Talk:Congressional office lottery

Lead sentence
Hi,. Regarding Special:Diff/1192296533, I phrased it that way to avoid redundancy in the lead: I thought that "congressional" would be repeating the "House of Representatives" information, with less detail (congressional can mean the Senate too, of course). Happy to listen to your thoughts on the subject. Sdrqaz (talk) 18:29, 28 December 2023 (UTC)


 * @Sdrqaz I did this per usual structure of leads where you bold the title. Per MOS:BOLDLEAD it says "If an article's title is a formal or widely accepted name for the subject, display it in bold as early as possible in the first sentence."
 * In my opinion the word "congress" specifically is not used close enough to "Congressional office lottery" for it to read redundantly, but since you feel it can cause some confusion I removed the word "congressional" from the bolded statement. Panini!  • 🥪 19:08, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Larger picture
The article doesn't explain what happens with incumbents. Since it mentions there being only 75 slots, it seems to be the case that the lottery applies only to newly elected members, not to incumbents who are re-elected. Do incumbents just keep their office? Do they get an opportunity to move to a more desirable office vacated by a member who has retired, resigned, or failed to be re-elected?Bill (talk) 08:09, 29 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi, Bill; thanks for the question. The lottery only applies to new members (in the lead, I referred to "incoming" representatives, but I think I can make that clearer, thanks). There's a cascading effect for office vacancies: incumbents get to keep their offices, unless they choose to move to one that is more desirable, vacated by someone more senior. As a result, new members are choosing from the dregs, the ones which none of the 300+ more senior members wanted. This Roll Call source, in the article, is probably useful . Sdrqaz (talk) 11:10, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that is helpful. Bill (talk) 20:00, 30 December 2023 (UTC)