due to different viruses either causing the same disease or looking very similar. In addition, viral structures are often difficult to determine under the microscope. Classifying viruses according to their genome means that those in a given category will all behave in a similar fashion, offering some indication of how to proceed with further research. Viruses can be placed in one of the seven following groups:


title: Virus classification

text: Viruses with a DNA genome, except for the DNA reverse transcribing viruses, are members of three of the four recognized viral realms: "Duplodnaviria", "Monodnaviria", and "Varidnaviria". But the "incertae sedis" order "Ligamenvirales", and many other "incertae sedis" families and genera, are also used to classify DNA viruses. The domains "Duplodnaviria" and "Varidnaviria" consist of double-stranded DNA viruses; other double-stranded DNA viruses are "incertae sedis". The domain "Monodnaviria" consists of single-stranded DNA viruses that generally encode a HUH endonuclease; other single-stranded DNA viruses are "incertae sedis".


title: Virus classification

text: All viruses that have an RNA genome, and that encode an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), are members of the kingdom "Orthornavirae", within the realm "Riboviria".


title: Virus classification

text: All viruses that encode a reverse transcriptase (also known as RT or RNA-dependent DNA polymerase) are members of the class "Revtraviricetes", within the phylum "Arterviricota", kingdom "Pararnavirae", and realm "Riboviria". The class "Blubervirales" contains the single family "Hepadnaviridae" of DNA RT (reverse transcribing) viruses; all other RT viruses are members of the class Ortervirales.


title: Virus classification

text: Holmes (1948) used a Linnaean taxonomy with binomial nomenclature to classify viruses into 3 groups under one order, Virales. They are placed as follows:


title: Virus classification

text: The following infectious agents are smaller than viruses and have only some of their properties. Since 2015, the ICTV has allowed them to be classified in a similar way as viruses are.


title: Virus classification

text: Satellites depend on co-infection of a host cell with a helper virus for productive multiplication. Their nucleic acids have substantially distinct nucleotide sequences from either their helper virus or host. When a satellite subviral agent encodes the coat protein in which it is encapsulated, it is then called a satellite virus.


title: Virus classification

text: Satellite-like nucleic acids resemble satellite nucleic acids, in that they replicate with the aid of helper viruses. However they differ in that they can encode functions that can contribute to the success of their helper viruses; while they are sometimes considered to be genomic elements of their helper viruses, they are not always found within their helper viruses.


title: Virus classification

text: Defective interfering particles are defective viruses that have lost their ability to replicate except in the presence of a helper virus, which is normally the parental virus. They can also interfere with the helper virus.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. It differs from but often goes hand-in-hand with voter suppression. What exactly constitutes electoral fraud varies from country to country.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Electoral legislation outlaws many kinds of election fraud, but other practices violate general laws, such as those banning assault, harassment or libel. Although technically the term "electoral fraud" covers only those acts which are illegal, the term is sometimes used to describe acts which are legal, but considered morally unacceptable, outside the spirit of an election or in violation of the principles of democracy. Show elections, featuring only one candidate, are sometimes classified as electoral fraud, although they may comply with the law and are presented more as referendums/plebiscites.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In national elections, successful electoral fraud on a sufficient scale can have the effect of a coup d'état, protest or corruption of democracy. In a narrow election, a small amount of fraud may suffice to change the result. Even if the outcome is not affected, the revelation of fraud can reduce voters' confidence in democracy.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Electoral fraud can occur in advance of voting if the composition of the electorate is altered. The legality of this type of manipulation varies across jurisdictions. Deliberate manipulation of election outcomes is widely considered a violation of the principles of democracy.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In many cases, it is possible for authorities to artificially control the composition of an electorate in order to produce a foregone result. One way of doing this is to move a large number of voters into the electorate prior to an election, for example by temporarily assigning them land or lodging them in flophouses. Many countries prevent this with rules stipulating that a voter must have lived in an electoral district for a minimum period (for example, six months) in order to be eligible to vote there. However, such laws can also be used for demographic manipulation as they tend to disenfranchise those with no fixed address, such as the homeless, travelers, Roma, students (studying full-time away from home), and some casual workers.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Another strategy is to permanently move people into an electoral district, usually through public housing. If people eligible for public housing are likely to vote for a particular party, then they can either be concentrated into one area, thus making their votes count for less, or moved into marginal seats, where they may tip the balance towards their preferred party. One example of this was the 1986–1990 Homes for votes scandal in the City of Westminster in England under Shirley Porter.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Immigration law may also be used to manipulate electoral demography. For instance, Malaysia gave citizenship to immigrants from the neighboring Philippines and Indonesia, together with suffrage, in order for a political party to "dominate" the state of Sabah; this controversial process was known as Project IC.


