Talk:Electoral system/Archive 1

message: Hi,
I'm new to the wiki as an author and I would like to contribute a section on the votes are actually sorted and tabulated in various states.  Specificly, I wanted to add a section on how absentee ballots are handled and then tabulate which states allow for absentee ballots.  The current Voting System page doesn't allow for this very well without an addition to the table of contents.  My thought on this is to add a voting methods section under the aspects of voting systems and have 3 sections:
:Voting methods
::Absentee voting:
::Internet Voting:
::DRE voting:
::Paper ballot:
Then I will want to expand on the sub headings and get others who are well versed to do the same.
Thoughts?
--Ceremona 19:56, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  want to add a section for how the absentee ballot is handled in various states 

message: There's an orphaned article, Simple Majority Voting.  Someone might want to rescue the material there, or delete it.
:I'll add it back for now under Plurality, until someone tells me the difference. Drernie 22:43, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I would rather see it deleted Pm67nz 06:04, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  orphaned article: [[Simple Majority Voting]] 

message: Does anyone understand this section? Where the heck is this stuff used? I don't think this belongs on a "list" page like Voting_Systems unless it has a link. --Tom Ruen 05:44, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)
:Single Winner Variations
::Automatic Equal Ranking Line Option (AERLO)  
:::A voter may mark a line in his/her ranking, meaning that if no one above that line wins, then that voter wants to promote to 1st place all of him/her above-line candidates and have a recount. (In pairwise-count methods the promotion only takes place if, additionally, there's a circular tie containing above-line and below-line candidates). 
::Automatic Truncation Line Option (ATLO)  
:::A voter may mark a line in him/her ranking, meaning that if no one above the line wins, then that voter wants to drop from him/her ranking all of him/her below-line candidates and have a recount. (In pairwise-count methods the dropping only takes place if, additionally, there's a circular tie containing above-line and below-line candidates).
: Agreed, these are AFAIK recent inventions known only to readers of the electoral methods mailing list, and do not (yet!) belong in a general purpose encyclopedia, well certainly not on a core/intro/list page like this one. Pm67nz 06:35, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  '''Single Winner Variations''' SECTION 

message: In one of the comments above, Tom suggested that we have a separate page to give an overview of voting systems as they have been used in practice and in history.  I think this would make a good subsection of this page.  For example: "Around the world, the most popular voting systems are .... and ...., which is especially  popular in ...." DanKeshet 19:41, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  theory vs. practice/history 

message: Henrygb: why did you feel that was POV?  I thought it was tautological, based on the preceding paragraph.  --Baylink 04:48, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "... is not guaranteed..." 

message: I followed the link to the University of Texas tutorial, and found it to be misinformative, and generally lower-quality than existing tutorials in the external links section. Specifically, it called IRV and Approval "positional methods", but the generally accepted definition of a positional method is one where positions on a ballot correspond directly to points.
IRV is at least ranked, which is a term that is confusable with "positional", but I have no idea what inspired them to put Approval there.
Fahrenheit451, I hope you can understand that I'm not reverting your edit out of spite. I would have removed that link if anyone had posted it and I had followed it. That said, it is because your edits to Borda count have made me suspicious that I followed the link.
If any other external links on this page are equally misinformative, or if they are biased or have other flaws, I would advocate removing them too. I simply haven't looked at them all.
RSpeer 17:38, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
That's fine on removing that tutorial.  Your other criteria for link removal is interesting in that it is contrary to what you are advocating for the electowiki link: "if they are biased or have other flaws.."
That is quite broad and would include many, perhaps most links on wikipedia. Perhaps you are operating on a double standard. --Fahrenheit451 02:10, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove University of Texas tutorial 

message: F451: If you go to this page
http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Special:Allpages
you will find various articles that exist on electowiki but do not exist on wikipedia. Certainly there is a lot of duplication, but the extra material makes it worth an external link. Hermitage
It's another secondary resource, but in this case, mostly an older, obsolete version of the wikipedia articles that have since been edited to much higher quality.  Let's cultivate a high standard of scholarship, James.
Anything that is there and valid should be copied over to wikipedia and edited here.  There is a worthwhile project for whoever wishes to do it.--Fahrenheit451 00:58, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: electowiki link

message: I challenge the validity of the Independence of Clones criteria: I have not found any mathematical definition of a clone, nor have I found a way to objectively determine what a clone is and isn't. I can say that clones are a special case of a correlated pair, but that still is not a precise definition. I would like to promote a discussion on this topic.--Fahrenheit451 18:29, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no evidence of the existence of ideal gases either, however they are a very useful concept for studying real-world chemistry.  To claim they have "no real world application" because empirical research shows them to be only very good approximations rather than a perfect model is...strange.  True clones may not commonly exist in large public elections (just as true ties don't), however near ties and close elections certainly do, and theoretical analysis of their effects is certainly done - hence, it belongs in Wikipedia. Scott Ritchie 01:30, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Challenge to validity of Independence of Clones criteria 

message: I can't tell when this page had anything POV on it recently, regardless of whether you think independence of clones is a good criterion. This page doesn't express any opinions about criteria, it just lists them. Can we remove the NPOV notice?
RSpeer 02:44, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
I think so. Perhaps the npov flag served to foster discussion about ICC, but I think discussion can continue without it. I don't think that the inclusion of a criterion like ICC is a sufficient reason to label a page as non-neutral. Hermitage 07:13, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV notice 

message: Today I edited several method articles to bring the criteria listed to consistency.  One method satisfied the foo criteria, but in another article the foo criteria was not listed, but the boo criteria was.  For example, I removed the Smith criterion from the Borda count article because most articles did not use it, and Hermitage reverts my edit.
We need a consensus on which criteria is used to evaluate methods and stay consistent with that in editing.--Fahrenheit451 23:59, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that consistency in this area could be beneficial. I will follow Rspeer's lead and continue the discussion of which criteria to use on the /Included methods and criteria page. Hermitage 01:00, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistent use of voting method criteria 

message: It seems that KVenzke's 20:57, 12 July 2005 edit unintentionally made it so the content of this page repeats twice. I will attempt to restore normalcy by deleting the top half.
WARNING: This may delete new content. Please help me restore normalcy by attempting to find and restore new content that may be deleted in this edit. Thank you. --Hermitage 09:02, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  doubling of page content: be on the lookout for possible deletion 

message: I noticed that the methods table states that irv satifies condorcet loser.  This is only true if voters are not allowed to truncate ballots, as is the law in Australia.  If voters are allowed to truncate ballots, and that is actually the standard form of STV and IRV, then the condorcet loser can be elected as other candidates may never receive the cl's transferred votes. This should be noted in the table. --Fahrenheit451 18:23, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  STV and IRV point of information