Talk:Mexican general election 2006 controversies

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Contents 1 Discussion 2 PREP vs. Quick Count 3 Is disagreeing with Timeshifter a form of vandalism? 4 Is agreement with Hseldon now a new wikipedia guideline? 5 Mark Almond? 6 What happened next? 7 Al Giordano, and photos 8 First proposal: Archive of portions of talk page 9 Second Proposal: Moratorium and reorganization 10 Broad categories for the reorganization 11 English and Spanish Names 12 Calls for election reform 13 Removed 4 duplicative photos 14 Letter by Woldenberg 15 Sergio Sarmiento quote 16 José Woldenberg article 17 Víctor Romero info 18 Missing Votes 19 Speaker's platform 20 Alliance vs. Coalition 21 User copy 22 Titles for articles in Spanish in the references 23 Relevance 23.1 Warnings on editor's talk pages 24 Quality of sources

[edit] Discussion

--Timeshifter 12:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC). Wikipedia is not a debating society between 2 simple positions of right and left. It also is not about consensus. It is about putting out verifiable info from sources. If you have more info, and the sources to back it up, then please add the info, and the sources. You obviously are not very familiar with the wikipedia guidelines. Please read them all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

--Timeshifter 12:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I might not be familiar with the guidelines, but I have been reading them and consensus is a Wikipedia guideline. And I certainly doubt Wikipedia encourages a single person to decide that the current content should not be removed. Please see straw polls, it's a perfectly valid resource in order to find consensus, which is something I'm not the only one asking for here.

Besides, even if Wikipedia is not a debating society between two simple positions you should take a look at the title of the article: "Mexican general election 2006 controversies", they key word is controversy, which citing Wikipedia is "an opinion or opinions over which parties are actively arguing", so by definition the article should mention the argumentation of the opinions. Or rename the article to "Mexican general election 2006 disagreements", which better describes the current purpose of the content of the article.

-- Felipec 16:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is a quote from the top of the overall Wikipedia guidelines page: "While we try to respect consensus, Wikipedia is not a democracy, and its governance can be inconsistent."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

You can't vote here to overrule the Wikipedia guidelines. You can't remove the current content by a straw poll consisting of your friends. The current content meets the Wikipedia guidelines because it is verifiable and sourced. People have added info and sources from various sides. As I said, if you have more info, then please put it in the article. With the sources. --Timeshifter 17:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

What are you afraid of? I'm not asking my friends, I'm asking the community and it's a simple question, it doesn't mean it's going to be done. If you believe Mckappa and others are friends I asked for help you are not only wrong, but certainly not acting in good faith.

Just because the content is verifiable and sourced doesn't mean it meets Wikipedia guidelines. Besides, policies are more important than guidelines, and a very important one, specially for controversies is Neutral point of view, and the current content doesn't meet it.

I understand that you don't want all your work to be gone, but starting from scratch doesn't mean all your work will be gone, because obviously there is important information there, but it would have be slowly added always carefully keeping the neutral point of view.

Regarding the quote: "While we try to respect consensus, Wikipedia is not a democracy, and its governance can be inconsistent.", it states that Wikipedia tries to respect consensus, so there's nothing wrong with trying to achieve it.

Another important policy is:

Ownership of articles

You agreed to allow others to modify your work. So let them.

-- Felipec 21:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

You don't understand Wikipedia guidelines partly because you have done so few edits. I can see why you have done so few edits, because the last one you did here had typos and errors of misspelling, grammar, and English wording. I corrected your many errors. Obviously you are not a native English speaker. I have learned a second language also, so I can understand why you have so few edits on English-language Wikipedia.

You think I don't understand the Wikipedia guidelines, it's your opinion and I won't take it as true.

No you don't understand, I have done few edits because I have never found an article that I would like to edit until now. Also, I don't normally make so much errors, I guess I didn't took the time to re-check what I wrote, I simply made a direct translation of what I read which is much accurate than what was written down. With your changes it now has better "English wording" but still is not what the articles says. I know English, but I don't know how to translate Mexican legal jargon into English one.

-- Felipec 17:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I kept the gist of what you wanted in the article. So no one is censoring you. Also, there is info in the article about how both sides have been accused of fraud and irregularities in this election and one following it. I added the info about the following election where it was the left who won the election, and it was the right who were claiming fraud and irregularities. I am not a supporter of any political parties in Mexico. I don't even understand Mexican politics that well, since I do not read Spanish. I am interested in the issue of election fraud and irregularities which is what this article is about. All sides are represented in the article. If you have more info, then stop complaining, and put the info in the article. Seeking Wikipedia consensus is not about trying to please political parties and their supporters. It is about seeking to meet Wikipedia guidelines. --Timeshifter 16:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course, all the sides are represented, in a biased way. I would still want to know the opinion of other people via the poll.

-- Felipec 17:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

How can we achieve a form to contact an administrator or wikipedia expert so as to calm down this discussion and start the balancing of this article? --189.135.70.251 04:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

...and by the way to analyze Timeshifter editing behavior as I agree with what Felipec has stated: It seems a little 'suspicious' --189.135.70.251 04:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

---

Start of McKappa reply

Timeshifter. Fortunately for you, you have plenty of time to edit and erase all what we comment against. That makes you be sort of the "owner" of the article. In my opinion, Felipec, we should write a completely different article, explaining the nature of the controversy from another perspective. A more "partial" en "centralized" one.

I haven't erased any sourced material. You keep complaining about wanting to add more info. No one is stopping you. --Timeshifter 08:16, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Timeshifter is definitely not going to accept that "his" article is completely unbalanced, and he will continue making changes "pretending" he is partial. He says he has plenty of sources, but unfortunately his sources are not any credible ones. He cites "La Jornada", the worst, more partial source of information about this controversy.

Felipec, let's coordinate together (you and I, and whoever else would like to participate -including pro-AMLO with some decent wish to write a balanced article-) and let's start it. I know Timeshifter can always edit what we do, but we should can also revert his edits all the time. I propose to call it "Controversies of Presidential Election in Mexico 2006, a balanced view".

Mckappa 04:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Mckappa, I couldn't agree with you more. This is the reason I stopped trying to contribute to this article. It is evident that the regular editors, those who don't have to work and/or have enough free time to advance their version of reality in wikipedia, have as a priority to advance their political positions, instead of presenting a neutral and balanced article.

It seems to me that consensus seems to go around the unbalance of this article. The only thing that prevents me to edit is time! How sad! However, it seems to me that a rewriting of this article is necessary, instead of writing a "competing" article. Hari Seldon 04:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Mckappa, Hari Seldon, I also agree, maybe we can get our hands in some private wiki where we can edit a new article freely, and once we are happy with the results start merging stuff to this article. In my personal opinion the best way to start is with a list of the controversies, and then with the claims of both sides. -- Felipec 19:22, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

My personal reading is that there is a clear unbalance, at least in the sourcing for the article, if not the actual presentation. The vast majority of sources are staunchly pro-López Obrador (e.g., La Jornada, Narco News, New Left Review). while other sources are merely neutral (El Universal, foreign press, etc). I know that "a lot more pro-López Obrador" could be added, but the unbalance of an article is not measured by how much it omits in favor of one side, but by whether the views are accurately and proportionally represented. I am not advocating for a 50-50 split on opinions, but the general weight shoudl somehow reflect the general feeling on the issue. One would surmise from reading this article that there is a majority consensus that fraud either likely or may have occurred; the opposite seems to me to be true, based on both personal observation and reading, and polls I have seen. The allegations are labeled as allegations, but there seems to be little or nothing said on the debunking of many of them. Is it not relevant that López Obrador produced a video, allegedly smuggled, which he claimed showed ballot stuffing; and that it was clear that he was transferring ballots from the wrong box to the correct one, in plain view (as per the law)? That the video was not smuggled, and that the PRDs own representative to the polling place verified this? Or that López Obrador dismissed this by accusing the representative of having been bought? They produced a woman claiming to be a poll worker whom the PAN tried to bribe, but the claim did not hold up upon scrutiny (she wasn't a poll worker). They produced a man claiming to have been working for the IFE and saying his boss had made him input fake results favorable to Calderón, but again the claim crumbled upon scrutiny. López Obrador accused the PRD's own election observers of having been bought (since many of the polls in which he claimed irregularities had signed statements by those observers saying no irregularities had been observed). Making unfounded or provably false allegations time and again is a measure of credibility, and the López Obrador campaign made many; yet they are not mentioned as far as I can tell. Magidin 19:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

According to polls, 50% of the voters feel the elections where fair, while 30% feel the election was a fraud. Therefore, 50% of the content should present the view of a fair election, and 30% should present the arguments to that supposed fraud. Timeshifter argues that no one is stopping me from adding info, but the fact is that I have too little time to do it myself. I ask concious editors to take this opportunity at improving the article. Hari Seldon 23:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

You are not the only one with limited time. I spent longer than I wanted to (or should have) fixing up the section on the PREP, as you can probably tell by looking at the times in the history. Magidin 23:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

According to a Sept. 8-30, 2006 Ipsos/AP poll of citizens of 9 nations Mexicans had the lowest confidence that their votes are counted accurately. [1] Angus Reid Global Scan, Canada, writes: "87 per cent of Canadian respondents are very or somewhat confident that votes in their elections are counted accurately. France was next on the list with 85 per cent, followed by Germany with 84 per cent, South Korea with 83 per cent, Britain with 79 per cent, and Spain with 75 per cent. The lowest level of trust was registered in Mexico with 60 per cent, Italy with 65 per cent and the United States with 66 per cent." [2] --Timeshifter 23:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. Nobody is arguing that mexicans have a high level of trust as compared to other nations. In fact, it is the relatively low confidence (compared to other nearby countries) that is exploited by those who simply cry 'Fraud' without proof. Rather, the point is that a majority of mexicans believe the election was not fraudulent. Even at 60% that would mean that more mexicans believe their votes were accurately counted than not. Magidin 23:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Some more poll info from the Wikipedia article:

Nationwide polls: A poll released July 27 by El Universal found that 48 percent wanted a full recount, and 28 percent were against it. [3] 39 percent of Mexicans believe fraud occurred according to a nationwide poll of registered voters taken August 25 through 28, 2006 by the newspaper El Universal. 51 percent believed the election was clean. [4] [5] --Timeshifter 00:01, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't support any particular candidate or party in Mexican elections. I don't read Spanish, so I don't really know much about the candidates or parties. All the parties have made allegations of irregularities or fraud in the presidential election and/or the state election that followed soon after it. The roles have been reversed too when one side or the other wins a particular election. I put that info in the article. I am sure that some of the claims made by all sides have later been found to be mistaken claims or exaggerated claims or possibly fraudulent claims. Wikipedia just reports the info and sources and claims and counterclaims, and lets readers decide for themselves. You also have to remember that there is a lot less info in English than in Spanish. I have to deal with the English sources. So Magidin, your fluency in both languages is a great help. --Timeshifter 23:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

It is something of an exaggeration to say the roles were merely reversed in the two elections. The PAN did not call for a full recount, nor did it claim a "State Election", nor did it bring forth videos claiming they presented one thing when they were another, nor did they accuse their own poll workers of having bought. Neither did they claim to have "won by two million votes" (the claim made by AMLO on Sunday night when he claimed victory), nor to be ahead in the polls by 10 points in some secret polling which they refused to reveal. Dismissing the long track record of false claims by saying that you are sure "all sides" have engaged in "some" such behavior seems rather cavalier to me. Magidin 23:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I am not dismissing anything. Just pointing out the obvious. The same stuff goes on in the USA. Claims and counterclaims. From all sides. Some of it is found to be true. Some not. I am not taking sides. And there is a long track record of this stuff in Mexico going back many years. --Timeshifter 00:01, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The point is that this is not simply "claims and counterclaims. From all sides." The PRD has a history of crying Fraud. Sure, the wolf did eventually come for the sheep, but the context is important. The PRD cannot even hold internal contested elections without the loser claiming that he was defrauded. While the PRD has set forth many nebulous claims, most of which contradict each other, they have yet to produce something that rises above the level of insinuation and innuendo which is not quickly demonstrated to be false or baseless. Why is this not relevant to the context? I think you are trying to be fair; but I think you do not realize the proper context for the situation. You seem to be getting most of your information from "independent" news sources; that's fine, they often include a lot of information not carried by the usual ones. But the, remember: FOX News is an independent news source in that regard: it does not rely on the usual news outlets to produce its news. Does that make them somehow a reliable source? López Obrador stated time and again that a triumph "by the right" (i.e., the PAN), was "unacceptable" and "morally unacceptable." On July 2nd he claimed a two million vote advantage, now he is saying that he won by less than 0.25%, while at the same time saying that the fraud did not involve votes cast, but rather the "prevailing environment". Which is it? Is it relevant? I think it is. I think just saying "all sides do it" or "some true, some false" is far too cavalier an attitude. I say this as someone who personally experienced the PRD from its inception. And as long as I am at it: why are some labeled as "right-leaning" before reporting their opinion that the election was fair, but those who proclaim their opinion the other way are not labeled? Alianza Cívica may be a government watchdog, but it is hardly independent: it has close ties to the PRD. Perhaps all those "right-leaning" labels ought to be removed. Magidin 19:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

You have to remember that this page was edited by many people. I tried removing all the right and left-leaning stuff initially, but people kept insisting on similar stuff. They would use much stronger language, though. So we came to a compromise and used the terms right and left leaning. It seemed the most NPOV description. It was not an attacking, inciting description such as "far-right" or "extreme leftist" and other such descriptions.

If you find verifiable sourced material that claims that this and that specific PRD allegation in the 2006 election is wrong for such and such reason, then absolutely, please put it in the article. --Timeshifter 22:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PREP vs. Quick Count

The text of the article suggests (and states overtly at least once) that the PREP and the Quick Count are the same thing. They are most definitely not.

The Quick Count ("Conteo Rapido", as opposed to the PREP, "Programa the Resultados Electorales Preliminares"), was a statistical sampling model of several polling places. It was meant as a statistical tool of prediction. The results from the Quick Count, which were made public some days later, showed that the statistical tests showed Calderon as winning in all three, but in two of them the difference was within the margin of error and in the third it was only barely outside. It was because of this, as per prior agreement, that the IFE declared the race too close to call (the prior agreement was that the IFE would either state which candidate was projected to be the winner based on the Conteo Rapido, or ask for a couple more hours to collate more results, or declare the race too close to call). The Quick Count was not the PREP. As it happens, the final tally agreed with the Quick Count results.

