Supermajority rule gave southern Democrats an effective veto over any presidential nominee for many years, until the rule's abolition at the 1936 Democratic National Convention. A majority vote, or more than half the votes cast, is a common voting basis. Instead of the basis of a majority, a supermajority can be specified using any fraction or percentage which is greater than one-half (i.e., 50%). It can also be called a qualified majority. Common supermajorities include three fifths (60%), two thirds (67%), and three quarters (75%). A two-thirds vote, when unqualified, means two-thirds or more of the votes cast. This voting basis
Quarters of nobility Quarters of nobility Quarters of nobility is an expression used in the bestowal of hereditary titles and refers to the number of generations in which noble status has been held by a family regardless of whether a title was actually in use by each person in the ancestral line in question. For example, a person having sixteen quarterings (formally in heraldry Seize Quartiers) might have exclusively noble ancestry for the four previous generations ("i.e.", to the great-great-grandparent level): Given two parents per generation, four generations of uninterrupted nobility = 2 = 16. Alternatively, such a person might have exclusively noble