Talk:Instant-runoff voting/Archive 3

message: I'm using a Palm to write this, and if I attempt to edit the article, large chunks of text could disappear. But I can add new sections like this.  The POV tag should remain. POV and political purpose are woven through the article in sometimes subtle ways. The very name IRV was a political device. By labelling a series of methods (forms of preferential voting with sometimes very substantial and significant differences in details), it can be claimed that, say, Robert's Rules describes "IRV" when, in fact, what is being proposed in many places is importantly different from what RR describes. *If* bylaws permit plurality victories -- which RR dislikes -- then, yes, what is described is "IRV," as it was described in the article.
The "Con" argument about negative campaigning has been put in this article -- with source! -- and deleted many times, by Rob Richie and by the sock puppets. We should, indeed, review the whole procedure for dealing with arguments, but the section is worded such that the needed  level of proof is low, and, I would argue that the testimony of any editor that an argument is actually being made is prima facie evidence that it's being made, unless this is controverted. This, in fact, could be established as a general principle for "arguments." Yes, it is better if there are references. Similarly, the Pro argument about campaign expenses, I think I have seen. I think it's false and even silly, but ... if it is being made, it should be there. So it would reduce, in this case, to "who says so?" For simplicity, in this section, we are, I suggest, allowing arguments any of us recognize as actually being made to remain.
I'd recommend that Captain Zyrain study the history of this article and Talk on it to see what has been discussed. There has been specific discussion of the Con argument negating the "negative campaign" Pro argument.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 14:32, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Verifiability says that unsourced information can be dealt with by deleting it or by adding the "fact" template. I probably am a little too impatient about giving people time to find sources for information they add. On the other hand, I think that this article is so susceptible to edit wars and challenges of the veracity of information that we should pretty much cite sources for everything at this point, preferably using the ref template, and using hidden comments if nothing else. (Hidden comments are the icon fourth from the right on that little toolbar that shows up when you're editing a page.) Plus I have nominated this article for peer review, as a prelude to a featured article nomination, and since we are entering that process I think we should raise the bar a bit, relative to how we would treat other articles. Once it gets posted to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, reviewers will start nailing us on verifiability if that's a weak point. See Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. Captain Zyrain 16:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You're welcome to dig through the history and find the sourced Con argument; I just didn't feel like doing it, partly because I'm not familiar with the history of this article and wouldn't know where to look in those ~1,500 edits. Captain Zyrain 18:10, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

text: By the way, I understand and sympathize with your concern that IRV is a POV name. San Francisco chose to call it RCV for the very reason that the term IRV can be inaccurate, since the votes aren't necessarily retallied instantly. However, for the benefit of the reader we typically go with the more recognizable nomenclature. I would compare it to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate, for lack of a better example. Captain Zyrain 21:07, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree with Jeff Dahl that someone needs to create an outline from scratch and then move the text around to fit the outline, so that it will fit together as a well-organized article. Maybe sometime I will set a day aside to do that. Captain Zyrain 11:24, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment on POV tag removal 

message: Someone has removed my sourced edit on IRV in North Carolina.  I live in North Carolina, I watched the legislation go through 7 revisions, and I provided independent links to the the state legislature's reference for the NC IRV law, and to a news article that had not been there before.
Now someone has come in and replaced my independent links (to the legislative code and to a news article) with other wikipedia links.   
I think it weakens an article to replace all independent links with either other wikipedia articles as reference, or only Fair Vote links as reference. 
It looks like the article has been diluted.
Here is what I am adding back to the article and I ask that it be protected from further edits:
•	North Carolina adopted a pilot program for instant runoff voting for certain judicial vacancies and municipal pilot programs starting in 2007. "The State Board of Elections shall closely monitor the pilot program established in this section and report its findings and recommendations to the 2007 General Assembly."  The city of Cary  will use IRV for mayor and city council elections in October 2007, and the city of Hendersonville will use IRV for city council elections in November 2007.
--Ask10questions 00:52, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Given that the North Carolina legislature meets in January, I would think that this report to the 2007 General Assembly has already been made? Captain Zyrain  —Preceding comment was added at 01:17, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  COMMENT on United States Category and edits 

