Talk:Election

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[edit] Misc

Anyone want to clean up the "Who is voted for" section? It reads terrible and has really weak grammar.

I agreed, and I did so. Ataru 14:39, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your changes to "The need for constant vigilance". While I think your paragraph about media, advertising etc is valuable, my version was aiming at something a bit deeper than the direct influence of the media on the electoral system. I was more concerned with the idea (held by some) that the drive t oconsuem is embedded deeply enough in our society that democracy is now more or less irrelevant as we can be counted on to want more and more consumer goods every year. (not my point of view, but held by some).

What d'you think? (and thanks for all the work you've done on this entry by the way). The Land 08:28, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Editorial Note: Today I have reorganized and enlarged this page, while attempting to retain nearly all of the previous edition of it. In attempting to better organize the page, I moved some paragraphs from one section to another. Some sentences were slightly modified in order to make the flow of the article more smooth, especially after moving these paragraphs around. The one section that I altered and enlarged upon the most was the section regarding the definition of fair and free elections. I essentially expanded this from 6 paragraphs to 11 paragraphs, and added eight subtitles to this section to enhance ease of navigation. I also added external links to my Democracy Watch (International) organization on this page.

The section regarding "Examples of Structural Biases" (1.2.2 Some Examples of Structural Biases) contains some very blunt but honest criticisms of the recent Iranian and Russian elections. I hope these do not get erased by some hypervigilant patriots of these countries. We shall see....

Scott Perry

Executive Chairperson: Democracy Watch (Internatnional)

April 10, 20

I made some fairly major changes to this article. It was written in a precriptive tone of how proper democratic elections should be run, not the decriptive style of an encyclopedia article. It also tended to spend to much time discussing the nature of democracy and what makes a true one, subjects better covered in democracy itself. - SimonP 00:18, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

This is a very good article...Someone want to post it for Featured Article Candidates?

It may not be perfect, but it has the best description and elaboration of the concept of the loyal opposition I have EVER seen.

Bravo, folks. -Penta 17:35, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A similar argument was responsible for Canada's unelected Senate. Bureaucrats, who may have a great deal of power, are both too numerous and need to have far more specific skills to be elected. -- removed, sounded POV. David.Monniaux 15:10, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Growing?

What evidence is there that (as in the first par) electoral reform movements are 'growing'? This sounds subtly biased. I'm not sure that this is the case in the UK, where the movement for PR could be argued to have peaked, or in the US, which has zero appetite for PR etc, and these are major examples of unreformed democratic systems. Suggest deleting the word 'growing'.

[edit] Disambiguation text is small

I'll make it big enough to be readable. Brianjd


[edit] Voter turnout

At what level of non-voter turnout would an election be deemed invalid, or not providing a meaningful result?

Depends on the country. I know that it's 50% in Serbia. Not that I live there :-) Wouter Lievens 22:19, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Why is the page title vandalized and moved? — Stevey7788 (talk) 03:46, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

It's been fixed but there was a server lag. — oo64eva (Alex) (U | T | C) @ 04:01, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Candidates vs Parties

"An election is a process in which a vote is held to choose amongst candidates to fill an office." That doesn't sound very much like Dutch (political) elections. More like the UK or US, where one usually votes for a person (I believe), but in the Netherlands it is more common to vote for a party. Of course one votes for a person, but that's often just the person who happens to be at the top of the list. Although, especially in national elections, that person may have a strong influence on whether people will choose that party. Also, he (or theoretically she) may become prime minister. In city elections I sometimes vote for someone I've never heard of and don't care about (hey, I'm voting for a guy with a Turkish name, ah well, whatever). I can imagine that originally the idea was to vote for people, but then they started to group themselves into parties and those became the focus of elections. But of course in, say, the USA many people will vote Democrats irrespective of who's 'running for office'.

Which brings me to the other issue. One doesn't always vote for someone to fill an office. Like I said, the person you vote for may become pm, but it may also be clear that that will never happen. Which doesn't matter. You vote for someone to get them into parliament (or rather to get as many people of that party as possible into parliament), and then that person may (or may not) take up a ministerial post, but you almost never know which post that may be. And in political campaigns this is hardly ever an issue. So maybe the text should be changed to include all the above in a few words. Anyone ready for a challenge? DirkvdM 20:31, 2005 May 12 (UTC)

I took up the challenge. Please copyedit to make better, if needed. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 19:27, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

That came quite close. I was afraid it would turn into something contorted, so I didn't attempt it myself. I just rearranged it a bit and added 'house of representatives', assuming that is a proper generic term for parliament, senate, house of commons and what have you. Looks good now, I think. DirkvdM 19:55, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

[edit] Show elections

Dictatorships, such as the former Soviet Union, have been known to hold such show elections.

