Talk:Haitian general election, 2006

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[edit] Content needed

Please add any information you know about the elections to this page, or if you have links to articles about the elections please add them to the discussion page and I will attempt to sort through them for new information. --MateoP 01:51, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your editing. I had started the article before logging in, but your job did more than plenty to improve its state. Plus, would you consider a current event template, since this is, of course, an ongoing newspiece. Thanks. --Toussaint 16:05, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
Done. If you can, it would be great to get more information. I'm going to try and collect information about the candidates and expand on their campaigns. There is a full list of candidates I found, which I believe is more than 20 people, should I add that? --MateoP 22:43, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
Of course! A list of candidates would provide a service to the maintenance of this article as the events progress. Plus, since there are so many candidates for such a (seemingly-trivial) election (and I mean, don't forget the parliamentary elections, which are probably 10 times as confusing and varied), it would be great to have articles (and accompanying resources) on each and every one of them so as to cover as much historic ground as possible. Thanks again. --Toussaint 16:05, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help expand on the candidates

Please view the list of candidates listed in the article, follow their links, and add anything you happen to know about them from a NPOV, if you will. I know a little about most of these people but not necessarily a lot about any except for a few. --MateoP 02:04, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Need sources about Jean-Juste

An anonymous user editted the page and included this, "witnesses say that the police watched and refused to intervene to protect Jean-Juste from the crowd until many minutes after the assault began." We need a source on this. I wrote the wikinews article about the arrest and none of the sources from that article said anything about this. It probably needs to be reworded a little to make it more NPOV, but I have no problem with it staying in if we can identify a source. I'll go ahead and delete this sentence on Monday if no one (preferrably the person who added it) can identify a source. --MateoP 20:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV about Guy Philippe and reason for the coup d'etat in 2004

Not everybody may agree that the "rebellion" in Feb 2004 was a coup d'etat - but a quick look at 2004 Haiti Rebellion shows that there it is highly POV to sum up the reason for the regime change as due to allegations of election fraud in the 2000 parliamentary elections. There were allegations of fraud, sure, but that's not the whole story...

Moreover, there's plenty on the page Guy Philippe suggesting that he's a mass-murderer, or at a minimum is extremely closely related to mass murders and mass murderers. This needs to be stated in NPOV style, of course, but for the moment it's missing from the Haitian elections, 2006 page... Anyway, i'll try to find some NPOV way of adding some relevant info. Boud 22:54, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

"allegations of election fraud" does not mean that the allegations are true, it just means that this is the reason (or one of the reasons) why the rebellion happened. I'll try to rephrase that to make sure that it doesn't make it seem like that's the only reason that the rebellion happened. An about Guy Philippe, you can't use wikipedia as a source for wikipedia, and I know for a fact that many Haiti related articles are highly POV and that's surely one. If you can found reliable outside sources that show that Philippe was involved in atrocities, please I'd love to see him (for the record I think he probably was, or at bare minimum was involved in drug trafficking but we need sources to include this). I'll clean up the sources you provided earlier also. --MateoP 23:10, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] opinion polls dec 2005 - preval:baker:manigat=37:10:8

i don't have time to write this up properly right now, so i'm just putting this up here -

preval:baker:manigat=37%:10%:8% according to opinion poll by Angus Reid Consultants of 1200 people between 5-12 December 2005: http://www.haitipressnetwork.com/news.cfm?articleID=7329

ratios for believing in fair, open, transparent elections vs not fair/open/transparent = 43%:36%.

i'm adding charles henri baker just as a stub. he's 3rd in line (even if only at 8%) so he ought to be on the page... Boud 03:31, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Results?

Is there an expectation of when the results will be released? If they will be released relatively soon (a day or so), then I would wait till then to put this on the Main Page. If it takes a couple of weeks to tabulate everything, I would just put it up now, and again when the count is done.--Pharos 21:44, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

It looks like (01:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)) the USAID pre-polls were hopelessly (deliberately?) biased against Preval - the difference between 30% and 67% is huge:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wohait0209,0,173867.story?coll=ny-top-headlines February 8, 2006, 7:04 PM EST - At a large polling center near the huge slum of Cite Soleil, unconfirmed results taped to large columns inside showed Preval winning about 90 percent of the votes cast there. - Across the capital in Petionville, home to many of Haiti's wealthiest citizens as well the poor Haitians who serve them, Preval took slightly more than 70 percent of the vote at another polling station, according to posted results. - Preval's political adviser, Bob Manuel, said preliminary calculations show the former president having won 67 percent of the nationwide vote, with 16 percent of votes counted. Anyway, more reports will presumably come out soon... Boud 01:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