title: Electoral fraud

text: A method of manipulating primary contests and other elections of party leaders are related to this. People who support one party may temporarily join another party (or vote in a crossover way, when permitted) in order to elect a weak candidate for that party's leadership. The goal ultimately is to defeat the weak candidate in the general election by the leader of the party that the voter truly supports. There were claims that this method was being utilised in the UK Labour Party leadership election in 2015, where Conservative-leaning Toby Young encouraged Conservatives to join Labour and vote for Jeremy Corbyn in order to "consign Labour to electoral oblivion". Shortly after, #ToriesForCorbyn trended on Twitter.


title: Electoral fraud

text: The composition of an electorate may also be altered by disenfranchising some classes of people, rendering them unable to vote. In some cases, states have passed provisions that raised general barriers to voter registration, such as poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and record-keeping requirements, which in practice were applied against minority populations to discriminatory effect. From the turn of the century into the late 1960s, most African Americans in the southern states of the former Confederacy were disenfranchised by such measures. Corrupt election officials may misuse voting regulations such as a literacy test or requirement for proof of identity or address in such a way as to make it difficult or impossible for their targets to cast a vote. If such practices discriminate against a religious or ethnic group, they may so distort the political process that the political order becomes grossly unrepresentative, as in the post-Reconstruction or Jim Crow era until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Felons have been disenfranchised in many states as a strategy to prevent African Americans from voting.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Groups may also be disenfranchised by rules which make it impractical or impossible for them to cast a vote. For example, requiring people to vote within their electorate may disenfranchise serving military personnel, prison inmates, students, hospital patients or anyone else who cannot return to their homes. Polling can be set for inconvenient days, such as midweek or on holy days of religious groups: for example on the Sabbath or other holy days of a religious group whose teachings determine that voting is prohibited on such a day. Communities may also be effectively disenfranchised if polling places are situated in areas perceived by voters as unsafe, or are not provided within reasonable proximity (rural communities are especially vulnerable to this).


title: Electoral fraud

text: In some cases, voters may be invalidly disenfranchised, which is true electoral fraud. For example, a legitimate voter may be "accidentally" removed from the electoral roll, making it difficult or impossible for the person to vote.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In the Canadian federal election of 1917, during the Great War, the Union government passed the Military Voters Act and the Wartime Elections Act. The Military Voters Act permitted any active military personnel to vote by party only and allowed that party to decide in which electoral district to place that vote. It also enfranchised those women who were directly related or married to an active soldier. These groups were believed to be disproportionately in favor of the Union government, as that party was campaigning in favor of conscription. The Wartime Elections Act, conversely, disenfranchised particular ethnic groups assumed to be disproportionately in favour of the opposition Liberal Party.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Stanford University professor Beatriz Magaloni described a model governing the behaviour of autocratic regimes. She proposed that ruling parties can maintain political control under a democratic system without actively manipulating votes or coercing the electorate. Under the right conditions, the democratic system is maneuvered into an equilibrium in which divided opposition parties act as unwitting accomplices to single-party rule. This permits the ruling regime to abstain from illegal electoral fraud.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Preferential voting systems such as score voting, instant-runoff voting, and single transferable vote are designed to prevent systemic electoral manipulation and political duopoly.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Voter intimidation involves putting undue pressure on a voter or group of voters so that they will vote a particular way, or not at all. Absentee and other remote voting can be more open to some forms of intimidation as the voter does not have the protection and privacy of the polling location. Intimidation can take a range of forms including verbal, physical, or coercion. This was so common that in 1887, a Kansas Supreme Court in "New Perspectives on Election Fraud in The Gilded Age" said "[...] physical retaliation constituted only a slight disturbance and would not vitiate an election."