The PREP on the other hand is the quick dissemination of full results as reported by the district electoral councils to the IFE. There is no statistical component to the PREP, as opposed to the Quick Count which is an entirely statistical analysis of results.

See for example [6], in which Ugalde speaks of making the results from the Quick Count known, and whether the tecnical committee felt it would be possible to determine the electoral tendencies at the time. Another note is in: [7] Finally, the official report from the tecnical committee is at [8] Magidin 22:21, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I did not write those 2 sections in the article: "Quick count" and "Official count". But I would really appreciate it if you could rewrite both of those sections. With as much detail as possible. I don't read Spanish so I can't follow up on the links you left. If you rewrite those sections please leave some links sprinkled around in it. Just plain old external links if you want. Like you did in your above comment. I can convert them to detailed reference links. That will save you some time. --Timeshifter 22:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I've rewritten the first, with a title change. I will get to the second part when time permits, probably later today. Magidin 17:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I've done a lighter but nontrivial rewrite to the Official Count section as well, and some small additions and fixes to the other section. Magidin 19:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is disagreeing with Timeshifter a form of vandalism?

I have deleted the See Also section because if you remove "Electoral Fraud", there is nothing else to see...

I believe that removing "Electoral Fraud" as a link would greatly aid in the neutrality of the page. Having that link makes the implication that the 2006 election was a form of electoral fraud, advancing the thesis of the minority who saw their candidate lose the election. In honor of neutrality, I believe this article should strive to focus on facts, and the fact is that the election was held, and that controversies where filed, but that there is was no legal resolution, or no majority opinion (at least in Mexico) that electoral fraud occured.

Having the link is an implication that fraud occured in Mexico in 2006, and that the controversies have factual value. I contest this conclusion, as many others in this talk page do. Indeed, for the benefit of neutrality, the link in the "see also" section should be deleted. Hari Seldon 06:22, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is agreement with Hseldon now a new wikipedia guideline?

Having a "See also" section is normal for most wikipedia pages. They put in links to other wikipedia pages about the same topic or related topics. This article is about alleged electoral fraud. The wikipedia article on electoral fraud has a lot of info on all types of electoral fraud and irregularities. It is a good place to look to learn, and to decide which, if any, of the claims in the Mexican election are similar or not. It is not a claim that the Mexican election was, or was not, fraudulent. Let the readers decide. I will add some additional "See also" links. --Timeshifter 08:30, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I was not asking for you to agree with me, only to discuss the point before imposing your point of view, and calling mine vandalism.

I am not against a See Also link, but I think the See Also should link to other controversial elections, or to other Mexican elections. The See Also section adds context. By adding a link to "Electoral Fraud" the context you are advancing is one with the conclusion that the 2006 elections constituted Electoral Fraud. They do not, and so the link should be removed from the See Also section. Hari Seldon 18:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I added this note after the Electoral Fraud link: "Inclusion of this wikipedia link does not indicate endorsement of the claims made of electoral irregularities and fraud in the 2006 Mexican general election." I know of no other wikipedia page that does this. You will note that the solution was to add more info, to clarify, and to edit, not to delete material. Deleting material is vandalism when editing it would solve the problem. Look it up in the wikipedia guidelines. --Timeshifter 21:55, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually it is a wikipedia guideline to agree with Hseldon if he is with the consensus. Timeshifter obviously doesn't care about this guideline.

In my opinion all those links in the "See also" section should be gone. Are you going to add each and every link to other wiki pages there? As Timeshifter said, it is meant for pages about the same topic or related topics. May I remind you that this page is about controversies, not electoral fraud. A good see also example: 2004 United States election voting controversies.

It also isn't helpful to go forth and backwards adding and removing editions, that's what consensus is for.

-- Felipec 19:51, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the 2004 United States election voting controversies seems like a good guideline. Compared to it, this page is poorly edited (completely setting aside the content, the formatting seems generally poor: a lot of short or one-sentence paragraphs, and the like). I think the article could use a full rewrite (okay, setting aside the sections I just fully rewrote yesterday...), inclusion of background (both the fact that election fraud was widely prevalent prior to 2000, that the rules were completely overhauled in 1998, and a quick review of how the system is supposed to operate; and also problems and statements made during the campaign, such as the illegal ads by the CCE which were pro-Calderón). A better organization of the allegations, with a clearer timeline. Rather than quoting each allegation separately, mentioning the categories and linking to those making them, etc. Now, it is of course easy for me to propose such massive work, a bit harder to bring it to fruition. I teach at a university, and we are heading to the end of the semester rush, so I certainly do not foresee having a lot of time for reformatting and reorganzing, let alone dig up more information and references. But I may have some in three or four weeks. Given the recent back and forths perhaps a good temporary solution would be to have a cooling off period for a couple of weeks, leaving the neutrality tag but leaving any major re-write off, and then come back to it. In any case, by mid-December I should have a couple of days during which I could try to reorganize and reformat this article, and try to provide more references and a background. Magidin 21:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you Magidin. I am a student at a university, so I have the same time problem as you. Late december would be better for me to contribute.

About the "See Also" section, I also believe it should be about same topi or related topics, such as elections in Mexico, controversial elections in other countries, and the electoral system of Mexico, and perhaps other countries. A link to the Electoral Fraud article has no place in this section. Hari Seldon 22:40, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I also agree with you Magidin. You are doing a great job, it would be great if you could give some time in mid-December to make these big changes. Maybe then we can focus on the controversies, and of course, an explanation of the whole system seems necessary, maybe even a different article about it. -- Felipec 20:32, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mark Almond?

I agree with Hseldon, the opinion of Mark Almond is not that relevant here, he was not even an observer in this elections.

If you read the article, he mentions a lot of stuff happening in a lot of parts of the world, and few references to Mexico. The only fact the he mentions is the following:

Although Mexico's election authorities rejected Lopez Obrador's demand for all 42m ballots to be recounted, the partial recount of 9% indicated numerous irregularities. But no echo of indignation has wafted to the streets of Mexico City from western capitals.

A lot of people keep mentioning this one, specially the people that doesn't know how the Mexican elections work. I agree it's a controversial one, but that doesn't mean there was fraud, the reason is simple: Only the ballots with proved irregularities are recounted. Assuming that the other 91% of the ballots which had no proven irregularities actually had irregularities because the 9% with proven irregularities actually had irregularities it's a fallacy.

The rest of the article he actually mentions something related to the election focuses on Salafranca. He makes a lot of claims, but no facts.

So what are we gaining from the opinion of Mark Almond? Are we going to put the opinion of all the world even when they make fallacious conclusions?

-- Felipec 20:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps it would be more constructive to, instead, show the opinion of Mexican analysts or the opinion of someone directly involved in the election. I understand that including an opinion about the observers is important for the issue of neutrality, but does it add anything to just put any opinion, no matter how far out of context the opinion is taken? At the very least, the article should mention that Mark Almond's opinion is not made as a judgement of the election, but as a judgement about attitudes of western nations. Hari Seldon 22:34, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the recent edit of that section by Magidin here is fine by me.

He added this mainly: "(but who did not participate as an observer in the Mexican election)"

Here is the original sourced sentence in question:

Mark Almond, an election observer in several countries, questioned the objectivity of José Ignacio Salafranca and some of the mass media.

The reference link for it is:

"Outcry over Mexican elections falling on deaf ears". By Mark Almond, Malaysia Sun, 15 August 2006. Same article in The Guardian is titled: 'People power' is a global brand owned by America. "West promoting 'people power' when it suits". Taipei Times, 19 August 2006. Same Guardian article as above.

This is obviously relevant to the article. The referenced article was reprinted in several mainstream media. It comments directly on the election observers in Mexico. Consensus, as I discussed previously, is about meeting wikipedia guidelines, not about a small group of people agreeing to delete parts of a wikipedia article. See all the relevant wikipedia guideline links in previous discussion.

If you want to further clarify the Mark Almond info, Felipec, then feel free to do so. But it must be verifiable info that you add, and verifiable editing that you do. Meaning it comes from verifiable sources, and not just from you. :See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability - Feel free to add info from other analysts, etc..

Felipec, you are now up to 7 edits total as a member of wikipedia (not including edits on talk pages). All of those edits are on this wikipedia page. Several of your edits have been deletions of sourced material. Anyone can see this for themselves by clicking the link to your contributions, and then clicking the "diff" links next to each of your edits. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Felipec

Felipec, you also tried to label the Global Exchange group as "far left". See that here. People then agreed to use NPOV terms such as right or left leaning. Or no description. --Timeshifter 23:00, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, 2 deletions are several, and please keep in mind that the article is biased, I removed content that was leaning towards the AMLO side, and considering Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, I consider that a good thing. Or do you think we should add each and every piece of sourced material out there?

I did try to label Global Exchange as far left? Please read the Wikipedia article about Global Exchange and you'll see I was not the one who made that label.

And why my contributions have anything to do with this? Please let's discuss the article, not me. Oh, and BTW, I'm Felipe Contreras, not Felipe Calderón, if that's any relevant to you.

-- Felipec 02:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Out of your current total of 7 edits of wikipedia pages, here are 3 vandalizing deletions of highly relevant sourced material: 1. 2. 3.

I see where somebody snuck in the label of "far left" on the Global Exchange wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_Exchange&diff=73806689&oldid=72970664

I just deleted that "far left" sentence there. My edit comment there says: "Deleted sentence about them being 'far left.' That is a POV. The most one could accurately say is 'left-leaning' and that is unnecessary since people can decide for themselves from the description."

Found this on a Global Exchange page: "Global Exchange is ranked in the 'Top 20 Most Trusted NGOs' by readers of the Wall Street Journal." http://store.gxonlinestore.org

It is common on wikipedia talk pages to discuss an editor's biases as shown by their edits and talk page controversies. --Timeshifter 02:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, #2 is not a deletion, it includes #1 deletion, which is a totally valid deletion because it didn't make any point (and I made that comment in the hope that somebody else would put it into context), it didn't even mention it was Ted Lewis the one who said that, and there is no other source of that information. It alone didn't imply anything, but putting it in the context of the Ted Lewis's comment it implies that if there were irregularities the diplomats were not allowed to make comments.

According to Wikipedia vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. So are you implying that I tried to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia? You are making far fetched comments and assuming people are doing things in bad-faith, and that is against Wikipedia guidelines, always assume good-faith. And "highly relevant sourced material" is a relative qualification.

Top 20 Most Trusted NGOs? I can't find any other source of information that mentions that, except Global Exchange of course. But even if that were the case what does it have to do with anything? I did not delete any relevant information that came from Global Exchange.

Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Apparent bad-faith edits that do not make their bad-faith nature inarguably explicit are not considered vandalism at Wikipedia. For example, adding a personal opinion once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated.

Edits that blank all or part of a biography of a living person may not be vandalism, but instead an effort by the subject of the article to remove inaccurate or biased material.

-- Felipec 06:09, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The high rating of Global Exchange by Wall Street Journal readers is to further show that it is not correct to label it "far left."

Repeated deletion of the same relevant sourced material is strongly frowned upon in Wikipedia. Here are the 2 items below that you deleted. One of them you deleted twice. I converted the reference links to standard links, so people could see them.

There were 673 international election observers for 130,000 polling stations. Most of them were diplomats, and were therefore not allowed to make public comments. "Standoff At The Zocalo". Sophie McNeill, ZNet, 28 August 2006.

Mark Almond, an election observer in several countries, questioned the objectivity of José Ignacio Salafranca and some of the mass media. "Outcry over Mexican elections falling on deaf ears". By Mark Almond, Malaysia Sun, 15 August 2006. Same article in The Guardian is titled: 'People power' is a global brand owned by America. "West promoting 'people power' when it suits". Taipei Times, 19 August 2006. Same Guardian article as above.

The info is obviously relevant. And both have references to back them up. You will note that an experienced editor, Magidin, did not delete the Mark Almond info. He added more info. That is how it is done in Wikipedia. One clarifies and edits. One does not delete except as a last resort. --Timeshifter 08:03, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Please do not quote my leaving the information in as evidence that it is relevant. In my editing comment, for example, I stated I thought the relevance was questionable at best. I usually tend to leave things in on a first pass, but that's merely my style, not my evaluation of the relevancy. In addition, since I am hoping to reorganize the entire thing to make it more coherent and less a long list of people and opinions, I left the information in for future reference. Whether this is actually fully relevant is, frankly, something I am nowhere near convinced. The article is a complaint that the media has not paid more attention to the situation, Almond's general feeling that there may be something fishy (a feeling he gets from a distance, not from direct observation or even inquiry into the situation, from what I can tell) and the only thing the quotation seems to add is Salafranca's affiliation (something that could be added directly onto Salafranca). As I said, I am pretty unhappy with the organization of this article as a whole, and I think it needs a thorough reorganization and rewrite. Magidin 13:40, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

OK. I added some info from the Mark Almond article concerning Salafranca's track record as an election observer. It must be noted that Wikipedia doesn't require its editors to agree with sourced info. Only that the sourced info represents a significant viewpoint. --Timeshifter 14:12, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Flooding the page with information does not help; it only helps make the page more confusing. Now we have a long paragraph regarding elections in Lebanon and Hizbullah in the middle of a page about controversies regarding the mexican elections. The point of putting links to the documents is to allow the readers to go and see the specific points being raised by those making it, while the page only summarizes the highlights. Almond's objection to Salafranca stems from the fact that Salafranca belongs to the Partido Popular, so he views Salafranca as ideologically suspect given the declared winner; that's mentioned. The piece is linked. Why do we need the extra paragraph? Should we start adding a paragraph on Almond too, pointing out any ideological affinity he might have with the PRD? Rather than clarify the flood of tangential information only murkies the issue, IMHO. Magidin 15:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that once stuff is sorted out into more subsections as discussed in my reply to your proposal on reorganization farther down, then things will sort themselves out. Both for us and the readers. --Timeshifter 02:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What happened next?

