Talk:Third-party and independent members of the United States Congress

Sen. Murkowski
Sen. Murkowski never left the Republican Party, did she? I realize she was reelected as a write-in but if she didn't leave the GOP, she isn't a third party officeholder. 331dot (talk) 11:32, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * In Alaska on the ballot, Joe Miller's name was listed with the words "Republican Nomination". So Murkowski did not have the republican nomination, but she was still a republican. I know this is from 10 years ago but I just saw it and felt like answering it. Greenhighwayconstruction (talk) 17:51, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Sanders
He returned to the Senate as an Independent. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 18:12, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Capitalization of "independent"
I note many instances here where "independent" is capitalized, as if it were the name of a party. It isn't and shouldn't be capitalized within a sentence or phrase, since the word is a common noun. It's treated as a common noun and not capitalized (except at the beginning of sentences) in Independent politician.

I'll wait a few days for discussion and then proceed to implement lower case, if there is none. The more places the word is capitalized, the more it muddies the waters about whether it should be. See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government. Sincerely, HopsonRoad (talk) 19:29, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Bold edits
I just made some bold edits to this page and wish to explain.

The page is entitled "Third party officeholders in the United States". Third-party officeholders and independent officeholders are two different categories. By definition, an independent officeholder is one who is not enrolled in a political party; therefore, he or she is not a third-party officeholder and does not belong on this list. Accordingly, I have removed information on independent officeholders. If anyone takes issue with this move and wants to re-include material on independent officeholders, I would respectfully ask that you consider either (a) creating a new page on independent officeholders; or (b) renaming this page so that its name encompasses both third-party officeholders and independent officeholders. SunCrow (talk) 01:17, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Needs sources
As of today, there were only three cited sources on this page. They all related to independent officeholders, and so they were deleted when I made the bold edits referenced above. The page is now entirely unsourced. As far as I can tell, the list of senators was always unsourced. While each entry on the list has his own Wikipedia page, I believe each entry should be sourced as well. This will make for a bit of a project. SunCrow (talk) 01:19, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose merging Third-party and independent senators in the United States(this article)) with Third-party and independent members of the United States House of Representatives into a new article that will be called Third-party and independent members of the United States Congress. I just find in non-nonsensical to have two separate pages. Additionally there is some overlap so merging the pages just makes sense. Greenhighwayconstruction (talk) 17:43, 15 July 2022 (UTC) Due to lack of objections this disscussion is now closed I'm working on what will become the new page on my sandbox so feel free to chip in Cosmictoilet (talk) 20:23, 19 July 2022 (UTC) (my username changed)