Talk:Instant-runoff voting/archive4

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archives: ~ Dec 3, 2007 - Jan 8, 2008

Contents 1 Restoration of mention of Approval Voting 1.1 warning Tbouricius 2 Robert's Rules *Again* and APSA IRV election information 3 Comments on Australia 4 Restored full set of external links. 4.1 Again 5 The name of this article. 6 POV tag on article 6.1 Does anyone agree with Abd that Robert's Rules does not "suggest" IRV? 7 RfC: To avoid another edit war, which is clearer? 7.1 Roberts Rules of Order 7.2 Con Arguments 7.3 COI editors 8 Current use 9 Approval advocacy 10 Pro and con arguments 11 Two "IRV can fail to elect a majority winner" arguments 12 Excessive external links 13 Arrow's Theorem: does it prove that "no voting method can satisfy all criteria." 14 wiki.electorama.com/wiki 15 Tideman claim in Tactical Voting section 16 Reverted whole-article edit by anonymous editor. 17 Removed "one vote" claim from introduction 17.1 Third opinion requested 17.1.1 arbitrary section break 18 Practical implications - cost issue again 18.1 On the San Francisco 2000 election 19 United States - Minnesota lawsuit 20 Cleaning up links 20.1 General comments 21 meaning of name "instant runoff" 22 outrageous editing by MilesAgain 23 Access for Disabled Removed from Practical Considerations 24 Can we archive/subpage any talk content?

Restoration of mention of Approval Voting

The sock MilesAgain removed the mention of Approval Voting in the Arguments section (diff), with an edit comment that has been made before in similar context: "since approval isn't being used, make consistent with first point" (i.e., "other systems" instead of specifying Approval. Actually, I think Approval *was* mentioned there before and it was taken out by one of the pro-IRV editors.

The language had been: "is more expensive to count than Plurality voting or Approval Voting, requiring changes to vote counting procedures or voting equipment." Approval is particularly relevant here because Approval has *no* implementation cost over Plurality. The ballot doesn't need to change at all, only the instructions, and all vote-counting equipment can already handle multiple votes per office. IRV proponents have typically attempted to steer all discussion (here and in the political world) into comparisons of Plurality and IRV, whereas it would seem appropriate, if reform is being considered, that other possible reforms be compared. There simply is no question that Approval is the "winner" if the issue is cost; the debate would then turn to other forms of comparison, such as concerns about Majority Criterion failure (theoretically possible but likely rare and harmless with Approval) or the "Core Support" criterion that FairVote invented as something positive they could claim about IRV. I'm restoring the mention of Approval and making a few other changes to the Con arguments section.

Most notably, I have changed the "doesn't guarantee a majority winner" to "may pass over a majority-supported winner in favor of one with only a plurality of ballots cast." This is actually the argument that Robert's Rules makes against preference voting (when election by plurality is allowed). Robert's Rules also discourages top-two runoff for the same reason -- the failure to find a compromise winner when the compromise winner doesn't get enough first-preference votes. With IRV that is possible even when the votes, analyzed with an "instant round-robin" or Condorcet method, would show majority support for another candidate over the IRV winner. IRV disregards those votes, since the candidate has already been dropped before they would be uncovered. --Abd 03:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I would like to know how you expect to find a source on the relative cost of approval when it isn't used. It seems to me that you are merely inserting advocacy for your favorite system. Do you have any actual source for what you claim? If you exclude "other systems" then you are implying that only plurality and approval cost less, for which there is also no source. MilesAgain 08:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Numerous times it's been pointed out to the sock MilesAgain that the section presents *arguments*, not facts. The argument in question is well-known; for completeness, it should be sourced, as we have gradually been doing with the other arguments, but WP:RS has different implications with arguments or opinions than for facts.

I have not *excluded* other systems, I merely have not mentioned them because Approval is a system that involves no significant change to ballot or counting methods, thus it is not a change with cost associated; I know of no other reformed voting system with such a low asserted conversion cost; that is why Approval, in particular, is relevant here. Indeed, there are other possible reforms with lower conversion cost -- most of them, in fact -- than IRV, but the question becomes much more complex. The detailed argument as to why there is little or no conversion cost for Approval belongs in the Approval article, not here. Here, it is enough that the argument is a known one, not a straw man argument.

Generally, though, methods which can be summed from ballots and across precincts have low counting cost. IRV cannot, for the count from a precinct depends on the exact sequence of ranks on the ballots; the counts for the second round depend on the counts from the first, the sequence of eliminations. As an example of a different voting method where there actually may be old published data (though not easy to find on the internet), we could look at Bucklin voting. The totals for each round are simply sums, and sequence doesn't matter, because there are no eliminations. As with IRV, if there is a victory in the first round, it is not necessary to count subsequent rounds (this fact ameliorates to some degree the counting cost for IRV, it only truly kicks in if there is no first round victory; note, however, that implementing a preferential voting system will increase the number of "first round" majority failures as increasing numbers of people choose to vote for minor candidates, thus reducing the amelioration to a degree that will vary with election environment).

--Abd 19:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you intend to continue replacing mention of approval voting as simpler in the cons without any source mentioning it (directly violating the WP:V rule) while using pejorative comments about other editors in your edit summaries (against the first paragraph of WP:CIVILITY)? Perhaps things would be better in the long run if you did. MilesAgain 20:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

(unindent)One of the forms of damage done by sock puppets is that time is wasted arguing with them. This particular sock makes shotgun charges; for example, he has claimed that the article is now POV against IRV, but no examples, other than immediate edits still being worked out, have been given. He has claimed violations of WP:CIVILITY without specifying the violations. As to alleged violation of [WP:V], it's been pointed out that when arguments are being presented, it is arguable that the very fact that a legitimate, known editor will stand behind an argument and claim that the argument is common is prima facie evidence that the argument is actually being made; this is why it has been common to allow such arguments to stand for a time. This is actually common law: testimony is presumed true unless controverted. Now, we desire that all possibly controversial statements be sourced; the question is about statements that are *not* controversial, but are being removed by a POV editor because they aren't sourced, without giving time to find sources. That's disruptive, and contrary to the working principles of building this encyclopedia.

To be specific, if I state that it is common knowledge that Approval voting can be implemented with little or no cost (maybe even cost savings) over Plurality voting, and if this is not challenged by anyone as a fact, and, more to the point, that this argument is being used in public debate over IRV, it is disruptive to remove the statement from the article based on an alleged impossibility of finding a reliable source for the claimed underlying fact (actual cost), when that fact is not actually controversial. Further, here, the article did not state that Approval voting had minimal cost, but that *it is argued* that it does.

There are, indeed, legitimate applications for sock puppets, though such are normally called "alternative accounts;" however, disruptive editing is not among them, and could be considered grounds to block not only the sock, but also the main account. MilesAgain is not a new user, his knowledge of Wikipedia policies and procedures is extensive (I'm learning from watching his edits.). He would know all this, so I'm writing for others.

In any case, this sock is waiting for me to commit a 3RR violation, it seems, because he thought I'd done it and posted such here on Talk; apparently he then checked and deleted the claim. Given that I'm editing an article with one clear COI editor making edits that he's been warned not to make, another editor who is "affiliated" with FairVote but who is generally restrained and only a minor problem, and this sock who is making numerous contentious edits and effective or actual reverts, I might well cross the 3RR boundary at some point, but I don't do that lightly. I have previously stated here, though, that I'm less restrained about reverting sock puppets than I am known users, and I've been sustained in that in the past. Maybe I was lucky.... Last time a sock tried to get me blocked for 3RR violations, it was over this article, and he got indefinitely blocked, and so did several SPAs, including Tbouricius. My intervention was cited as a reason why it was acceptable to unblock the latter, and I sincerely welcomed him back. Believe it or not, I welcome the participation of COI editors here, as long as they do not attempt to control the article toward their POV or away from legitimate criticism or neutral comment that is relevant to the article. To gain true balance, we *need*, indeed, their POV.

To my knowledge, the only assertable WP:CIVILITY violations by me have been a matter of WP:SPADE and not perjorative. (Though I do make mistakes, I'd appreciate being informed when I do so I can apologize.) It is not perjorative to label a known COI editor a COI editor, nor is it perjorative to label a sock a sock, these are *information* that may be needed by those judging edits. I made my original comment *tentatively* about MilesAgain probably being a sock, though it was blatant; at the same time I asserted the right of the sock to still be treated with the Wikipedia principle of Assume Good Faith, and for his edits to be judged on content. However, when a pattern of tendentious edits becomes apparent, AGF fails to continue to be appropriate, and other measures are to be taken. And, in this case, the sock acknowledged being a sock, claiming legitimacy. However, the behavior here hasn't been legitimate for a sock.

It is not uncommon for accusations of WP:CIVILITY violations to be WP:CIVILITY violations. --Abd 03:53, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

warning Tbouricius

Tbouricius has reverted the mention of Approval voting, calling it a "plug" for Approval. I have above established the reason why Approval is mentioned. It is essentially counted identically to Plurality, the only difference is that overvotes are no longer discarded; all equipment can already handle this without modification. It's not controverisal that Approval has little implementation cost. (If votes are counted manually, there can be more votes to count, but FairVote has correctly pointed out that most people don't use those extra votes, so the only extra work is in counting the relatively small number of extra votes cast. Just enough to fix the spoiler effect....

The mention of Approval voting is in the contest of a Con argument. That argument is being made in the real world. I've been collecting sources, and they will be provided so that the article is bullet-proof, which is necessary for Featured Article status. I really wonder why an advocate of IRV is resisting so strongly efforts to make this article qualify for that status, which will surely increase public knowledge of IRV -- or whatever it's called by then, the will certainly know that it's IRV that is being described.

I also wonder why Tbouricius is taking such risks with his account. He was banned indefinitely by an experienced administrator, who refused to retract the ban even after I supported dropping it. There were reasons for that refusal. I preferred however, to Assume Good Faith, which is why I supported removing the block. The administrator lifting the block noted that Tbouricius should be cautious. Personally, I'd hate to lose him, though increasingly I might find it a relief. This is a warning, not that I would attempt to get him blocked, as such, but that, given the history, a renewed block coming out of administrator attention here would likely again be "indefinite," instead of the one-day or short-term block more common with new users. I'd expect this from what I've seen happen, and I've followed a lot of cases. Wikipedia process happens to be even more interesting to me than IRV.

This COI editor (he's been paid as a consultant to FairVote) is attempting in these edits to control the text of arguments against IRV, claiming that the text I'd placed was "misleading." Arguments can be misleading. The arguments I've edited in are real, not made-up, and they can and will be sourced. I've placed citation-needed tags for that, and if someone -- including COI editors -- wants to put a Fact Date on them, I certainly would not object. IRV supporters may not like these arguments, but the article cannot be balanced until all such significant arguments are in it; the prior FairVote edit cabal worked hard to keep them out, only allowing straw man arguments, and succeeded for a time because most editors don't know what to do when faced with reverting sock puppets and anonymous IP editors. They simply go away, which was fine for FairVote and its supporters, but it harms Wikipedia, as it develops a reputation for enforced bias. I do not mean to imply that all supporters of FairVote or IRV are malicious or unfair or incapable of working together with others on an NPOV article, and many knowledgeable and well-motivated people support IRV, and FairVote, for that matter. And I truly welcome their participation in improving this article.

Tbouricius is here cooperating with a sock, making the same edits as MilesAgain, and cooperating with a sock (Acct4) is precisely what got him blocked before (that and being an SPA involved in nascent edit wars). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 19:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I highly doubt that Tbouricius would get an indefinite block without it going to the arbcom. And any arbcom case involving the IRV article would probably be a total mess. Sarsaparilla (talk) 06:55, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Socks and contentious SPAs can get indef blocks immediately at admin discretion. That is *not* a community ban, but tradition is becoming that admins do not unblock without the consent of the blocking admin, except through some level of discussion. That's what it took to get User:Tbouricius unblocked. I would suggest to User:Sarsaparilla that he AGF, which means, among many things, that testimony from any user is presumed true in discussion unless controverted. If he doubts my report, it's easily verifiable, and if he finds contradiction, then he not only may properly contradict me, but he actually should. I make mistakes. There is far too much deceptive presentation of evidence around here, not just in this article. Users should be held responsible for (1) deceptive presentation of evidence -- not mere error -- and (2) incivility, and expressing "doubt" about what one user says without checking it out, if it can be easily checked, and leads to increased and unnecessary defense and offense. (If a user makes a claim about something that cannot easily be verified, doubt can certainly be expressed, though it is far more politely is expressed as surprise and with a request for the source, i.e., "That's surprising to me, can you provide a reference?" Which is, in no way, an attack or insult.

Here are some links relevant to the block of User:Tbouricius:

Block notice: [1].

Discussion on blocking admin talk page.[2] Includes my comment which later helped unblock, "I see no reason to continue his general blocking."

ANI discussion.[3]

The blocking administrator refused to release the block, but did not appeal from the unblocking admin's action. As he said in his response in ANI, "I can already picture the dazed and confused looks on a few editors' faces at the fact that these blocks were ever put in place." That is because the ANI discussion was being fed a somewhat distorted picture of what had happened, it was not merely a matter of a few COI edits, or a simple SPA engaging in a little edit warring. It was because of a *pattern* of heavy sock control of the article. Was Tbouricius part of that? A case could be made that he was, but it would involve not only appearance and conduct on Wikipedia, but also external email evidence about timing. Almost certainly, Tbouricius was recruited as a "meat puppet," an unfortunately rude expression. It's been said before, and it has never been denied directly. "Meat puppet" does not mean that the person is not independent, but that they were recruited to help "defend" the article, specifically by one engaged in edit warring. That is, in fact, grounds for blocking quite the same as sock puppetry, read WP:SOCK. However, my opinion was that Tbouricius was nevertheless potentially a valuable contributor to the article, even though dealing with him could be difficult at times. That is why I suggested and did not object to his unblocking. I do not unearth this history to attack him, and he is not a major problem at this time. We have generally been able to come to agreement about the text. The problems now are coming from another acknowledged sock. Again, calling him a "sock" is not an attack on him, there are such things as legitimate socks. But it is relevant when a judgement is being made regarding edit warring.

--Abd (talk) 19:42, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

As to ArbComm, maybe. Maybe not. It's a drastic remedy, but it may properly be confined to some very narrow issues. I'm certainly not rushing to ArbComm, we can and should exhaust less involved remedies before that. Advice from uninvolved parties, RFCs -- which can be pretty thinly "attended," mediation. But the simplest is that the community of editors here starts engaging with mutual respect. I'm sure that some are upset by my calling a spade a spade, but that has nothing to do with content, only with process. As to content, alleging that an opposing POV is silly and idiosyncratic based merely on disagreement with it, doesn't help work out agreeable compromises. The sign of an NPOV article will be that all sincere editors will agree "this is fair," no matter what their POV. I'm assuming that enough of the pro-IRV editors are sincere that if there are any that aren't, it won't matter. And I Have no plans to be the boy with his finger in the dike, I voice my opinion and generally serve the consensus, that's my history and experience. I merely know that "consensus" is not expressed when a collection of people are preferentially composed by participation bias; with Wikipedia articles, those with some agenda or conflict of interest *commonly* outnumber those who are aiming for NPOV. They have more interest than the disinterested, and, in this case, there is a national movement in the U.S., with a lot of effort from many people, toward implementing IRV, and opposition is seen as serving the status quo -- which is part of the propaganda. --Abd (talk) 21:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Robert's Rules *Again* and APSA IRV election information

I expanded the Robert's Rules mention under usage to much more fully quote what is in that book about the topic; I consider this essential for balance; in the past I tried to summarize and it was consistently removed by POV editors apparently trying to maintain the cachet of a Robert's Rules "recommendation," as it was originally worded. I've had conversations with a person familiar with the Robert's Rules editing process, and Robert's Rules is constrained from recommending or even describing methods that are not in actual use; however, it's clear that the editors were being quite careful to point out the problems of "preferential voting," and, in particular, the form that they described. Not all forms of preferential voting have the particular problems they describe. (As one example from actual usage in the past, Bucklin voting is a form of preference voting (and that's what it was called). Bucklin does not eliminate candidates and is, in fact, an "instant runoff" system; if there is no majority in the first round where only first preference votes are cast, votes from the second round are added in -- as with Approval voting, and if there is still no majority, then the third round votes are considered. In the Duluth Bucklin form, only one candidate selection was allowed in each of the first two ranks, but as many candidates as the voter desired to vote for were allowed in the third round. Note that, however, few voters would use such a freedom. In any case, Bucklin would ordinarily find a compromise winner, one of the concerns of Robert's Rules, as would Approval voting.

I also explained in detail the situation with APSA. The pro-IRV editors consistently battled this point as well, removing true information as "unnecessary." It's pretty clear that the reason they wanted APSA mentioned is the supposed cachet of being "adopted" by an organization of political scientists. I have been unable to find when the method was introduced to the APSA constitution (preferential voting was the rage in the early twentieth century, and APSA was founded in 1903), nor have I seen records of APSA elections before 2003; I was informed, however, that IRV has never actually been used. Given that the procedures produce a single nominee for President from the Nominating Committee, and a nomination by petition would be relatively cumbersome and not terribly likely to succeed -- something that political scientists should understand! --, and none have presented in the years I've looked at, it would be *quite* unusual that the Presidential election would have three candidates, which is what it takes to trigger an IRV election. In today's world, as well, repeated balloting is quite feasible and practical: APSA conducts elections by internet now. Remarkably, they do not use STV of any form for the Council elections, I think it is standard vote for N plurality, for N seats. With those elections, there have been a few nominations by petition, and some such nominees have succeeded. As to the idea that APSA would be some sort of model for the future, and sophisticated about election methods, I'll just note that the definition of "majority" in the APSA constitution is incorrect. It has "fifty-percent-plus-one," a fairly common error. The actual definition (at least from Robert's Rules) is "more than fifty percent." The former can be one vote too high , i.e., if there were 101 votes, the threshold for victory would be 50.5 plus 1 or 51.5 votes, thus, unless half-votes are allowed, it is really 52, whereas the correct threshold for the standard definition would be 51, which is more than 50.5.