What happened after the TEPJF declaration on 5 September? Did Obrador give up? Did the 500,000 protestors just go home? Sure;y that wasn't the end of the story, was it? -- Dominus 09:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

López Obrador lifted his sit in, I believe on September 16 or thereabouts. The sit-in had been steadily losing people, and more importantly, eroding the support for López Obrador in particular and the PRD in general, especially among a moderate middle class that they had successfully courted for the election. He formed a "wide political front", and has begun the process of registering it with the IFE so as to get public monies that are assigned to legal, registered, political associations (so much for "to hell with your institutions"). He declared himself the Legitimate President by a show of hands in his last large rally, and will swear himself in on November 20. He says he will have a sort of shadow cabinet, and will go around the country dealing with the people personally. He spent some effort unsuccessfully campaigning for the PRD candidate for governor of his native Tabasco, who lost some weeks ago amid allegations (and this time, lots and lots of verifiable evidence) of electoral violations by all sides. Right now, the discussion among his people is whether to attempt to prevent the swearing-in of Calderón on December 1st by taking over the podium, the way they did with Fox's State of the Union on September 1st. Magidin 18:33, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is some info from the wikipedia article about the unpopularity of the sit-in: "Since the rally on July 31, López Obrador's campaign has set up plantones, or encampments, inside the Zócalo and along Paseo de la Reforma, one of Mexico City's main arteries, snarling traffic for weeks. Though 59% of Mexico City residents believe there was fraud, the encampents are widely unpopular, as 65% oppose them, according to a poll taken August 9 by El Universal." http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/19857.html and http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/141694.html The info is in the "protests" section of the wikipedia article. Under the July 31 entry. --Timeshifter 22:20, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Al Giordano, and photos

Reading the Al Giordano piece referenced regarding the photographs, there is one thing that jumps up: he has already reached the conclusion that there was "massive fraud". The piece is not reporting, it is a big op-ed piece expressing this conclusion (if conclusion it be). In addition, the "photographic evidence" is laughable. To wit: the first photograph shows the large poster-sized version of the acta which is, by law, posted outside each polling place after the count is finished and the actas signed by the poll workers and the party representatives. Once posted, it is not only within plain sight, but in easy reach of anyone. Any one with a felt-tip pen can modify the poster. Giordano misidentifies the manta as the "acta" (it is not), and does not show enough of either the manta or the PREP report to be able to determine for sure if they are meant to be reports of the same polling place. In any case, the PREP are not the official results. Compare this to the photo of the second one in [9], which is the acta (not the manta), and where the "fraud" seems to consist of capture error (88 rather than 188). He tells us of a "pattern" based on two examples, and seems to have ignored the fact that, if his first example were correct, it would show Calderón's total also being under-reported in the PREP. As for the second one, you might note that the acta seems to lack the signatures of the party representatives, which together with the obviously amended totals on the third column bring to question the validity of the entire acta. This is "evidence"? Al Giordano is not acting as a reporter here, he is acting as an advocate; and referencing this as "photographic evidence" is a rather large jump. Magidin 15:34, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

In the wikipedia article that particular claim of his is not mentioned. --Timeshifter 02:45, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First proposal: Archive of portions of talk page

Clearly, we have some frayed nerves and strong opinions, myself included. I want to make two proposals, the first one here, the second below in a different heading.

First, I propose archiving at part of this talk page (see WP:Archive), which seems to be growing rather fast. It seems like at least the first 8 sections are done; the next four sections haven't seen any action since mid-September. This at least, could probably be archived now. I have never done any archiving myself, but the page linked above seems fairly straightforward. My second proposal appears separately, since it involves the actual page. Magidin 17:53, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, archiving is necessary. Hari Seldon 18:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I created an archive page using the instructions at WP:Archive. Which I just edited a little to simplify the process for the next person. The most recent comment in the last section in the archived talk page is from October 27, 2006. The most recent comment in the "Discussion" section in the current talk page is from November 18, 2006. --Timeshifter 02:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Second Proposal: Moratorium and reorganization

My second proposal is to agree to a moratorium of a couple of weeks to let tempers cool off a bit. I don't think we need to set it up as a formal blocking on editing, but I would propose that we refrain from adding substantial new information (going either way) for a bit. Copy-editing, slight reorganization or rephrasing, missing links added, all of them are still good ideas; but perhaps we can simply propose any major new additions in the talk page for now, pending a whole reorganization of this page.

As I mentioned before, I think 2004 United States election voting controversies gives a reasonable template in terms of what we should be aiming for. It is clear that the evaluation of the election mostly breaks along ideological lines (with a few notable exceptions like Jose Woldenberg), which we can make clear to begin with system was completely redesigned and that the only real antecedent to this election is the 2000 election, not the ones run by the Secretaría de Gobernación under the PRI; but that nonetheless the makes the issue of fraud a sensitive and emotional one. We should also clearly distinguish between fraud and irregularities. We should have an opening paragraph, similar to the one in page mentioned above, which summarizes the allegations by broad category (mistakes in the PREP, bias of observers, problems with party observers, etc.) Then a section on background. Then the problems during the campaign (the CCE spots, comments by Fox, etc). Then the summary of the voting and PREP, Conteo Rápido, and election results, the legal complaints, and final resolution. Then we can go on to specifics: complaints on the PREP, allegations of irregularities, the legal complaints (both about the campaign and the voting process), the opening of packages and the TPEJF resolution. Then the recount, and the allegations surrounding it, and then the decision about the TPEJF. These sections would contain the information currently on the page, but be organized in a manner similar to the page on the US election problems. They include specific alegations, and specific links and comments, without the apparent flood of information we currently have here. After that, we can have a section on the general press reaction, op-ed pieces with more generic arguments, the intellectuals' letters, and so on, and some of the polls on the general opinion in Mexico (there were several that were very explicit on the breakdown relative to how people voted, e.g. that most but not all people who voted for López Obrador believed there was fraud, that most but not all people who voted for Calderón were happy with the partial recount; we should aim to find polls like that which show the clear breakdown along ideological and partizan lines).

After that we can have the sections on the organized opposition and the photographs, which seem to me to be better edited and reasonably so within the context (of course, those are easier, since we all agree that the actions happened, whereas the previous sections are about allegations). The issue with the See Also section can be fixed if instead of simple links with no comment (which is, granted, the usual) we do something more along the lines of the way it is done in, say, Squaring the circle (to name one I notice recently).

All of this is a major undertaking, but I honestly think that this page is a bit of a mess, even setting aside issues of neutrality. Alas, I certainly do not have the time to do this right now, and I am not positive I will have sufficient time later (of course, I'm not the only one who can do this). We should probably begin, after a cooling-off period, with the background and campaign, which should be straightforward and unlikely to be contentious. Clearly the most contentious bit will be the section on the allegations, but even there I think that a more coherent organization of the claims and counterclaims will go a long way towards making this seems more balanced. Of course, it is possible (if not likely) that the way I envision this is improbably or impossible to actually bring to fruition. It's happened before. But I think we should try, when there is enough time to devote to it wholesale rather than bits and pieces at a time.Magidin 18:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you wrote. I understand you may not have time to work on it soon. But I have time now and will start adding subsections to break down the allegations by topic. That way the related claims and counterclaims will be in the correct sections so that readers can find stuff easily using the table of contents. We can always rearrange stuff at any time. It is much easier to do once stuff is sorted out. --Timeshifter 02:38, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

My one request would be to stick to reorganizing and copy-editing, rather than introduce new references or allegations. I think we need a short cooling off period before addressing what should be in or out. Magidin 13:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, reorganization will be very helpful, and a cooling off period would be great too. -- Felipec 20:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Broad categories for the reorganization

As far as reorganizing the page, here are a few comments. I believe the allegations should be broadly broken down into five kinds:

1. Irregularities during the campaign/about illegal campaigning. There were some allegations during the campaign, and some after the election. Undue influence, the CCE spots, "dirty campaigning", false accusations, etc.

2. Irregularities during the vote. This is the category where I believe there were very few, if any, complaints: I am talking about turning people away, people not being allowed to vote because they are not in the registry, etc. The only complaints I am aware of were people being turned away from special polling places (for people voting outside their district) because the latter ran out of ballots. The law specifies both location, number, and number of ballots in those polling places. But if there are other such allegations of problems during the voting, they would go here.

3. Irregularities in the counting. This is where allegations of ballot-stuffing, vote-stealing, etc. would go. In general any difference between the votes actually cast and the totals as they appear in the corresponding acta (including the "ballots in the dumpster" and the like).

4. Irregularities in the reporting. This is where the allegations of cyberfraud or differences between what the actas say and what the PREP and/or official count said.

5. Irregularities during the controversy. This would be unauthorized reopening of the ballot packages, unauthorized recounts, problems during the recount, etc.

I believe that most foreign observers were mostly concerned with points 2 and perhaps 3; that is, the actual voting, and perhaps the counting. We probably want them in roughly chronological order within each category, with also a broad chronology of when any particular kind of allegation may have surfaced: for example, there's been allegations of type 1 throughout (and some where addressed during the campaign, and by the TPEJF later). López Obrador and much of the foreign commentary from independent news sources focused initially on problems of type 4. Only later the allegations shifted to type 3 (so perhaps type 4 should go first, despite it "logically" being later than type 3). Type 5 began during the official count and continued until the TPEJF ruled. Magidin 22:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

--Timeshifter 04:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC). The broad categories sound good as a start. May need more, or may need to refine the words used, and so on. May be difficult to combine them with more chronological elements though. Subcategories by topic can be added too. One just adds more equal signs at the beginning and end of the headings: = == === ==== . Something like this below. Headings will be refined. Gave some examples of subheadings for the first main category. Just some preliminary ideas. I will keep adding subcategories to this map below over the next few days. I may rearrange things completely. Feel free to start your own map after mine, and we will see how we can integrate them. We are pretty much agreed that the order of the rest of the article is fine. The task ahead is on how to reorder the irregularities section.

Irregularities

Illegal campaigning.

CCE spots

Vote buying

False accusations

Foreign influence

Voting

Counting

Recounting

Reporting.

During the controversy

I rearranged the main article a little so that all the alleged irregularities are in one overall category. Also I created a new recount section that only describes the timing and mechanics of the recount as has been done for the PREP, Quick Count, and Official Count sections. But without any details of the irregularities. I took out the specific claims of irregularities out of the election observers section, and put them in the main irregularities category for future sorting.

This way all the irregularities are in one section, and we can concentrate on breaking down that section. --Timeshifter 05:36, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] English and Spanish Names

As a general rule, I think that if you are going to include both Spanish and English names of an organization, you should put the actual name first, and the translation later. Thus, for example, when the page first refers to Alianza Cívica, I think the name should be in Spanish with the English translation in parenthesis. Future references can be either to the Spanish name alone, or to the English translation alone. Same goes for "Conteo Rápido"/Quick Count, etc. Magidin 19:06, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Future references should go to the English translation in my opinion. Otherwise most native English speakers will get confused. --Timeshifter 21:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Calls for election reform

I am not sure the section on calls for election reform belong in this article; this is about the controversies on the election, and it mostly focuses on allegations of irregularities during the counting (though there will be some on the campaign and pre-campaign issues when we rewrite it). The article in the El Heraldo de México is not proposing anything that would change the way in which votes are cast or counted, nor in the way allegations or recounts are handled; I don't know if any party has proposed changes there. The PRD has not proposed any change in the law that would allow a full recount, for example. Perhaps a paragraph might eventually belong in the section on irregularities during the campaign. Discussion on a possible second round in future elections is, I think, well beyond the scope of this article. Magidin 19:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I moved that section so that it is now a subsection of "Results of opposition." That should make it more relevant. Also I just rewrote it to make the connection to the election irregularities controversy clearer. I connected Salafranca more clearly to the issue by pointing out that he observed the July 2 election. Also, a runoff election is a full recount in a sense. Because in many nations a runoff election does not occur unless the top 2 candidates are within a certain number of percentage points of each other. In Nicaragua there is no runoff election if there is five percent or more difference in votes. Salafranca's comment "greater democratic legitimacy" is directly connected to the alleged irregularities and the questions they caused in many people's minds about the legitimacy of the July 2, 2006 democratic process.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_election,_2006#Electoral_reforms_in_2000

From that section:

The electoral reforms introduced in January 2000, as a result of the pact between the PLC and the FSLN, established new rules for the contending parties in the elections. The required percentages to win the Presidential Election was reduced from 45 to 40 percent. The electoral law states that a participating candidate must obtain a relative majority of at least 40 percent of the vote to win a presidential election. However, a candidate may win by obtaining at least 35 percent of the vote, with at least a five percent margin over the second place finisher. The law also established a second-round runoff election if none of the candidates won in the first round. --Timeshifter 21:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

"A runoff election is a full recount in a sense." I'm sorry, but that is rather a large stretch. In fact, in very close multi-party elections with very polarizing candidates, that is seldom the case. It is well known that the results of an election with more than 2 candidates need not, in any way, shape, or form, have anything to do with pairwise elections among those candidates. See Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, Condorcet's Paradox, Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem, . You can have an election in which the Condorcet loser wins an full election, or one in which the Condorcet winner loses the election. Runoffs have little to do with recounts. The proposals for runoffs have to do with legitimacy and gobernability, not with alleged irregularities. The fact that Salafranca observed the elections in 2006 does not make his suggesting reform or a second round relevant to an article about the controversies surrounding the 2006 election, and especially not at length. At best, it seems to me that the most it would deserve is a sentence saying that in the aftermath the political parties and many observers have suggested changing the system from an FPGP-election to a two-round/runoff system; in which case, since the controversies surrounded the counting of the votes and the recounts, another sentence noting the changes that may have been suggested in that arena (counting, oversight, handling complaints, hangling recounts, etc); or that no change to the procedures for counting the votes or for recounts or investigating alleged irregularities has been proposed (if that is the case). Any discussion about changing the law may be the result of the controversies, but it is not part of the controversies, the subject of this article, regardless of who proposes the changes. Magidin 23:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

