I like this article, but it has some weaknesses in terms of coverage:
Why would a change in just the method of election of the president give the president more power? If the answer is that the president would have a direct power base among the people, that needs to be expanded upon more.
And why exactly did de Gaulle prefer this? Needs to be explained more.
There is much discussion of the constitutionality of the referendum, but there needs to be more discussion of the debate over the merits of the referendum. What were arguments for and against direct election? Who was making those arguments? Had this been proposed in the past?
Was there campaigning going on about the referendum? Advertisements for and against? Did the issue capture the imagination of the voting public? How long did the campaign go on for? Were any public opinion polls taken?
Was any analysis of the final vote done? What kind of people voted for it, as opposed to against it? Did it break down by party affiliation, ideological affiliation, or allegiance to certain politicians? Did support correlate to age or gender or geographical location? Was voter turnout high or low?
What were the long-term consequences of this referendum passing? Did the presidency in fact achieve greater power than before? How did this change affect French politics overall?
Update. The normal waiting period for GA review is a week, and it has now been more than a month. There has been no response here from the nominator. One unsourced paragraph was added to the article to address the first two points above, but nothing beyond that, and the nominator has not been active much in WP in general during this time. Since progress is not being made, I am going to fail this GAN. Once more improvements have been made to it, it can always be re-nominated at a later time.
Wasted Time R (
talk)
14:57, 16 October 2009 (UTC)reply