title: Electoral fraud

text: People may distribute false or misleading information in order to affect the outcome of an election. For example, in the Chilean presidential election of 1970, the U.S. government's Central Intelligence Agency used "black propaganda"—materials purporting to be from various political parties—to sow discord between members of a coalition between socialists and communists.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Another use of disinformation is to give voters incorrect information about the time or place of polling, thus causing them to miss their chance to vote. As part of the 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal, Elections Canada traced fraudulent phone calls, telling voters that their polling stations had been moved, to a telecommunications company that worked with the Conservative Party.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Similarly in the United States, right-wing political operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were indicted on several counts of bribery and election fraud in October 2020 regarding a voter disinformation scheme they undertook in the months prior to the November, 3 2020 general election. The pair hired a firm to make nearly 85,000 robocalls that targeted minority neighborhoods in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Michigan, and Illinois. Like Democratic constituencies in general that year, minorities voted overwhelmingly by absentee ballot, many judging it a safer option during the COVID-19 pandemic than in-person voting. Baselessly, the call warned potential voters if they submitted their votes by mail that authorities could use their personal information against them, including threats of police arrest for outstanding warrants and forced debt collection by creditors.


title: Electoral fraud

text: On October 24, 2022 Wohl and Burkman pleaded guilty in Cuyahoga County, Ohio Common Pleas Court to one count each of felony telecommunications fraud. Commenting on the tactic of using disinformation to suppress voter turnout, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley said the two men had "infringed upon the right to vote," and that "by pleading guilty, they were held accountable for their un-American actions.”


title: Electoral fraud

text: Vote buying occurs when a political party or candidate seeks to buy the vote of a voter in an upcoming election. Vote buying can take various forms such as a monetary exchange, as well as an exchange for necessary goods or services. This practice is often used to incentivise or persuade voters to turn out to elections and vote in a particular way. Although this practice is illegal in many countries such as the United States, Argentina, Mexico, Kenya, Brazil and Nigeria, its prevalence remains worldwide.


title: Electoral fraud

text: A list of threats to voting systems, or electoral fraud methods considered as sabotage are kept by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Ballot papers may be used to discourage votes for a particular party or candidate, using the design or other features which confuse voters into voting for a different candidate. For example, in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Florida's butterfly ballot paper was criticized as poorly designed, leading some voters to vote for the wrong candidate. While the ballot itself was designed by a Democrat, it was the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, who was most harmed by voter errors because of this design. Poor or misleading design is usually not illegal and therefore not technically election fraud, but it can nevertheless subvert the principles of democracy.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Sweden has a system with separate ballots used for each party, to reduce confusion among candidates. However, ballots from small parties such as Piratpartiet, Junilistan and Feministiskt initiativ have been omitted or placed on a separate table in the election to the EU parliament in 2009. Ballots from Sweden Democrats have been mixed with ballots from the larger Swedish Social Democratic Party, which used a very similar font for the party name written on the top of the ballot.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Another method of confusing people into voting for a different candidate than intended is to run candidates or create political parties with similar names or symbols as an existing candidate or party. The goal is to mislead voters into voting for the false candidate or party to influence the results. Such tactics may be particularly effective when a large proportion of voters have limited literacy in the language used on the ballot. Again, such tactics are usually not illegal but often work against the principles of democracy.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Another type of possible electoral confusion is multiple variations of voting by different electoral systems. This may cause ballots to be counted as invalid if the wrong system is used. For instance, if a voter puts a first-past-the-post cross in a numbered single transferable vote ballot paper, it is invalidated. For example, in Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom, up to three different voting systems and types of ballots may be used, based on the jurisdictional level of elections for candidates. Local elections are determined by single transferable votes; Scottish parliamentary elections by the additional member system; national elections and for the UK Parliament by first-past-the-post.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Ballot stuffing, or "ballot-box stuffing", is the illegal practice of one person submitting multiple ballots during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Votes may be misrecorded at source, on a ballot paper or voting machine, or later in misrecording totals. The 2019 Malawian general election was nullified by the Constitutional Court in 2020 because many results were changed by use of correction fluid, as well as duplicate, unverified and unsigned results forms. California allows correction fluid and tape, so changes can be made after the ballot leaves the voter.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Where votes are recorded through electronic or mechanical means, the voting machinery may be altered so that a vote intended for one candidate is recorded for another, or electronic results are duplicated or lost, and there is rarely evidence whether the cause was fraud or error.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Many elections feature multiple opportunities for unscrupulous officials or 'helpers' to record an elector's vote differently from their intentions. Voters who require assistance to cast their votes are particularly vulnerable to having their votes stolen in this way. For example, a blind or illiterate person may be told that they have voted for one party when in fact they have been led to vote for another.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Proxy voting is particularly vulnerable to election fraud, due to the amount of trust placed in the person who casts the vote. In several countries, there have been allegations of retirement home residents being asked to fill out 'absentee voter' forms. When the forms are signed and gathered, they are secretly rewritten as applications for proxy votes, naming party activists or their friends and relatives as the proxies. These people, unknown to the voter, cast the vote for the party of their choice. In the United Kingdom, this is known as 'granny farming.'