"Any discussion about changing the law may be the result of the controversies, but it is not part of the controversies, the subject of this article, regardless of who proposes the changes." That is your opinion. I disagree. I believe the controversies include all aspects of the election process, not just the specifics of the current process in question. People are questioning everything. The same thing is happening in the USA (the call for runoff elections, proportional representation, Condorcet, and fundamental changes of all kinds). The election controversies go very deep in both countries. To try to narrow the range of those controversies is a POV fork in my opinion. Wikipedia says that all significant sides of controversies should be covered. The "results of the opposition" section was initiated by either Felipec or Hseldon, I believe. I agreed. And some of these calls for reform are a result of the opposition to the July 2 general election irregularities (alleged). Also the calls for funding limits, time limits, and transparency are related in some ways to the claims of illegal campaigning during the run-up to the July 2 election. --Timeshifter 00:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

People are questioning everything? Really? This article should include all the aspects of elections? Shall we throw in a couple Ph.D. thesis worth of discussing the different electoral systems? All significant sides of the controversy should be covered, yes. The question is whether people talking about whether a different electoral system should be used is not part of the "controversy" about the election; it is, at best, a result of the controversy. Should there be a section on eliminating the electoral college in the article about the controversies of the 2000 U.S. election? No; at most, it would deserve a very quick mention. Likewise here. Citing Salafranca in extenso on the excuse that he was an observer seems unwarranted. Now, controversies about elections may cover a lot, but this article is "Mexican general election 2006 controversies", not "Mexican elections controversies in general, and everything that might be remotely connected to this". As I said, saying that in the wake of the problems there have been discussions about these things, and links thereby, okay, maybe. Why is Salafranca being singled out? As a sly way to undermine the fact that he said he thought the elections were clean. Magidin 01:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Why would one not talk about the electoral college controversy during the 2000 and 2004 elections as part of their wikipedia pages? It was talked about a lot here in the USA during those times. I am American, so I can vouch for that. It is very much a part of the 2000 and 2004 election controversies. Salafranca is very much a part of the 2006 Mexican election controversies. People frequently tried to dismiss all claims of irregularities by just saying that Salafranca's EU observers had spoken. Wikipedia puts out the significant sides of the controversies, and lets the readers decide. Wikipedia does not ostracize particular viewpoints. That would not be NPOV. Of course, there is not enough room for Ph.D theses on wikipedia pages. Everything is summarized in wikipedia pages. And links are provided to further info. I notice that you have worked a lot on some math-related wikipedia pages. Things are not as clearcut in politics as in math. I doubt Condorcet methods were discussed much before, during, or after the July 2, 2006 Mexican election. It may not even merit a link in the "See also" section. But a link to Voting systems is merited since changes in the Mexican electoral system were discussed before, during, and after the July 2, 2006 election. And Condorcet methods are discussed in that overall article on voting systems. --Timeshifter 06:47, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[It is fine to break up my comment in order to comment on it, but please leave a copy of my unbroken comment too. I pasted a copy of it back in. --Timeshifter 21:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)]

Why would one not talk about the electoral college controversy during the 2000 and 2004 elections as part of their wikipedia pages?

Not as part of the pages on controversies, because they are not germane to the topic of the page. Magidin

It was talked about a lot here in the USA during those times. I am American, so I can vouch for that.

So am I (just so you know). I know. The discussion happens in cycles. The same is true in Mexico. Talk of a second round was flying before the 2000 election. And talk is happening in Mexico now, to an even lesser degree than it happened then. But it is not part of the controversies of the 2006 election; mentioning that talk of electoral reform followed on the heels of the controversy, okay. In extenso discussion of the pros and cons of such reform, and quoting in extenso someone who is not Mexican on the excuse that he was mentioned earlier on the page as endorsing the election, that's not germane to the controversies either. And in any case, since this is the conclusion of a report by the EU team, if you are going to mention it, it should be attributed as such. Magidin

It is very much a part of the 2000 and 2004 election controversies.

Curious, then, that they are not mentioned in those pages, no? Why not go and try to add such sections to the page on 2004? As you can see, they are not there right now. Why? Because they don't really belong on the pages on the controversies. On the page on the 2000 U.S. presidential election it is not even mentioned in the section on Consequences. This might belong on the main page of the 2006 Mexican election; maybe. It might deserve a quick mention in this page. But this page is not the place for a long discussion on this; it is not part of the controversies. Magidin

Salafranca is very much a part of the 2006 Mexican election controversies.

His contemporary statements about the election, yes. His observations of the election, yes. His discussion, in an interview five months later, as representative of a team which is the one who issued the recommendations, on possible changes to the Mexican electoral system for future elections, quoted in extenso? Let me quote you: that's your opinion. I disagree. Moreover, the articles quotes make it clear that this was not Salafranca speaking on his own initiative. Rather, as head of the observation team, he was in charge of presenting recommendations issued by the team as a whole. Magidin

People frequently tried to dismiss all claims of irregularities by just saying that Salafranca's EU observers had spoken.

So... are you saying that quoting Salafranca on reform is a way to undermine the earlier quote of his about not seeing problems in the election? Magidin

Wikipedia puts out the significant sides of the controversies, and lets the readers decide. Wikipedia does not ostracize particular viewpoints.

You still are missing the main point. This is not part of the controversy. Magidin

That would not be NPOV. Of course, there is not enough room for Ph.D theses on wikipedia pages. Everything is summarized in wikipedia pages. And links are provided to further info. I notice that you have worked a lot on some math-related wikipedia pages. Things are not as clearcut in politics as in math. I doubt Condorcet methods were discussed much before, during, or after the July 2, 2006 Mexican election.

A two round system was discussed a lot during the run-off to the 2000 Mexican election; the fact that López Obrador might very well lose a 2-round system on the strength of anti-PRD votes from the PRI was also discussed quite a bit leading to the 2006 election. But the point is, the discussion going on now may be considered part of the aftermath of the controversies; a quick mention at the end might be in order. But this is not part of the controversy, and so there should not be a lengthy section on it in this page. Especially not if its main purpose is simply an attempt to discredit a source that was not critical of the election. You need to distinguish between what is part of the controversy, and what is a tangential consequence of the controversy; tangential, because this talk always follows close elections. The PRD talked a lot about it in 2000, and kept it up, right up until Jospin lost to Le Penn in France; then, all of a sudden, it did not seem like such a hot idea. Magidin

It may not even merit a link in the "See also" section. But a link to Voting systems is merited since changes in the Mexican electoral system were discussed before, during, and after the July 2, 2006 election. And Condorcet methods are discussed in that overall article on voting systems. --Timeshifter 06:47, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I am confused. Did I say you should not include a link to different voting systems in the "See also" section? Not that I recall. What I said is that in extenso discussions about talk of reform, and in extenso quoting of Salafranca (which is merely done as a way to undermine his earlier comments; it seems to be a pattern, as it happens: you've gone to great lengths, it seems to me, to try to undermine his contemporary conclusions about the election. Why is that?) is out of place in a page about the controversies of the election. Magidin 19:45, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I really think you have just proved my points. You haven't really disagreed with me that all these things were discussed as part of this election. And we agree that we don't want a long thesis on anything in this wikipedia page. There is not room. So it is a matter of balance and presenting all sides fairly. There is room to do so. You are desperate to prevent Salafranca from being discredited in my opinion. Even by inference. I just throw out the significant viewpoints, and let the readers decide. What you are trying to do now is what Felipec and Hseldon were trying to do before. Which is selective emphasis on certain POVs. By blocking material you don't like. That is not allowed in wikipedia pages. I have no fear of all the viewpoints getting out. I haven't blocked anything that you 3 have wanted in the article, I believe. By the way, out of curiosity, why does your user page say: "This user is able to contribute with a professional level of English." That is why I assumed you were not American. Are you a naturalized American? --Timeshifter 21:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

My reply, interspersed. Magidin

You are desperate to prevent Salafranca from being discredited in my opinion. Even by inference.

I think it is dishonest to do so the way it has been done so far. First, someone who wasn't even there was quoted authoritatively, and he was refered to giving the impression he was there, to discredit Salafranca. Now, Salafranca is mentioned apparently in order to undermine his earlier mention. And you seem to be agreeing that the intention of that quote was to discredit Salafranca. If that be the case, then it is a dishonest attempt at discrediting him; trying to present it as Neutral POV and then saying "let the readers decide" is disingenious at best. It is being done on the sly, by presenting comments that should not be in the page in the first place since they are not germane to the subject matter of the page. The EU team, as a whole, is recommending a number of changes for future elections. It is the second attempt at discrediting him in a questionable way. Magidin

There was no plot on my part to hide anything concerning Mark Almond. Almond may not have been in Lebanon either. I just pointed out Mark Almond's opinion because Mark Almond is also an election observer. You are bordering on a personal attack on me. That is not allowed in Wikipedia talk pages. I suggest you assume a good faith effort on my part. That is what Wikipedia recommends. Along with being polite. There is nothing wrong with presenting opinions about Salafranca from Mark Almond and you know it. You are filibustering. --Timeshifter 23:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

First, let me apologize for what you perceived to be slanders; this discussion overlapped another discussion elsewhere on the same subject, with someone who was very definitely purposely misinterpreting the report, and it is likely my annoyance was at least partly transfered onto this discussion. But I would request you assume good faith effort on my part, too.

I expressed concerns, and I explained why I have those concerns. The moratorium was requested to cool tempers down; given your reaction to my concerns, it would seem to have been justified. Sorry, but you went overboard; and yes, I went overboard as well. My sincere apologies for that. It tends to happen. Hence the suggestion of a cooling-off period; it was clear you were also on edge earlier, as evidenced by the labeling of an edit you did not agree with as "vandalism" (which would seem to violate the guidelines stated in WP:Vandalism). Re-read the first paragraph on this section, where I expressed my concerns. Was I mad or trying to "block material [I] disagree with"? As it is, the article it is taken from makes the quote ambiguous. It can be read as making suggestions about the present election; that a runoff now would give legitimacy to this result. Note: this is the fault of the source you are quoting from. Read that way, it is a sly (and dishonest) way to undermine the earlier assertions that the election was seen as fair by the EU observers. Singling out Salafranca with the ambiguous quotation is part of that as well (and this is what that other person, elsewhere, was doing explicitly; saying earlier comments by Salafranca were now null and void since Salafranca had expressed made comments now suggesting the election lacked legitimacy). Since the actual report is now available [10], whether or not the extensive quote belongs here (and I still think it does not), for now it should at least be rewritten to make it clear that, as one of several suggestions for future reform the EU team, as a whole, suggested replacing the current system with a two-round runoff presidential election (thought the report does not say so in the Recommendations section, I suspect they are thinking in terms of the French Presidential election).

As for "and you know it", again, I disagree. I do not see why the opinion of someone who seems to have a personal axe to grind against Salafranca is relevant, especially if all Almond has to offer for his opinion is past disagreement and no direct observation. He expressly states in his piece that he is basing his opinion on a vacuum, since he is complaining that there is no information. I think the opinion is dubiously relevant, and that is my honest opinion about the issue. When I said "[w]hether [his opinion] is actually fully relevant is, frankly, something I am nowhere near convinced" you added information I thought was more tangential than helpful. I am sure it was a good-faith effort; I don't like it much; too bad for me, apparently. In any case, you can see that the paragraph is still there, completely untouched by me despite my continuing disagreement with its relevance and with its presence.

Which is one of the reasons why I found particularly irksome that I after raised my concerns on the Talk page, in what I think was a reasonable manner by expressing my concerns and why I had them, I was accused of "blocking material [I] don't like". That was unwarranted, unfounded, and personal. If you found the comments that followed "impolite", then I am sorry; I found the ones you made ("desperate", "blocking") both personal and impolite for my part. If it was in response to a perceived personal slight, rest assured none was intended. The reference to "sly" in regards to Salafranca being singled out are from the original piece.

What I suspect is that, because you say you do not follow the Mexican Spanish-language coverage of the election and the controversies, you are relying on the English-language coverage. As was pointed out (e.g. by Almond), the mainstream English-language media is not covering the issue very much. Hardly surprising: mainstream media seldom covers the details and back-and-forths of any foreign (i.e., not in the country where that media resides) election. Even the 2000 U.S. Election did not receive that much coverage (in terms of allegations and counterallegations) in foreign media as one might think by looking at the U.S. media. In this case, you have to rely on non-mainstream media outlets such as Narco News. Many of these are news outlets with a very clear editorial policy; they are, to some extent, much like Fox News but with a different agenda. No matter how impartial one may try to be, if all one knew about the war in Iraq is what one heard in Fox News, one's view would naturally be skewed. I suspect that is what is happening here, and that is the likely source of the imbalance; we have quotes from left-leaning sources like La Jornada (often refered to as "the official newspaper outlet of the PRD" in Mexico), and as "balance" we have the occassional references to El Universal and Reforma, two newspapers that are widely considered to be merely neutral or balanced (e.g., Miguel Ángel Granados[11], a stalwart of the PRD and well-known leftist political commentator, writes a daily column in Reforma; in fact, he left La Jornada for Reforma, because he felt the former laid down the line editorially; sorry, no English wikipedia article on Granados Chapa). Because those are the sources that these non-mainstream sources are quoting and pointing to. I am hoping to help rectify this by providing much more sourcing and context via Reforma and El Universal, but they both have lousy search features on the Web, which is why I cannot spend the time right now to do so. Magidin 18:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I just throw out the significant viewpoints, and let the readers decide. What you are trying to do now is what Felipec and Hseldon were trying to do before. Which is selective emphasis on certain POVs.

Shall I quote you again, "in your opinion"? Almond's lack of direct observation was omitted. Al Giordano presents incorrect information and misrepresents photographs, but is taken as a reliable source. You present a quote which is out of context and misrepresents the statements, and then you wash your hands by saying "Let the readers decide". In a page where there is an ongoing disagreement, and where a simple moratorium was requested, you went ahead and added the information. I raised my objection in the Talk page, and I am the one with "selective emphasis on certain POVs"? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. You are giving much too much weight to what is a minority view of the subject, as evidenced by the polls you yourself have quoted. Fine; that's the side that you are clearly invested in. But when that predilection was questioned, first Felipec's opinion was questionable for lack of experience. You were happy to applaud my participation when you thought I was on your side. But then sly comments about my experience perhaps not being useful because this is a political page and claims I am somehow "blocking" material I haven't even edited, because you don't like what I'm saying. An objection to what is at best tangential being presented as germane is not a violation of NPOV. Neither is objecting to underhanded attempts at discrediting a certain majority POV (that of the EU observers) by quoting people who were not there, or material that is at best tangential and likely irrelevant to the subject matter of this page. Quite the opposite, in fact. Magidin

The EU opinion is not a majority opinion. They were only 70 international observers out of 673 international observers. It is you who are misrepresenting the truth. A request for a moratorium on more info being put in the article was not agreed to by me. You say you are not trying to block certain info from being in the article. Yet when I don't honor your request for a moratorium, then you get mad. As for the rest of your attempts at slandering me, see my previous reply about the wikipedia policy on personal attacks.