One would think that they could find a better example than APSA, from the point of view of being able to point to actual usage, but this situation (theoretical adoptions not actually being used) is pretty common with the "adoptions" of IRV that are noted in the article. Again, until I started adding details, all these looked like big successes for IRV. However, the Berkeley adoption, I just looked at it today, as an example, is full of conditions that must be satisfied before the method can actually be used; no timetable exists, apparently, for such elections to actually start. One funny adoption is Takoma Park, Maryland. Mostly unopposed elections. Could the fact that FairVote staff live in Takoma Park -- it's a very small town, a suburb of Washington, DC -- have anything to do with that adoption? I do wonder if it is truly notable. But, hey, they work hard, perhaps they are entitled to a few crumbs of success. When I have time, I really want to look more closely at San Francisco, where real IRV elections have been going on, and where there are rumors and rumblings of problems. Contrary to what some might think, I favor experimentation with IRV; I'd just like to see some experimentation as well with the much, much simpler, cheaper, and (arguably) theoretically more sound Approval Voting as well, and that might happen in Colorado, there is process under way there with the Voter Choice Task Force.

So, FairVote-affiliated editors, how about doing something useful? Find and edit in some better examples of the *actual* usage of IRV in nongovernmental organizations, if they exist, I'd be surprised if they do not. --Abd 05:26, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Comments on Australia

"In Australia, the only nation with a long record of using IRV for the election of legislative bodies, IRV produces representation very similar to those produced by the plurality system, with a two party system in parliament similar to those found in many countries that use plurality.". - This is uncited (after I removed an off-topic reference) and, I would suggest, wrong. IPV has allowed a third party - National Party of Australia - to thrive. Peter Ballard 11:36, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

'Thriving," in the sense of being able to remain active, is not the same as winning more than a rare election. Further, preference voting can allow party blocks that really are more like wings of a single party. The claim that IRV fosters and maintains two-party systems is pretty common, I should dig up some other references. Note that some consider this an argument *for* IRV, others consider it an argument *against.* Depends on their POV! I should look at the National Party situation in detail so I can understand better what is happening there. --Abd 14:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I looked. As I'd been told, and from the Wikipedia page, which I presume is sourced, the National Party is indeed a minor party that has survived a long time. It is a "traditional" coalition minor party with a major party, though in a few strongholds, at times, it's been the major partner in the same coalition. Is it "thriving"? From a peak of over 15% of the vote in 1937, it has fallen to 5.5% in 2007. Nevertheless, IRV clearly allows such a party to participate; with Plurality it probably would have disappeared. The point of the claim in this article is that IRV has not overturned the two-party system, and I think that is roughly true; but it is also true that it allows third parties, still, some existence and even some seats. With 5.5% of the vote, this party has 10 out of 150 seats, or 6.6%. It has more seats than its vote percentage! -- but the difference is small.

"Survive" would be more accurate than "thrive." --Abd 14:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I disagree. It is not a two party system, there are quite plainly 3 significant parties in the lower house, and the 3rd party has survived in the Lower House due to IPV. Even if you call it two party, IMHO that is due to single member electorates (in its Lower House) rather than the method of counting, i.e. in a country like Australia, single member electorates will inevitably favour two major parties, because it is almost impossible for a 3rd party to build up a supporter base to win Lower House seats (just ask the Australian Democrats or Australian Greens). In short, for the claim to remain in the article, it needs a proper source; and even then it needs to be reworded to account for the existence of a 3rd party. Peter Ballard 11:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Restored full set of external links.

An anonymous editor removed most of the external links, claiming that this article had become a WP:LINKFARM or was on its way to this. While I agree that there might be too many links, the set of links which remain or which are later added should be a matter of consensus, since POV bias can be introduced, maintained, or flipped through selection of links. I originally thought, as I began the edit, that I would keep some of the original links out, but I'd rather do that piecemeal, one link at a time, in order to allow other editors to reverse any deletions simply and easily. I can't speak for others, but I can say that I would not complain about any reverts of edits I make removing links at this point, and I would defend any editor against WP:3RR charges for doing this, nor I would not include any such edits in any 3RR complaint. This is an example where reverting can and should be liberally used. Deletion of links, at this point, should be a matter of consensus of the editors, unless there is first thorough discussion and a link is shown to be contrary to WP:EL -- or is blatantly so at the outset. The practice we currently have of segregating links by POV is, in my opinion, a good one; it allows us to continue to link to POV sites that otherwise might be questionable, like FairVote or RangeVoting.org. --Abd 13:53, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Again

Another editor just removed many links at once, and made some edits to the links section (other than probably too many deletions, some good edits). Because linking is sensitive, imbalance in links can be a form of POV imbalance, I greatly prefer that changes to this section, other than isolated edits which can then be dealt with individually, be a matter of discussion here. So I reverted it.

We should all be satisfied that the links section is appropriately complete; if a few of us think it's become a linkfarm -- I happen to agree with that, the links could be winnowed -- that is less important. Too much, if necessary for balance and completeness, is better than too little, especially if the links are classified and helpfully described. Just as a comment, on another topic very important in my personal life, I found the best on-line source on the topic through a link on the Wikipedia article. That link was later removed as part of an edit war that was resolved, I'd say prematurely, by an administrator applying policy without fully understanding the context and application, one of the hazards of Wikipedia. I could put it back, but ... so many articles, so little time.

Please *improve* the links section in a way not likely to cause contention, work with *all* the editors on this, don't just hack away. (The anonymous editor before seriously hacked, this one clearly did some hard work, and I think we should consider at least some of the changes made, shown in my undo: (^[1]

I certainly will not object if anyone deletes individual links or small sets, which can then be considered individually. But it may be more efficient if we discuss the overall balance and presentation first. --Abd (talk) 15:59, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The name of this article.

Well, we might as well start this discussion.

"Instant Runoff Voting" is a name that was coined quite recently. It is not the name used for the method in the vast majority of actual implementations in the English-speaking world. It was, I have understood -- it would be interesting to find source on this -- adopted here by the Center for Voting and Democracy, the predecessor of FairVote, as a political tactic, attempting to sell the method on the basis of its (rather superficial) resemblance to top-two runoff, already in use in many places in the U.S. That is, the name itself is part of a POV strategy. That strategy worked, and the name caught on here, but, of course, not in the places where the method is already in common use.

The name appropriates to single-winner STV ("IRV") the mantle of handing the problem of holding additional elections by collecting additional preferences on the initial ballot, when there are, in fact, other methods of doing this, and, for the U.S., one of these methods saw fairly wide use earlier last century, Bucklin voting. Bucklin worked to avoid runoffs, with a much simpler counting process. My point here is not to claim that Bucklin is better than IRV (though that is indeed my opinion), but that it is also "instant runoff."

The use of the new name on Wikipedia is "U.S. centric." Nowhere else, to my knowledge, is that name used, and there are very few implementations here. (But, of course, there are lots of campaigns, thus lots of usage of the term here.) When what we now call IRV was used in the U.S., it was called by various names. For example, in Ann Arbor, it was called "preferential voting."[4]. Robert's Rules of Order (2000) calls what it describes that is close or identical to IRV (depends on details) "preferential voting," and it notes that there are many forms of preferential voting and what it describes is only one example.

There is some prior Talk relating to this; I was surprised at how little. I'm pretty sure I've seen a complaint that this article was U.S. centric, but I couldn't find it immediately.

Talk:Instant-runoff_voting/archive1#Preferential_Voting_in_AU_-_terminology Talk:Instant-runoff_voting/archive1#Instant_Runoff_Voting_is_a_good_name_for_America

The last one argues that the article should have that name. The reason? It's worth quoting that entire Talk section here (there was no response).

"Instant Runoff Voting" is a good name to use in the US for a voting system known elsewhere by other names because it emphasises the key difference between it and one system it is trying to replace. * Instant Runoff Voting - several rounds all on one day or on one ballot. * "Slow" Runoff Voting - a first round and a second round weeks later. * "Delayed" Runoff Voting - aka SRV It would help the case for IRV, if better name for SRV and DRV could be found. For countries not familiar with Delayed Runoff Voting, the following names are OK: * Preferential Voting - "number the squares in order of your preferences". * Alternate Vote * STV for single member seats. Syd1435 03:13, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)

This argument is essentially that the name will help to sell the method. No non-POV argument was presented, that I could find.

Hence I am proposing that the article be renamed, with, naturally, redirection for "Instant-runoff voting" and its various forms to the new name, which should probably be "Preferential voting." Used to be such an article, I think, this one ate it.

It's a piece of work, to be sure.... but I'm willing to do it; what remains is to find consensus, if we can, or further process, if we can't.

We can then start to talk about the history of preferential voting in the U.S. Happens that Bucklin, if I'm correct, was also called "preferential voting," which appears to refer, primarily, to the *ballot*, which is one which lists preferences. Robert's Rules of Order quite correctly notes that there are many forms of "preferential voting."

This article is about single-winner STV. At one time there was an initiative to merge the articles (IRV and STV). I agree that single-winner STV is quite different in behavior from multi-winner (STV is a *much* better method because the candidate dropping is of less effect), but the *method* is identical; while there are many forms of STV, all of them reduce to IRV if the number of winners is 1. At least they reduce to one form of IRV! There is constant confusion about what form of IRV is being implemented: this was actually a formal Argument Against IRV with Measure I in Oakland, California, that the initiative did not specify which form -- and it can make a big difference!

Summary: the name "Instant-runoff voting" is a POV, advocacy name for the method, designed to convey a controversial message. Wikipedia should not be a party to continuing this, given that there are other names in wider use in English-speaking countries. We should use the most common name. Exactly how we would go about doing this, exactly how articles would be partitioned, I am not proposing yet; the first question is whether or not to continue with the name as-is. In the end, of course, no decision would be final and implemented until we *do* have a proposed change and process. --Abd 18:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that the name should be determined by the most popular usage. I know there is a guideline to that effect, but not sure which one it is.

• "instant runoff voting" : 180,000 ghits
• "alternative vote" : 53,900 ghits
• "preferential voting" : 112,000 ghits

If you want to rename the article, you're going to need to make sure you do it to a more popular name. 76.246.150.63 20:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Raw popularity is not the only standard, though it's a major one. I've uncovered a little more evidence on the issue. First of all, the guideline is WP:NCON. When using Google, "wikipedia" should be excluded from the search, otherwise we end up counting ourselves, and with all the mirrors, we are often the largest single source of hits, by far.

ghits for the terms: "instant runoff voting" 114,000. "alternative vote" 23,800. "preference voting" 14,400 -- includes PR methods "preferential voting" 43,800.

I did an edit for here last night and apparently didn't save it.... I'd swear that the "instant runoff voting" result was 110,000 last night. Looking over the first few pages, it was all U.S. usage. Not so suprising, "preferential voting" gets academic sites and a lot of .au domains. The first hits on "preference voting" are almost all academic. "Alternative vote" seems to get academic and .uk sites. One of the latter, 10th return, [linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S026137940300060X], from the U.S., has a title of "If you like the alternative vote (a.k.a. the instant runoff), then you ought to know about the Coombs rule." Indeed we should. The Coombs rule creates a form of IRV that is theoretically much better than standard IRV: instead of dropping the candidate with the least first place (or highest remaining) preferences, it drops the candidate with the most last place preferences....

I've said before, based on reports made on mailing lists and my own analysis, that the people who started FairVote and its prior incarnations invented the term "instant runoff voting" as a sales strategy. It's clear that it has had that effect, and that many proponents like the name because of the implied argument. Hey, if runoffs are good, but a nuisance, then what about "instant" runoffs? It's an appealing argument! Which also glosses over the very significant differences between true runoff voting and IRV, plus the fact that "IRV" is used to mean top-elimination, as with STV, whereas there are other methods that are also "instant runoff," such as Bucklin voting or Coombs method.

I was able to find some evidence about the introduction of the name "instant runoff voting." I searched on Google Groups. Prior to Jan 1, 1997, there are two hits for 1996, one in July, one in November, none before that. Searching for "preferential voting," there are 129 hits. For "alternative vote," 148 hits. For "preference voting," 194 hits. For comparison, "approval voting," 24 hits. "Condorcet," 125 hits. "Instant runoff voting" began to hit the Internet in 1996.

In 1997, there were two more hits for "instant runoff voting." 1998, 22. 1999, 19. 2000, 824. 2001, 181. 2002, 481. 2003, 473. 2004, 928. 2005, 96. 2006, 339.

(I think the later declines are due to the decline of usenet. But we can see how "instant runoff" came into use.") --Abd 14:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Gary D. Shapiro [5] claims that he had proposed the term "instant runoff voting" to Robert Richie on 29 Feb 1996. Markus Schulze 15:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I have just observed that you have to be subscribed to the instantrunoff mailing list to be able to read the above link. So this is what Gary D. Shapiro wrote on 15 March 2000 in that link: "I think it's disgusting when I do this, but I have to confess to suggesting the term 'Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)' to Rob Richie in an email sent on February 29, 1996, as an analogy for Majority Preference Voting or Preference Voting." Markus Schulze 12:25, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

This is consistent with the appearance on Usenet of the term. A 1995 report from the Center for Voting and Democracy does not seem to mention "instant runoff voting." --Abd (talk) 05:08, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

POV tag on article

The article has a POV tag. Aside from active edit disputes, one editor, though a sock, has claimed that the article is POV (basically blaming me) without giving examples. What difficulties remain with the article that justify maintaining the POV tag?

I have not myself reviewed the article in detail looking for this, lately, so I'm asking myself this question as well. If we can identify remaining issues, we can then fix them. If not, we can remove the tag.

I'm going to include the active disputes as well, so we have a complete list here. --Abd 13:43, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I still need to make a complete list, except it has become a moving target. The article seems to be getting worse lately; progress that had been made has been lost, it's a war of attrition. --Abd (talk) 05:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone agree with Abd that Robert's Rules does not "suggest" IRV?

Since you continue to refer to me pejoratively as a "sock" then I am sure since you admit you are here primarily because of your support of approval voting, then you won't have a problem if others refer to you as a "POV-pusher," will you? My primary objection at this point is that you refuse to allow the article to say that Robert's Rules "suggests" IRV even though it states "preferential voting is especially useful and fair in an election by mail" and gives IRV as an example. I believe that the article should say that RR suggests IRV, and it should say it in the intro, where you found it before you started on your extraordinarily verbose anti-IRV crusade here. Until that problem, among others, is corrected, I will object to the removal of the POV tag. I'd like to see if there are any other editors who agree with your interpretation that RR does not "suggest" IRV. Nothing so formal as an RFC is needed. If there are any, they should just say so here. MilesAgain 18:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Expecting a deafening silence on any affirmative answers besides Abd, I'll ALSO express my view as disagree - I believe the process described in Robert's rules for election by mail is exactly the IRV process, even if there's some minor differences - i.e. whether a winner can be determined on a plurality of ballots if there's insufficient rankings. Tom Ruen 20:30, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

(1) It's not perjorative to note that an editor is a sock who has acknowledged being a sock, when this is necessary to explain editorial actions that may be stronger for socks than for identified editors. I've repeatedly stated that, as far as I'm concerned, socks can *helpfully* edit articles, but engaging in or supporting edit wars, no. This article has seen *way* too much of that.

(2) I have placed the *exact* language of Robert's Rules in the article. To say that RRONR "suggests" IRV when it actually suggests "preference voting," specifically notes that there are other forms of such than the IRV variation it describes, and specifically criticizes the one it describes, is POV, unless the balancing information is included.

(3) The difference between what it describes and IRV as described in this article and generally implemented is *crucial* to a parliamentarian, but not to an IRV advocate, "affiliated" with FairVote, so I'm not surprised at Ruen's response, and I can understand and sympathize with his frustration.

I'd prefer that further discussion on this specific topic be undertaken in the RFC section.... --Abd 21:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

RfC: To avoid another edit war, which is clearer?

Editors Abd and Tbouricius both assert other may have COI, but both are experts on voting methods. We need help settling many areas of dispute, but here I ask for just two points. 1. In the non-governmental section is the quotaion from Robert's Rules of Order posted by Abd overly long, and is the summary of this originally posted by Tbouricius adequate? I eidted and undid one version today for easy side-by-side comparison. 2.In the Con Section is the description of the Con argument about IRV failing to assure election of majority winner more clearly stated as proposed by Tbouricius or by Abd? See the discussion for arguments each way. Again, I did an edit and undo this morning for easier side-by-side comparison. Tbouricius 16:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

First of all, I thank Tbouricius for placing the RFC tag. This is the proper way for a COI editor to protest what he may see as POV edits by other users. For the benefit of commentors who may not be familiar with the arguments here, I'm summarizing below the points on which comment has been requested. I'm signing each section so that others can intersperse.... ==Abd 19:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Tbouricius added the following edit while I was in the middle of mine:

I tried to use the RFC (request for comments) feature above, but perhaps I didn't type it exactly right, because I don't find this listed on the RFCpol page. How long does the bot take to post it there? If I made a typing error, can anyone reading this, who is more experienced, re-do my attempt?

Tbouricius 18:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It takes the bot a while to find the tag.... --Abd 19:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Roberts Rules of Order

The article originally contained a simple reference, in the introduction, to the effect that "Roberts Rules of Order recommends Instant Runoff Voting." Now, placing a recommendation in the introduction could be POV (due to imbalance and the prominence of the introduction) even if it were uncontestably correct, which it was not. Robert's Rules of order actually "recommends" repeated balloting if possible. If it is not possible, say it is mail voting and it is considered necessary to complete the election with a single ballot, then it *suggests* "preference voting." There are many forms of preference voting, and it says that explicitly, then it gives an example, which is *almost* exactly what has come to be called "Instant Runoff Voting." But what form of Instant Runoff Voting? There exists more than one. Specifically, unless the bylaws of an organization explicitly allow it, Robert's Rules does not allow election by anything short of a majority, and the "majority" which is obtained by discarding all ballots on containing a vote for the last two candidates remaining after eliminations can fail to be an actual majority of votes properly cast in the election; unless the bylaws allow it, Robert's Rules is concerned with that actual majority of valid ballots cast. Further, Robert's Rules goes on to note that the preference voting described (majority-required IRV) can fail to find a compromise winner who would actually be preferred over the IRV winner by a majority, as could be seen by the votes. If we are going to imply that Robert's Rules "recommends" or "suggests" IRV, then we should also note that it criticizes the method. There are other forms of preference voting that don't have this problem.