title: Electoral fraud

text: One of the simplest methods of electoral fraud is to destroy ballots for an opposing candidate or party. While mass destruction of ballots can be difficult to execute without drawing attention, in a very close election, it may be possible to destroy a very small number of ballot papers without detection, thereby changing the overall result. Blatant destruction of ballot papers can render an election invalid and force it to be re-run. If a party can improve its vote on the re-run election, it can benefit from such destruction as long as it is not linked to it.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Another method is to make it appear that the voter has spoiled his or her ballot, thus rendering it invalid. Typically this would be done by adding another mark to the paper, making it appear that the voter has voted for more candidates than entitled, for instance. It would be difficult to do this to a large number of paper ballots without detection in some locales, but altogether too simple in others, especially jurisdictions where legitimate ballot spoiling by voter would serve a clear and reasonable aim. Examples may include emulating protest votes in jurisdictions that have recently had and since abolished a "none of the above" or "against all" voting option, civil disobedience where voting is mandatory, and attempts at discrediting or invalidating an election. An unusually large share of invalidated ballots may be attributed to loyal supporters of candidates that lost in primaries or previous rounds, did not run or did not qualify to do so, or some manner of protest movement or organized boycott.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In 2016, during the EU membership referendum, Leave-supporting voters in the UK alleged without evidence that the pencils supplied by voting stations would allow the referendum to be rigged in favour of Remain by MI5 erasing their votes from the ballot. This has been described as the "use pens" conspiracy theory.


title: Electoral fraud

text: All voting systems face threats of some form of electoral fraud. The types of threats that affect voting machines vary. Research at Argonne National Laboratories revealed that a single individual with physical access to a machine, such as a Diebold Accuvote TS, can install inexpensive, readily-available electronic components to manipulate its functions.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In 1994, the election which brought majority rule and put Nelson Mandela in office, South Africa's election compilation system was hacked, so they re-tabulated by hand.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In 2014, Ukraine's central election system was hacked. Officials found and removed a virus and said the totals were correct.


title: Electoral fraud

text: During the 2020 presidential election, incumbent President Donald Trump made numerous allegations of electoral fraud by Democratic candidate Joe Biden. The Trump campaign filed numerous legal challenges to the results, making unsubstantiated allegations accusing Democrats of manipulating the votes in favor of Biden. The campaign lost 64 of 65 lawsuits. Election security experts, officials, analysts, and Trump's own Attorney General William Barr have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Concerns about voter impersonation have led the UK government to propose the Electoral Integrity Bill. Academic research shows very little evidence of impersonation, however.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Some commentators, such as former Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky, have claimed that voter impersonation fraud, in which one person votes by impersonating another, eligible voter, is widespread, but documentation has been scarce and prosecutions rare. Numerous others, such as Professor Larry Sabato, and a variety of studies have shown this to be "relatively rare" in the USA. Since 2013, when the US Supreme Court ruled that a provision of the Voting Rights Act was no longer enforceable, several states have passed voter ID laws, ostensibly to counter the alleged fraud. But many experts counter that voter ID laws are not very effective against some forms of impersonation. These ID laws have been challenged by minority groups that claimed to be disadvantaged by the changes. By August 2016, four federal court rulings overturned laws or parts of such laws because they placed undue burdens on minority populations, including African Americans and Native Americans. In each case: Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, and may adversely affect minority voters. The states were required to accept alternatives for the November 2016 elections. These cases are expected to reach the US Supreme Court for hearings. In April 2020, a 20-year voter fraud study by MIT University found the level of fraud "exceedingly rare" since it occurs only in "0.00006 percent" of instances nationally, and, in one state, "0.000004 percent—about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 United States presidential election by busing out-of-state voters to New Hampshire were found to be false. Suspicions of hacking of electronic voting machines in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were determined to be unfounded.