Is the USSR such a good example for this? It had a dictatorship of the proletariat, but I assume this denomination was rather tongue in cheek. There may have been show elections (I don't really know), but it's certainly not a good example of a dictatorship (wasn't it more of an oligarchy?). Maybe some Latin American country would be a better example.

In the 'fixed vote' type of show-election such elections may offer several candidates for each office.

How is that a show election? Sounds pretty normal to me.

In the 'single candidate' type of show-election, there may only be one candidate for any one given position, with no alternative choices for voters beyond voting yes or no to this candidate.

Isn't that more of a referendum? Just not the type most of us will be used to, but it seems to fit the definition.

In both cases, the government uses intimidation or vote-rigging to ensure a high yes vote or that only the government-approved candidates are chosen.

Now that's what I'd call a show election. It's rigged. But a yes/no vote isn't quite necessarily rigged.

Further on, it is suggested that Hitler came to power thanks to plurality voting. But I don't see how this could help overthrow democracy because one might still need an absolute majority. Unless it's combined with a 'winner take all' system like in the USA. But I understand that that's not what happened. The Nazis used undemocratic means they called gleichschaltung.

DirkvdM July 7, 2005 11:26 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

Does anyone think the top picture (Image:Election_Poster_Board.jpg) is a bit obscure? It's not obvious how it relates to elections; I surmise election candidates stick their posters on it? Or are results posted on it? In any case, something easy, like people queueing at a ballot box, might be simpler. Joestynes 00:46, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Image:Votingwomen.jpg is a good picture of people voting. Image:SI-CampaignSigns.JPG is colourful and easy to understand. - SimonP 00:50, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] UK Parliamentary term

Other states (e.g., the United Kingdom) only set maximum time in office, and the executive decides exactly when within that limit it will actually go to the polls. In practice this means the government will remain in power full term unless something special happens, such as a motion of no-confidence.

As I understand it, it is quite rare for a Parliament to sit out its full term in the UK, because the Prime Minister usually calls an election at a time deemed opportune for the Government's electoral fortunes. In fact, contrary to what the article says, delaying an election right to the five-year term is often considered a sign of weakness ("waiting for something to come up", like Micawber). An example of this would be John Major's hanging on after the narrow victory of 1992 all the way until 1997. I think this part needs rewriting. Any suggestions? Tamino 16:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Victor Berger

I removed[1] the sentence on Victor Berger from the "Bias and limited options" section. Not only is it a single-person example in a section covering systemic forces and biases, but Berger had been convicted under the espionage act (later overturned) at the time the House denied him his seat. Whatever their actual motivation, a legislative body unseating a member for a criminal conviction is not necessarily the same thing as simply "denying him his seat because of his anti-war views". Note that Berger was able to make the ballot and win the subsequent special election. - David Oberst 17:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] "Popular Vote"

I have no idea what the problem is, but I added something that was deleted and someone said it should be on the talk page. So here it is, relating to the electoral college.

Because of this, it's a misnomer to even call it a "popular vote," as it is, in reality, dozens of different popular votes, with different circumstances affecting the outcomes. For example, a vote in 2000 in Massachusetts or Texas -- states where the victory of Al Gore and Bush, respectively, were virtually assured -- was mostly symbolic, while in Florida -- which was much closer -- each vote meant a lot more. So turnout might be higher in Florida, and lower in Masschusetts and Texas, in 2000. Or people in the latter two states might have been more likely to vote for third-party candidates, like Ralph Nader. Also, each state conducts its elections differently, within certain paramaters, including the method of voting, and even who is eligible to vote (e.g., convicted felons). Due to these and other factors, lumping all the votes from all the states in the nation together into one "popular vote" to determine who "won" is statistically invalid.