Why, then, did RRONR not describe one of those? Well, RRONR is mostly descriptive, not prescriptive. I've been told that the editors could not give an example that was not in actual use, probably requiring more than a few actual uses. Single-winner STV, what we call, in the U.S., "IRV," has reasonably wide use. But the editors are also aware that this method has problems, so they include criticism of it. Wikipedia should not present one side while excluding the other.

Because the claim that Robert's Rules recommends IRV has been widely repeated, I've seen it, for example, on an official city elections web site, the claim is notable and thus I prefer that it be in the article. With the balance. --Abd 19:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I edited back my version of the brief Robert's Rules paragraph, and then undid it a moment later (earlier today) so it is easy to do a side-by-side comparison. All of the relevant points that Abd seeks (including ones that I think are straying pretty far from the mark) by using his lengthy quotation are fairly summarized in my brief version. I leave it to the readers of these to judge which version is more appropriate to an article about IRV.

Tbouricius 19:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with the longer detailed paragraph in the text, as long as the introduction says RR suggests IRV, or RR recommends IRV for elections by mail, either one. Abd writes (above):

I have placed the *exact* language of Robert's Rules in the article. To say that RRONR "suggests" IRV when it actually suggests "preference voting," specifically notes that there are other forms of such than the IRV variation it describes, and specifically criticizes the one it describes, is POV, unless the balancing information is included. The difference between what it describes and IRV as described in this article and generally implemented is *crucial* to a parliamentarian, but not to an IRV advocate, "affiliated" with FairVote, so I'm not surprised at Ruen's response, and I can understand and sympathize with his frustration.

I strongly disagree. I believe this splitting-of-hairs is being done only because Abd doesn't wish to state the fact that RR recommends IRV for voting by mail because Abd prefers approval voting as an alternative reform, as Abd has admitted. Furthermore, I see no evidence that there are any other editors who believe Abd's interpretation to be accurate. If there are any, I invite them to come forward. MilesAgain (talk) 21:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Con Arguments

A brief summary here is that a COI editor is attempting to control how a contrary argument is presented. This section is a description of arguments as they are actually being made. It is not about facts, other than the fact of an argument, which can be wrong, misleading, deceptive -- or accurate and true. Arguments are frequently not presented in the public arena with weasel words, or weakly. They are presented with the strongest wording possible, typically, even sometimes going beyond what the truth can justify. It is not our job to judge the truth of these arguments; we are only describing them, and we should not try to modify them to make them more acceptable to those who disagree with them.

Take the example chosen by Tbourcius (there have been others). My wording is that IRV critics argue that IRV "does not count all votes, and thus can pass over a candidate preferred by a majority over the IRV winner." This is a common objection to IRV, and the source I cited was only one example out of many that could be chosen, it was simply the first one that popped up when I searched.

Bouricus wants to change it to "does not guarantee election of true majority winner." This is a major dilution of the argument, practically an elimination of it, since *no method* can make such a guarantee if we take the words literally and simply. Basically, there may be no majority in the electorate for any candidate, and no voting method can force voters to change their preferences.

However, voting methods *can* collect and analyze expressed preferences to find such a winner, and some do it much better than others. Robert's Rules, in the section quoted that Tbourcius wants to remove from the article, makes exactly this criticism of IRV. Other critics note specifically an explanation that my wording includes: IRV does not count all the votes. This is a *common* criticism. I don't wonder that a COI editor wants to exclude it! --Abd 19:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I restored and then undid my edit this morning to allow easy side-by-side comparison of the two versions. One is the simple clear version of the argument (as originally inserted by IRV opponents) without the miss-leading phrases Abd seeks to insert, like "pass-over" and the miss-leading statement that implies some ballots are simply disregarded (rather than some rankings on some ballots, where the voter's first choice is still in the running, are not used, etc.) The phrasing proposed by Abd creates a false impression to most Wikipedia readers about the nature of this CON argument. Nobody is arguing that a candidate with a majority of first preferences is passed-over in favor of a weaker candidate, nor that some valid ballots are simply ignored...yet that is the impression that Abd's choice of words leaves with most readers. His summary of the issue does not capture the thrust of the main CON claim ... that exhausted ballots can lead to sub-50% winners, nor even the much rarer claim that candidates with much less core support, but broader secondary support, may get eliminated. I repeat...I have never seen any claims that IRV "passes over" a candidate who receives a majority of the votes, nor that IRV doesn't count all the ballots. Abd's wording implies these criticisms exist out there, but they do not.

Tbouricius 19:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If this is an RFC then what is the question? MilesAgain 21:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I answered this below, I'm not sure why MilesAgain asked it twice.... --Abd (talk) 05:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I have removed a piece of another edit by MilesAgain in which he tried to once again dilute and defang the anti-IRV argument about negative campaigning. He had changed it to:

• [IRV] does not eliminate negative campaigning;^[2]

He claimed in his edit summary that he was merely changing arguments to "what the refs actually say." Let's take a look at that. The ref says this:

• Negative campaigning. It was a vote winning argument for Proposition A but it's a myth. In fairness, hit pieces often perform a service to the electoral process. They hold individuals who will pass laws, appropriate public funds and play an important role in shaping local debate to account. They also are a major deterrent to all kinds of bad habits. [...] But there is no evidence IRV is stemming the flow of hit pieces. In the 2004 supervisor contests Districts 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 all witnessed negative campaigning.

Now, I had previously used the language

• [IRV] does not reduce negative campaigning, this claim is a myth.

I could certainly argue that the source claims that IRV does not reduce negative campaigning. But, hey, I suppose others get to nit-pick as well, though the argument here -- previously made above on this by MilesAgain -- is pretty extreme in that way. I have now used the language:

• [IRV] has not been shown to reduce negative campaigning, that claim is a myth.

I also removed the citation needed tag from the last Con argument, since it is blatantly obvious that real runoffs do provide an opportunity to reconsider candidates, whereas IRV (and other instant runoff methods or other methods that are more effective at amalgamating majorities than Plurality) does not. Now, if anyone wants to seriously argue that this is not an argument being made, I'd suggest that they haven't been looking. The argument is common, as one might expect, since opponents of something will frequently dredge up anything they can find, and this is an obvious one. I'd provide the citation myself, right now, if I considered it necessary and important and had the time. If someone *does* think a citation is needed, by all means, put the tag back, though it would be more helpful to put in a source. Blatant and uncontroversial facts don't need citations, so the only possible remaining controversy here is whether or not anyone actually is arguing this against runoff voting. --Abd (talk) 05:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Peter Ballard changed the language back to "does not eliminate negative campaigning," though this is not an argument actually used by anyone, since nothing known could accomplish that, and IRV proponents don't claim that, they claim it would reduce negative campaigning. The counterclaim is that it doesn't or wouldn't, or that the reduction, if any, would not be significant. The language I used is a quote from the source. Ballard claimed that "myth" is a peacock word. Perhaps. It would definitely be POV and would not normally be stated as a fact in Wikipedia. But, then again, these arguments are POV, *by definition.* That's the whole point! They are conclusions, assertions, claimed facts, all of this, being presented in the real world as arguments. Some of them are noting clear, known facts that are then asserted to have significance, and this latter is what is POV. I have changed it back, and request that this editor discuss the matter here if he wishes to continue this. The language he used definitely is incorrect, the source did not say that, it said something stronger. It said that the alleged reduction of negative campaigning by IRV was a "myth," see above. When the language here was simply "does not reduce negative campaigning," it was claimed that the article did not say that. Instead of arguing that point, I replaced the core argument with the exact wording, "myth". I would quote it all *exactly* if the context were not one which requires IRV as the subject of a phrase. Now, this editor complains about the word "myth." He'd be right if we were asserting a fact. Not correct if we are reporting an argument.

He also replaced the fact check tag. Fine. Anyone can fix that. --Abd (talk) 06:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I understand your argument. The word "myth" can stay but it needs a rephrase. Let me explain: when POV argument points are added, often anything after a full stop or comma reads like a fact, not an argument. As an example, let us suppose the (totally fictious) argument, "fear of dictatorship, Hitler was elected using IRV". The first clause is the argument, the second clause is presented as fact. In the same way, the sentence in question, "has not been shown to reduce negative campaigning, that claim is a myth", needs to be rephrased to make it clear that the last clause - "that claim is a myth" - is an argument, not a fact. SO I've done that in a way which I hope is fair: "(critics argue that that claim is a myth)" Peter Ballard (talk) 11:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Abd has re-directed the discussion to a battle he has had with another editor (also in the Con section). But I asked for comment on which summary of the Con argument about IRV not electing a majority winner most clearly states this Con argument. My view is that Abd's phrasing implies criticisms of IRV that are not being made (that it will pass over a candidate with over 50% of the first preferences, or ignore some ballots).

Tbouricius (talk) 16:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Also...I hope to hear from OTHER editors. Abd and I have already posted our views, and should wait and read, rather than type, prolonging our dispute.

Tbouricius (talk) 17:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

COI editors

Tbouricius wrote above that, "Editors Abd and Tbouricius both assert other may have COI."

There is a difference. Tbourcius introduced IRV legislation, I understand, when he was a member of the Vermont legislature. He has been a paid consultant to FairVote, and he is a published author advocating IRV. He falls clearly into the COI category. It is not marginal.

While I haven't seen an accusation elsewhere that I'm COI, I have been accused of being an "enemy" of IRV, though that is not really true. I'm a critic, to be sure, though my goal is to *improve.* Sometimes pushing a little is necessary to get attention for reform. I don't have any institutional affiliations that would categorize me as COI. Material that I have written has been web-published by the Center for Range Voting rangevoting.org, but I have no control over that site, nor am I a formal member, and I'm also a critic of aspects of Range Voting as advocated there. My central concern is the methods by which large groups of people can collectively make choices for coordination and cooperation, which is much broader than election methods. However, it did lead me to election methods, and to the community of people advocating reform in such methods, and I am active in the *neutral* organization of election methods experts and others interested.

I've long been interested in Wikipedia; this predates my interest in election methods. However, recently (September, I think), I looked at the Instant-runoff voting article and saw that it was repeating most of the FairVote arguments as if they were facts. When I looked at the history, I saw a pattern of blatant and firm exclusion of any criticism, with wikilawyering and any excuse to challenge it, including "editor is a critic." So I began working on the article, and stood up to the sock puppets and others. My goal, however, was never to turn the article into anti-IRV propaganda, and this is why I intervened to assist the unblocking of Tbourcius. I considered his participation valuable for the development of consensus. And still do. --Abd 19:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with Abd's statement that I am any more a COI editor than he is. Essentially the ONLY people who have studied and know enough about IRV and are also INTERESTED inediting who can competently edit this article are people who have formed opinions about it. Abd is an activist promoting Range and Approval Voting, and apparently sees IRV as an obstacle to his favored reforms. I was a legislator and am a professional elections administrator and elections methods analyst. I have d0one elections consulting for municipalities, Universities, the League of Women Voters, FairVote, Pacifica Foundation and many others. I do not believe my expertise gives me an automatic COI. If I were inserting and editing an article about an organization such as FairVote itself, that would be COI. NONE of my edits contained POV bias. They have all been fair, accurate, and balanced. I challenge Abd to give any example of an unbalanced edit I have done. I have repeatedly compromised on language to try and satisfy any reasonable objections that Abd has raised. Sometimes his edits are just too extreme POV pushing to let slide.

Tbouricius 19:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If this is an RFC then what is the question? MilesAgain 21:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I did not seek comment on whether I or Abd have a conflict of interest...Abd has simply added this heading attacking me, so I responded.

Tbouricius (talk) 16:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Please see below my explanation about why the COI issue made a part of the RFC section. Tbouricius, indeed, requested comment on one narrow issue, rather artificially, I'd suggest, separated out. Suppose someone were standing on my toe. It hurts. I ask politely for the person to stop stepping on my toe. No response. I yell, "Get off my toe!" The person, instead of removing his weight from my toe, flags down a passing policeman and asks him to stop me from yelling at him. No specific implication is intended from this example, nobody was stepping on my toes. And I didn't yell at anyone. From [[WP:NPA}: "Accusing someone without justification of making personal attacks is also considered a form of personal attack." Now, WP:AGF leads me to assume that one of two things is true. Either Tbouricius doesn't understand what's going on, and thinks that my using the term "COI editor" for him is an attack, or I *am* attacking him and I'm the one confused. Or, possibly, both....

It is not an attack -- unless there is no basis for the claim -- to call an editor "COI." Many, many editors have Conflicts of Interest and edit, Wikipedia is better for them, overall, *if* they understand the guidelines and conduct themselves accordingly. I *and others* have been trying to educate this relatively new user what the guidelines mean. There are good reasons for them. I am arguable a "COI" editor for other articles, at least in some respects. I have, for example, a web site on what is called, on Wikipedia, Liquid democracy. It is actually more commonly called Delegable proxy, which is a term I invented. Am I proposing a move, i.e., to rename the article "Delegable proxy" and to focus more on that, perhaps than on liquid democracy, which is somewhat different in intention and in who is discussing it and for what applications? No. I have a COI, particularly if I try to push my web site or my organizations, or to arrange the material so that the impressions I desire people to have about the topic are created. However, I can certainly participate in Talk there. But I wouldn't touch an edit war over that article with a ten-foot pole. COI.

The fact is that the best people have Conflicts of Interest. Anyone considerably active in politics, which is to be commended, has, potentially, Conflicts of Interest. Instead of considering a mention of his COI to be an attack, I'd greatly prefer him to consider it a badge of honor, just as it would be a badge of honor to be named an arbitrator in a dispute. The arbitrator, however, would recuse himself where some personal interest were involved!

I'd urge any interested reader to look at User_talk:Abd, User_talk:Tbouricius, and related material showing the history of our contributions and interaction, including the administrative comments about his block and its lift. I have genuinely welcomed him to this table, so to speak, and my intervention *might* be the reason that he is able to sit at it. If I didn't want him here, you would have seen complaints on any of numerous grounds; Wikipedia can be unpredictable, but it also usually proceeds in a certain way. Perplexed about how to deal with the situation here, I requested advice from an experienced user who offers such (there is a page to help find that, I forget the link). I did not ask the advice in a biased way, I think, and I asked for his counsel, not assuming that I was right. Instead, he chose to warn User:Tbouricius, you'll see it on his Talk page. You can also, from my contributions, see what I wrote to request this. This is a public place, it is almost all visible, and it will remain visible. It can help to remember that!

--Abd (talk) 23:32, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Tbouricius referred to one issue in the section head, but actually raised three, and I created subsections to consider each. First, the wording of the Robert's Rules mention. Second, what I read as control of Con arguments by Pro editors. I would be very cautious before I try to edit a Con argument on a thing when I am personally Pro, and vice-versa, and my edit is likely to displease those with other POVs as not fairly representing their actual arguments. Third, proper behavior for COI editors, or, alternatively, who is and who is not COI, or both.

Frankly, I think that some of the answers to these questions are pretty clear, we have been in the process of working out details, though not without teetering on the edge of edit wars, and that RFC was possibly premature at this point, but I also think that if an editor thinks another editor is merely being stubborn, an RFC may be helpful, and I've commended the editor for placing the tag. See my talk page.

--Abd (talk) 22:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps Bouricius is correct about COI, though he has been warned by users more experienced than I. If it's true that I have a COI, then I shouldn't be editing the article in any controversial way, and I stand ready to consider advice to that effect. But I don't have a COI by the guideline. As to the willingness to compromise claimed by Tbouricius, he is correct. He has frequently settled on language that I've found acceptable, while complaining all the while that I'm being unreasonable, nitpicking, and guilty of various other offenses. If both he and I find language acceptable, it is quite likely to be acceptable to both pro and anti IRV communities (though this is certainly not guaranteed and some people won't be pleased with any NPOV text). This is, in fact, exactly why I wanted to see him back here helping with this article.

IRV is not an obstacle to "my favored reforms." How could it be? It's just an election method, better than some, worse than others. The obstacle is misleading arguments promoted by various factions. Those are not merely "my" enemies, they are, in my view, enemies of all of us, they promote confusion and lack of clarity. An NPOV article will not eliminate these arguments, but it will make it easier for readers to disentangle the mess that political activists sometimes create. It's not our job to decide, on behalf of our readers, what arguments are misleading and what are not. We simply present them in the NPOV manner that has been well-documented in the guidelines. Where our own personal judgments can come into play are in recognizing *imbalance* in arguments. It's a well-known problem that one can create misleading impressions with compilations of true facts that have been selected such as to accomplish this. My own POV may be offended by such a selection of facts, another editor with a different POV may think it is just fine, but will find some offense with a different selection. This is where consensus comes in. Wikipedia advises *including* more facts rather than *excluding* them, such that all factions can agree that the presentation is complete. Other editors here have claimed sometimes that I've biased the article by selecting facts favoring my own POV. While I never intend that, this is certainly possible even without intention. Wikipedia guidelines suggest that, in a situation of selective presentation, the remedy is generally to add balancing facts, not to remove facts that are true and sourced merely because they can create an allegedly misleading impression.

The example of this that comes to mind is that I started researching the claimed IRV "successes" in the article, and I found that there have been very, very few actual elections in the United States in recent times where IRV made a difference, and that most places that have passed IRV haven't implemented it. I went down the list and started adding election details. I did not select the claims to research, and I put in whatever I found that related to two issues: has an IRV election actually been held or is one scheduled? If one has, were there more than two candidates; if so, was the result any different than it would have been with Plurality? I put these facts in as I found them, with sources. It was claimed that I'd selected them. That wasn't true, and, even if it had been true, it was irrelevant. The remedy would not be to edit those facts out, but to make sure that the rest of the examples were researched..... And the claim that I'd cherry-picked the data was incivil, a basic Wikipedia rule is WP:AGF. Yes, indeed, sometimes it's difficult, but it is also necessary, particularly in the absence of proof contrary.