message: I think that it will be beneficial to expand the article which I have created, opposition to instant-runoff voting. This can be a place for opponents to expound on their arguments in more detail without having to worry so much about the need to balance pro and con arguments. The major arguments, having been fleshed out and put in polished form at that page, can then be summarized at instant-runoff voting. Captain Zyrain 12:22, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We might move the page to criticism of instant-runoff voting or arguments against instant-runoff voting. 66.208.12.125 12:31, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

text: The new article would be better placed in this article because it is not a separate concept but criticism of an existing concept. If you look at any other article, they will invariably include criticism sections rather than having separate articles. Green Giant 12:40, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see rationale at Talk:Opposition to instant-runoff voting. Captain Zyrain 13:04, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Rationale seen, comment added and agreement reached. :) Green Giant 13:22, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In accordance with Abd's suggestion, it has been moved to Controversies regarding instant-runoff voting. Captain Zyrain 02:00, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. That title is longer than it need be... I'd suggest Instant runoff voting: controversy. Presenting only one side in an article without equally presenting the other side is not balanced and will not help readers to understand the issues. Abd 14:03, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Opposition to instant-runoff voting]]

message: Last time I started a section with this title, which is a play on "Revised," the actual name of the most recent revision, someone edited the title to correct it. I guess I omitted the smiley face! This is *Talk,* folks, where it is a bit rude to edit someone else's contribution. Errors are allowed here! (It's even a tad rude to edit one's *own* contributions here, if someone has responded to them as-is ... but that's just my opinion. I'm certainly not in charge.)
The article as, as I write this, has the following in the introduction:
:Robert's Rules of Order describes how to implement IRV on p. 411-414, stating that in situations such as voting by mail in which it is impractical to repeat balloting until one candidate receives a majority, "it makes possible a more representative result than under a rule that a plurality shall elect"[2].
Being placed in the introduction, it has prominence, and it is quite understandable that advocates for IRV would be pleased at this placement and attached to it. On the other hand, opponents of IRV won't like this. Now, I agree that there is a significant fact behind this, and that mention of that fact belongs in the article, but ... if it is in the introduction, it must be brief. Going into nuances is not something that belongs in a short introduction. And without nuance, the mention is not balanced.
Originally, the mention was more blatant: "Robert's Rules recommends IRV for voting by mail," or something like that. Now, when I changed that to something more accurate, the edit was reverted. When I revised the edit to reflect some of the criticism of my edit, that was reverted. When I moved the mention to the middle of the article and added, again, more detail to make the facts clear, considering what had been said, that too was reverted, and an edit war started over this. I was careful about 3RR, but one of the reverters and persistent editors was a sock puppet, originally BenB4, but BenB4 was tossed in the laundry by Wikipedia admin and was replaced by Acct4. Then an SPA appeared and immediately filed a 3RR complaint against me. When an admin looked at this, the admin was pretty clearly angry about what had been going on and banned almost everyone in sight. But not me, the administrator made it clear that I had been defending the article from socks and anonymous reverts.
So there is history behind this. There were extensive discussions of what was actually in Robert's Rules, under descriptive section headers, just now archived.