Pudge 20:54, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I was the one that reverted that edit. It seemed like a controversial addition that deserved some further discussion. Thanks for posting it here.
Here are my comments:
  • This is a rather large amount of text to add to the relatively-short "Who is elected" section of this wikipedia page. If this talk page were a paper, I would include your text as a footnote if I thought the idea of "popular vote" needed clarification.
  • I see what you're getting at here... but in some sense any large election is going to suffer from regional discrepancies in how elections are administered, conducted, etc. And at the center of all of this, the definition of popular vote that the article is talking about is along the lines of: "tabulating all votes in an election contest from the official statement of results from subordinate jursidictions (states, counties, etc.)".
  • Do you have any source to which you can attribute this argument?
But the fact is that "tabulating all votes ... from subordinate jursidictions (states, counties, etc.)" has no statistical meaning. While differences are true "in some sense" in any large election, what's different here is that you are not actually all voting for the same thing, whereas in most large elections, you do. Because I am voting for the electors in Texas (who are already going to Bush) and you are voting for electors in Florida (where the election is close), we are not voting for the same thing and we will have different motives for voting the way we do. To lump them all together is meaningless. The fact is, for all we know, Bush might have had more popular votes than Gore if we had an actual popular vote for President, all other things being equal.
Maybe you can think of a better way to express this?
As to source, I don't see that one is needed; the conclusion obviously follows from the known facts. You can no more add Florida and Texas together as you can add NFL and NBA scores together. I have some though, for example, Empirically Evaluating the Electoral College, which notes among other things:
The results in Figure 5.4 are only approximate, not just because of the specific modeling choices made, but also because of the implicit assumption that the patterns of voting would not be affected by changes in the electoral system. For example, states such as California and Texas that were not close in the 2000 election might have had higher turnout under a popular vote system in which all votes counted equally. Thus, our results compare different electoral systems as applied to the actual observed votes and do not directly address counterfactual questions about what would happen if the electoral system were changed.
-- Pudge 01:19, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I see what you're getting at... I've still got a couple of questions. I'm just running out the door right now, but will return to this tomorrow. -- Joebeone (Talk) 03:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to take so long to respond... while we may be voting for different things (electors for different states), what do we think we're voting for? That is, has there ever been any survey work that shows people from different states believe that they are not voting for president but voting for the electors in their state? Could you propose a shorter version of the material that you added for inclusion? (I could take a shot at it, if you'd like). -- Joebeone (Talk) 20:32, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I know that in 1996, I voted for Harry Browne. I lived in Massachusetts, where Clinton was a shoo-in to win. If I had lived in a "swing state," I would have voted for Dole (I did not like Dole, but preferred him over Clinton). And I know I am not nearly alone in this, as I've met many people who have voted similarly (or not voted at all). Yes, it's anecdotal evidence, but it's also a given that for many people, their voting patterns change because of whether their state is competitive; indeed, how your vote will be counted is considered so influential to how you vote that there are whole voting systems created to counteract the effect (see, for example, Condorcet method).
The question really isn't so much whether we can prove the election result would be different had it been an actual poular vote, it is whether you can show it wouldn't be. We cannot assume that changing a major component of the election system will not have an impact on the result. Pudge 17:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The general "Election" article probably isn't the best place for extensive detail of particular electoral systems, except when illustrating general concepts. There are articles for U.S. Electoral College and Elections in the United States where this sort of stuff should live, and be pointed to or summarized here as necessary. I did some stop-gap rewording of the text in question to eliminate the problematic "popular vote" phrasing. - David Oberst 22:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Your edit still has two big problems. First, it says that it is "somewhat a formality," which to me means that it is not significant in determining outcome, which is the very question we're discussing, and to me seems to be POV. Second, it incorrectly implies that the "winner" of the "popular vote" necessarily has either majority or pluralirty support, when, again, that is simply not known. It is simply false to say that Gore had more "support" than Bush in 2000, because there is no significant evidence supporting that conclusion; you're taking the "national popular vote" to mean something it doesn't mean. It is true that Gore may have had more popular support, but as popular support was not actually measured, we can't state it as a fact.
In the interests of agreeing with the spirit of your edit here, I've removed that part of the discussion, letting people find out more by going to the Electoral College page. Pudge 17:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

For the purposes of this article, it doesn't matter if some people wrongly think the US presidential elections are a simple direct election, or would advocate making it one, or whatever. The section in this article is just covering "Who is elected", and points out the somewhat indirect nature of the election in some cases. The "majority or plurality" referred to is of the votes cast in whatever process is in place, the point being that this is not a simple direct election - it doesn't imply that this "majority or plurality" of votes is the actual mechanism by which the winner was chosen. The "somewhat of a formality" (I couldn't come up with a better wording on short notice) can be taken to refer to the electors in the current system, which could be removed from the existing system without too much trouble. The state-by-state allocation, on the other hand, is what makes this different from a popular vote, but the questions of direct elections, opinion sampling, or whatever can be taken up at the US-specific articles, electoral reform, or wherever. - David Oberst 20:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Does it "matter" in "this" article if there's factually incorrect information in it? Because that's the problem. It is, for example, simply incorrect to say "In both cases the office is not being voted on directly, and the distribution of legislative seats (or the state-by-state results in the American case) may produce a winner who lacks a majority or even a plurality of support, as in the 2000 US Presidential election." There is *no evidence at all* that Bush did not get majority/plurality support, because there is no actual measurement of that. It's one thing to decline to get into the issue, but it's another to misinform. My edit last time didn't take for some reason; fixing it now (basically, just removed the whole end of the discussion; as you say, people can go to the individual pages to find out more). I hope you will agree this is acceptable. Pudge 00:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I restored the paragraph, replacing "support" with "votes cast", which wording should alleviate your concern without deleting the entire text. - David Oberst 01:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