A Haitian friend of mine who claims to be distantly related to Preval told me today that Preval has won with 80% of the vote. I don't know where to go to verify this, though. -Kasreyn 04:22, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, it seems he's doing very well in the initial polling and there probably will not be a run-off. Since I first posted, I've seen that the results it seems should all be in before Saturday.--Pharos 04:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Don't hold your breath though. It'll take an extra few days to dump all those Préval votes in the sea... Yours cynically, QuartierLatin1968 El bien mas preciado es la libertad 16:17, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Sigh. I hate to say it, but it's now looking like you turned out to be right. Those bastards.  :( -Kasreyn 17:53, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I have a question about Presidential elections. When the U.S. Presidential election results are being counted, various TV news programs "call" the election in favor of one candidate or the other, based on some mixture of data and bias. Would it be inappropriate to "call" this in favor of Preval, always assuming the current results data are true? Ie., would it be appropriate, would it be NPOV, and would it be reliable?

My reasoning for calling it for Preval is very simple. With about 75% of votes counted, he has about 50% to his nearest competitor's 12%. Even if all the remaining 25% went to Manigat, that would still not be enough to overcome Preval's lead. If the data we are already showing on Wikipedia is true and factual, then Renee Preval is now unbeatable. Therefore, in my opinion, we should call for Preval, based on the mathematics. If on the other hand it is argued that the data are not reliable, we should remove them from the article. -Kasreyn 04:28, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, mathematically Préval has won a plurality of the vote. However, to prevent a run-off, he must also win an outright majority, and as of now it is unclear from the partial results whether he has done so.--Pharos 04:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Kasreyn wrote "If on the other hand it is argued that the data are not reliable, we should remove them from the article". I don't agree with that part. Although I do believe that the results published by the CEP have been fraudulently manipulated, they are an extremely important historical artifact of this election. Our putting up a summary of the "official" (i.e. doctored) results doesn't have to mean that we endorse those results at all. We're just saying, this is what the CEP says. (But that distinction perhaps should be made more explicit on this page...) QuartierLatin1968 El bien mas preciado es la libertad 00:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, as long as it's pointed out that Wikipedia is quoting a set of figures from some other group's whole cloth, rather than some sort of synthesis. If we're going to host misleading data, we need to be clear that we did not originate it. I'm very concerned about building Wikipedia's credibility. -Kasreyn 05:14, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] foreign interference in/after election

Here are some links for anyone feeling comments about foreign interference in the elections could be relevant:

It would require a bit of thinking of how to NPOV summarise this info and thinking of how (if) it's encyclopedically relevant. Boud 01:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Page name

Should this page be moved to Haitian presidential elections, 2006 and a separate page made for the general election? That seems to be the way most election pages are organised.--nixie 03:41, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Hmm... we don't seem to have any content on the legislative elections as of yet. I guess we should just move this article, though.--Pharos 03:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I'll knock something together if someone can find me some sources.--nixie 03:57, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It's probably worth keeping this page to discuss the 2006 elections in general (far more to discuss here than most countries given the delays and so on) and splitting off the presidential and legislative pages from here.--nixie 04:18, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Strongly disapprove of wikipedia main page text

after several thousand blank votes were discounted, giving him the majority needed...

This implies that Preval would not have won if those several thousand had not been discounted. This isn't something wikipedia knows. I'm very disappointed that this logical error made it to the front page.

I suggest alternative text:

Former president René Préval is declared the winner of the Haitian presidential election after several thousand blank votes were discounted. Mr. Preval had a majority of the vote and therefore a run-off election was not held.

This text sticks to the facts, is encyclopedic, and only says what we know. Again, suggesting that Preval owes his victory to the discarded ballots is unsourced, unproven, and biased. -Kasreyn 18:08, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics

The CEP website shows Preval with 48.8% of the vote. Until the site changes, that is the official result. Also, the number of enrolled voters is 3,533,430, so only 51% of the vote has been counted (or at least reported as counted), not 92% as stated. The 92% refers to the proportion of votes so far counted which are valid. Adam 04:04, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

  • No, please look at it again. They clearly report 90.02% counted, and 92.5% as the proportion that are considered valid. Don't assume that everyone who enrolled beforehand actually voted. As to the "official result", I do think a public press conference trumps an infrequently updated website every time.--Pharos 04:13, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I have looked at it very carefully. It says:

Procés-Verbaux traités 8289 / 9208 90,02%
Votes Valides 1.825.055 92,51%
Votes Nuls 147.765 7,49%
Total Votes 1.972.820 100.00%