If you want to add an equal amount of counterclaims to the article to balance the claims of irregularities, then feel free to do so. Add even more than that. I have never called for a moratorium on your contributions, nor on Hseldon's or Felipec's. Put 51% counterclaims to 39% claims of irregularities. To mirror the polls:

Nationwide polls: A poll released July 27 by El Universal found that 48 percent wanted a full recount, and 28 percent were against it. [3] 39 percent of Mexicans believe fraud occurred according to a nationwide poll of registered voters taken August 25 through 28, 2006 by the newspaper El Universal. 51 percent believed the election was clean. [4] [5]

According to a Sept. 8-30, 2006 Ipsos/AP poll of citizens of 9 nations Mexicans had the lowest confidence that their votes are counted accurately. [1] Angus Reid Global Scan, Canada, writes: "87 per cent of Canadian respondents are very or somewhat confident that votes in their elections are counted accurately. France was next on the list with 85 per cent, followed by Germany with 84 per cent, South Korea with 83 per cent, Britain with 79 per cent, and Spain with 75 per cent. The lowest level of trust was registered in Mexico with 60 per cent, Italy with 65 per cent and the United States with 66 per cent." [2] --Timeshifter 00:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The last poll you quote is not really relevant. The "minority opinion" I refered to is the opinion that the results of the 2006 presidential election in Mexico were the result of fraud and/or irregularities, and that the international observers are somehow suspect. So the different levels of confidence in the electoral institutions in sundry countries is hardly relevant to that issue. The first poll you quote is also somewhat off. There is a difference between "wanting a full recount" and believing the result is inaccurate. A good portion of people wated a full recount to show the result was accurate and "to shut up" López Obrador. For example, [12] gives a poll on July 22nd, in which 53% say they believe the elections clean; of course, hardly surprising, it broke along voting lines. A poll by Ipsos/Bisma on July 27 (same date, same polling firm, as the one you give for recount), reported in [13] gave 52.5% of the population as believing Calderón won the election. A door-to-door poll by Reforma published on September 6 gave 74% approval to the Tribunal's decision to declare Calderón the winner, 71% saying Calderón's triumph was "legitimate", 72% saying the Tribunal was both just and impartial when it issued its decision. (Again, it broke along party lines; PAN supporters broke in favor of just and impartial by 94% to 4%, PRI supporters by 71% to 22%, PRD supporters by 16% to 80%, and independents by 73% to 25%). You can find that poll in Reforma; it is in Spanish, but it should be easy to interpret, at [14]. I do not know if you need a subscription to read it (I have one). The only poll that seems relevant is the second one you quote directly addressing cleanliness of the elections, but it predates the dissemination in the mainstream Mexican press of the details of the PRDs requests to the Tribunal and their street blockades. The fact that they failed to ask for a full recount or for the nullification of the election affected public opinion perceptibly. Compare to the 74% approval to the Tribunal's decision declaring Calderón the winner, a big jump. Magidin 18:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

By blocking material you don't like.

For crying out loud. How have I "blocked" anything? Have I removed the text I am objecting to? Have I removed any text that I have found questionable? Did I remove the Almond quote you were so fond of? There, I added the information that he did not participate in the election and thus did not observe the events or the person he criticized; was that "selective emphasis on certain POVs"? Or was it rather the removal of selective emphasis on a particular POV, that of "let's discredit the observers"? Now, I have a disagreement, and I am trying to hash it out in the Talk pages prior to any editing. I have not even touched the section at issue. How am I blocking something? What I said was: "I am not sure the section on calls for election reform belong in this article[.]" Magidin

See previous replies. --Timeshifter 23:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

That is not allowed in wikipedia pages. I have no fear of all the viewpoints getting out. I haven't blocked anything that you 3 have wanted in the article, I believe. By the way, out of curiosity, why does your user page say: "This user is able to contribute with a professional level of English." That is why I assumed you were not American. Are you a naturalized American? --Timeshifter 21:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Not that it is in any way relevant, but the reason it says that is because it is true. No, I am not naturalized. Which is completely irrelevant, as is your nationality or how you came by it (but you decided it was important to bring it up). Magidin 23:21, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

If you were not in the USA during the 2000 or 2004 election cycle, then you may not have gotten the full discourse on all the discussion about electoral reform during those election cycles. That is why I brought up the point that I was an American. Were you or were you not in the USA during those election cycles? I could care less whether you are American or not. By the way, you almost completely ignored the quotes below that disprove a previous point of yours about those electoral reform issues not being discussed in the 2000 election wikipedia article. --Timeshifter 23:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The point (again) is that the pages on the controversies of the 2004 U.S. election do not include in extenso discussions of proposals for future changes. Why? Because such discussion does not belong on the page on the controversies. The quotes you provided were for the main page on the election, not on pages on controversies about the election. I did say that in my reply. My point was that detailed discussion about electoral reform is not part of the discussion on the controversies; it is not in the pages on the 2004 U.S. election controversies because it does not belong there, it should not be on the pages on the 2006 Mexican election controversies. A brief mention in "Consequences", perhaps. A more detailed discussion on the main page on the election, probably. But this is the page on the controversies, not on the discussions about electoral reform.

As I understand it, the point of having a separate page on the Controversies is so that the article can be both more detailed and more focused than the general article on the election. The problem I see here is not with details, it is with focus. This is not the main page on the election, but rather an "auxiliary" page on the Controversies. Which is why I think that discussion of the suggestions by the EU team for future changes of the full electoral procedure is not really relevant. Some of the points they raise in their report (for example, the fact that the IFE was not clear in explaining what the PREP and the Quick Count were, as we were able to see in this very page) which directly address issues of controversy would, in my opinion, be warranted. The proposal for a second round, as well as the majority of their 47 recommendations, does not seem to agree with the focus of this page.Magidin 18:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

--Timeshifter 21:59, 26 November 2006 (UTC). Also, here are some excerpts of the 2000 U.S. election wikipedia article:

This election marked the third time in United States history that a candidate had definitively won the Electoral College and thus the Presidency without winning a plurality of the popular vote. (This also happened in the elections of 1876 and 1888.)

Nonetheless, embarrassment about the Florida vote uncertainties led to widespread calls for electoral reform in the United States and ultimately to the passage of the Help America Vote Act, which authorized the United States federal government to provide funds to the states to replace their mechanical voting equipment with electronic voting equipment. However, this has led to new controversies including the lack of paper-based methods of verification and the complexity of testing required to certify correct operation of computer-based systems.

Such a close national contest contributed to the controversy of the election. This was the first time since 1888 that a candidate who clearly did not receive a plurality of the popular vote received a majority of the Electoral College (see United States Electoral College, losing the popular vote). (Due to the unusual ballot in Alabama in 1960, it is unclear how much of the popular vote in that state can be attributed to Kennedy and hence whether Kennedy beat Nixon in the popular vote.)

Since the Presidential Election was so close and hotly contested in Florida, the United States Government and state governments pushed for election reform to be prepared by the 2004 United States Presidential Election. Many of Florida's year 2000 election night problems stemmed from voting machine issues like rejected ballots, "hanging chad", and the possibly confusing "butterfly ballot". An opportunistic solution to these problems was assumed to be the installation of modern electronic voting machines.

Electronic voting was initially touted by many as a panacea for the ills faced during the 2000 election. In years following, such machines were questioned for a suspicious lack of a paper trail, less than ideal security standards, low tolerance for software or hardware problems, and being manufactured by companies which had openly supported Republican candidates. The United States Presidential Election of 2000 spurred the debate about election and voting reform, but it did not end it. See Electronic voting: problems.

--Timeshifter 22:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC). The 5 wikipedia articles on the 2004 U.S. election controversies have much more info than the 2006 Mexican election controversies article we are working on.

• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, exit polls
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, vote suppression
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, voting machines
• 2004 U.S. presidential election recounts and legal challenges

Nobody is arguing that the amount of information is too much. There are concerns about the organization, the lack of representability of the majority POV in the article, and an apparent predilection for sources closely tied to one particular candidate (López Obrador). We are not talking about the size of the article, but whether an in extenso discussion about potential changes to the electoral system is germane to the subject matter of this page. I brought up the pages on the 2004 election because you brought up the 2004 elections and calls for change, and I pointed out that this information is not on the pages on the controversy, because it is not part of the controversy, exactly the same argument I am making of this page. Did you notice that the talk about proposals and calls for reform is in the main article on the election, not an article about the controversies? And that the mention is brief, to the point, and without quoting in extenso specific people or specific calls? Magidin 23:21, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

There is no separate page on 2000 election controversies, and you probably know it. --Timeshifter 23:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

So there is room to discuss more of the claims and counterclaims in the 2006 article. I can't read the Spanish-language reports written by the Civic Alliance. Their reports of irregularities are in their articles linked from this page:

• http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/electionreports.html

The MS Word doc file version of their reports can also be opened with WordPad or the free Word Viewer. --Timeshifter 21:59, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Again, the point I am discussing is not whether there is room or not for discussing more claims and counterclaims. The point is that discussions about future changes to the electoral system are not claims, and they are not counterclaims, and they are not controversies about the election. Magidin 23:21, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I guess you are going to just completely ignore the material I quoted from the 2000 election article. As in "Please don't confuse me with the facts." --Timeshifter 23:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe the discussion in extenso does not belong in this page. If it belongs anywhere, it belongs on the main page of the election, just as it does in the main pages for the 2000 and the 2004 U.S. Elections. That is my point. That was my point. That continues to be my point. This is meant to be a more focused page, the narrower focus to allow for more detail. Expanding the focus to include tangentially related material undermines that purpose. Magidin 18:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Electoral reform is discussed on the 2004 election controversies pages. I could leave quotes here, but I won't. There is no separate page for the 2000 election controversies. So electoral reform was discussed on the main 2000 page. Electoral reform was not discussed on the 2004 main page. --Timeshifter 12:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The only occurrences of "reform" I can find in 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities is in the section on the challenges in Congress:

Numerous Democratic members of Congress spoke on the importance of election reform, announced initiatives for constitutional protection of the vote, and called for election integrity protection against conflicts of interest, listing problems with the process of the vote in Ohio and other states. Numerous Republican members of Congress spoke against the objection, calling it an obstruction of the democratic process and pointing out that Bush won Ohio's vote by over 118,000 votes according to the recount. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) denounced the objection, calling Boxer and Jones the "X-Files Wing" of the Democratic Party.

and the very brief mention:

Debate continues regarding election reform, with a number of bills aimed at eliminating some of these irregularities expected in the 109th Congress. Community concern about the integrity of US election procedures is continuing and may bring about reform in several states.

The first mention relates to the objections raised during the certification of the electoral votes; that's part of the controversy. Only the second brief mention matches the flavor of the EU's recommendation for this page. There is one other occurrence of "reform", but it is related to the Diebold suit in California prior to the election. The mention is brief, non-specific, non-attributed, and in passing. Exactly how I think such mentions should be limited in this page, if it is to appear. If I missed another one, please tell me where it is.Magidin 13:59, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Did you also check the other 4 pages on the 2004 election controversies? Also, the 2000 page has more info. See the quotes higher up on this talk page. --Timeshifter 15:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes. There are no mentions in 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, exit polls or 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, vote suppression. The only mention in 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, voting machines is to describe someone as an election reform activist. No mention of election reform in 2004 U.S. presidential election recounts and legal challenges, nor in 2004 U.S. election voting controversies, Florida or 2004 U.S. election voting controversies, Ohio. There are brief mentions of rallies and talks about election reform and links to articles with "reform" on their title in Timeline of the 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities. I am aware that the main page on the 2000 election has more info. The main page on the Mexican general election, 2006 should probably have more info in a section on the Aftermath. A brief mention that in the aftermath of the protests and controversies there has been discussion of reforms may be adequate for this page; but a discussion of who, where, what, or why such reforms are or are being proposed is out of place in the page on controversies because they are not controversies. It's not that they are opinions I dislike or like (most of what the EU is proposing is stuff I have been arguing in favor of for over 10 years). It's that the suggestions for change are not part of the controversy. See "Stay on Topic" in Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles. As long as I am mentioning that page, I may try the "personal copy" suggestion as part of my continuing efforts to cool things down prior to the major rewriting. Magidin 17:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The electoral reforms info makes more sense in the context of the alleged irregularities they are related to. That is why they make sense on the 2000 page, because that is the page in which the irregularities were discussed. Same for 2004 discussions of electoral reforms. You will notice that the 2004 controversies required several pages. So if we need more pages for the Mexican controversies we can do that. Same for electoral reforms. I don't see that being a problem yet, because I haven't seen many electoral reforms proposed that are a direct result of this 2006 election. The 2004 pages are an ongoing project. Because the discussion in the US media had a large increase after the compilation report of 2004 irregularities written by Robert Kennedy in June 2006 [15]. --Timeshifter 17:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

"The electoral reforms info makes more sense in the context of the alleged irregularities they are related to." Well, yes. That's why I said:

Some of the points they raise in their report (for example, the fact that the IFE was not clear in explaining what the PREP and the Quick Count were, as we were able to see in this very page) which directly address issues of controversy would, in my opinion, be warranted.

In other words, when we get into the detail of charges of cyberfraud, or that the results of the Quick Count were manipulated, the EU's report stating that there was widespread confusion about what the PREP and Quick Count were is germane because it helps explain why the charges were levied and believed.