But now instead of stating something that's incorrect, it merely implies it. I don't think that's an improvement. I also don't get how it is useful to talk about electors being bound by law or custom when we aren't told how electors are selected to be on the ballot, and so on. Apart from the false implication of the meaningfulness of the popular vote -- which is unnecessary since the facts already stated imply that the so-called popular vote, which doesn't actually exist, can end up with a different result -- this all seems to raise more questions than it answers. As you said, this should all just point to the relevant articles, which it already did. Pudge 08:50, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Election surprise

Greetings all. I just wrote the page Election surprise, and was wondering if some of you could pop in, and tweak the page up some. I'm looking for maybe:

  • a bit more clarification,
  • more incidents worldwide which would qualify as election surprises
  • categories

Thanks! samwaltz 00:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Electoral Geography"

Hello, can you please add "Electoral Geography" website to the external links section? I really think this website will be useful for everybody interested in elections.

http://www.electoralgeography.com/en/index.html 62.141.71.65 08:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC) http://www.electoralgeography.com/en/index.html - That's definately a very good website - tons of maps and statistics on elections. Please add it to the 'External links' section. Thanx, Serge

[edit] More on the popular vote

From the argument above, I assume that there used to be a section on the 'popular vote', and now there isn't. This is a bit annoying, since typing in 'popular vote' directs people to this page. Since it is obviously a contentious topic, I propose a page on the popular vote, and how it is not necessarily what determines who gets elected.

Obviously this was a big issue in the 2000 US presidential election, but it has also been important in other times and places. For example, in the 1978 and 1981 New Zealand general elections, the government lost the popular vote but kept office. This eventually led to a complete change in the electoral system. It is also a major factor keeping third parties out of the running in most countries with first past the post / winner takes all electoral systems.

Basically, I would like to be able to use the phrase 'popular vote' in articles and link to a page on the popular vote, rather than having to explain it there and then. --Helenalex 04:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Umm yes, since POPULAR VOTE redirects to this page, it is necessary to explain what it means. Sorry, but the terms is used outside of the US and the Bush v Gore connotation, for example, in Canada. The page is useless without explaining what it is.
Examples of this use of the terms in Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2004/06/28/elxn_popvote040628.html http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=Cjk&q=popular+vote+canada&btnG=Search&meta=

It's truly ridiculous to redirect "popular vote" to this page, and then NOT EXPLAIN WHAT IT IS! 99.245.173.200 08:48, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Early elections

It would be good some mention about what early elections are, as they are not unusual in Europe, for example. Mountolive | Talk 08:14, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Snap election is probably a synonym. --Helenalex 22:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I think it's advance poll that's referred to. --Vuo 13:20, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tagged with NPOV

I tagged the Difficulties with Elections section with a NPOV tag, because in my opinion it reads like someone's high school essay on what is wrong with democracies, including conspiracy theories about corporations being behind both major parties in the United States. I didn't want to take the radical action of completely removing it although I don't think it would be unwarranted. The "Voter frustration and apathy" section especially needs a major rewrite or deletion. I would point out that it doesn't offer any citations or references but nothing else in the article does either. Gudeldar 22:33, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree and hacked out a good part of that section. - SimonP 13:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I found this section empty; I added a summary of electoral fraud and removed the NPOV tag. -- Beland (talk) 16:29, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Split to Popular Vote

For one reason or another, someone has moved the article "popular vote" to "election." "Election" is far too broad a topic. There is an article about electoral colleges and electoral votes, for example, and yet no one that describes the popular votes in say U.S. presidential elections, the history behind the popular vote, and why it is still used even though it does not directly affect the election of a president in the U.S. There are also the issues relating to popular votes and that they have been used in other government's systems. "Popular vote" should have its own page as the page "election" really gives limited information on that topic (therefore, it was also unwise that the two were merged in the first place). Wolfdog (talk) 03:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 'Election' in a wholly religious context?

I've occasionally heard religious people use the term "election" to describe a facet of their beliefs, but I haven't ever seen it adequately explained. I'm at a loss as to finding more information, since searching for "religion" and "election" brings up results that are entirely unrelated. The reason I bring it to the attention of this talk page is that if there is such a belief, whatever it is, that article may need to be created and this page disambiguated. I'm still entirely unsure of how notable and documentable the religious idea of 'election' is, though. All I know is that it may have something to do with protestant Calvinism. I don't have anything else of value to add, so does anyone else? Is this even worth pursuing? 67.127.55.234 (talk) 17:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Try Calvinism or predestination. There is a reference link to the latter at the top of the article already - David Oberst (talk) 18:19, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion

 Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (January 2007)

The above tag has been sitting around for a while. Can anyone name any specific areas which need expansion, or can this request be considered filled? -- Beland (talk) 16:31, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] returning officer

Media:Example.ogg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.3.61.4 (talk) 20:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)