title: Electoral fraud

text: The North Carolina Board of Elections reported in 2017 on questions of voter fraud and the state's proposed voter ID law. The report showed that out of 4,769,640 votes cast in the November 2016 election in North Carolina, only one illegal vote would potentially have been blocked by the voter ID law. The investigation found fewer than 500 incidences of invalid ballots cast, the vast majority of which were cast by individuals on probation for felony who were likely not aware that this status disqualified them from voting, and the total number of invalid votes was far too small to have affected the outcome of any race in North Carolina in the 2016 election.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In particularly corrupt regimes, the voting process may be nothing more than a sham, to the point that officials simply announce whatever results they want, sometimes without even bothering to count the votes. While such practices tend to draw international condemnation, voters typically have little if any recourse, as there would seldom be any ways to remove the fraudulent winner from power, short of a revolution.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In Turkmenistan, incumbent President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov received 97.69% of votes in the 2017 election, with his sole opponent, who was seen as pro-government, in fact being appointed by Berdymukhamedov. In Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili received 96.2% of votes in the election following the Rose Revolution while his ally Nino Burjanadze was an interim head of state.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Fraud with absentee or postal ballots has been found occasionally in the United Kingdom, and the United States


title: Electoral fraud

text: and has been alleged in Malaysia. In both the United Kingdom and the United States, experts estimate there is more fraud with postal ballots than in-person voting, and that even so it has affected only a few local elections.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Types of fraud have included pressure on voters from family or others, since the ballot is not cast in secret;


title: Electoral fraud

text: collection of ballots by dishonest collectors who mark votes or fail to deliver ballots; and insiders changing or destroying ballots after they arrive.


title: Electoral fraud

text: A significant measure to prevent some types of fraud has been to require the voter's signature on the outer envelope, which is compared to one or more signatures on file before taking the ballot out of the envelope and counting it. Not all places have standards for signature review,


title: Electoral fraud

text: and there have been calls to update signatures more often to improve this review. While any level of strictness involves rejecting some valid votes and accepting some invalid votes, there have been concerns that signatures are improperly rejected from young and minority voters at higher rates than others, with no or limited ability of voters to appeal the rejection.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Some problems have inherently limited scope, such as family pressure, while others can affect several percent of the vote, such as dishonest collectors and signature verification.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Vote fraud can also take place in legislatures. Some of the forms used in national elections can also be used in parliaments, particularly intimidation and vote-buying. Because of the much smaller number of voters, however, election fraud in legislatures is qualitatively different in many ways. Fewer people are needed to 'swing' the election, and therefore specific people can be targeted in ways impractical on a larger scale. For example, Adolf Hitler achieved his dictatorial powers due to the Enabling Act of 1933. He attempted to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority to pass the Act by arresting members of the opposition, though this turned out to be unnecessary to attain the needed majority. Later, the Reichstag was packed with Nazi party members who voted for the Act's renewal.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In many legislatures, voting is public, in contrast to the secret ballot used in most modern public elections. This may make their elections more vulnerable to some forms of fraud since a politician can be pressured by others who will know how the legislator voted. However, it may also protect against bribery and blackmail, since the public and media will be aware if a politician votes in an unexpected way. Since voters and parties are entitled to pressure politicians to vote a particular way, the line between legitimate and fraudulent pressure is not always clear.