I edited the mention to be accurate. Now, more slowly, (the socks and anonymous editor -- Rob Richie of FairVote, known by IP -- could no longer access the article to edit it, the mention has slipped back toward what it had originally been. It was placed back in the introduction. The explanation of what was *different* about "IRV" as described by Robert's Rules and what IRV is described as in the article was removed. It is now almost as POV as was the original. That is, it is a biased interpretation of the facts, prominently placed. And we have been over and over the facts. I'd suggest that anyone who wants to work on this particular problem read what came before, and then Talk about it here. I understand that this means a lot of reading, and I apologize for that; however, I certainly cannot demand this of anyone. Nevertheless, until we have an agreement on how Robert's Rules is going to be mentioned, I'm taking it out entirely, and I will defend this position against any attempt to put it back, unless what is put in is accurate *and* balanced.
I see no justification for allowing it to be in the article if we cannot agree on its language. It is not essential or necessary to the article. Not everything relevant or interesting must be in an article, and particularly not in the introduction. And I have put too much effort already into trying to find exact language that was acceptable to the pro-IRV editors. (And I am not claiming that all editors who have effectively reversed my edits on this are pro-IRV; but the view of these editors of the context hasbeen, in my opinion, as yet insufficient for these editors to recognize easily all the implications.)
What do I mean by balanced? Well, suppose there was a resume from a candidate for employment, and it quoted from a termination letter from a previous employer. The quote says that the employee did a good job making sure that certain responsibilities were fulfilled. The quote might be true, accurate, and sourced. Is that balanced? Well, it depends on the rest of what is in the report!
Robert's Rules dislikes the use of "preferential voting," in general. However, it is a manual that reflects actual practice. There are conditions where an organization may consider it impractical to hold a runoff election or other further process. (RRONR dislikes top-two runoffs, by the way, for reasons apparent to anyone who understands election methods: frequently the top two excludes the most broadly acceptable candidate, the one who would beat either of the others in a one-on-one contest). *Given* that further process is considered difficult or impossible, RRONR suggests "preferential voting" *as a possibility.* Now, there are many forms of preferential voting, with different characteristics. Some organizations, for example, use a Condorcet method, which would always select as winner a candidate like the one just mentioned, who would beat all others in pairwise elections, and it is clear that on these grounds, RRONR would prefer this. But the editors are constrained by actual practice, and the use of Condorcet methods is still relatively rare. So they do describe a "preferential voting" method, as an example, that clearly resembles IRV, so clearly that many observers, including myself, when first looking at it, have thought that it *was* "IRV." Was it? That depends on details.
Unless the bylaws specifically allow it, RRONR disallows election by a plurality. Where voters are free to vote as they choose, any ballot submitted by an eligible voter is part of the denominator when considering the fraction that have voted for a candidate, even if the ballot is spoiled; spoiled ballots can be considered No votes on all the candidates, in this sense, and a candidate must get a majority Yes to be elected. What STV (IRV is single-winner STV) allows is vote substitution, that is, you may vote for A, but if A is being eliminated by the IRV process, and you have cast a lower rank vote for B, then B may be substituted for B. In other words, if you rank a candidate, you are voting for that candidate, against all others with lower rank on your ballot, as well as against all candidates you have not ranked at all. This is, indeed, why some voters would dislike ranking all candidates, for a requirement that they do so requires that they vote *for* such a candidate, making it appear, possibly, that a majority supports that candidate when, in fact, this is not the case, the majority might actually prefer that the office remain vacant. The only way to vote, clearly, *against* a candidate if full ranking is required is to rank the candidate last, and if one wishes to so vote against more than one candidate, full ranking does not allow it.