--Abd (talk) 05:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Current use

In my opinion, the following statements are misleading and should be removed:

• The claim that IRV was used in some cities in North Carolina is misleading. Fact is: These cities use the Sri Lankan contingent vote.
• The claim that "instant runoff ballots" were used for absentee voting is misleading. At best, you could say that "preferential ballots" are used.
• I am not aware that IRV is used "for municipal elections in various places in New Zealand".

Markus Schulze 14:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Regarding NC use of IRV... If the article were titled "Alternative Vote" I would agree with Markus. The legislature in NC passed a law to use this form of voting and they called it "instant runoff voting" in the statute. The term "instant runoff voting" was coined about a decade ago, and is now popularly used to mean a few variations that all have elimination of bottom candidates, rather than pair-wise or other methodology. Thus, Alternative Vote and Contingent Vote (terms known in the U.S. only by students of election systems) both fit under this umbrella. Since everybody in Cary, NC, and within the election reform movement uses the term IRV to describe the voting method they use, I believe Wikipedia should follow suit, even if just to avoid confusion.

Now the situation in Hendersonville, NC, is a bit trickier, since they used a unique self-invented variation with two equal first choices, and then alternate rankings. I don't think their invention even meets the description of IRV in the NC law, let alone scholars' or any other jurisdiction's understanding of IRV. I would agree that Hendersonville's invention is arguably a method "related to IRV," rather than actually IRV.

Tbouricius (talk) 16:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, instant-runoff voting and contingent voting differ too much in their properties to treat them as if they were the same method. For example, contingent voting violates the mutual majority criterion and the independence of clones criterion.

When you really argue that contingent voting is a special form of instant-runoff voting then I recommend that the "instant-runoff voting" article should be changed into a disambiguation article with links to alternative voting, contingent voting, and Sri Lankan contingent voting. Markus Schulze 17:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that if we have only one article with a generic title, then everything gets complicated, particularly when the characteristics of election methods are described and the criteria that they satisfy. What has been considered "details," such as whether or not a true majority is required to win, how many ranks are allowed on the ballot, affect criteria and performance of the method. In my opinion, for example, IRV with majority required is much better than IRV which depends solely on the elimination of candidates to create an artificial majority. It still has other problems, to be sure, but it's better. However, that method does not avoid a runoff, necessarily, which is the source of the whole problem with what Robert's Rules describes. The default under Robert's Rules, with *any* election or decision, is that a majority votes for it, and majority means majority of ballots cast containing a vote for the candidate. The Robert's Rules, method, then, cannot be sold as "IRV".... not so simply. Only if the organization enables election by plurality can it then be considered the same as IRV; under those conditions, it is.

The solution suggested by Markus Schulze is more or less what I would do. It's still not easy. The name "Instant Runoff Voting" was coined to present an impression, a particular POV about what the method accomplishes. What would we think about a name, "Best Voting Method," used to describe some method as part of a campaign that was claimed to be, indeed, the best voting method?" That is, the name, in itself, a POV argument. Yet IRV is also, in the U.S., the most common usage -- but only since 1996; before that, it was unknown anywhere, apparently. This name is a neologism, the product of a political campaign, created by that campaign. Definitely, it's notable. But that does not automatically mean that the article should be titled by it. Ghits indicate it is the most commonly-used name, but that result is fueled by a very active political campaign here. The methods are in wide actual use elsewhere, and have distinctive names that, sometimes, refer specifically to the variation. If we only look at places where the variations are in actual use, "IRV" is very rare.

It will take work, but we would end up with a much clearer, cleaner presentation of the methods, their strengths, their specific histories, etc. I'd say that part of our task should be to introduce those interested in IRV to the *world* of election methods. The U.S. isn't the whole story!

It has also been proposed, and there was some rough agreement here about it, that a pattern be developed for voting systems articles on methods. It could resolve a lot of concern about how a particular article might be biased subtly by how the information is presented. There was a struggle with this article, in particular, over what information should be in the introduction. That question should be answered generically, in a kind of template, with participation by all those interested in the voting systems articles, not just those focused on one particular method. --Abd (talk) 22:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Changing the article into a disambiguation page because a couple uses refer to a variant? Given that the vast majority of the term's usage refers to what the article is about, that seems unreasonable. Why not just explain the differences at the two uses in question? MilesAgain (talk) 23:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Some scholars are now adopting the term "instant runoff voting," and it is a term of art in popular culture, as well as a variety of ordinances, statutes and pending legislation. The term is used to refer to a variety of systems including Alternative Vote and Contingent Vote, as well as ranked ballots used by overseas voters in traditional two-round runoffs. Arkansas' and South Carolina's ranked ballot in primaries are legally designated an "instant runoff ballots." As academics and systems experts we might wish terminology were more precise and consistent, but Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias and dictionaries must reflect actual widespread usage.

Perhaps the IRV article needs to be updated to reflect this reality that contingent vote as well as Alternative Vote are examples of instant runoff voting-- voting methods in which candidates are eliminated from the bottom up (whether sequentially or in a batch) with a single transferable vote.

As for New Zealand…. Many mayors are elected by IRV - in the same cities that adopted STV.

Tbouricius (talk) 01:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

MilesAgain writes that "the vast majority of the term's usage refers to what the article is about". That's not true! The vast majority is about a concrete single-winner election method: alternative voting. Only a very small part of the article refers to instant runoff voting, which is --according to Tbouricius-- a family of single-winner election methods.

Tbouricius writes: "As academics and systems experts we might wish terminology were more precise and consistent, but Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias and dictionaries must reflect actual widespread usage." I don't see why this is an argument against changing the instant-runoff voting article into a disambiguation article with the --admitted-- different uses of this term. Markus Schulze 14:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Approval advocacy

Does anyone other than Abd think that it is reasonable to mention approval other than in the navbar? (e.g. "IRV takes more work than Plurality Voting or Approval Voting" etc.) I would feel different about it if there were any jurisdictions using Approval, but without anyone actually using it, it's undue weight. It looks like advocacy, which I would think might be better spent organizing to get AV implemented somewhere.... MilesAgain (talk) 23:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree, there's no real place for AV here except for AV-advocates who want to give their alternative reform extra exposure.

Myself, the only method I really compare to IRV is the Condorcet method, and not even as a practical method for picking a winner as much as a measure for comparison when a CW exists, seeing runoffs and IRV specifically as a compromise between plurality (all core support) and Condorcet (all compromise appeal). I think this fact is important because it explains the funny nonmontonicity graphs IRV-detractors like to show. Compromises are messy. I don't want to hide, this but explain why the compromise is important. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

(Later comment than below) To answer User:MilesAgain directly and simply, the mention of Approval Voting in the Tactical Voting section was inserted by User:McCart42. I just looked over Special:Contributions/McCart42, who has been editing Wikipedia since 2004, and see no sign that he's an "AV-advocate." He has not edited, as far as I could see, the Approval voting article or its Talk page since 2004, when he inserted a characteristic of Approval that isn't controversial, stated as a fact (though it can be used as an argument). You'd think that if he was an "AV-advocate," he'd show just a teeny-weeny bit more interest! He has many edits of voting systems articles, so he does have some interest in the methods, and is apparently knowledgeable. I wrote this, ran into an edit conflict, and then saw that User:McCart42 had posted below....

Okay, now we have one sock and one IRV advocate affiliated with FairVote making their position clear. I mention the sock and the advocate merely to call attention to the fact that we have multiple expressions of opinion that may not be representative of a consensus of the editors. I was not the editor who inserted Approval Voting into the language of the Tactical Voting section, so, obviously, there is another editor who thinks it appropriate. I'm getting the feeling that Tbouricius might actually be paying attention, because, instead of removing the reference to Approval and Condorcet methods, he added balancing fact, i.e., that these methods are subject to tactical voting themselves. This is precisely how to work toward NPOV.

Now, the claim is being made that the number of "jurisdictions" using Approval is relevant. What is relevant is whether or not Approval is notable and its mention in the context is informative and relevant to the topic of the article. If it is going to be asserted that IRV is not subject to some form of tactical voting, a reader will see this as a plus, presumably. However, how does IRV compare to other methods in this respect? It seems to be perfectly okay to constantly compare IRV with Plurality and, indeed, this has long been FairVote strategy. Smart. What User:MilesAgain does not seem to get -- and I think it's been pointed out to him -- is that voting systems are used for other than governmental elections. Approval is in use. Condorcet methods are in use.

As far as public elections in the U.S. are concerned, which all too often seems to be the sole concern of some editors of this article, maybe even myself, Bucklin voting, which does solve the spoiler effect, and saw pretty extensive use in the U.S. Bucklin is essentially Instant Runoff Approval. It simply brings in the additional votes in a different way (with different implications for tactical voting, of course). Given that Bucklin apparently was working, as can be seen from reading Brown v. Smallwood -- don't believe the propaganda about it, and most Google hits on Bucklin, if they aren't Wikipedia or mirrors, are copies of FairVote's page on Bucklin, which the Wikipedia article mostly repeats) -- I've become a bit chagrined that Bucklin isn't being proposed again for public elections. And, again, that's a discussion for another day.

There has also been at least one serious proposal to use a Condorcet method for the state of Washington, the method called Schwartz Sequential Dropping.

The point is that IRV is being described as a (partial) solution for the spoiler effect. Are there other solutions? Before choosing a solution, I'd think that one would want to answer this question, and then compare the solutions if others exist, especially if there is a big difference in the costs involved. The reason Approval gets mentioned so readily is that it is (1) a method which was *designed* to eliminate strategic voting (as normally defined by voting methods people), (2) is free, there is no implementation cost, since existing procedures can already count Approval with no changes other than routine settings of equipment (Bucklin can be counted that way also, it just takes a few more voting positions, i.e., ballot space. Likewise Range voting, though it gets cumbersome with high-resolution Range), (3) It's really simple to vote, most voters under current conditions in partisan elections simply vote for their favorite, probably, and (4) there are other reasons why some consider Approval a better method than most other options. Some would say "all other options." I don't, by the way. I'm merely impressed by "free" and "simple." If it is "free" then there isn't any reform capital wasted by the change, and the effort and expense might then be available for further reforms. What if a jurisdiction spends the substantial money it can cost to change voting equipment to handle IRV, then discovers that it's a fish bicycle? Again, I'm not trying to convince anyone here that Approval is better than IRV, but that *it can be argued that it is*. And, in fact, the arguments are out there, they are notable, and thus they are relevant, within limits.

There are potentially a series of topics that can be covered in this article, or forked to separate articles, and there could be some good reasons to fork. One topic is "What is the voting method and what are its characteristics" A second is "What is its history?" (This includes usage, "History and Usage" is redundant.) A third is Controversies regarding instant-runoff voting and we have that article in process. And a fourth is comparisons with other methods.

--Abd (talk) 03:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

• I think a comparison to AV to illustrate the flaws of IRV (non-monotonicity, spoiler effect) is completely justified. - McCart42 (talk) 03:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

  How does AV illustrate anything since is completely different? The only justification for AV I've seen in this article is that it can be implemented like plurality, with checkboxes. Bucklin voting more sensibly deserves comparison to approval, since it counts more than one vote at the same time. Tom Ruen (talk) 03:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

It is clear the reason Approval Voting keeps getting inserted into this article is POV pushing. In terms of the cost of IRV...One could say IRV is more expensive to use than using monarchy, if one were a monarchist. The fact is, mentioning Approval Voting through out the article only seems relevant to advocates of that reform (as mentioning a comparison to monarchy would seem to a monarchist). Remember 99.9% of the Wikipedia readers are going to want to know how IRV compares to the method they are currently using (either plurality or two-round runoffs). THESE are the only two method comparisons that are relevant by name for this article, other than in one or two spot links, such as in the methods sidebar.

Tbouricius (talk) 04:13, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

An attempt to "justify" Approval voting in this article would be out of place. This article is not about Approval voting. However, IRV cannot be properly understood in a vacuum. Listing, for example, compliance or non-compliance with a series of election criteria will tell an average reader practically nothing unless there are some comparisons with how other possibly relevant methods perform with respect to those criteria. I'm not proposing that Approval be mentioned at every turn, but there are particular criteria and characteristics where Approval, in comparison to IRV, particularly stands out. It would be perfect okay, on the other hand, in noting that, allegedly, with IRV you cannot hurt your first preference by adding another preference, with Approval you *can* hurt your favorite by adding a vote for someone whom your favorite might beat if you hadn't added that vote. Likewise, with Bucklin, if you add a second preference, it won't stop your first preference from winning the first round (Bucklin satisfies all forms of the Majority Criterion), but it *might* help your second preference beat your first preference in the next round. (On the other hand, that possibility, commonly asserted as an argument against Approval, really requires that a voter vote, as first and second preferences (say), both of two frontrunners. It's actually a pretty weird vote under most circumstances -- like voting for Bush and Gore in 2000! And I'd put just about none of this in this article. Approval is mentioned to make clear the characteristics of IRV in comparison to other possible reforms, and that could be positive or negative. A truly total comparison of methods would require a complex article, it should not be done in a specific method article. These, in the article, are just a few salient points.

As to the argument presented immediately above by Tbouricius, I've already lit up too many pixels with specific response to the points he made, more than once, and there is no sign that he's understood it or even that he knows these comments exist, so at a certain point I have to decide it's enough. However, hope springs eternal: You have a bicycle, and I'm selling you a Cadillac. Definitely, I don't want anyone to mention a Subaru to you. I'm going to tell you over and over how much better the Cadillac is than the bicycle. It will get you where you need to go faster. (Unless there is a lot of snow.) It will be more comfortable (True). If you are hit by a train, wouldn't you rather be in a Cadillac? (I'd rather avoid riding or driving in front of trains). Cost? Well, isn't democracy worth the cost? (And, yes, it is; that is, the cost of a poor election can be a train wreck, it can easily exceed the cost of implementing IRV. But is that expense necessary? IRV is only a first step reform, the real goal -- which I wish they had stuck with and cooperated with other reformers toward -- is proportional representation. What is our reform budget? Is STV the only method that can be used for proportional representation with good performance?

(No, it isn't, but one of the lovely things the sock puppets do is to AfD articles that nobody is watching, such as Proportional Approval Voting, and nobody even attempted yet -- I think -- to put up Reweighted Range Voting; both of these use STV-like techniques but with much simpler counting. Do we have anything on Coombs method? I think FairVote made a huge tactical error. It could be fixed, and there are lots of people urging them to fix it, but ... sunk cost fallacy, as my friend Clay Shentrup likes to repeat. On that, he's right. The same sock that took out Proportional Approval Voting had, as a first target, Schentrup Method. Yes, misspelled. It was almost a joke article, no damage was done, it merely indicated the purpose of that sock. Get the Range Voting people. Editors interested in voting methods who have wondered where this or that article went might look at Special:Contributions/Yellowbeard. He took out a whole series of articles when we weren't looking. His arguments are familiar. I think he was seeing the writing on the wall, and he changed his socks. Proportional Approval Voting should probably be resurrected, it's notable. So are some of the other articles he got deleted or tried to. He always asserted "original research," as if that were conclusive when notable original research *can* be described on Wikipedia. Sometimes he was simply wrong, but the few who commented didn't know that. Maybe we *can* get some Yee diagrams here. It's all in how it's framed. OR can't be presented as fact without attribution.)

--Abd (talk) 04:51, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Pro and con arguments

I reverted McCart42's deletion of Abd's disclaimer that the pro and con arguments are simply what the sides say and not necessarily true. However, I do not like the fact that some of them are blatant opinions with no basis in fact. Should only those that can be found in reliable sources remain? MilesAgain (talk) 19:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No, quite definitely no. If an opinion is *notably* expressed, if we can show the expression of the opinion in a manner that readers can verify, *the opinion is the fact,* not what it claims. If this were just a single opinion or argument, we would state the fact as "So and So claimed, "IRV is better than sliced bread," and then we would source this. IRV being better than sliced bread is an opinion -- unless it were printed in some journal as peer-reviewed research. But that So-and-so holds that opinion can be established by any reliable source in a different meaning. For example, if So-and-so has a blog, it did not just suddenly appear, it's known, and So-and-so has not disavowed it, we may assume that the opinion So-and-so expressed on the blog is his or hers.

The opinions are the facts here. Originally, we simply stated them without sources, since these opinions are pretty well known to a number of editors active here. It's better that they be sourced, of course. The sourcing of opinions is needed primarily to avoid straw-man arguments; and this, as well, points to the problem that some editors have tried to dilute opinions on the side they don't favor, or, alternatively, on their own side. For example, an IRV promotional piece might have headlines: Eliminate the Spoiler Effect, Reduce Negative Campaigning. Presenting the argument here, in order to avoid criticism, a pro-IRV editor may weaken the argument to make it more defensible. Like Reduce the Spoiler Effect, May Reduce Negative Campaigning. The arguments should be presented strongly here if they are being presented strongly by notable sources. For example, any argument presented on the FairVote site is notable; likewise arguments from the Center for Range Voting. Arguments on less notable web sites may likewise be, for the purpose here, notable, especially if there are multiple sites. Similarly, multiple arguments presented on mailing lists with accessible archives would, for this purpose, be notable. Essentially, if people concerned about the issue of IRV are making or commonly encountering the arguments, they are notable. Now, not all these arguments necessarily belong in this article. Only the most common arguments, I'd suggest, should be here, unless they are needed for balance.