title: Electoral fraud

text: As in public elections, proxy votes are particularly prone to fraud. In some systems, parties may vote on behalf of any member who is not present in parliament. This protects those members from missing out on voting if prevented from attending parliament, but it also allows their party to prevent them from voting against its wishes. In some legislatures, proxy voting is not allowed, but politicians may rig voting buttons or otherwise illegally cast "ghost votes" while absent.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Some of the main fraud prevention tactics can be summarised as secrecy and openness. The secret ballot prevents many kinds of intimidation and vote selling, while transparency at all other levels of the electoral process prevents and allows detection of most interference.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Election auditing refers to any review conducted after polls close for the purpose of determining whether the votes were counted accurately (a results audit) or whether proper procedures were followed (a process audit), or both.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Audits vary and can include checking that the number of voters signed in at the polls matches the number of ballots, seals on ballot boxes and storage rooms are intact, computer counts (if used) match hand counts, and counts are accurately totaled.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In the United States the goal of prosecutions is not to stop fraud or keep fraudulent winners out of office; it is to deter and punish years later. The Justice Department has published "Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses" in eight editions from 1976 to 2017, under Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Trump. It says, "Department does not have authority to directly intercede in the election process itself. ... overt criminal investigative measures should not ordinarily be taken ... until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded." Sentencing guidelines provide a range of 0–21 months in prison for a first offender; offense levels range from 8 to 14. Investigation, prosecution and appeals can take over 10 years.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In the Philippines, former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was arrested in 2011 following the filing of criminal charges against her for electoral sabotage, in connection with the 2007 Philippine general election. She was accused of conspiring with election officials to ensure the victory of her party's senatorial slate in the province of Maguindanao, through the tampering of election returns.


title: Electoral fraud

text: The patterns of conventional behaviour in a society, or mores, are an effective means for preventing electoral fraud and corruption in general. A good example is Sweden, where the culture has a strong tendency toward positive values, resulting in a low incidence of political corruption. Until recently Canada had a similar reputation. The In and Out scandal of 2008 and the Robocall scandal of 2011 has tarnished Canada's electoral integrity.


title: Electoral fraud

text: An advantage of cultivating positive mores as a prevention strategy is that it is effective across all electoral systems and devices. A disadvantage is that it makes other prevention and detection efforts more difficult to implement because members of society generally have more trust and less of a sense for fraudulent methods.


title: Electoral fraud

text: The secret ballot, in which only the voter knows how they have voted, is believed by many to be a crucial part of ensuring free and fair elections through preventing voter intimidation or retribution. Others argue that the secret ballot enables election fraud (because it makes it harder to verify that votes have been counted correctly) and that it discourages voter participation. Although the secret ballot was sometimes practiced in ancient Greece and was a part of the Constitution of the Year III of 1795, it only became common in the nineteenth century. Secret balloting appears to have been first implemented in the former British colony—now an Australian state—of Tasmania on 7 February 1856. By the turn of the century, the practice had spread to most Western democracies.


title: Electoral fraud

text: In the United States, the popularity of the Australian ballot grew as reformers in the late 19th century sought to reduce the problems of election fraud. Groups such as the Greenbackers, Nationalist, and more fought for those who yearned to vote, but were exiled for their safety. George Walthew, Greenback, helped initiate one of the first secret ballots in America in Michigan in 1885. Even George Walthew had a predecessor in John Seitz, Greenback, who campaigned a bill to " preserve the purity of elections" in 1879 after the discovery of Ohio's electoral fraud in congressional elections.


title: Electoral fraud

text: The efforts of many helped accomplish this and led to the spread of other secret ballots all across the country. As mentioned on February 18, 1890, in the Galveston News "The Australian ballot has come to stay. It protects the independence of the voter and largely puts a stop to vote to buy." Before this, it was common for candidates to intimidate or bribe voters, as they would always know who had voted which way.


title: Electoral fraud

text: Most methods of preventing electoral fraud involve making the election process completely transparent to all voters, from nomination of candidates through casting of the votes and tabulation. A key feature in ensuring the integrity of any part of the electoral process is a strict chain of custody.


title: Electoral fraud

text: To prevent fraud in central tabulation, there has to be a public list of the results from every single polling place. This is the only way for voters to prove that the results they witnessed in their election office are correctly incorporated into the totals.