The ballot-counting procedure described in RRONR that resembles IRV is the equivalent of sequential-elimination IRV in every respect except the final step: that procedure does not terminate unless there is a true majority, including all spoiled or exhausted ballots. Because the description was not completely explicit about this, but this understanding is clear if one understands how RRONR uses terms and considers to be valid votes, one editor claimed that my commentary on this was wrong. That was User:Tbouricius; however, when the rules in the recently proposed "IRV" legislation in Vermont were brought here, he backed up and claimed he had never argued against the basic point about "majority." Why was this an effective argument? Well, he wrote that legislation, and, I think, another commentary on FairVote saying practically the same thing. In Vermont, if there is no majority winner, the election goes to the Assembly, which votes by secret ballot to choose between the top three. How the "top three" are defined, by the way, is utterly unclear to me.... and the ballot instructions in that legislation are incorrect ... but that's another matter.
Until I started to work on this, the article seems to have assumed that there was only one form of IRV. However, batch-elimination IRV and sequential elimination IRV behave differently, and the number of ranks allowed also have major effects, and likewise this question of the majority. Lumping these all together as "IRV" is politically useful, for, then, the "IRV" movement can claim "momentum," each time we get something that is one of these forms.
A mature article will clearly delineate the various forms in use and being proposed, and, to the extent that instances of use are mentioned, the specific form used will be mentioned. Robert's Rules of order "describes" (not "recommends") a method which is IRV-sequential elimination, with no restrictions on ranking -- it can be complete, or not, as the voter chooses -- with a majority election requirement unless the bylaws otherwise specify (which it does *not* recommend, it would, in fact, discourage). What Mr. Bouricius proposed in the Vermont legislature is, I agree, what Robert's Rules describes, but most IRV implementations in the U.S. aren't like that, and IRV is being sold as "guarantees a majority winner," which is utterly untrue unless we define "majority" to exclude inconvenient votes; but this fact is easily obscure to someone who is not aware of the details.
So I can understand at least some of Mr. Bouricius' frustration with me. Since what he proposed in Vermont *was* what is described in Robert's Rules, how could I claim that it was different? But what he proposed there was *not* what was described in this article as "IRV"! Indeed, the description of sequential elimination that was here (and I think it's been taken back to that) referred only to "majority" of the ballots remaining, not of all the ballots cast by eligible voters.
(Legal voting systems may generally not count true spoiled ballots, unlike RRONR, in determining the majority, but I see no way to exclude ballots with a lawful vote from the base for "majority," unless the IRV legislation trumps a majority requirement in law that is therefore removed. Some have argued here that "IRV is like runoff elections,' but that is actually an argument of no legal force, entirely aside from being defective in another way: in a real runoff, a voter who expressed no opinion on the pair involved now has the option of expressing one, whereas "instant runoff" does not allow the voter that option.) Abd 17:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In cases when you say something and then think better of it after someone has already responded, you can strike out your original comments.. On second thought, it's probably better just to avoid saying something dumb to begin with. Captain Zyrain 17:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite possibly not. By sticking my foot in my mouth, I learn far more rapidly than if I hang back, censoring what I say because it might be wrong.... Yes, caution is good, but only to a point. Using strikeout is an excellent idea. It preserves the record and makes clear that the writer no longer supports what he or she wrote. Cool. Abd 19:34, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: True, you learn more from your failures than your successes, but the mistakes sure can be painful! Fortunately, making a regrettable comment on Wikipedia ranks pretty low on the scale compared to other ill-advised life mistakes (e.g. switching majors to philosophy). Captain Zyrain 19:41, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Robert's Rules of Order, Newly "Revisited" :-) 