The truth of the arguments is something that we cannot decide without violating NPOV. However, on the article now named Instant-runoff voting controversies, we present the arguments in a different manner. Each argument is a subsection, and the subsection then discusses the arguments in an NPOV manner, presenting fact and opinion; the opinion should be attributed, at least generally. Thus we don't see, there, matching Pro and Con arguments, like "IRV is better than sliced bread" as a Pro, with a Con, "No, sliced bread is better." So far, on the controversy article, arguments are classified by the side most commonly asserting it. For example, the argument that IRV does not reduce negative campaigning is a Con argument only in the context created by a Pro argument that it will, so this is discussed -- and the contrary claim presented -- in the Pro section. So we attempt to present, together with the argument, facts and opinion that may help the reader to form their own opinion or conclusion. Our presentation must be balanced; but this is precisely where having editors with opposing viewpoints can be helpful. The general policy is to balance by addition, not by deletion, to distinguish between fact (which requires RS and, actually, even more than that, often, in my opinion, i.e., an agreement of reliable sources when multiples exist, or, sometimes, the absence of notable controversy) and opinion or argument, with the latter being attributed (which identifies it as opinion).

Why don't we attribute in the text? I.e., "Warren Smith claims that IRV will cause bread to mold." Well, it makes it harder to follow, and the identity of the one presenting the argument may not contribute to understanding the subject. If it does, definitely, full attribution should be in the text. Generally the opinions we are presenting here are actually being argued by many people, not just by one or two, that's why identity isn't so important. All this is a bit experimental; I'd like to review some other articles that deal with controversies to see how it's handled elsewhere.

It's quite reasonable that we might move all the Pro and Con arguments to the controversies fork, in fact, I'd like to do that.

By the way, I thank User:MilesAgain for reverting that removal of the disclaimer, which was based on a common misunderstanding. The arguments exist whether the claimed facts in them are true or not. People claim that evolution is nonsense. That's a fact, i.e., that people claim it. That evolution is nonsense is not a fact, it's an opinion. I'm not entirely thrilled with the disclaimer or warning, but without it, it becomes necessary to specifically identify and attribute every argument, making what is intended to be a brief outline of arguments into a complex mess. However, pushing it all to the controversies article makes more sense to me.

Many of the arguments presented have been carefully worked out by experts in developing arguments that will influence public opinion, perhaps by playing on known knee-jerk responses and common misconceptions. That's why a warning becomes important, particularly if the arguments are going to be presented without deeper examination....

--Abd (talk) 05:28, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Two "IRV can fail to elect a majority winner" arguments

I think one of the listed Con arguments needs to be divided into two separate Con arguments as they are made by critics who may be approaching the criticism from opposite ends, and with opposite notions of what is desirable. This is the "IRV can fail to elect a majority winner" argument.

Some critics prefer alternative voting methods that may promote the election of a compromise candidate with 75% majority acceptability over a candidate with 51% first preference (or perhaps only 51% of non-exhausted ballots) majority. These critics believe the "community will" (or "social utility") is better served in this way. Thus they object to IRV's possibly eliminating a widely supported compromise candidate due to lack of first preference support.

There is a second and rather different criticism dealing with majority winners from those who prefer two-round runoff elections. Many of thses critics disagree with the "compromise" argument above, and simply object to the fact that exhausted ballots may mean a winner does not have a "true" majority of all ballots cast.

Some critics embrace BOTH of these criticisms, but many do not, and I think they need to be separated.

Tbouricius (talk) 17:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm a little confused maybe. Condorcet supporters might say that a Condorcet Winner is the only true majority winner (when such a candidate exists). Abd's argument on exhausted ballots disabling a clear majority winner on the surface might imply the two-round runoff as better, although I don't get that from his words (as far I actually read what he writes). I'd judge his position more coming from the view of range/approval voting is to denounce IRV's majority claim simply because it wouldn't allow IRV to promise something that approval can never give. So that seems like a third position to me. MYSELF, I perhaps come from BOTH sides. I can defend a top-round process as giving a true majority among the (first round) top-two, and Condorcet giving a true majority among all the candidates, while IRV also gives a true majority among the (final round) top-two.

I accept there's an exhausted ballot issue in IRV that visibly manifests itself as a failed majority, but I consider that judged consequence as insufficient to explain the problem. For me a minority winner isn't the problem of IRV, since I believe people have the right to leave remaining choices unranked, giving up their vote. The problem isn't results but intention. Are people having exhausted ballots by intent or a consequence of insufficient planning. Is it better for voters to leave choices unranked they don't know about? Is a voter's democratic rights diminished if they are unprepared to rank enough choices to have a vote among the final-two?

I went to a FairVoteMN event last month in Minneapolis, argued the unprepared voters case and LOST every argument. I suggested Minneapolis is better off keeping the primary to reduce the number of candidates, and if IRV was used, more than two candidates could pass the primary. The position I got back is that primaries have low voter turnout and people lose choices if they only attend the general election. I argued back that as long as everyone is allowed to vote in the primary, there's no unfairness AND that people who vote in the primary tend to be voters who can deal with a 12-candidate field and properly sort them out while its more likely in a 12-candidate field general election that people will lose their votes without the willingness to sort out the choices. I argued that having 3-4 choices left from the primary ought to be quite sufficient for the general election, but I was merely arguing from the point of view of the limitations of people to participate while true-blue FairVote supporters are idealists who want to spread power as widely as possible without regards to whether people are able and willing to wield the power given. Anyway, so my point is lost because I'm a bad guy trying to take away power (while in fact I'd gladly support true majority Condorcet TOO, but again, I'd still keep the primary!) Oops, sorry falling off topic, and nothing quotable for Wiki. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Excessive external links

There have been two attempts by two different editors to cleanup the external link section, and both have been immediately reverted. Please see WP:EL and WP:NOT#LINKFARM. If you guys can find a compromise, go for it on your own. Otherwise, I think it's better if an editor who is univolved in the content dispute does so (such as me or the other editor who's tried), but no one is letting the changes remain. Next time, please read through the changes and delete some extra links and add a few more if you think it's unbalanced, rather than blindly reverting. Thanks, нмŵוτнτ 21:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

hmwith may have overlooked that I commented here in talk each time that I restored the links section. What he claims here, though, isn't exactly accurate. There was one anonymous IP editor plus him. I reverted those edits because they were massive. Massive changes to a built-up section like that should properly enjoy consensus prior to being done. Rather, I suggested, above, if the editor wants to challenge the appropriateness of a single external link, removing just that would be one way. With another massive edit, I would probably do the same again. I *agree* with these editors that there are too many links. However, taking them out en masse isn't the solution.

For starters, how about all the links to various local IRV campaign sites? I'd presume that all of those would be linked from the FairVote site. It might be reasonable to just have FairVote, or to have a link to a page on FairVote or elsewhere with a list of such resources, instead of having every local advocacy group and the kitchen sink.

I certainly would have liked to go through the changes made by hmwith, but I did not have time -- and still don't have it -- and I think that we should consider that the article is in continuous use in an encyclopedia. I have no doubt but that useful information, within WP:LINK, was removed in that edit; a little extra material, in external links, is less harmful than too little.

Taking out a whole series of links at once means that no reason is given for each one in the edit summary. If an editor really does want to take out a lot of links in one edit session -- not a good idea -- then I, personally, would be more likely to leave untouched some of the edits if they were individual, with a reason given in the summary. As to content dispute, I don't see that we have one yet. We have one action by someone anonymous who made no comment in Talk, in spite of comment there, and another by hmwith, who likewise did not respond to discussion in Talk. Setting aside the anonymous edit, we have one large deletion of content by one editor, and reversion by one, who invites a piecemeal approach, and is not digging in his heels against any reduction of links. Just against a massive one without discussion and consensus.

--Abd (talk) 06:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

(A) I'm a SHE, not a HE. Please don't assume that every person is a male without prior knowledge either way. Gender neutral language is preferred if you do not feel like clicking the userpage link.

(B) I did participate on the talk page, as you can see above.

(C) Just because you don't have time to go through the links does not mean that others do not. I went through each and every link individually. I didn't just delete a bunch of links. I kept the ones that were relevant and useful to this article. I have no political agenda whatsoever here on this article. Please assume good faith on the part of other editors. You actions are holding back the positive development of this article. You apparently don't trust the changes to be made unless there are made by yourself, and the article will be in a sub par condition until you get this time, unless an edit war is in order.

Thank you for your time, and I hope that you realize that positive, BOLD improvements can be made here (if they aren't reverted by you).

нмŵוτнτ 22:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

First of all, I apologize for the gender error. I frequently use "he or she" or the singular plural "they", however, I somehow failed to do it this time. I do not and did not dispute editor hmwith's right to be BOLD; however, this is a heavily controversial article, and specific links in the list are important to specific "constituencies." So what I'm asking is that either one or two deletions be done at once, or that a larger series of deletions be considered here, to seek editor consensus. I have not assumed a political agenda. However, I *will* assert something: if the editor is not familiar with the issues -- this is actually likely with neutral editors -- important links may easily be missed. Nonetheless, participation by neutral editors is highly welcome; my only concern was the mass removal of links by one editor at one time, given the article context. I see no reason to change this opinion, yet. However, I will take the step of facilitating the kind of discussion that I consider necessary, it will be in a new section specifically for that purpose. --Abd (talk) 19:00, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Arrow's Theorem: does it prove that "no voting method can satisfy all criteria."

This has come up before. For a justification of the removal of a reference to Arrow's theorem from the article, see the archive [6] There, I explained the removal -- plus some history of this article. This discussion does not preclude putting mention of Arrow's theorem back in ... but the issues raised there should be addressed.

In summary, the only reason for mentioning Arrow's theorem here is to defuse implied "criticism" of IRV due to criterion "failure." It raises, in fact, a controversial issue. What criteria are important? That controversy is better reserved for Voting_system_criterion#Criteria_in_evaluating_single_winner_voting_systems.

Personally, I think "election criteria" can convey some useful information about a method, but they are not a sound basis for judgement, they are, rather, intuitive characteristics considered desirable, and that intuition can be way off.

By the way, that Voting system article at this point repeats the claim. It needs some attention. Like much of that article, it is not sourced. I don't personally mind that when the facts are well-known (though it is not good long-term). Arrow's theorem does *not* prove the claim as stated; rather Arrow proved that a short list of criteria were mutually incompatible *for ranked methods*. There are voting systems that are not ranked methods. Again, this controversy is far too complex to address here. That article would be a great place!

You could define a criterion that says: system is a ranked method. *Then* you could say that the criteria are mutually incompatible. Arrow, however, did not say "no voting method." His proof assumes a pure rank order ballot, no equal rankings. At least that's my recollection!

Now, I think I've seen peer-reviewed articles that made the assertion about voting systems; however, it's blatantly problematic, once the definition creep has been identified. To me, it's like peer-reviewed articles that assert that a diet is heart-hazardous because it includes substantial saturated fats (like butter). An error that remains an error no matter how many times it is asserted, it was never more than an unconfirmed hypothesis, a weak inference from cherry-picked epidemiological data, yet it got repeated so many times that it became the accepted wisdom. Ahem, where were we? :-) --Abd (talk) 21:38, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

So how would you be with "no known system passes all the criteria" then? MilesAgain (talk) 04:18, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Tell me why it should be in the article. And: All what criteria? All imaginable election criteria? That's practically a tautology. Define a "Method X criterion" as being that the winner is the winner chosen by method X. So we could use the "IRV criterion." Any Condorcet method, of course, "fails" this "IRV criterion." Arrow's theorem was about a specific short list of criteria. I've seen claims that Range voting satisfies all on that list; but that claim, I think, depends on extending definitions, otherwise it would simply be said that some of the criteria -- at least one -- don't apply to Range at all. It was in the Range voting article at one point that Range voting was a "counterexample" to Arrow's theorem, but that was not true. Arrow's theorem is a mathematical proof; but it assumes a rank-order, strict preference list. However, I'm not going to pretend that I have a firm grasp of Arrow's theorem at the moment... maybe on alternate Tuesdays. To the point: this one should be properly sourced. From my understanding, though, the claim is controversial. --Abd (talk) 04:57, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

You pointed out that there is "implied criticism" if the fact is not addressed. More importantly, encyclopedias are supposed to be comprehensive. What reason is there to omit this crucial context? MilesAgain (talk) 05:28, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It is appropriate to mention that no voting method can satisfy all of the commonly used mathematical criteria. Technically it is the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem, rather than Arrow we are dealing with (single winner, vs. ordered set) One of the standard criteria Arrow proposed is the universal domain, which means the ability of voters to rank their choices. So OF COURSE methods such as Approval and unranked methods fail this criterion. Since Satterthwaite's Theroem proves that all ranked methods also must fail at least one criterion, this means that ALL voting methods MUST fail. Abd makes an important point that the value of some of these criteria is questionable...and I would argue some are easily dropped as unimportant. This dispute about the value of some of the criteria should probably also be mentioned in that paragraph. However, in the BRIEF intorduction to listing which criteria IRV hits and misses (as with any similar listing of criteria in all other articles about a particular voting method) it is certainly appropriate to let the lay person know that they are wasting their time if they are going to look for a perfect method as defined by these criteria, because they are mutually exclusive.

Tbouricius (talk) 17:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Abd has removed my language stating that no voting method can satisfy all standard criteria. I would like to restore it, but will first wait to see if there are any convincing arguments from other editors (I've read Abd's opinion numerous times already). In short, there is a nearly universal consensus among election methods expert, with the exception of a small group of Approval/Range voting advocates, that Arrow and Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorems show that no voting method can satisfy all reasonable criteria. The simple fact that Approval Voting fails the universal domain criterion (does not allow full ranking) does not mean it is "exempt" from Arrow's theorem, but simply that it fails that particular criterion. As evidence of this consensus, I would propose to provide this source from Nicolaus Tideman's book, Collective Decisions and Voting on page 123...

"The main conclusion that Arrow reaches is that it is not possible for a voting procedure to have all of the properties that one might think are essential. The theorem in which this is proven is known as the Arrow theorem."

It may be as Abd, I and others have argued, that some of these criteria are of doubtful value in evaluating voting methods, but the fact that no method CAN satisfy the standard set of criteria really is beyond any serious doubt.

Tbouricius (talk) 22:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Very well.... Do you *really* want to get into this?

There are three problems here. First is the truth, do Arrow and G-S prove what is claimed? Second is what can be reliably sourced. Original Research isn't allowed, strictly, and unless a reliable source actually says what is claimed, it is contrary to policy to restate or interpret sources. That is, it should be possible for any reader to confirm what is in the article by reading the sources, without having specialized knowledge, typically by reading secondary or tertiary sources. Third is what is proper for the article. A claim may be true, under some conditions, but not appropriate for the article because introducing it will cause some imbalance, some slant.

Now, let me make one thing clear: I won't personally use a difficulty in finding reliable source to keep information out of the article because I don't like the implications, provided that (1) the information is known to be true by me, and (2) it does not introduce POV imbalance; and typically if true information does introduce such imbalance, the solution is not to exclude it, but to balance it with additional information. However, what if the necessary additional information is without reliable source, as defined on Wikipedia? This is a possibility where I can't anticipate my response. What I might do, though, is to, at least, insist upon reliable source, so this is an exception to my general principle of not excluding what is true, in my opinion, from articles, based on lack of shown reliable source. I *might* do this by placing a citation needed tag.

So, first thing. Is it true? Does the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem prove what is claimed? In answering this question for myself, here I may consider original research and other material that does not qualify as WP:RS. For starters, let's look at the statement from Tideman. It's not the language that Tbouricius used, exactly, and some possibly weasel words have been used. My emphasis: "The main conclusion that Arrow reaches is that it is not possible for a voting procedure to have all of the properties that one might think are essential."

However, Arrow himself does not say this; Arrow confines himself to the precise conditions, as I recall, involved in his proof. We find the claim about "all voting systems" in the writing of others about Arrow's theorem, who often write, from what I've seen, as if this is what Arrow proved. If I'm correct, Arrow did *not* posit, however, that "all voting systems" were properly covered by his theorem.. Because I think it is simpler, however, and since Tbouricius claimed, at first, that it was really the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem that was important here, I'll start with that.

Now, googling "Gibbard-Satterthwaite," I find that Warren Smith has been here before me. rangevoting.org/GibbSat.html. I recommend reading it and criticizing it here if one does not agree with his conclusions. He's fairly thorough, and his more formal paper even more so, though, I must admit, I find his style irritating, it is his style more than the cogence of his conclusions that may inhibit publication of his writings in peer-reviewed publications.

Note that the conditions set in G-S, as in Arrow's theorem, are more than "election criteria." There are methods which have actually been used which blatantly and directly contradict some of the preconditions: a very clear example is the requirement that the method be deterministic. This means that the ballots, and the ballots alone, determine the winner. Venice used a complex mixture of Approval Voting and random choice for many centuries (like 500 years, I think). The point I'm making right now is that "deterministic" is not listed among the election criteria in the article. If the method is not deterministic, it might very well satisfy all of the criteria listed in the article, so a claim that these theorems prove that not all these criteria can be simultaneously satisfied has *not* been proven. A critical criterion has been left out.

What does Smith do with G-S? Well, he claims that Range voting does, in fact, satisfy all the G-S criteria. Where is the problem?

Here are the G-S criteria, and their application to Range Voting (the analysis is mine, not necessarily Smith's):

1. There is no "dictator."

Range satisfies this.

2. If every voter ranks X top, then X wins the election.

Is this true of Range? Well, not necessarily. Suppose all voters rank X top, but also rank Y top. Most election rules would fail to elect, or the choice would be submitted to chance, perhaps violating the next characteristic. However, this is a tie, and it is reasonable to exempt such ties from consideration.

3. The voting system is deterministic, i.e. its decision about who wins is based purely on the votes, not on random chance.

Again, excepting ties .... Range satisfies this. (Note that resolving ties by lot is a violation of "majority rule." Any tied election would fail under standard Robert's Rules, since a majority has not chosen the particular outcome. So is it reasonable that election methods be purely deterministic? Actually, not if we want a single poll to resolve the election.)