I disagree with your reasoning on the 2000 page in any case. I think they belong in the 2000 page because they are a facet of the 2000 election, just like discussion of reforms in Mexico are a face of the 2006 Mexican election, and probably belong on the main page on the 2006 Mexican election. In the 2000 page they are mentioned twice: once in the introduction, as a consequence of the final decision and as concluding remarks of the introduction, not as part of the controversies. It is not mentioned again until Response to the problems. Once again, the mention there is unattributed, brief, and generic, and not in the context of the irregularities themselves but in the context of the aftermath of the controversies. The fact that the 2004 controversies required several pages and are an ongoing project does not detract from my point: they do not address the aftermath of the controversies in any but the most cursory manner. Magidin 18:18, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The several paragraphs of info in the 2000 article related to electoral reforms are relevant to the controversies discussed in that page. If you think they do not belong on that page, then go to that page, remove the controversies, and start a page of controversies. Then leave the electoral reforms on the main page. You will not succeed in separating the controversies info from the electoral reforms proposed to deal with those controversies (some of them already passed) because people who have long worked on the 2000 page will see that it is illogical to separate via a POV fork the 2 issues. What you are doing could be considered as a POV fork. The 2004 controversy pages already have electoral reform info, and will have more as there are more electoral reforms proposed by electoral reform advocates, and the Democratic-controlled congress. As I said before, the 2004 controversies and reforms are now discussed much more widely. So that info will be entering more and more into the 2004 wikipedia articles. The proposed electoral reforms that relate directly to the 2004 election are being formulated more and more because the scope of the irregularities has only been recently seen in larger media. Since June 2006 and the Robert Kennedy compilation article. The info was out there before, but was scattered widely and in smaller media. And the full scope was not seen. It is an evolving wikipedia page just like this 2006 wikipedia page. --Timeshifter 13:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I would appreciate it greatly if you would stop ascribing me positions I do not hold. I apologized before, and if you still think there was something else I said to you that was unwarranted, I happily apologize for that as well. As you yourself quoted, you should assume good faith. I am getting the distinct impression that you have decided I am not acting in good faith; if that is not the case, then please be aware that it is the impression I am getting. Nowhere did I insinuate that the paragraphs that currently appear in the 2000 page do not belong there. In fact, I said they belong there, as that is the main page on the election, just I believe similar pargraphs would belong in the main page on this election. I am not advocating the creation of new pages either for the 2000 or 2004 U.S. election, nor for the 2006 mexican election, so your reference to POV fork is inapplicable. What I am saying is that, given that a page for the controversies on the 2006 election exists separate from its main discussion, then being a subcoordinated page it is meant to focus on controversies, and not on any and all tangential matters relating thereto. As the Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles states, Stay on topic. Magidin 15:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

For the 2006 page you are advocating separating the electoral reform info from the alleged irregularities. I am talking about electoral reform proposed to better avoid the alleged irregularities, or to make the irregularities (whether they happened or not) less relevant. As in proposals for runoff elections. See this quote from the Nov. 24, 2006 Herald Mexico article [16]:

"The EU mission, headed by Spanish Deputy José Ignacio Salafranca, said on Thursday that a runoff election would help the nation´s electoral system, especially following results as close as this year´s, when Felipe Calderón beat Andrés Manuel López Obrador by less than a percentage point. In a news conference, Salafranca said that while a second round would be expensive, it would give 'greater democratic legitimacy' to the result."

He is talking about future elections, of course, as the "call for electoral reforms" section of the 2006 wikipedia article indicates. --Timeshifter 18:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I did originally said that I believed the discussion of second rounds did not belong in this page. Then I modified and clarified this to say that it was an extensive discussion of the proposals that would be out of place, while also saying that proposals that directly refered to the irregularitiese would belong. When I rewrote the info to cite the original source, I included the call for a second round run-off explicitly. Why do we need another full paragraph that only repeats that information, which is tangential? Magidin 19:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The added info clarifies things greatly. Just like your addition to the section clarified things greatly. I started that section titled "Calls for election reform." You initially opposed having that section at all. Wikipedia people rarely get the big picture right when starting a new section. That is why wikipedia is so wonderful. We all contribute more info in order to paint all sides of various issues. That way we end up with a more NPOV page. In spite of our various conscious and unconscious biases. I don't believe I ever called for a broad discussion of all unrelated electoral reform issues on this page. I also called for inclusion only of related electoral reform issues. So we agree on that. --Timeshifter 19:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, I do not see what was unclear before, nor what got clarified after, greatly or minimally. But it is plain that you will not agree to remove the re-iteration. Magidin 19:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is the revision so others can see what we are talking about. The addition of the article quote makes it clear that the EU observer mission proposal for a presidential runoff election is due to the closeness of the past election, and that a runoff in future elections would give 'greater democratic legitimacy' to the result. --Timeshifter 19:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed 4 duplicative photos

I removed the thumbnails of the 4 photos linked below from the wikipedia page. They are for the "Third Informative Assembly." They are unnecessary since very similar thumbnail photos are already on the page for that particular rally, and because there are links on the wikipedia page to photo galleries with many more rally photos.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Img_2053.jpg
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Img_1902_GI.jpg
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Img_1940_GI.jpg
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Img_1916_GI.jpg --Timeshifter 21:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Letter by Woldenberg

I added text from a letter by José Woldenberg to La Jornada. The text is extensive, and I do not expect it will all survive (nor do I think it needs to or should). For now, however, I put a lot of it in since it is one of few explicit responses to several of the alleged irregularities on the page. As more quotes, newspaper reports, and notes are added, it probably will get shortened and/or replaced in parts. When it is all reorganized, it can be broken up and cited in situ relating to the specific issues. Magidin 16:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sergio Sarmiento quote

I (temporarily?) removed the following paragraph from the section titled "Old fashioned fraud":

Sergio Sarmiento, writing the next day in his daily op-ed column in Reforma, wondered: ^[1] "Perhaps it does not worry the main figures from [López Obrador's] campaign team, Leonel Cota, Gerardo Fernández Noroña, Ricardo Monreal, Manuel Camacho and Claudia Sheinbaum, that they have already explained the electronic fraud in diverse forums a thousand and one times."

I wonder whether we should include these type of non-substantial points. Maybe we could include a sampling of the insults and counter-insults between all the parties. I don't know. They are not part of the controversies. They are part of the circus surrounding the controversies. And maybe for that reason we should include some of that stuff. To paint a picture of the atmosphere surrounding the controversies.

I have been studying the statistical analyzes of the PREP results written by several professors. It is not an easy topic. And there are a number of issues involved. Different issues from the Official Count issues. For the PREP it is not just an issue of when the reports came in from the North, Mexico City, etc..

Do we really want to waste a lot of wikipedia space analyzing that stuff when even Lopez Obrador does not want to contest that issue? I left links to every substantial analysis I could find so far. Those interested can follow that info. --Timeshifter 18:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we should waste a lot of wikipedia space quoting almost every allegation or substantial analysis in the first place, but I seem not be in the consensus there. The reason I added the Sarmiento quote is because it makes a point that I think is important and substantial. Namely, that the allegation of cyberfraud was not just an early allegation made a few times that was then picked up and carried by others. The López Obrador campaign spent two weeks on every chat show and news conference they could find talking about the "evidence for the cyber-fraud", how the cyber-fraud has been done, and so on (note, they did not claim they thought there had been a cyberfraud, like López Obrador said; they talked about it as a proven fact). We have a lot of links and cites to people arguing about statistical anomalies and differences between PREP and actas. Al Giordano makes a big deal out of the differences between the PREP and the actas, and claiming it is definitive evidence for fraud in his oft-quoted pieces. Yet, after two weeks of that, suddenly it was "Never mind. It wasn't that after all." López Obrador may not want to contest the issue now, but he made big deal about it then. And talk of the alleged cyberfraud continued. Víctor Romero was still giving interviews in October saying that the only likely explanation he had for what he saw was that the results were "manipulated" by the computers. The following link is to an interview in Spanish, but here it is: [17]. I know you've removed the links and mentions to Romero (and I agree with their removal); the point is that the allegation did not die out with López Obrador's dismissal, just as it had not been merely put forth as a hypothesis before.

Imagine if the fable of the boy who cried wolf merely said "The boy had, in the past, claimed a wolf was approaching when no wolf actually was. The townsfold did not attend to his current claim." That would not accurately represent what happened. The fact that the arguments and claims of the fraud were continually shifting is relevant, and was a factor in public opinion. If we are going to just put all the information there and let the readers decide, then the information and the context for that information needs to be there. I certainly did not want to write it as an editorial statement (i.e., as a comment by the omniscient editor), but there should be a point made that it wasn't just a single allegation. The quote was clearly labeled as opinion, and Sergio Sarmiento is well-known and respected political commentator; while he is generally a free-marketer, he also had many columns praising many of the proposals of López Obrador and defending him against the charge that he was a "danger to Mexico." I am not sure why you qualify the quote as an "insult". López Obrador said in the interview he was not going to worry any more about the cyberfraud. Hence the comment.

In any case: I think the point should be there somewhere, as should the point that the claims of "cyberfraud" did not die when López Obrador said it did not happen after all.Magidin 20:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I have not found explanations for the PREP anomalies anywhere. I suggest you read the analyzes by the 2 physics professors. Good luck. It is tedious reading. :) --Timeshifter 23:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

You're talking to a mathematician.(-:

But I'm not sure which you mean by "anomalies". Differences between the actas and what they show? I think not, based on your comments below, but anyway: Woldenberg mentions that the IFE did not clarify the difference between "tally sheets computed" and "tally sheets received". I need to look up the eventual explanation (and I was planning to) but as I recall, it's the difference between putting up information based on the actual receipt of the tally sheet (which involved a couple of fail-safes to prevent capture errors), and putting up information based on reports (and I don't recall how the information was obtained then) rather than the sheet itself. In any case: the point is that any anomalies in the PREP would be utterly pointless. The PREP is not used for anything other than to let people know on Sunday what the returns look like, more or less. The Official Count is not used to validate the PREP, it is not based on the PREP, and has nothing to do with the PREP.

If you are referring to the alleged statistical inequalities, much of the analysis begin from flawed assumptions (that there should be randomness in the input, the most common one I've seen in the 10 or so "analysis" I have read cover to cover). But if you want to save space: we have a paragraph on the analysis of Jorge López. The subsequent discussion pretty much demolishes both his assumptions and his conclusions (he makes a big deal of correlation over time, apparently ignoring the fact that the results are cumulative, so they must show correlation over time; anything else would be suspect; and he makes a big deal of the late surge for Calderón, same as pretty much every one else. I'll be trying to find contemporary reports, but the board discussion also mentions it: the PRD's representatives in the northern states were under instructions to object to every packet and slow down the count. They wanted the difference to be made up overnight, so that people would go to bed with López Obrador ahead and wake up with Calderón ahead; ghosts of the 1988 'computer crash' were explicitly mentioned, ironically by the man behind that crash who now works for López Obrador, and by 9pm they were already talking about how the PAN was "planning a madruguete" (dead-of-night raid) ). Rather than link to a discredited analysis and to the discussion that discredits it, just remove it entirely. Magidin 13:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The official count graph is easily explained by the order in which the district results came in. --Timeshifter 23:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I have seen much confusion among many people discussing the the above 2 different issues. Because they mix them up. I am sure the same problem exists in what you have read too. --Timeshifter 23:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The difference between the PREP results and the actas is different from the above 2 issues. The tallies on the PREP precinct results (shown precinct by precinct on the IFE site during the PREP count) were sometimes different from the numbers on the tally sheets (actas). It wasn't just Al Giordano who noted that. He also referred to other sources. --Timeshifter 23:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

But that is not "cyberfraud", and it is pointless anyway. Al Giordano concluded fraud based on those differences, and explicitly says that there is computer manipulation going on. Did he also publish López Obrador's statement two weeks later that there was no computer fraud after all? I don't know. I was hoping to look it up. Allegations of computer fraud were picked up by the independent media en masse, repeated often (and are still repeated). That is why I think space needs to be devoted to this, even if López Obrador eventually decided to withdraw the claim. It's still out there. Magidin 13:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

We could find quotes from all sides saying that their side had explained a particular issue in many forums. But I am not sure that would do much good in an encyclopedia article. I prefer some actual explanations. Or I prefer some analysis such as the Luis Mochan info below where he doesn't act like he has an explanation yet. --Timeshifter 00:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

What I see is that we have many extensive, explicit quotes of people claiming problems and making allegations. Some seem at least somewhat misleading and personal; I don't recall Aznar being "flown in" by the PAN, but I could be wrong. I'll be looking that up, to mention one. In any case, those quotes are apparently fine. But rebuttal quotes should be summarized editorially? I'm happy to have all claims summarized editorially, drop most if not all of the extensive, paragraph-long quotes that have been added to the allegations sections, and keep only small sentences or clauses as quotations, for both allegations and rebuttals. But if the sauce is good for the goose, it has to be good for the gander as well. You said we should add the information and rebuttals. I'm trying to do so. As for the Sarmiento quote, fine. I'll just summarize editorially that the allegation was made many times by the main people in the López Obrador campaign (perhaps we should note who some of those people are. Are you aware that his head of campaign is widely considered to be the man behind the alleged fraud in the 1988 elections?) before putting López Obrador's statements, and that they did not retract them later. If I find news outlets still running the story of "cybernetic fraud" after that date and citing statements prior to July 17, I'll add referenced notes to that after. Magidin 13:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I just found this info from another article and will be putting it in the PREP section: "Mochan notes that these statistical anomalies aren't definitive proof of anything."

He is a physics professor who wrote one of the statistical analyzes of the PREP. --Timeshifter 19:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] José Woldenberg article

Here is that section:

In a letter published in La Jornada on August 31 2006, José Woldenberg wrote (internal paragraph numbering and breaks omitted) ^[2]:

"When we talk about fraud we understand an operation orchestrated to alter the will of the citizens that was expressed in the polls, some mechanism to artificially 'inflate' the votes for one candidate and subtract the votes of the other. I understand that we all recognize errors or inconsistencies in the filling of the actas on the day of the election. The difference lies in that some think or thought they were systematic irregularities in favor and against some candidates (that is, fraud), and [I and] others affirmed they were the result of errors that are natural in a labor done by citizens that were randomly chosen and trained for that day and that work.

"Today we know -still only partially- the results of the recount of almost 12 thousand polling places that was done by the electoral tribunal. And what we can state is that from this new recount no evidence of fraud or ill intention appears in the final tally of the votes. As can be expected, the errors are distributed in a more or less even manner among all parties and coalitions. [...]