"8289 / 9208 90,02" seems to be a reference to the number of polling places which have reported results. 1.972.820 is the number of votes so far counted. Of these, 1.825.055, or 92,51%, are valid votes. 1.972.820 is not the total number of enrolled voters, which is given elsewhere as 3,533,430. Haiti has nearly 8 million people, so its population over 18 should be about 4 million. 1.9 million is thus far too small a figure to be the total electorate, even allowing for underenrolment in a poor country. I also maintain that the figure given at the government election website must be taken as the official figure until a more official one is produced. Adam 04:21, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, 90% of polling places have reported in, ie. about that percentage of the vote has been counted. 1.9 million votes have been counted; how is it not possible that Haiti should have about a 50% turn-out?– this is an average figure for the US. And this is not directly relevent, but certainly the explicit word of government officials is more "official" than any website.--Pharos 04:40, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It does not follow that because 90% of polling places have reported 90% of votes have been counted and posted. That may be the case but it need not be.
  • I am the one saying that the turnout (on current counting) is 51% or thereabouts (1.9 million of 3.5 million). The article says that turnout is over 90%, which is incorrect.
  • It seems obvious that "government officials" have cooked the figures to allow Preval to be declared the winner and avoid a runoff, thus ending the riots. Given the circumstances in Haiti, this may have been a reasonable thing to do, since Preval obviously has more support than anyone else. But I don't think Wikipedia is obliged to pretend that the cooked figures (if any such have been posted) are the real figures. The real figures are those at the CEP website. Adam 07:12, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
While those sentiments are honourable and good, Adam, the figures at the CEP's website have themselves been cooked. Thousands of Préval votes were declared invalid, others may have been burnt or thrown away, thousands of blank votes may have been fraudulently added after the fact. All of those decisions were political, just as the decision not to count blank votes against candidates' percentages was political. It's a bit of an inelegant solution to a worse than inelegant problem. Anyway, we're not "pretending" anything, at least not on the results table, which is explicit about where its numbers come from and how (and why) they've been adjusted. QuartierLatin1968 El bien mas preciado es la libertad 16:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
There were 20 times less polling places in the 2006 election compared to the 2000 election (500 instead of 10,000) and most of them where in rich areas rather than in poor areas - this is already cooking the election in favour of richer people. All the initial results from the first few days were in the range 60%-90% for Preval, and given the various factors listed by Brian Concannon, i think the evidence of the election results being faked against Preval needs to be taken seriously. http://www.haitiaction.net/News/BC/2_17_6/2_17_6.html
Boud 22:27, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] preval distancing himself from Lavalas??

Does anyone have a source for this claim?

During his campaign, he sought to distance himself from any former association with the Lavalas party

From all i've read, this sounds rather hard to believe.Boud 22:16, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, he supports the occupation of Haiti, which Aristide doesn't. He didn't run on the Lavalas Party name. During his campaign advertisements and public appearences, he almost never mentioned Lavalas or Aristide. When talking about the possible re-entry of Aristide into Haiti, Preval said that he wouldn't tolerate the "violence" and "gangs" associated with Aristide. That would add up to a distancing, as far as I can tell. 207.6.31.119 18:36, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Also, I believe there was an external link in the Preval section to a Guardian article pertaining to this topic, but unfortunately, it appears it's no longer available. I guess the Guardian doesn't keep their articles up for long. 207.6.31.119 18:42, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics again

Does anyone have an explanation for the fact that the new figures at the CEP website don't add up? The vote total given for all the candidates is 1,938,641 (I added them all up and this is correct). But at the top of the page is the following table:

Votes Candidat 1.847.422 88,23%
Votes Blancs 91.219 4,36%
Votes Nuls 155.306 7,42%
Total Votes 2.093.947 100.00%

Here the total cast for all the candidates is given as 1,847,422, plus 91,219 blank votes. These two figures add up to 1,938,641, which is the actual number of votes cast for the candidates. This makes no sense. If there were 91,219 blank votes, they should not be included in the total of votes cast for candidates, and indeed they don't appear in the list, yet the total given appears to include them. Can anyone explain this? (If the correct total of valid votes is 1,847,422, then Preval's percentage should be given as 53.7%). Adam 09:10, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed a discrepancy while trying to figure out the percentage of "scattered" candidates. Probably the figure of 1,847,422 is left over from a previous version of the page (i.e. when 90% of vote tallies had been counted), or else it's a legacy of the fact that these numbers are basically fraudulent anyway. (Ah, me cynical again! But at least the right man won.) QuartierLatin1968 El bien mas preciado es la libertad 16:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)