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The tag wiki says:

In the United States, the President is not elected directly by popular vote, but by electors chosen by each state, which can sometimes produce a different outcome from the popular vote. Use with the tag

It seems this tag is claimed to be specific to the USA. Then how should we tag questions about electoral colleges outside the USA?

There are several other countries with electoral colleges. For example, in The Netherlands, there is an electoral college for the senate elections. The college electing popes arguably is one as well. Wikipedia lists a few more

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  • What questions would be tagged with this that are not about the United States? It is a very specific term used in the constitution.
    – Joe W
    Jan 10 at 19:49
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    @JoeW Questions about the Dutch electoral college, for example. See this question, where I have been naughty and used the electoral-college tag for a non-US question.
    – gerrit
    Jan 10 at 19:53
  • That should be edited into the question.
    – Joe W
    Jan 10 at 19:54
  • @JoeW Ok, done :)
    – gerrit
    Jan 10 at 19:57
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    The consensus is that [presidential-election] can be used for the presidential election of multiple countries, and allowing [electoral-college] to be used for multiple countries would be consistent with that. politics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/… Jan 15 at 2:35

2 Answers 2

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I propose editing the tag wiki to read something like:

Some elections are not decided directly by popular vote but by a group of electors. These electors can be selected in a number of ways, including being elected by popular vote. Use with a relevant country tag.

Since the tag is mentioned current tag wiki, old questions should already be tagged correctly.

This would bring the tag in line with other tags that are mostly but not entirely US-focused like or .

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The electoral college for the US president is a pretty unique election mechanism that doesn't have too much to do with other kinds of electoral colleges. And whenever there is a US presidential election, we get a ton of interest in this tag. But the other electoral colleges mentioned here are far less interesting to the users of this community (at least judging how often they are mentioned in questions).

I think it might be prudent to rename the tag to . If any other political entity that's also named "electoral college" becomes relevant enough in the future to warrant a tag, we can create one specifically for that electoral college.

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