Election

An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local government. This process is also used in many other private and business organizations, from clubs to voluntary associations and corporations.

The universal use of elections as a tool for selecting representatives in modern representative democracies is in contrast with the practice in the democratic archetype, ancient Athens, where the Elections were considered an oligarchic institution and most political offices were filled using sortition, also known as allotment, by which officeholders were chosen by lot.

Electoral reform describes the process of introducing fair electoral systems where they are not in place, or improving the fairness or effectiveness of existing systems. Psephology is the study of results and other statistics relating to elections (especially with a view to predicting future results).

Greg Gianforte

Greg Gianforte (born April 17, 1961) is an American engineer and businessman and candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for governor of Montana.

Greg and his wife founded RightNow Technologies, customer-experience software company. The couple is known for their philanthropy and relationships with various Christian and conservative groups includingFocus on the Family and the Washington, DC thinktank The Heritage Foundation.

Education

Gianforte holds a B.E. degree in electrical engineering and an M.S. degree in computer science from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Career

Gianforte began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories and was one of the engineers on AT&T’s StarLAN Network project.

Gianforte co-founded Brightwork Development, a developer of network management applications. He sold the business to McAfee Associates in 1994. Gianforte went on to serve as North American VP, where the company’s North American sales operation grew from $25 million to more than $60 million in revenues in less than a year.

Comedy Central (UK and Ireland)

Comedy Central is a television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated. This channel is specific to audiences within the United Kingdom and Ireland. The channel is aligned with the original US version of the channel. The channel started as Paramount Channel in 1995, before rebranding as the Paramount Comedy Channel in 1997 and again as Paramount Comedy 1 before finally becoming Comedy Central on 6 April 2009.

History

1995–1997

The channel was launched as The Paramount Channel on 1 November 1995 with a broadcast of the Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark. The original schedule was a mixture of comedy and drama, as well as films from the Paramount Pictures film library, including such eclectic offerings as Beauty and the Beast, several Japanese anime productions acquired from Manga Entertainment, and authentic Paramount archive programming such as The Magician, as well as Nickelodeon's Ren & Stimpy, due to its rather adult nature at times. It originally aired every evening after Nickelodeon's closing at 7:00 pm until around 4:00 am, with a testcard featuring a chicken crossing the road and holding up traffic airing during downtime until Nickelodeon started up at 6:00 am.

Comedy Central

Comedy Central is an American basic cable and satellite television channel that is owned by Viacom Music and Entertainment Group, a unit of the Viacom Media Networks division of Viacom. Aimed limitedly to mature audience, age 18 to up, the channel carries comedy programming, in the form of both original and syndicated series and stand-up comedy specials, as well as feature films.

Since late 2006, Comedy Central has expanded globally with localized channels in India, Germany, Czech Republic Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latin America, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom, Brazil,Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Belgium, Croatia, Romania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and South Africa. The international channels are operated by Viacom International Media Networks.

As of February 2015, approximately 93,992,000 American households (80.70% of households with television) receive Comedy Central.

History

Early years (1989–1991)