4. There are at least three candidates running.

This points out how the conditions of the proof are not the same thing as "election criteria." Range allows three candidates, so this is really setting up the conditions of the proof, and, indeed, we do expect that a decent election method will function with three candidates. However, before we move on, let me note that election "paradoxes" or difficulties arise when there are more than two choices, and there is an "election method" that is not only in common use, but which, in my view, is the best, which *prohibits* considering more than two choices at once, usually stated as Yes or No. Full deliberative process can be used for elections. However, it is not deterministic, there is no way to predict the outcome from initial conditions, as the very question itself shifts during the election process, through amendments. Each question submitted, including amendments, is subject to majority vote. So, again, the claim "all voting systems" is overstated. It's confined to single-ballot processes that address the contingency, with a single ballot, of more than two possible conclusions.

5. Honest and strategic voting are the same thing, i.e. it never "pays for a voter to lie," i.e. (more precisely) there is no election situation in which a voter, by submitting a dishonest vote claiming A>B when really she does not agree that A is a better candidate than B, can make the election result come out better (from her point of view) than if she had voted honestly.

The devil is in the details. However, to begin, Brams designed Approval for precisely this goal. (Of course, Approval already existed, though not under that name, it had been used for centuries.) And this takes us to a question that we have encountered before, the meaning of "dishonest votes." Arrow's theorem assumes rank-order input, with a complete ordering by preference of candidates. Range, however, *allows* complete ordering, but does not require it. Plurality and Approval (often considered a variation of Plurality) only allows complete ordering with two candidates. Is it a "dishonest vote" if a voter equal-ranks two candidates?

How does G-S actually state this? What is above is Smith's restatement of G-S. I don't think "honesty" is actually mentioned in th e original, that is all explanation. Rather, one of the ways the fifth condition is stated, I found, is that there are conditions possible where, if the voter knows the votes of all the other voters before casting his or her vote, the voter can improve the outcome by voting with reversed preference. (The possibility of voting with *equal* preference is not considered.) Is this ever true of Range (including Approval)? Let's look at an example, with Approval. There are five voters, choosing from three possibilities. The vote is A:2, B:2, C:0, and it is time for the fifth voter to vote. The fifth voter prefers C>B>A. If the fifth voter bullet votes for C, then there is a tie between A and B. If the fifth voter, however, votes for B, this is a preferred outcome. With ranked methods, this involves preference reversal. However, with Approval, the voter may vote for B and C, thus not reversing preference. If I'm correct, the original G-S theorem simply assumes that there is a preference order, similarly to Arrow's theorem, and that any vote to improve the outcome must reverse it, which is true for pure ranked ballots. Smith discusses this in the page referenced above, and he calls voting to equally rank, "semi-honest."

(If we think of Approval voting as honest if no preferences are reversed, with an understanding that the voter must equally rank at least two candidates no matter what -- either at the top or at the bottom -- then Approval does appear to satisfy all the conditions of G-S, for if equal ranking in the presence of some preference is dishonest, then *no* vote is honest in Approval, nor is it with any voting method using a ballot short of full ranking of all candidates. And we could carry this to an extreme: under Robert's Rules, as applied to preferential voting, a complete ranking of all legal candidates is generally impossible, unless write-in votes are not allowed, i.e., are illegal, for it would require listing every legal candidate. Because bottom-ranking must be equal for candidates not on the ballot and not written in, if we interpret equal ranking as insincere, all votes must therefore be insincere in some form or other, and this is an absurd result. Plus, of course, if we have a ranked ballot, and a voter actually has no preference between two candidates, they are clones for the voter, the voter is forced to vote insincerely, so equal-ranking-allowed ballots are necessary to allow sincere voting.)

My conclusion: to claim that G-S shows that all voting methods cannot satisfy the list of conditions given is properly controversial, it depends on subtle interpretation of definitions. The claim of Smith that Range satisfies all the allegedly contradictory conditions is reasonable. Is there any contrary argument? Has anyone, in any reliable source, claimed that Range and Approval do *not* serve as a counterexamples to the general applicability of G-S? Or in any paper similar to those of Warren Smith's, i.e, self-published?

Approval Voting, as I mentioned, was designed to be strategy-proof, and, besides Brams' original paper, there are other sources which consider it to be so. Claims that Approval are "vulnerable to tactical voting" seem to be based on the idea that equal ranking in the presence of some preference (no matter how small) is "tactical." However, the original meanings of "strategic voting" involved preference reversal, votes which were clearly dishonest, and when this has been extended to equal ranking, it's problematic, particularly because there is long habit of considering "strategic voting," i.e., voting dishonestly, as highly undesirable for a voting system to reward, this black mark gets applied to Approval by the claim that, say, bullet voting is "tactical," in some cases, or that voting for a preferred frontrunner -- which is simple realism -- is "tactical" and thus, by implication, dishonest, if one actually prefers another candidate. With Plurality, it is. But if, in Approval, one approves two candidates, it is properly not dishonest, a dishonest Approval vote would only be one where one disapproves a candidate that one actually prefers to one approved, or approves a candidate when there is an unapproved candidate one prefers. And Approval provides no motive whatever to do that. For sources considering Approval to be strategy-proof, see Approval Voting on Dichotomous Preferences, Vorsatz, 2004, and Vote Manipulation in the Presence of Multiple Sincere Ballots, Endriss, 2007.

This latter paper has a very direct statement of the problem with applying the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem to Approval voting:

• Firstly, the theorem assumes that voting amounts to reporting a full preference ordering over all candidates. The plurality rule, for instance, does not satisfy this condition, as it requires voters to submit ballots with just a single name on them.

• Secondly, the statement of the theorem presupposes that there is a unique way of casting a sincere vote, for any given preference ordering over candidates. Approval voting (Brams and Fishburn, 1978) is an important voting rule that does not satisfy this condition. In approval voting, a ballot consists of the names of any subset of the set of candidates standing; these are the candidates the voter approves of. The candidate receiving the most approvals wins. A ballot is considered sincere if the voter prefers any of the approved candidates over any of the disapproved candidates. Hence, there will be multiple sincere ballots for any given preference ordering.

This second problem is the core. Is "there is only one way of casting a sincere vote" a "property that one might think essential." Sure it is. One might think that, one who hasn't considered the possibility of Approval or, more generally, Range Voting. In other words, one might restate a conclusion here: there are "election criteria" which may seem reasonable, but which, on close examination, turn out to be unnecessary or even, sometimes, undesirable conditions. The Majority Criterion is, itself, as interpreted by many authors, quite clearly undesirable, and counterexamples to its desirability are easy to come by. (It's easy to confuse the Majority Criterion with "majority rule," which it is not. Majority rule would require the consent of a majority to some choice other than its first preference, which is exactly the condition under which Approval allegedly fails the Majority Criterion. The majority has consented, in that case, by voting, in larger numbers, for the less-preferred option in addition to the preferred one, thus explicitly consenting. Range voting fails MC uncontroversially, but, again, in a manner that is, quite arguably, superior to automatically accepting the first preference of a majority. Unless the Range ballot has a provision for indicating Approval cutoff, though, and that information is used to intercept a majority consent failure, the consent of a majority is not explicit, as it is with Approval.) --Abd (talk) 04:05, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

On Abd's edit labeled extend specifications in language[7] , with all due respect, what a load of crap.... Tom Ruen (talk) 00:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Seeing the senselessness of the section debating the meaning of voting criteria, I cleared it all and linked to a the voting system article section. If anyone wants to fight the value of the criteria do it there please!

Voting_system#Criteria_in_evaluating_single_winner_voting_systems

P.S. Can we archive this Talk section now and banish it from view? Tom Ruen (talk) 02:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for the length of my comments. Unfortunately, the topic is complex. Nevertheless, nobody is obligated to read my full text; in the end, what counts is edits of the article and if someone has missed my justifications, well, that may or may not be a problem. Believe me, if it gets close to an edit war, I'll get real succinct, for by that time, the full expression will have been made and, obviously, it must get short and sweet to be useful if intervention is necessary. Until then, I consider discussion here to be like a meeting; if I'm giving a long and boring speech, well that's my problem if the audience is not prisoners waiting for me to finish. (I've been a prison chaplain delivering the Friday sermon; talk about a captive audience .... and, indeed, I was brief.) User:MilesAgain has replaced the language and his wording, wherever it came from, seems fine to me. Not perfect, maybe, but also not enough of a problem to be worth even touching. It seems to me that an article on IRV should include various measures of IRV performance, starting with what is well-known and what has been studied for a long time: election criteria. Wait until we come to putting a Yee diagram in this article (and those of other election methods); the day is coming, fairly soon, that sourcing will be adequate. In any case, given that election criteria performance should be in the article, it is also appropriate to include some kind of cautionary note about it; my concern about that was the implication with prior wording, it's like a criminal, charged with a crime, saying, "Well, nobody's perfect!" True, but avoiding the issue. (I am *not* implying that IRV is criminal!) Again, reference to the Controversies article (Instant-runoff voting controversies may be appropriate here if there is a section there on performance measures. --Abd (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

One more remark: There was an obvious sock puppet who engaged in massive deletion of voting systems articles. He began, within minutes of registering, to AfD an article about Schentrup method a truly non-notable proposal by Clay Shentrup, a Range Voting activist highly critical of IRV. Not surprisingly, the article was deleted. He proceeded to AfD, among other things, making charges of "vanity," "original research," "non-notable," "no reliable sources," etc., many other articles. He was occasionally correct; however, more often, he was simply removing stubs and articles needed work from the encyclopedia, and he was succeeding because, essentially, nobody was watching those articles. He was successful in deleting Center for Range Voting, Bayesian Regret, Proportional Approval Voting and many other articles in this field. From many of the articles chosen, and some other hints, it's pretty clear that he is a supporter of IRV attempting to remove information that might be useful in debate against IRV proposals. (This is no aspersion on IRV or on any of the supporters of IRV who are openly active here, they are not responsible for what some individual might do, unless they join in it.) When an article is deleted, so is the edit history (though any of it can be restored). If you have thought you created an article and then came back and there was no trace of it, well, you may have been AfD'd. These decisions are sometimes made by very few editors who sometimes clearly don't do the research, they depend on their being defenders of articles, and if you don't log in frequently and check your watchlist .... it can all go quickly. If this is the case for any of you, do a search on the name of the article, you should be able to find the Articles for Deletion page on it. You can then find the name of the deleting administrator, and the article and history can generally be recovered if appropriate. I'm going to be doing this with some of the articles eradicated by this sock. If you want more information, look at Special:Contributions/Abd for recent edits of mine, which would lead you to the Suspected Sock Puppet report I filed. This should have been done more than a year ago! It was totally obvious.

He began to run into serious opposition when he attempted to re-delete Favorite betrayal criterion, which had been deleted as part of an AfD covering six articles. In my view, that six-article review was improper, for the voting on AfDs is Keep or Delete, and this should properly be confined to one article at a time, unless there is an actual and clearly-related family of articles, which was not the case. That six-article deletion covered:

Favorite betrayal criterion Generalized strategy-free criterion Strategy-free criterion Strong defensive strategy criterion Summability criterion Weak defensive strategy criterion

You can tell from the internal links if the article is still deleted....

The AfD was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Favorite betrayal criterion. How is someone who watches logs to know that the other articles are covered? The important one, of course, is Summability criterion. It happens to be an argument against IRV asserted by voting security people. Hopefully, if anyone is looking at this comment later, some of the deleted articles will have returned to normal status.... others were properly deleted as insufficiently notable. Perhaps.

--Abd (talk) 02:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• This is actually very insidious, and one of the things that bugs me the most. Several of the articles I contributed to were deleted in this way, and not only are the edit histories gone, I can't even look back at my list of contributions to see what I was working on that was deleted - the entries in my contributions list are deleted as well! Go ahead, look for my edits on Summability criterion - they're gone. Now, I don't know who was doing all this, but I see it happening again with Tomruen already asking to "archive this Talk section now and banish it from view". - McCart42 (talk) 19:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

What Ruen is suggesting might be a tad premature, for a recent discussion, but archiving is not deleting, it all remains, and contributions remain in user contribution history (for the user), and history remains effective for what is archived, I think. Take a look at History for this Talk page. Look at the earliest history, you will see that there is an archiving edit by Captain Zyrain. What has happened is that the Talk page was moved (renamed) to an Archive page. It's a little more complicated than that if one does not want to archive everything, and I didn't check to see what CZ actually did, I think it might have been in toto, which removes from *simple* access even recent Talk, which is not a good idea. But it all remains and the archiving could be undone, if someone objected.

As to articles where, say, someone deleted all the content and redirected the article to some other page, that's easy to fix. I'm not sure the *best* way to do it, but contributions to that page remain in history for it, so if you can, for example, find your own contribution, in your own contribution page, you can then go to history and you could undo the edit that accomplished it. Be careful about doing this if the change was the result of a consensus! But, also, I wouldn't worry too much. Just as it's easy for you to undo what another ordinary editor did, someone else can do the same for you. It's the good news and bad news....

Deleted articles are another story. Unless they are obliterated, which ordinary administrators can't do, and which is generally only done where there is a legal problem with the content, administrators can recover deleted articles and, I think, their history. Protocol is to ask the administrator who deleted it. Normally, there should be, for an article that is of anything close to reasonable content, an AfD. These articles won't be in your contribution history; when they are deleted, all the edits become "deleted contributions," which can be seen only by administrators. Search for the article name, assuming you know it, and you should find the AfD, which will have the username for the administrator who deleted it. Request to see it. There is also a process for reconsidering deletions. However, you may also be able to simple recreate the article without even seeing the old or going through formal process. That's how Favorite Betrayal Criterion was re-created. You could get the text from a mirror. Of course, it might be better to edit the article to provide reliable sources! Most of these articles were ordinary deletions, they aren't "salted" to prevent re-creation. Someone may, of course, challenge the re-creation of an AfD'd article, but that takes a new AfD, and, hopefully, this time, someone who knows the subject will participate! --Abd (talk) 21:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is: what if I don't remember the names of the articles I edited 3 years ago? You've been kind enough to supply the names of a few of them, but I'm sure there were more - I just have no way of looking them up because I'm not an admin and thus can't see my own contributions if they were made to a later deleted article. I think this is absurd. - McCart42 (talk) 23:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it is absurd if it is also absurd that we aren't born with internet access. Basically, the software is as it is, and the existing practice is at it is, and it will continue to be that way until it is changed. It's possible that it could be changed, indeed, all it takes is a consensus.

Here is what you can do: ask an administrator to dump your deleted contributions to a page for you. Should not be difficult. If it's not proper to dump it to a page in your user space, you could ask that it be emailed to you. In my view, any user should be able to view their own deleted contributions.

Before you try to restore anything, read Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?.

You can look at the Suspected Sock report that I filed (day before yesterday?), find it in my recent contributions. There, you can find contribs for the sock involved, a lot of voting methods stuff was mowed down by him in 2006-2007, not just what I've specifically mentioned. I thought of looking through the deletion logs, but those seem to have about

There is also electowiki: it would be interesting to see what articles there are not here. If the article says it was copied from Wikipedia, and it's not here now, well, if two plus two equals three, you have a clue. Search for the article name! What you want to find, I presume, is the Article for Deletion page; though some articles are deleted without an AfD, perhaps someone put a speedy delete tag on it and nobody objected.

The deletion log[8] shows roughly 3000 deletions *per day*, so just reviewing that isn't practical. There is a search tool with the Deletion log, but, of course, it requires that you know the name of the article. Summability criterion was deleted by User:Deathphoenix. Prophetic?

--Abd (talk) 01:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

There's numerous copies of Wikipedia (of various unknown ages). Actually causes problems with detailed google searches, since you'll get a wikipage and all its reflections. I suppose this can allow a temporary backcopy of wiki articles until the next update clears them. Example [9] I guess that one is 3 years old (13 Nov 2004)!

Somewhere there's also a "www archive" - saves the entire web in some time interval - I can't remember where, but I could ask someone who told me about it... Tom Ruen (talk) 01:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here. Example: [10]

And referenced on Wikipedia of course! Internet_Archive#Wayback_Machine Tom Ruen (talk) 01:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

wiki.electorama.com/wiki

• It seems rather strange to link to [[11]] which was BASED off an older (2005) version of Wikipedia's IRV article! Tom Ruen (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It may seem strange, indeed, but, remember, this is an *argument*, not a sourced "fact" other than the fact that the argument is being made. I'm not thrilled, however, with the use of a wiki for that. A diff from here, attributing the argument to the person who put it in, would be better, though still iffy. Self-referential, not encyclopedic.... Ruen is referring to this edit: diff. I don't like that edit for several reasons. It's confusing, and the word "monotonic" is not going to convey the concept to the average reader. I'm reasonably familiar with the issues, and while, certainly, a lot of bad behavior of IRV is connected with its monotonicity, monotonicity failure is itself a serious problem, but not directly "the spoiler effect," which has a more specific reference.... in other words, I don't understand this argument, this is not how it's being argued, exactly. (i.e., the electorama source doesn't ascribe the "return of the spoiler effect" to monotonicity failure.) Didn't we have some better argument here at one point about the spoiler effect in the three-party case (IRV solves it in the two-party system case, but breaks down when there are three candidates in range of winning. Yee diagrams show this, spectacularly.) Strictly speaking, the use of the term "spoiler effect" is problematic in the three frontrunner situation. It's a different problem, really. Even though I've used that term myself, I think.... --Abd (talk) 04:20, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

See no sensible arguments in favor of this, I delete the wiki refs. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I wonder if wikipedia rules allow the referencing of historical copies of itself?! Or maybe we can start linking to wikipedia talk pages! Hmmm... Maybe not. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not accurate to term the electowiki pages mere "copies" of Wikipedia pages, even if text was taken from them. Suppose someone took a Wikipedia page, peer-reviewed it, and published it. Would it then become a reliable source? To me, it is clear: it would. It's been peer-reviewed and published. Electowiki does not merely copy pages from Wikipedia, if it is working properly: those pages get reviewed and changed by knowledgeable editors. But Electowiki has no formal process, which is the problem, and it could be that an article has escaped attention. Indeed, the Election Methods Interest Group was started to deal with this problem, it is planned that it may be used for some formal review process. --Abd (talk) 21:53, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

• There is a completely good reason that these electowiki links are essential. A great deal of information there was copied before it was deleted from wikipedia. One example of this is the summability criterion. There are other examples which can be found by following the link. If the information were here, then why not just change the link to it rather than deleting the link altogether, which makes the argument unsourced and subject to deletion later? - McCart42 (talk) 00:06, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia guidelines state that any of it's mirrors, no matter how similar or dissimilar, cannot be used as references as they are cyclical and not reliable. Timeshift (talk) 00:21, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, look at Talk for WP:RS. There is far from a settled consensus on all this. The *policy* is WP:V; policy trumps guidelines. (Guidelines can be considered not to apply by a consensus of editors for an article, perhaps, but policy cannot be set aside without some kind of community decision.) I did not notice on either page a reference to mirrors, but Wikipedia itself cannot be used as a source for fact or for notability; this would be circular. Perhaps Timeshift9 is referring to notability, where, in considering an Article for Deletion based on non-notability, one should exlude in searches the word "Wikipedia," to avoid counting all the mirrors. If not, I'd appreciate a reference to the guideline asserted. The *possible* use of an Electowiki page, perhaps copied in whole or in part from Wikipedia, would depend on that page having some kind of consensus on Electowiki. I do know that when election methods students and experts who use Electowiki find errors, they can and do edit the pages. A settled page there may have been reviewed by many experts.