"(It is worth remembering that the tribunal is not an entity foreign to the agreements that were agreed to by all political parties. They - the parties - decided that it would be a tribunal that would be in charge of processing the electoral disputes, and it would have the final and definitive word. It is not a perverse invention, but rather it was designed and approved by all political parties, and the naming of the magistrates was likewise approved by all of them and throughout 10 years all of its resolutions have been followed.) [...]

"First it was 3 million lost votes. But it turned out that the votes were in a special file of the PREP, that of the "inconsistent actas" that had been designed by common agreement between the IFE and the political parties. That, nonetheless, does not deny that in the presentation of the PREP on the Internet there was an error committed by the IFE: not distinguishing between actas received and actas computed. Then, it was an 'algorithm' that modified the results of the PREP. In the end the fantasy caved in among other things because the PREP is only a mechanism to put within reach of the citizens and the political parties information about the preliminary results, but it is not the official mechanism to tally the votes. Besides, since the political parties have in their possession a very high number of actas, they can check if their results coincide or not with those of the PREP (which are displayed polling place by polling place). Later the suspicion was expanded by noting the tallies-over-time of the PREP and of the district councils did not follow the same tendencies. The explanation of this alleged 'anomaly' turned out to be both easy and forceful: the fundamental variable that explains the collection of information in the PREP is the distance between the polling place and the district council (plus how slowly or quickly the polling place itself tallies the votes), while in the district councils the count advances as a function of the speed with which the actas are confronted by the councils themselves, the discussion that takes place in them, and whether or not the electoral packets are opened. Then a video appeared of a Polling place President putting votes in a ballot box as evidence of the "pregnant ballot boxes". It turned out, however, that the operation was being performed with the agreement of the representatives of the political parties, since the votes had been deposited by mistake in the wrong ballot box. I will not go on so as not to bore the reader. But the last proof was the inconsistencies in the filling of the actas. And what do we have? That those errors, after a recount of little less than 12 thousand polling places impugned by the coalition For the Good of All, does not follow the pattern of benefiting one and damaging the other.

Naturally, we also can and must discuss the conditions in which the electoral battle took place. But, for now, that's [a separate topic.]"

---

It does not make a lot of sense to wikipedia readers when it is all by itself in one section of the wikipedia page. I suggest putting parts of it in different places in the wikipedia article. We can use the same reference link. --Timeshifter 19:11, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

In my edit comment, I explicitly said that this would be the expected case, as I did in my Talk comment relating to it. I added the full information now, as I explained in the edit comment, because it is one of the few explicit rebuttals to a lot of the claims that were listed. I am more than happy to summarize and edit both statements of claims and statements of their respective rebuttals and leave the complete text as references for the interested reader to look up if they wish. Once the information is reorganized, the rebuttals should of course follow the claims. Magidin 19:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I did not realize you had completely excised the quote. Until it is edited in and distributed, should not the information be there? Magidin 20:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Víctor Romero info

I removed this info from the article:

Sophie McNeill writes: "Víctor Romero is a Doctor of physics who specialises in statistics and randomness at the National University of Mexico. Dr. Romero studied data from the election and believes there is strong evidence of fraud." In an interview with Sophie McNeill he declares:

"The PRD was winning and then suddenly at about 70% they start losing and never even gained .01 of a percentage," he explained. It seems incredible that as the last 30% of results came in, the PRD share of votes never increased. "It could be like this and then like that," Dr Romero explains, moving his hands up and down, "More of one party and less than another. But not in order. The order here is completely unexplainable. [...] There is a possibility statistically speaking, very strong, that there was an interference with the computer system of the IFE that made the counting of the votes." ^[3]

---

I didn't put the above info in the wikipedia article. Someone else did. I am confused about whether Victor Romero is talking about the PREP or the official count. I am going to look around and try to find more definitive info on what he said or wrote about the issues. Others can look around too. We can link to what we find. And we can put some clearer info in the article. --Timeshifter 19:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The reason I said that he must be talking about the official count is his statement: "The PRD was winning and then suddenly at about 70% they start losing". This has to refer to the official count, since in the PREP it was the PAN who was ahead until late in the game. See the table organized by time and percentage of returns counted in Mexican general election, 2006#Official count.

I agree, however, that he does not make it clear. I had added the information noting that there is no computer transmission or collation of votes in the official count, that was in the PREP. I fully agree with the information being removed. Magidin 20:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing Votes

There are two references to missing votes in the article. First, a bit of background: Starting on Sunday July 2 at night and continuing through Tuesday July 4, there were a lot of claims that there were between 1.5 and 2.5 million votes missing from the PREP. By July 4, Ugalde had confirmed that there were about 2.5 million votes that had been placed in the "irregular tally sheets" file, which was directly accessible from the PREP pages but whose totals had not been added to the on-line running real-time totals. The following article is in Spanish, but addresses that: [18].

The article makes the following references in the section on Alleged Irregularities: it refers to López Obrador's claims of "1,621,187 votes added or missing." The reference is given to a chart in a blog called "electoralfraudmexico". The blog's reference to a Reuters story is a defunct link. The only other reference is to www.lopezobrador.com, and I cannot find any reference for the assertions there either. Are they comparing PREP with the tally sheets, or are they comparing the final count with the tally sheets, or what?

I have been following up on the things you discussed in this talk section. These Google searches find more info:

http://www.google.com/search?q=72197+polling+stations

http://www.google.com/search?q=72197+voting

http://www.google.com/search?q=72197+polling

http://www.google.com/search?q=72197+voting+stations

They pull up pages quoting that number of polling (or voting) stations. That number is in the article you mentioned:

http://electoralfraudmexico.blogspot.com/2006/08/1621187-votes-without-sustain.html

I still have a lot of reading to do. --Timeshifter 23:29, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I will follow up on the links you give; thanks. I also made some half-hearted attempts to follow up on the distinction Woldenberg brought up between "tally sheets computed" and "tally sheets received", but have not yet been able to track it down. Meanwhile, I suggest changing "votes added or missing" to "overvotes" and "undervotes," respectively. I realize the sources from which these claims come talk about adding and missing, but the terms are loaded. What we have is overvotes (more votes counted than the registry seems to allow for) and undervotes (fewer votes counted than the registry seems to call for). Whether they are truly "added votes" or "missing votes" is precisely the crux of the issue, and calling them that assumes the conclusions. Magidin 15:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I did discover what the distinction is. "Tally sheets received" refered to the number of polling places for which the tally sheet had been received by the IFE's office at the district council; some of those would be found to be inconsistent and added to the inconsistent tally sheet database, and not to the regular totals. "Tally sheets computed" refered to tally sheets received, and which were added to the general database. IFE only reported the latter, resulting in the claims that there were "votes missing" on the night of the election. Magidin 19:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

We have the reference to Luis Mochán as well. There are two links; the second one should be changed: it simply points to an index of recent papers by Mochán. It should probably point directly to the papers that the first link (Galbraith's) points to: presumably the better is the English translation [19], or the Spanish original [20]. In any case, the paper makes clear that he is talking about information in the PREP. What was not clear to me, however, is whether he is including the irregular tally sheets or not. It is also unclear how large the differences are per polling place. A handful of "votes missing" (meaning, the total of blank ballots left over plus the total of filled ballots deposited is less than the number of ballots originally given to the polling place) is common, resulting form people who sign in but do not cast their votes for whatever reason. One or two "overvotes" (that refer to more votes cast than names stamped in the polling place log) is also not uncommon, resulting from errors by the poll workers. Mochán agrees many of the problems are explainable as errors, though he believes the explanation is insufficient: "It is quite probable that many of the inconsistencies has its origin in simple humanerrors made without malice. It has been speculated in the Mexican press that most of them originate in the confusion of some citizens due to the closeness between basic and adjacent booths corresponding to the same section. As part of this work I verifed that this confusion could indeed produce some of the inconsistencies, but that it is not enough to explain their magnitude, which remains even after aggregating the data section-wise." In any case, once again we are talking about alleged problems with the PREP.

These two claims should be at least moved within the article. They both occur after the mention of the official complaint, which is about the results in the Official Count. Mochán's analysis and Galbraith's column which is based on that analysis refer to problems identified in the PREP, and as such they should be placed before the "master complaint" is mentioned. I would also suggest that Mochán's disclaimer, and disclaimer on the disclaimer (i.e., that many of the problems are likely honest errors, but that he believes there are too many for all of them to be explained that way) should be added, though probably editorially rather than through the extensive quote. The López Obrador claim from the paragraph immediately above it needs proper citations, and there is a need to clearly identify what role the "incosistent tally sheets" may or may not have played in the assertion (this will no doubt take some doing). Magidin 20:06, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a heads up and an explanation for my recent additions. In the past couple of days I spoke with someone who was present during presentations with Mochán, in which the latter gave talks on his analyses and conclusions. One of the people present was a statistician who was in the Quick Count Technical Committee. That was the source of the explanation for overvotes/undervotes coming from contiguous polling places (Mochán and others do not specify the polling places from which they obtain their total); that person also claimed that a similar analysis on the 2000 election data would produce similar results, and that Mochán was invited to do that analysis as well (but that, apparently, no one has done so). Finally, I am afraid that for personal reasons I will not have as much time to dedicate to this article during these weeks as I had originally hoped. Magidin 19:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speaker's platform

My understanding is that an attempt was made on Tuesday 28 November to prevent the government's nominee from sitting in the speaker's chair in congress, which is a time-honoured way of preventing the house from officially sitting. The article doesn't specify this. Have I got this right? And can someone supply a good English language link describing what happened? Thanks.--Shtove 20:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

If by time-honoured you mean that somehow it is allowed in the constitution, then it's not.

The Mexican voting system is designed in a top-bottom way; in each step there is the chance to re-check and fix errors, there is time to point errors, and once the time is over it is highly desirable not ti go back. For example, in each polling station there can be observers of all parties, and all the registered observers must sign their conformance to the result, and by doing that there is no going back to re-count the votes. Later they (or anyone) can check the system (which is available online) the results of all the polling stations, if there are errors, they must report them, and the polling boxes are re-checked, but the individual votes are not re-counted (because everyone signed they were OK, and only the citizens are allowed to do that). However, the system allows the tribunal to order a full-recount, or other extreme measures, _only_ if there are exceptional and clear conditions of irregularities... that was not the case.

What happened in the congress is to quote Timeshifter, a circuss, as well as the event in which López Obrador took position as "legitimate" president-elect (with his followers) López Obrador has a history of such laughable events, and he makes it obvious he doesn't have any respect for the law or the institutions.

It is a shame that there is so many good information about this issue but a lot of it is in spanish, in papers that need subscription, radio and TV. IMO there should be more information available for people outside Mexico, at least better than Narco News. -- Felipec 08:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Time honoured: elected representatives have done this kind of thing for hundreds of years in parliaments all over the place - not just Mexico. The earliest example I know of is 1613 in Dublin. Anyway, no link yet.--Shtove 16:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alliance vs. Coalition

As far as I can tell, the grouping began with the name of "Alliance for the Good of All", but later registered itself officially as "Coalition for the Good of All"; Google gives no hits for a search for "Alianza por el Bien de Todos" in AMLO's site, www.amlo.org.mx, and gives 26 hits for "Coalicion por el Bien de Todos". I realize that the wikipedia page uses "Alliance", and I'll go and change it. I suspect they wanted a name that was clearly different from the PRI and PVEM's "Alianza por Mexico". In any case, the entire page should be searched and fixed. I'll put in a comment in the main page as well. Magidin 20:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. Only two ocurrences, as far as I could tell... Magidin 20:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User copy

I have created a User copy of this page to try to whip it into shape as far as organization and the like. I will try to write up a new introduction over the next few days to start with. Since I believe I may end up producing a lot of changes, I decided to go this way rather than stick my hand into the article itself.

I will post here in the talk page hen I have new sections done, to request comments. For now, the page should be a copy of what was on the main page at 21:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC) Magidin 21:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Titles for articles in Spanish in the references

We should have a consistent style; I had been putting just an English translation of the headlines of all articles in Spanish I have linked up as a reference. It had seemed to me that this was the case for the references until then. One I put up yesterday was modified to give the title in Spanish with a translation in parenthesis; and I see at least one link to an article in Spanish in the references that has only the Spanish title.

I would suggest putting just an English translation of the title; perhaps with a note "(in Spanish)" after it. Otherwise, put the title in Spanish and always include an English translation in parenthesis. In any case, we should keep it consistent. I would prefer the former (those who speak Spanish can read the original, those who cannot will see the translated headline). Magidin 15:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles sometimes disappear. But with a Google search they can often be found elsewhere in archives and other locations. But to do so one needs the original title. That is why I included the original title in Spanish. I do not think the English title is that important. I didn't want to delete your translation of the title so I put it in parentheses. I suggest deleting it to keep the same style, and to keep the kilobytes down. If all the titles were translated into English, and we kept both titles, it would significantly increase the kilobytes for this page. --Timeshifter 21:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

The articles are being given with bibliographic information (name of the publication, date of publication); that is precisely to avoid problems of "disappearing articles". In any case, for the same reason that you advocate using English translations of names like "Alianza Civica" and "Conteo Rapido", we should probably include the English translation of the title; it's what I've done over the last week, but I believe this is the first time you've put in the original title. But in any case, it should be a consistent style, and that it the one thing we don't have now. Some articles have only the translated English title; some have only the untranslated Spanish, and some have the original Spanish and a translation. Magidin 22:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I have had to replace reference URLs for disappearing articles in various wikipedia pages. It can be very difficult to find a replacement URL without the original title of the article. I am talking about URLs from different websites. Websites that have archived the article for various reasons. Sometimes the original site does not have the article archived anywhere on its site anymore. Or they require subscription. Wikipedia guidelines prefer links to non-subscriber locations of an article. People really don't need the English translation of the title of the article. If they can't read Spanish they still can't read the article itself. So the title in English does not help them. And Spanish speakers don't need the article title translated into English. Translating organization and other words in the wikipedia article itself is helpful because some English articles use the Spanish words now and then, and the non-Spanish-speaking readers need the translation. --Timeshifter 01:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I currently count 5 articles with only the English translation of the title in the references. You or I can add the Spanish titles too. I am not disturbed by the inconsistency. Or we can delete the English titles. But we really must keep the Spanish titles for the reasons I have given in order to maintain longterm verifiability standards. Otherwise others may delete some of the info in the wikipedia article if it is no longer referenced and verifiable. --Timeshifter 01:59, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Relevance

The Civic Alliance claimed that in Lopez Obrador strongholds he received 312,450 less votes than his allied senatorial candidate. In Calderon strongholds there were 403,740 more votes for President than for Senator.