message: Here are a couple images generously contributed by Bouricius:
These are actually from an STV election, so I'm not sure whether they could find use here, but I thought I'd post the links FYI. Captain Zyrain 19:53, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There'd be quite a few on Australian articles too as we've used a similar method at both federal and state elections for most of our post-Federation history. Most would be GFDL as they've been snapped by members of the public who've uploaded them here. Orderinchaos 22:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead and post them then, please. StrengthOfNations 06:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Images

message: I've now taken out two of the claims in the Instant-runoff_voting#History_and_current_use section.
The first is the APSA mention. The problem with this fact, as it is, is that this section is mostly about current use (and if we want to make it about history in the U.S., it will get *much* longer), whereas APSA is not, as shown by what I had placed in the article, not currently using IRV, and, quite possibly, *never* used IRV since it was founded in 1903. (Until I started fixing this, the article read that APSA "uses" IRV.) Given the context, removing the claim is probably a better edit than qualifying it to make it NPOV. "Adopted," the language inserted by another editor when the problem was pointed out is language intended to create the same impression in the reader: that political scientists favor IRV and are using it. And that is promotional and misleading.
The second is the university claim. There was nothing wrong with what I had placed in it, and I had compromised by wording the claim so that FairVote could be used as a source. (I.e., it was made into an attributed claim, not stated as a fact. That, in itself, could be questioned, but probably not by me.) However, all these claims of usage have not been verified, and the only ones I had yet researched turned out to be elections where IRV was not relevant, i.e., elections where simple Plurality would have produced the same result. The elections I looked at were major universities, and it turned out that IRV was being used, i.e., the ballots are IRV, but that the extra ballot information was moot. Therefore I don't consider these examples important to the article. The fact that IRV is being used by student associations (that's what it is, mostly) can certainly be in the article, but it should not be one-sided and misleading, overstating the importance of IRV in those elections. So I took it out for now, since my compromise language was not accepted by the reverting editor.
I'm continuing to research the actual elections being run. I'd have added a better reference for Cary, but so far I haven't found official results. A week after the election, it was still in dispute. This election *did* use the additional ranks, all three (but from preliminary results, it seems that the third rank added nothing to the votes). If I had official results, I'd put a very brief summary of how the method performed in the article, the same as I did for other elections. I'm not cherry-picking what I find for some polemic effect.
An editor has raised the question of why I have not mentioned the money saved by avoiding runoffs. So far, I haven't seen any. San Francisco may show such, but I haven't researched San Francisco yet. But the matter of saving money spent in runoffs is questionable. If, for example, we had IRV for major public offices, where party affiliation is important, it's a two-party system, and, let's say, there is a requirement for a majority, and then we have an election, and it goes into the second round, was a runoff saved? Maybe, maybe not. If IRV is the method, then we will see third party supporters voting sincerely, instead of making, before voting, the nearly inevitable compromise that is reflected by the dropping of their candidate in the first rounds and their votes's reduction to their second choice. The effect here was not that a runoff was avoided, necessarily, but that the voters were able to vote sincerely. So, what we can tell from the IRV results is not whether or not a runoff was avoided, though it is possible. What *is* relevant and important, in my opinion, is:
(1) Was the election decided in the first round, i.e., all the other choices were moot?
(2) If not, by what percentage of *total* votes did the winner prevail?
and, sometimes
(3) Are the elections contested? If contested, are there more than two candidates? If the answer to either of these questions is No, then IRV is a complication without a justification.
It could be argued that it's still good to have the system in place, just in case it's needed. But, believe it or not, I'm not arguing about IRV here. I'm just doing research and editing for an encyclopedia, happening to have some knowledge and interest in the subject.
If the article says that the additional ranks were used (as with Cary), and if the facts support it, though, any reader could see that a runoff was avoided. Whether or not it was avoided would depend on the specific rules for runoffs in place. Additional ranks might be used but not change the result that would have come to pass anyway. My intention would be to succinctly report the election results (or a series of election results) so that what the reader would need to know about runoffs would be included, or would be readily accessible.
Whether or not a runoff was avoided is a *conclusion* that would probably require original research, which we cannot do for insertion here unless we can get it published in a reliable source. So, unless it were so blatantly obvious that it essentially is not controversial, or it is published in a reliable source, I couldn't write what the complaining editor seems to want me to write, even if I thought it true. ---- Abd (talk) 21:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of controversial items 

message: Its possible that the burlingtonvotes.org site was prepared by IRV advocates.
It happened to the site about Cary NC's elections.  
If you key in caryvotes123 to your browser, it re-directs you to the Wake County North Carolina Board of Elections website, Wake County Gov
The problem is that the caryvotes123 domain name is registered to -  Robert Richie
--Ask10questions (talk) 07:35, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  COMMENTS ABOUT GOVERNMENTAL ELECTIONS, SPECIFICALLY BURLINGTON INFO 

message: House Bill 1024 defines "instant runoff" as follows:
:"Under 'instant runoff voting,' voters rank up to three of the candidates by order of preference, first, second, or third. If the candidate with the greatest number of first‑choice votes receives more than fifty percent (50%) of the first‑choice votes, that candidate wins. If no candidate receives that minimum number, the two candidates with the greatest number of first‑choice votes advance to a second round of counting. In this round, each ballot counts as a vote for whichever of the two final candidates is ranked highest by the voter. The candidate with the most votes in the second round wins the election."
Isn't this Sri Lankan contingent voting, rather than instant-runoff voting? Markus Schulze 16:09, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  North Carolina