This is the *possible* argument for using Electowiki, not necessarily sufficient or sufficiently reliable. However, it's actually possible to verify any fact about election methods by posting a question to the Election Methods mailing list. It's not the individual responses which would verify it, unless they came from a known expert -- which *could* be considered verification by Wikipedia standards -- but the *collective* response. The reasonable bias against using a mailing list as a reliable source is the true problem that anyone can subscribe and write a post, sounding like they know what they are talking about. I know, because I've done it many times. :-).

However, when I assert some notable fact on that mailing list, a possible fact which is controversial, and I do it briefly, not buried in some long post that nobody reads, it *does* get corrected if it's in error or controversial. This raises an interesting possibility for fact verification: ask an expert, or, in this case, a list which includes experts. The response, then, can be verified by anyone. I can assure readers also that if one expert writes something on that list, asserting it as fact, and it is, in fact, controversial, it gets challenged.

Editors putting together a traditional encyclopedia I'm sure, if they run into ambiguity in sources, ask experts. Why can't we? The responses would generally require specific attribution unless the response from the list was clear and unambiguous as the response of the entire community, in which case it could be asserted as a fact with as much *or more* assurance than with ordinary peer-reviewed publications. Often I've found real nonsense in "peer-reviewed" publications, or what is little more than speculation dressed up in academic language, and then cited here as proof of a position, making it allegedly statable as fact instead of mere opinion. It can be a real nuisance. Apparently, none of the limited number of experts who reviewed the article noticed it, or cared enough to bring it up.

--Abd (talk) 01:34, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

So much nonsense, I shouldn't even waste my time here. THAT wiki.electorama article was copied from Wikipedia on Jan 26, 2005, and not a single relevent edit changes the content. Do a history or diff yourself there and see. If this section is what is referenced:[12] SAME AS WIKIPEDIA HISTORY on 1/18/05 [13].

Why don't we just reference Wikipedia article history to make our arguments?! Tom Ruen (talk) 23:24, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Totally agree. What a waste of time reading it. It is a wikipedia mirror and as such is not a valid source. END OF STORY. Timeshift (talk) 00:17, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there another source for this claim? There must be. If the only time the claim has been made was in an unsourced wikipedia edit which doesn't exist except in an article fork, then it shouldn't be in there as a claim "opponents" make. MilesAgain (talk) 00:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Miles again is correct. However, here is the problem: that old version of the article is actually an accurate report of consensus among those who study election methods. Certainly one might claim that it is imbalanced, that contrary arguments might need to be added to make it NPOV, but *the facts in the old article are true,* they are not actually controversial. So why were they removed? Well, it's what I've been saying: the election methods community has mostly developed this consensus outside of traditional print publication. Most of the field has developed, rapidly, in the last fifteen years or so. What is in peer-reviewed print is but a small part of what is well-known. It's not rocket science or advanced mathematics; understanding, say, the summability criterion is pretty simple. Wikipedia is supposed to be a compendium of all knowledge; but caveats are added to that; however, "peer-reviewed" is no longer the actual standard: the actual standard is verifiability. If any user can, with reasonable effort reading sources, confirm the fact, it's verified. If it requires specialized knowledge, no; then review by some expert source is required, and that's where reliable sources come in. In any case, the claim is being made that, for example, IRV does not meet the summability criterion. In this case, that it's on electowiki is actually confirmation. It's an argument against IRV, it is being made. However, we can and should provide better sourcing, such as the Center for Range Voting, which is proper for arguments, just as, for arguments, FairVote is.

(At some point soon, expect to see the Center for Range Voting link go blue. It was, in my view, improperly deleted, though it was less significant a year and a half ago. The sock who nominated the deletion made false statements that nobody checked (for example, the Center is not just one person's website). It isn't marginal any more. I might wait until the book comes out, there is one being published that describes quite a bit for which it will be useful to have a published source. And, no, it is not being published by an author connected with the Center.)

In any case, what's remarkable to me is that information which *can* be verified, which is true about IRV, which was in the article at one time, has been removed. This is what happened when a group of people dedicated to using the Wikipedia article as a promotional tool for IRV were able to function here without any check. Systematically, they got rid of inconvenient truths (though I haven't tracked the whole history, I mostly know about how the article was being maintained.) New users would show up, make an edit, and it would be deleted as "unsourced." If the edit is something true, it's not supposed to be deleted just like that; rather, it is to be tagged and only deleted if no source appears within a reasonable time. Then, if a source was provided, well, there was something wrong with a source, perhaps it was alleged to be a blog. When it was pointed out that it was actually a newspaper, it was deleted because it wasn't phrased properly. Is a claim that an argument is a "myth" the same as claiming it's "false"? Newcomers have typically given up long before this. They don't know what to do when an IP (anonymous) editor reverts all their changes, removing hours of work. They may not even know about Undo. Mostly they go away.

An additional problem is that some of the sources are not available for free access. Now, we can cite sources that aren't free, that aren't on-line, but those papers aren't accessible to those who don't have ready access to a research library, or who can't afford to pay $30 just to check a fact.

If a web site copies an article from Wikipedia and subjects it to peer review, approving it, it would no longer be simply a "wikipedia mirror." It would actually be a reliable source. The reliability comes from the peer review. Electowiki is, to some minor extent, this, but the process has not been formalized so that we can know that it has actually functioned with a particular article. It might also be relevant to point to Electowiki main page, which describes what it is, and to Why not just use Wikipedia?. There were at one time a number of election methods experts actively involved with Wikipedia, but maintaining articles here can be a real nuisance, and they mostly moved on. Electowiki has not managed to gain sufficient participation to be reliable. Yet.

--Abd (talk) 02:08, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I replaced the citation with Yee Ka-Ping's paper which makes the same argument and includes his diagrams. MilesAgain (talk) 06:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Hurray for short comments! Fine with me. Tom Ruen (talk) 06:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Tideman claim in Tactical Voting section

Tideman may be quoted, but not interpreted. I don't have access to much of Tideman, but I will assume that exact quotations made here in Talk are accurate, and I can check with others about context. Tideman has been quoted elsewhere as saying that IRV was "insupportable," but I've also seen claims that he "changed his mind." If he said what was stated in the claim I removed, I'd say that his mind changed beyond limit....

In any case, here it is:

An analysis by Nicolaus Tideman of voting methods, using real world election data from various countries, in his book Collective Decisions and Voting,[14] showed that instant runoff voting is exceptionally resistant to tactical voting, scoring better than any other voting method. However, that analysis was inherently limited by the data available, and is therefore controversial.

"any other voting method" -- what methods did he analyze? "exceptionally resistant" compared to what? one other possibility? "limited by data available" -- the claims are extraordinary as stated, how can extraordinary claims be made, in a neutral fashion, from limited data?

(Election data does not read the minds of voters, and to determine that tactical voting has actually occurred, one must compare election data, generally, with other information and inferences. Rather, this is what I would guess: from "limited data" -- some of us have attempted to obtain actual ballot data from IRV elections, it is not easy to come by -- Tideman infers the existence of situations that would *motivate* tactical voting. These would be situations where, say, Condorcet analysis of the IRV ballots shows that a different candidate was actually preferred by a majority over the winner. If the voters knew this, they could change their previously sincere votes to prefer the Condorcet winner, thus improving the outcome. So it being "resistant" would mean, I'd guess, that this situation is rare. How rare? Now, I would certainly concede, personally, that Plurality has an obvious incentive to vote tactically, and that with Plurality, tactical voting is extremely common, practically normal (but not if your true preference is a frontrunner). With IRV, it is going to be much less common for the need to arise; however, there are other methods where the need is again greatly reduced over IRV. From simulations, the problem with IRV is not rare, but the research has not been done to confirm this with actual elections. And, again, the data is quite difficult to find. What is necessary with IRV is actual individual ballot data, if I'm correct.)

If my speculation about what Tideman is doing is correct, I'd expect the conclusions to be pretty shaky. But ... whaddaya got? Sourcing a claim to a whole book is a no-no. Page numbers, please.

Much more specific information from the book may allow mention here, as an attributed claim, but Tideman alone is not an expression of consensus in the field. He is really a primary source, in this case, apparently, doing original research. We should look at specifics. What reviews are there of this specific work and the specific claim made here?

By the way, don't hoard the wealth. Cited above is a review of the book in the journal Public Choice, no more than three pages, which I could buy for $32. The book itself I could buy for $114.95 from Amazon. However, I could actually read some pages from the book at [15] but my experience with googlebooks is that frequently the pages I'd need aren't available.... however, it is possible to confirm exact quotes sometimes, and maybe even to see the context.... --Abd (talk) 03:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I will replace my summary of what Tideman says with a quote from the book instead as Abd suggests. As to his methodology he took ranked ballot data from 87 ranked-ballot elections run by the Electoral Reform Society (which administers elections mainly in Britain and Ireland). To measure resistance to tactical voting he compared the number of voters in each election who would be NEEDED to change a ranking to allow a different candidate to win, with the number of voters who ranked that different candidate above the actual winner (that is voters who would WANT to vote tactically to change the outcome). In some elections with some methods the tactical opportunity was common and easy since many voters would have an interest, and not that many voters were needed to make the change to be successful. In other situations there were simply not enough interested voters to accomplish the change of outcome. He analyzed many voting methods for this resistance (as well as every mathematical standard you have ever heard of). The simple calculation of the score for tactical resistance range from zero to ten. He analyzed, Plurality 6.3, Approval 3.9 (just 15 out of the 87 elections were immune to tactical manipulation), Range 4.0, Borda 4.6, Condorcet 8.9, Two-Ballot Runoff 8.1, Alternative Vote (IRV) 9.7 (84 out of 87 elections were immune to tactical manipulation), Simplified Dodgson 8.9, Nanson 8.9, Bucklin 5.8, Copeland 9.4, Black (Condorcet Borda blend) 7.8, MaxiMin 8.9, Coombs 3.9, Estimated Centrality 4.5, Young 9, Ranked Pairs 8.9, Weighted Condorcet 8.9, Schulze (beatpath) 8.9, Alternative Smith 9.9 and Alternative Schwartz 9.8, and finally Cardinal-Weighted Pairwise Comparison (can't be calculated with existing data).

Tbouricius (talk) 18:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Haven't read the book, but I can guarantee you I know why Tideman says approval voting appears to be so "tactical". He's probably saying that the tactic of "vote for your favorite candidate and every candidate you prefer to the leading candidate" is non-obvious. This is effectively "don't vote for both of the top two candidates" and it's common sense. Besides, in a real election, the top two candidates tend to spend plenty of time telling voters about their differences so it is not at all realistic to vote for both of the top two. How many people would've voted for Bush and Gore in 2000 if given the opportunity? Bush and Kerry in 2004? - McCart42 (talk) 20:00, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

We should see the text. Tbouricius may be helpful with this; however, I'm not entirely sure that he would bring us all relevant text, from prior experience. (And with AGF, I assume he doesn't notice the relevance of what certain others, not so steeped in the IRV advocate mindset, might consider very important. This is why having advocates and critics both participating is so important.) But from what Bourucius reported, I'm highly suspicious that Tideman's work is solid, for Approval was *designed* to be strategy-resistant; but if one uses the very loose definition of strategic voting ("tactical voting" is a possible tip-off -- or not) that considers equal approval in the presence of some preference to be strategic voting, quite debatable, and, in any case, apples and oranges. With ranked methods, tactical voting involves preference reversal, never with Approval. It's a trick. Over and over again, papers were written about strategic voting, bad thing, bad thing, but always involving preference reversal. Then comes Approval, designed to avoid preference reversal, and the same language is used "strategic voting," or "tactical voting." Which must be bad, right? A motive for preference reversal is a sign of a poorly designed election system, in fact, whereas equal preference is a choice that voters must ultimately make in one sense or another, whenever human beings make joint decisions, they shift their preferences to find consensus. It involves compromise. Good systems involve allowing this compromise to appear, while at the same time sincere voting is encouraged. Contrary to what has been asserted about me, Approval voting is not my favorite system, nor is Range. My favorite system is what Robert's Rules recommends, and we should be looking at ways to accomplish this on a large scale. It is actually practical; it always was practical, in fact, through the proxy trick. As to Tideman, what I intend to do is to get some preliminary idea of what Tideman is saying, then bounce it off of experts, see what they say. Right now, I'd say we don't have enough.

Tideman in this is "original research," though it has been published. It has entered a grey zone, in my opinion. There is no doubt that Tideman can be quoted, if attributed to him, but there then is the problem of balance. How has this research been received by his peers? What do secondary and tertiary sources say? What responses have there been in the literature? I encourage Bouricius to bring the quotations here before taking the step of inserting this material in the article.

--Abd (talk) 20:27, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• I guess the real question about approval voting is: is there ever a good reason to not vote for either a) the leading candidate or b) every candidate you prefer to the leading candidate? Because it's been shown (in one of the articles I've linked to in the past) that if this "tactic" is followed, approval tends to elect the Condorcet winner. The graphs Ka-Ping Yee generated demonstrate something along these lines. - McCart42 (talk) 03:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

  My understanding on Approval strategy - vote for the candidate you'd pick under plurality PLUS every candidate you like better. (Wait! why are we talking about approval here?!) Tom Ruen (talk) 03:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

(unindent)We are discussing the Tideman quote currently in the article. For reference, it's currently:

"In his book Collective Decisions and Voting Nicolaus Tideman uses real-world voting data to analyze all proposed election methods in terms of resistance to tactical voting, and states on page 194 that "."

We are discussing Approval because it's a "proposed election method." Now, Bouricius has again made a very substantial claim without quotation, exactly this. There are *lots* of proposed election methods, and I rather doubt Tideman has looked at all of them. Now, one can get, at least, a few pages from the book from Google Books. One can get a pretty good idea of where Tideman is coming from in this:[16]

"Since a voter could not be expected to vote simply by asking, "Is this an option of which I approve?" it must be expected that voters under approval voting would be asking themselves, "Is this an option to which I wish to give a vote, considering the likely consequences of doing so?"

So far, so good. I have actually made this very argument many times. "Approval voting" is not about "approving candidates," there is no particular standard for "approval." It is a term which depends on context, it's not really a property of the candidates themselves, it depends on alternatives.

But then Tideman adds:

"It is unfortunate to put voters in this position...."

which is an opinion, unsupported and unsubstantiated, and quite contrary to the whole theory of electoral choice. Votes are actions in the real world, and voters are precisely responsible for considering the consequences of their vote. Elections are not opinion polls, they are *actions*. Plurality ballots do not say "Vote for your favorite." They say, "Vote for one." (I'm only considering single-winner elections.)

Tideman then explains his opinion:

"... as it means they must confront such questions as, "Shall I give a vote to all the options that I believe are adequate, thus helping to insure that the winner will be adequate, or shall I trust other voters to do that and make a distinction among the adequate options?"

Tideman is following a familiar line of thinking among critics of Approval Voting; he does happen to express it very clearly and succinctly here. The problem is that this question is not one which is consistent with what he immediately stated previously, in the vast majority of elections. Basically, in most elections, there are two frontrunners, in which case the voting strategy is quite clear, there is no complicated question. With three viable candidates, yes, an option appears, and optimal strategy becomes more complex. Just like Plurality, to vote optimally in Approval requires some understanding of the context. But there is a very simple election rule that makes it all less difficult. If the winner must gain a majority, then the easy strategy is to vote for only the favorite of all viable candidates. Tideman knows the standard strategy, which has nothing to do with the "unfortunate" situation he described:

The general strategy that works under approval voting, with reasonable foresight, is to identify the two options that are most likely to win and give only one of them a vote. This involves "burying" the less attractive option if one had been inclined to vote for it and "directly hoisting" the more attractive option if one had been inclined not to vote for it.

Again, Tideman is not exactly wrong; however, he is now taking the process of determining an Approval cutoff and describing it in strategic terms, as if an "inclination to vote" a certain way were equivalent to a preference which is then betrayed by voting contrary to it. Essentially, this is an introduction of the language of ranked methods, it's a kind of sleight-of-hand. Thus a voter who votes this way, he will consider as having tactically voted. But all the voter has done is to set an Approval cutoff based on real possibilities in a real election, not abstract consideration of the candidates in some ideal space.

Anyway, garbage in, garbage out. By assuming that setting a higher approval cutoff -- a normal behavior that we can expect in real elections in two-party systems -- is "burial," which has a radically different meaning with ranked methods, Tideman is counting together apples and oranges.