I recently erased this from the article, but Timeshifter re-added it. I understand it is sourced material, but, if I add sourced material about, say, dinosaurs, or the goverment of Argentina, should it remain in this article simply because it is sourced? Shouldn't the information also be relevant? How is a statistic about voting splits relevant to the article?

Voting splits is when a person votes for one political party for President, and another political party for another post. I splitted my vote, and the phenomenon is not at all uncommon in Mexico. It has happened in all federal elections since 1997. This information, though probably correct and sourced, weasels the idea that a natural phenomenon "voting split" implies an unnatural phenomenon (there are votes missing). Because it is pov, a weasel comment, and it is irrelevant to the overall context (i.e., there is no CLEAR explanation of how the voting split has anything to do with the controversy), I find it natural for it to be eliminated from this article.

Hari Seldon 00:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

The Civic Alliance is an election observer group. Vote splitting that favors one candidate is a common allegation of voting irregularities worldwide. Please do not erase relevant sourced info. If you find other relevant sourced info concerning this vote splitting, then please feel free to add it. Wikipedia does not interpret the sourced info. It puts out all significant relevant sourced info, and lets the readers come to their own conclusions. I did not delete the sourced info you added recently. --Timeshifter 00:26, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, then, if "vote splitting that favors one candidate is a common allegation of voting irregularities worldwide", add a source to explain it (i.e., explain what is vote splitting, explain that it is a natural phenomenon, add context on vote splitting in Mexican elections historically, etc...). Meanwhile, the sentence has no logical connection to the article and should be eliminated. That is, either the sentence is kept by adding context that makes it relevant to the article, or the sentence is erased. And no, it won't be me who adds the context, because I don't see how vote splitting and electoral fraud are related at all. Hari Seldon 00:35, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia can not explain everything to every reader. The point is whether it is relevant sourced info to the article. It is to many readers. Maybe later you or I can add more info on it. There is lots of info of yours that needs further info. I added "citation needed" tags to that unsourced info. Unsourced info can be deleted by anybody. But many editors leave it in if it is relevant, and they wait awhile to allow the editor who added it to find the sources for it, and to add the reference links. --Timeshifter 00:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I contest that this information is relevant "to many readers". Have other readers expressed that this is useful? Does this conform to the good article guidelines? And, above all, is it logical that this statement is the lead to the entire subsection? My concern is that this almost seems as if all allegations of fraud where based on the phenomenon of vote-splitting, a phenomenon that is not controversial in itself! The info I've added, as you can see, I've added the appropriate citations in some cases, and in others, I am finding them. The Hugo Chavez vs. Aznar clarifications should need no citations, but if you insist, that can be easily found too. Hari Seldon 02:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Two points: note that "vote splitting" has a technical meaning, which is not the one being used here. See the corresponding section in Spoiler effect.

Second, here is some related data that I think would be relevant to put some of these numbers in context, but I am having a hard time figuring out how to do so, hence my putting them in the talk page. Consider the elections for President, Senator, and Governor of Guanajuato, a PAN stronghold. From [21] we see that the totals for president for the three major candidates were 1,155,403 votes for Calderón, 368,789 for Madrazo, and 301,463 for López Obrador. The results for Senator, [22] give the PAN 1,104,120 votes, the Coalición (Obrador's associated senator) 249,935, and the Alianza por México (PRI and PVEM) 424,165. We see that both Calderón and López Obrador got more votes than their associated senatorial candidate, and of about the same order of magnitude: Calderón 51,283 votes more, and López Obrador 51,498 more votes. However, relatively speaking, López Obrador had about a 17% increase over the senatorial candidate, while Calderón had only a 4.44% increase (the difference as a percentage of the presidential totals). Madrazo got about the same votes fewer than his associated senatorial candidate, 55,376 fewer votes, a 15% decrease. Now move on to the governor's race. See [23] The PAN candidate, who was in alliance with Nueva Alianza, got 1,166,820 votes, or 11,417 more than Calderón. The Coalición's gubernatorial candidate received 204,143 votes, meaning that López Obrador received 97,320 more votes than his associated gubernatorial candidate. The PRI-PVEM received 494,446 votes for governor, or 125,657 more votes than the corresponding presidential candidate. Since the PAN ran by itself for president but joint with Alianza for governor, perhaps we should add their totals: adding the votes for Calderón and with the 18,611 votes received by Nueva Alianza for president still means they both together received 46,089 fewer votes for president than their common gubernatorial candidate (Nueva Alianza received 66,551 votes for senator, or 47,940 votes more for senator than for president). Or going the other way, the PAN's candidate received 1,135,514 votes under the PAN's emblem, or 19,889 fewer than Calderón. In the four states that held gubernatorial elections, López Obrador exceeded the totals for his allied gubernatorial candidate, even when the latter won: in Mexico City, definite a López Obrador stronghold López Obrador got 2,813,112 votes to Ebrard's 2,206,551 (Calderón also exceeded with 1,325,474 votes the 1,291,805 votes received by his allied candidate, Sodi); the Coalición's senatorial candidate received 2,493,288, or 319,824 fewer votes than López Obrador. In Jalisco, another PAN stronghold, Calderón received 1,435,334, which amounted to 138,589 more votes than the gubernatorial candidate, and 11,190 more than the senatorial candidate; López Obrador received 559,266 votes, more than double the 224,590 votes the gubernatorial candidate received and 222,052 votes more than the allied senatorial candidate (with 337,214 votes). In Morelos, which López Obrador won with 312,815 votes to Calderón's 226,340, the PAN's gubernatorial candidate received 246,136 votes (19,796 more votes than Calderón), and the Coalición's gubernatorial candidate received 218,931, or 93,884 fewer votes than López Obrador. In the senate race in Morelos, the PAN candidate received 216,423 votes, 9,917 fewer votes than Calderón, but López Obrador's allied candidate received 211,871 vote, 100,944 fewer votes than López Obrador. The implication is that the difference is attributable to either changed votes or stuffed ballot boxes, but as far as I can tell they are picking and choosing where they are comparing. Here we see two of the major PAN strongholds with both Calderón and López Obrador well ahead of their senatorial counterpart, and the same in two PRD locations; and López Obrador did substantially better than gubernatorial candidates of his party in all four elections, while Calderón did only marginally better in two, and worse in two. Magidin 19:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't this original research, Magidin? Hari Seldon 20:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Missed this the first time around... I believe such collation of data would not constitute original research within the meaning of Wikipedia. In WP:OR, it is stated that:

research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia.

while WP:ATT states:

What is not original research? Editors may make straightforward mathematical calculations or logical deductions based on fully attributed data that neither change the significance of the data nor require additional assumptions beyond what is in the source. It should be possible for any reader without specialist knowledge to understand the deductions. For example, if a published source gives the numbers of votes cast in an election by candidate, it is not original research to include percentages alongside the numbers, so long as it is a simple calculation and the vote counts all come from the same source. Deductions of this nature should not be made if they serve to advance a position, or if they are based on source material published about a topic other than the one at hand.

Magidin 16:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Any way, whats your point? Hari Seldon 20:39, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

My point is actually in support of you: I do not know where it is alleged that López Obrador received fewer votes than his allied senatorial candidate; the places I have looked at, he always got more. And places where I see Calderón receiving more votes than his allied senatorial candidate, López Obrador also received more. Alianza Civica is using innuendo to suggest there are indications of fraud because in some places López Obrador received fewer votes than the senatorial candidate, whereas in other places Calderón received more than the senatorial candidate. Even ignoring the problem of logical connection that you put forth, should we not compare any difference between Calderón and his senatorial "mate" with those of López Obrador in that location? See above: while there are places where Calderón did indeed get more votes than the senatorial candidate, the same thing happened with López Obrador in that state. If you have the innuendo that there is something fishy because Calderón got more votes, well, that is completely moot given that López Obrador not only also got more votes, he got even more votes. If, as is insinuated, the "extra" votes were a result of fraud, then what about the "extra" votes for López Obrador, and what did they accomplish? Likewise, let us see in those places where Obrador allegedly received fewer votes than his senatorial partizan; did Calderón also get fewer votes than the PAN candidate? The allegations are not only nebulous, they seem to me to be misleading. And see the new text. Now we are talking about "more votes for president than senator", but this completely glosses over for whom those votes were cast. In the case of Guanajuato, a PAN stronghold, the 100,000 "more votes for president" were split almost evenly between PAN and the Coalition, with the Coalition slightly ahead. How is this supposed to be indicative of pro-PAN fraud, exactly? Note also that Madrazo ran several percentage points behind his party's congressional candidates throughout; how does the distribution relate to the relative strength of the PRI? Many PRIistas were disgusted with their presidential candidate but voted for the congressional candidates anyway. How much of the difference between votes for president and for senator can be laid at the PRI's feet? Magidin 21:56, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I know, Magidin, that the intention was to support the point of view that the information currently displayed in the sentence is flawed. However, NPOV would mandate that both information (the one currently in, and the other one that you've just presented) be included in the article. After all, they are both points of views.

In any case, my criticism is that, regardless of point of view, the information is irrelevant to the article. Whether or not more people voted for legislators than for President, or whether or not they voted for one political party for the legislature and another one for the President is completely irrelvant to the controversies. Either phenomenon is not controversial in of itself.

I agree; I was merely pointing out that even if we were to accept the intended innuendo, it makes no sense. Magidin 20:02, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

And since the phenomenon is not controversial in of itself, then it should not be in this article. Unless someone is advancing the hypothesis that this phenomenon indicates some form of fraud (i.e., assuming that people always voted for the same party in legislature AND president, and all people who voted for legislature also voted for President, then Lopez Obrador should have gotten more votes). This hypothesis, however, IS NOT present in the article. Why? Because an individual editor cannot advance such hypothesis in this encyclopedia (it would be considered Original Research), and perhaps it is difficult to find a source claiming this ludicrous hypothesis.

Since the hypothesis is not presented in the article, then the presentation of the phenomenon in itself is not controversial, and therefore has nothing to do with this article. It should not be here.

Again, I agree. I do want to point out a further point of weaseling, though: the original claim stated that López Obrador was running behind his allied senatorial candidate in PRD strongholds, while Calderón was running ahead of the PAN candidate in PAN strongholds. Hence your comments about splitting your vote among different parties. But now the claim has been changed substantially. Now the statement is that if you look at all "PAN strongholds" (whatever that is supposed to be), then you will find more votes for president than for senator (adding up all votes for all parties), whereas in "PRD strongholds" (again, whatever that is supposed to be) you find the opposite. Further, the refered article claims that having more votes for president than for senator is somehow indicative of fraud, since they claim it is extremely difficult for someone to vote for president but not senator. That is patent nonsense, as I am sure you know: a lot of people in Mexico vote only for president, and in addition some of the small parties that fielded a presidential candidate did not field a senatorial one. In short: I agree it is not controversial, and I further add that if you were to accept the innuendo as assertion of opinion, that opinion is baseless and is not well sourced. Just quoting someone who asserts something nebulous is not adequate sourcing, no matter who that person is. Magidin 20:02, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

And even then, a voter can choose to vote for his legislative representative and chose not to vote for President, and vice-versa. This does not necessarily imply any wrong-doing. The article, however, does state that someone actually suggested that an otherwise perfectly normal phenomenon "suggested" wrong-doing. In the interest of NPOV, I would like to, at least, ask that the legal actions taken by the PRD on this issue are included. If the PRD did not take any legal action, or took insufficient legal action (like, they sued but presented no proof), then that should also be stated.

I mean, I want to assume good faith, but the current order, wording, and structuring of the article seems like a suggestion that the PRD was attacked with innumerable cases of fraud and that the law decided to not do anything about it. However, this is far from the truth. The PRD created a great mediatic experience around accusations of fraud, but failed to file any legal complaint, and thus the courts had no choice but to validate the election. Legally, the PRD was ok with the election (so much ok that they decided not to sue), and legally the election is valid. This quite important point seems to be left out. Hari Seldon 23:37, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

And again, the defense that it should be in the article because it is sourced is no excuse. I mean, I can find plenty of useful sources about UANL Tigres that have nothing to do with this article... does that mean that this article should also feature sourced information about UANL Tigres?

Hari Seldon 02:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Warnings on editor's talk pages

RE: I did not violate the three revert rule. Additionally, I am not reverting your edits, rather I made an edit that you are reverting without properly addressing the concerns I present in the talk page. True, wikipedia cannot explain everything to every reader, however I am not asking about the origin of the atom here, I am asking for a logical link between the contested information and the article's presentation. At the very least, it should be properly explain why it is the lead to the whole section. Is it that this controversial piece is the main reason why the election was contested? Obviously not! Irresponsbility and inability to discuss logically/negotiate do not assume good faith, and that too is against wikipedia policy. Lets not make this content dispute transform into a personal dispute. I have nothing against you, and I do feel that this warning is rather premature. Hari Seldon 02:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

By the way, Timeshifter, you added a warning to my talk page without me actually committing a 3RR violation. Yet, you reverted my edits the same number of times! Perhaps you should add a warning to your own talk page too.

But, I will assume that this is just a misunderstanding, and that there is a willingness to talk this through. I am contesting a piece of the article, and I suggest that we resolve this without warnings and edit warring. Please provide the appropriate context. I am working on the citations.

As you notice, my intention is to make this article more NPOV.Hari Seldon 02:22, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

And the sources have been added. Now, please address the issues I raise about the controversial sentence. Hari Seldon 02:39, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I find nothing curious about the voting results. In fact, I find them irrelevant. I've presented my case, and still no response. I think I'll be bold. Hari Seldon 21:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quality of sources

It worries me that many of the sources used to invoke allegations of "fraud", "corruption", and others come from blogs. Are we using opinions to justify entries in an encyclopedia? At least the wording makes it clear that said allegations have never been proven (sometimes, not even denounced) in a court of law and that the allegations are entirely the opinion of its authors. Perhaps a disclaimer would be useful? Hari Seldon 02:38, 31 March 2007 (UTC)