do "indirect" elections count? also, how direct do the elections need to be to be considered direct?

@someoneR5c8l yes they do count, there is no need for the election of a national leader to be direct. As described in the criteria, election of electors, or of a legislature that elects a leader, or the leader of the majority faction of which becomes the national leader, or anything like that counts. This is intended to allow all the kinds of indirect elections that acknowledged democracies in the world currently use to elect their national leader such as a prime minister or president.

@chrisjbillington Thanks for that, but I meant indirect elections to the parliament itself. The current proposed elections format talks about regional "committees" that will elect the parliament, and that parliament will elect the prime minister or something. So the people won't elect even the parliament. Will this kind of elections count as elections? and what if the committees themselves will be appointed by unelected regional governments?

@someoneR5c8l Ah, I see.

The number of layers doesn't matter, so it will count if such regional committees are elected, and it won't count if they're not.

I think the potential ambiguity is something like how universal the vote is - unelected regional committees voting is still a kind of democracy, it's just very limited in that not many people (only the committee members) get a vote.

I don't think I want to require full universal suffrage for a vote to count, but I don't want to allow super limited suffrage like that to count either.

It should be something like a large chunk of the adult population nationally being allowed to vote, say, at least 30%. I'll add this to the description.

Does a parliamentary election count?

@nathanwei only if this has the effect of electing a head of state or head of government (e.g. as in a parliamentary system), and only if said leadership position is not symbolic or a sham.

This market is about Syria freely electing its leader, so that may or may not come about from a parliamentary election, depending on what kind of system they decide to operate under.

I'll see if the market title character limit permits me to clarify this in the title, since from the title alone it would seem that any election counts which is not my intention.

New elections could take up to four years, Syria rebel leader says

Here is a market with a longer deadline:

Opposition leader asked for first a vote on a new condition & electoral system, and only an for representatives in 18 months. Would a vote on the first resolve NO?

It captures the spirit of the question "is Syria going to be on a path to democracy" but it's not an election for representatives

@Siebe A constitutional referendum wouldn't count for this market, it would stay open until an election for representatives or resolve NO at the end of 2025.

Sounds like I should make a copy of this market with an extra year added to the deadline.

I think you should clarify: will the government that controls Damascus hold elections. Because there are like 4 governments

@IsaacLiu added, thank you.

@IsaacLiu also what counts as free?

This rebel faction is led by a former member of al-qaeda. I wouldn't hold my breath for a flowering of democracy here.

@MattP Might still fare better than Ukraine, where elections were eliminated, or Romania, where they are annulled if the outcome is the "wrong" one 😉

@MattP You would think so, but they appointed the former PM head of the interim government instead of cutting off his head, and then the guy called for elections with his head remaining curiously on his shoulders. It's all very strange.

I certainly don't want to get my hopes up that revolutionaries talking the talk of "rule by institutions, not individuals" and of non-sectarianism will actually walk the walk, but it's been a little uncharacteristic so far.

@chrisjbillington I'll join you in hoping for the best!

@chrisjbillington if the resolution criteria involve western media reporting on this then the most important factor is probably how in depth they decide to cover the elections and how they end up spinning the story. Expect the bar for free elections to be lower if the government is ideologically aligned with the west/israel.

If the election is a sham, or if the leadership positions are merely symbolic and true power remains with an unelected leader, that won't be sufficient for a YES resolution.

How will it be determined whether an election was a sham?

@OP It will be a judgement call on my part based on whatever media reports and expert opinion I can find. If it's quite ambiguous, I may resolve NA instead of forcing one result or the other. I expect it will be clear enough, but I'm not aware of a way to remove judgement entirely.

I will try to impose a reasonable standard that allows for the fact that many real elections in democratic countries are flawed in many ways and have some amount of fraud, yet we still generally recognise them as free and fair elections.

If there is some organisation that people trust that ranks how free elections are, I'd happily defer to them on the matter. Though that's still not the whole question - whether the elected positions are real or symbolic or puppets may still require a judgement call.