To estimate the vulnerability of approval voting to strategy from the available data, I assume an approval voter would give an approval vote to every option mentioned on his or her ballot, unless all options are mentioned, in which case the last is dropped. The minimal number of votes needed for the strategy to succeed is one more than the difference between the top two approval scores. The number of voters who are available to implement the strategy is the number of voters who gave votes to both options and ranked the option with fewer approval votes ahead of the option with more approval votes. Thus the strategy that I measure is a burying strategy.

I haven't read the details of the elections, but I'm assuming that these are preference ballots, voters may rank as few candidates as they like.

The method is interesting. I would need to see the election data to have some understanding whether or not the assumption he is making is truly relevant. We can expect that, in major elections, in a two-party system, a strong majority of voters would only approve one. Approval places more responsibility on voters than IRV. Adding an additional approval when one is a supporter of a possible winner is precisely what FairVote has claimed [Bucklin voting]] voters would not do, and in this they were correct; that is, one will not do it unless the preference strength is small.

The core of the problem here is that it seems likely he assumes a level of multiple approvals that is very unrealistic, and I could expect that this might increase the incidence of "burying" possibilities. He has outlined reasonable approval strategy, but then he does not use it. Is his raw data available? If so, there would be a way to better approximate, I expect, actual voter behavior. IRV encourages adding additional preferences. However, if this is a two-party system he is analyzing, and I think it is, I'd expect burying opportunities to be small.

The claim in the article is an opinion that is not meaningful without comparison: "the alternative vote [IRV] is quite resistant to strategy." Quite resistant compared to what? Originally, Bouricius had "instant runoff voting is exceptionally resistant to tactical voting."

At this point what I can tell is that the measurement of "resistance to strategy" of Approval Voting is shaky, though it's possible that the actual data would show better than what I conclude from the above. I'm going to have to get a copy of Tideman somehow. Reading fragments through Googlebooks isn't satisfactory....

I did read far enough to see Tideman begin to consider Range voting. The Range voting "sincere vote" he posits is highly unlikely to be the normal one. He assumes distribution of candidates through the Range spectrum. Most Range students seem to think that most voters are going to bullet vote, if they support a frontrunner, at the outset, but then will add additional votes where those are harmless or better for them. In other words, the bugaboo of majority failure in Approval and Range is a pure theoretical possibility not terribly likely to occur in real elections; if it does, it may be showing, in fact, a defect in the majority criterion rather than in the method.

However, this whole investigation has turned up a few tidbits which should end up in this article, and there may be many more: Tideman on "alternative vote," i.e., IRV:

The lack of monotonicity in the alternative vote should not be considered a serious defect since many competing rules lack this property as well.

I find this an odd comment. If other rules did not lack this property, would it then be a serious defect. It's certainly implied. And, of course, there are only three serious single-winner competitors in the U.S., with advocates working for implementation: Plurality, Approval, and Schulze Condorcet method that was being worked on in Washington state. All are monotonic. Anyway, he goes on:

The lack of resolvability is also probably not too serious, because it seems likely that irresolvable ties would be quite rare. The lack of Condorcet consistency is more troubling. Over the past two centuries, numerous voting scholars, such as Condorcet, Dodgson, Nanson, and Black, have held that Condorcet consistency is a prime requirement of a good vote-processing rule. The fact that in 87 elections in the sample, there were just three in which there was a dominant option that was not chosen is somewhat reassuring.

Ties: "quite rare" compared to what? Ties are rare currently with Plurality. They would be more common with IRV, probably. "Somewhat reassuring" is a nice phrase. It means that it isn't reassuring. It's not a total disaster, it's better than that. One election out of thirty where there was a candidate preferred by the voters to the winner.

Yes, I'm, overall, quite grateful to Tbouricius for bringing my attention to Tideman's new work. It's going to be helpful with a whole series of articles. However, I'm not satisfied that the quote should remain as-is. It's not balanced as a report of what is in the book. --Abd (talk) 02:19, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Reverted whole-article edit by anonymous editor.

An anonymous editor made spread-out changes to the article, some acceptable, some not.[17] I reverted the first edit, and this editor then reverted me.[18] I've reverted back. Some of the language in the current article represents compromises made to NPOV text, removal of pieces of it can remove balance. Adding allegedly true fact without source may create POV bias, which might exist even if the alleged fact is true. Presentation of facts selectively can easily create bias.

If changes are made to one section at a time, they may be discussed here to find consensus. I encourage the anonymous editor to work with the other editors toward this; the process will be facilitated, I'd suggest, if this editor will register, if not already registered, and log in before editing, to take responsibility for edits. Making controversial edits anonymously is not recommended. Please discuss changes here. Of course, for minor edits, of no POV significance, this isn't necessary; however, even then, whole-article edits become much more difficult to review. Many or even most of the changes made by this editor, if made without linkage to possibly imbalanced edits, would have been fine. If I have time, I may review the edit and restore some of the changes, but I'd appreciate it if this editor would make them *one section at a time*. It will save everyone's time. --Abd (talk) 17:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I did go over the edits and incorporated a number of them into the article. However, some of the claims in the reverted edit would require a closer examination of sources; a blog source was provided for one claim which is not adequate, and I did not find a primary or secondary source satisfying WP:RS. Details of new implementations should be provided in the reference. Is it IRV? What form? Batch elimination is, some claim, not IRV at all. There remained a few edits that could have been incorporated without a problem, but ... I'm doing this anonymous editors work for him or her. Anyone can do it, I've done enough for today! --Abd (talk) 18:11, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The anonymous editor did remove again the claim about "further process", on the grounds that there is no implementation like this. While that is debatable, it is also an incorrect standard. Voting methods exist and have characteristics whether implemented or not. In Vermont, in particular, there have been a number of attempts to implement IRV for the election of the governor; I think our very own User:Tbouricius wrote one of the pieces of legislation introduced. There is another, I now cite as a reference. The last-round majority found in IRV (by definition, absent ties, there will be such) is not necessarily a true majority, because some voters' ballots may have been exhausted. Robert's Rules, in its discussion of preferential voting, is quite clear about this, and it is only common sense: if 100 voters went to the polls, and 50 of the legally-cast ballots did not contain a vote for the IRV last-round winner, there was no majority vote for any candidate. To guarantee a true majority, full ranking of all candidates would be a requirement, and that proposal is not about to fly in the U.S. (In Australia, I think, single-winner STV ballots without full ranking of all listed candidates are discarded, no votes are counted from them. I'd appreciate correction.) --Abd (talk) 20:16, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Removed "one vote" claim from introduction

While IRV is the single-winner form of "Single transferable vote," whether or not voters get "one vote" is debatable and will, quite likely, be tested in Minnesota soon. Brown v. Smallwood, outlawing Bucklin voting, considered the number of marks on the ballot. Certainly an IRV voter may cast more than one vote on an IRV ballot, though it is also clear that only one is considered at a time. The "one vote" comment is not necessary to convey the definition of the method. STV, in fact, is "single" in that it is a multiwinner system where only one vote at a time from each voter is considered. I would guess that "single" was used to distinguish STV from Cumulative voting, another method used to create a rough kind of proportional representation. A quick search did not turn up any reliable source for "one vote" being part of the definition of IRV. However, note that "IRV" is a coined term, created by an advocacy organization, for political purpose. --Abd (talk) 23:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I have made a compromise, with a direct link to Single transferable vote which is where the "single" comes from and mathematically equivalent to IRV for a single seat, as you indicate. Although perhaps not necessary to convey the bare definition, people will have a legitimate question about it, since again as you say, they can make multiple marks on the ballot. Your own argument plainly shows this. Do you seriously contend that people will not question whether they cast more than one vote at a time with IRV? MilesAgain (talk) 09:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The introduction is a critical part of the article, as any political activist would know. Some readers will just see the introduction. So what is in the intro should be uncontroversial, clear, simple, and not biased in any way, if it is possible to avoid bias. The text MilesAgain supplied looks like what was there before. It said single before, now it has a link to single transferable vote which displays as the world "single." Thus this "compromise" is essentially what was there before.

I should say about STV, as well, that the "single" refers to a single vote being divided as well. That is, when a candidate wins, with an excess of votes over the quota, the vote is divided according to a formula so that, in the end, each winner is elected with the same number of votes, at least roughly, each voter having one vote *total*. The votes get chopped up, what is transferred may be not one vote, but a fraction of a vote, if the first preference was elected. The already effective and remaining active votes for a voter total one full vote. There is, however, no need to refer to a "single vote" in the introduction and, as I stated, it is truly debatable, there being official legal opinion in existence that IRV does involve more than a single vote. I agree that, in fact, IRV never grants voters more than one vote at a time, but some voters end up having no effective votes, even when those votes might be part of a majority of voters supporting a candidate over the IRV winner. The argument in Brown v. Smallwood that preferential voting violates one-person, one-vote, in the sense of granting some voters *excess votes*, is wrong. But it exists, it is being argued and debated, and there is current legal action. This definitely does not belong in the introduction!

Same with the Robert's Rules mention. It's *wrong*! Roberts Rules does not "recommend" IRV, except under particular circumstances, and it actually recommends avoiding those circumstances. If we want to mention that Robert's Rules describes IRV, we should also mention that what it actually recommends is "preferential voting," that it describes IRV as "one example," and then it *criticizes* this, pointing out a serious defect. It is somewhat questionable whether or not recommendations belong in the article at all. (This book, that book, this famous person, that scholar?) But I will concede that the mention in Roberts Rules *is* notable, and thus prefer the procedure of balancing possible positive POV with appropriate negative, in this case, fortunately and easily, the negative is right in the same source. I'd urge editor MilesAgain to review WP:NPOV and note, particularly, that even if a fact is true, there can be serious bias in how it is presented.

Another example that comes up all the time is that a product can be sold by comparing it only with an inferior product. If the salesman can avoid comparisons with better products, this promotes the salesman's goals. It is a FairVote tactic to attempt to make the only important comparison be between IRV and Plurality. When it is pointed out to them that there are other, better, and cheaper reforms, they assert that only IRV is "viable." It has "political momentum," and, again and again, FairVote activists blast proponents of other methods who point out the problems with IRV as "working for the status quo," as if, again, the only possible choice is between the status quo and IRV. FairVote was formed out of a movement for Proportional representation, an *excellent* goal. However, an obstacle to PR is that the best voting method in use for it is complicated, Single transferable vote, and this was considered a fatal problem. So, what a great idea! Let's promote single-winner STV as a replacement for Plurality! Lots of people know about the spoiler effect! (This was shortly after Ross Perot's effect in 1992, but before Ralph Nader's effect in 2000) This was taken up by a small group who were able to attract funding and some prestigious names, and the Center for Voting and Democracy was formed, which later became FairVote. As I've pointed out before, though, this was *not* a democratic organization, it was a classic political action organization, making its decisions internally according to its political perceptions of what would be effective. For starters, the name STV was not a good seller for the United States, I'm not sure what they used at first, it may have been "alternative vote" or "preferential voting." Somewhere I have the name of the person who suggested "Instant Runoff Voting," and I've documented the timing elsewhere, it was a little more than ten years ago. So that is where the money went, and all the complaints by people who actually understood voting methods were ignored. The goal is not IRV, the goal is multiwinner STV. Noble goal, bad method of getting there. There are, in fact, much simpler ways of accomplishing PR, including one, Proportional approval voting which an activist managed to get deleted from Wikipedia even though it has, in fact, been mentioned widely enough to be notable. It can start with Approval voting, but Approval is not, in my view, at least as usually proposed, an ideal method. It is merely a simple, cheap, easy to understand, and surprisingly quite well-behaved system, in use for something like seven hundred years, rediscovered something like thirty years ago by Brams, in use by a number of societies, a very good first step reform. There is also Asset Voting, which, it turns out, was first proposed, to my knowledge, by Lewis Carroll, more than a hundred years ago. Asset can actually be *perfect* proportional representation, more accurate than STV, and it can create an interface, a synthesis, of direct and representative democracy. And really quite simple. No article here yet. We should fix that. If that link goes blue, it's been done. Not my invention, so I have no COI.

--Abd (talk) 21:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Asset voting [19] sounds like cumulative voting and Single transferable vote, except the candidates get to control the transfers. Effectively voters use fractional-CV, and candidates offer rank ballots counted by STV, weighted by the voter's support. At least that's the optimized reduction of the process. Droop quota determines viability, and there's the same 1/(seats+1) fraction of wasted votes like STV. Overall it seems more elitist than STV, taking away rank preference power from voters, not that I'm against elitism! The advantage is there's no exhausted ballots by voters who don't want to think past top preference(s). Tom Ruen (talk) 04:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, there's participatory variations of STV. Specifically a room of people could vote via one vote STV, moving around the room to a first choice, electing winners, voluntarily abandoning candidates who fail quotas, and fractionally transfer (physically) by moving to their next choice as candidates are elected. (A similar system used in Minnesota DFL is called Walking subcaucusing) Tom Ruen (talk) 04:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Third opinion requested

Abd, you have offered no reasons that a reader might not legitimately wonder, because the IRV ballot is cast with multiple marks per seat, whether an IRV voter casts more than one vote. Even after you yourself mention that IRV is equivalent to STV for a single office, and whether multiple votes are cast by multiple marks has been a point of contention in the courts, you claim that it is "controverisal" to clear up the potential misunderstanding. Clearing up the understanding is exactly what should be done, and you know it.

Moreover, the fact is that Robert's Rules does indeed recommend a form of IRV for elections by mail. And you have said nothing to the contrary. Your claim that they recommend "preferental voting" and then give IRV as an example seems like hair-splitting by a POV-pusher and avowed advocate of an alternative system. However, I have attempted to compromise on this issue by changing the statement in question to, "Robert's Rules of Order recommends preferential voting for elections by mail, giving IRV as their example."

I was going to request an RFC, but, since you are the only one arguing this position, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution suggests that this can be resolved with a third opinion.

Therefore, I ask: Does anyone agree with Abd that the intro should not say that IRV allocates a "single" vote, and that Robert's Rules recommends a form of IRV for elections by mail, per his revert?I, for one, do not agree, and I doubt anyone else does, either.

If a supporter does emerge, I intend to convert this question to an RFC, so I urge all readers to reply. MilesAgain (talk) 03:58, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

• I find myself unable to read 94% of Abd's opinion novels, but have never supported his hairspitting argument. All I can tell is he wants to claim no winner if exhausted ballots fail to allow a majority winner (50%+1 of ballots). Besides that extremely minor point, I have no idea why he is so anal about it all. Tom Ruen (talk) 04:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

• Abd's case is silly and overstated. "Vote" is a polysemic word and the single meaning attributed to it by one court in one place at one time is thoroughly trumped in the context of this page by common usage amongst voting theorists and the voting public. No one in Australia asks on election day "how many votes did you give then mate?". That said the deletion of the words "have a single vote cast according to how they" does vastly improve the readability of the sentence and for that reason I actually prefer Abd's version (except for the substitution of the word "ballot" for "vote" later on). I have no opinion on the Robert's Rules issue. Pm67nz (talk) 05:25, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I see your point, and I will add have added another compromise proposal to address the readability issue. MilesAgain (talk) 05:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The main issue is that the "one vote" language is totally unnecessary to convey the meaning, and it is clearly asserted to make a political point, which happens to be a controversial one. There are arguments, unnecessary to repeat here, that IRV does violate one-person, one-vote, not only the argument that I mentioned, but one coming from a different direction, the fact that some votes in IRV have more weight, effectively, than others. Debate over this, properly, should not be here. If the language of "single vote" were necessary, it would be there. But it is not, and that there is so much insistence on its being there simply reveals POV intent.

Robert's Rules does not "recommend IRV." That is an *interpretation* of the source, and it is not allowed to substitute interpretation for the real thing. We dealt with this long ago, and we have already posted an RFC which attracted no comment, though perhaps something went awry with that, Bouricius put it up. The way we dealt with it was by (1) moving it out of the introduction, where only the briefest and clearest things should be said about the subject of the article; for some time it was out of the article entirely. It was then put back, and ultimately settled on a nearly exact quote from the book. Many attempts were made to prune this down to only present what seemed favorable to IRV, and that, clearly, was POV-pushing. Robert's Rules *criticizes* IRV; what do you think about including a supposed recommendation but not including the criticism placed with it? What about featuring one of these more than the other by placing one side in the introduction? What would you think about we have the favorable part in the middle of the article and the criticism, *from such an authoritative source,* in the beginning?

As to "ballot" rather than "vote," that is actually essential. Robert's Rules will consider ballots cast by legal voters as the basis for majority, not "votes." Blank ballots still count in the determination of majority, it is a way that voters can effectively vote "None of the above," and in an election where majority is required, that's important. A voter casts a ballot, which may contain votes or not. Or it may contain votes for eliminated candidates. In either of these cases (and details depend on local law), a true majority would be a majority of ballots cast, not of those remaining active in the last round. Where election by plurality is allowed, then the method can still elect without this true majority, and that is what most IRV implementations do. However, IRV is sometimes sold as a way of insuring that there is a majority winner, and it is sometimes implemented as a substitute for runoffs in places where majority vote is required. I'm fairly sure that FairVote does not take pains to inform voters in IRV initiatives that IRV can declare a winner based on plurality, that substituting IRV for plurality with runoff can result in declaring a winner who was not supported by a majority of those voting. And this is why the edit cabal here took such pains to try to keep that information out of the article, and the clearer was the expression, the stronger the effort to eliminate it. Now, the cabal was broken when Richie and the sock puppets were banned; User:Tbouricius was also banned, but I intervened to help him recover access, and he has been reasonably cooperative in helping create a good article, NPOV, which might eventually reach Featured Article status. But there is still work to be done. Tom Ruen, by the way, is not exactly disinterested, he is formally affiliated with FairVote. Again, my point of view is that all POVs should be represented in finding consensus on the article. I happen to be particularly sensitive to FairVote propaganda and how some real experts in political polemic have carefully crafted arguments to provide just the right spin. This article was full of that. There is much less now, but there still remains the very name of the method, which was crafted quite recently, for a method which has been around a long time, for spin purposes. It is *not* runoff voting, and the way that it eliminates candidates, except in some implementations, as recently pointed out by one expert here, is not the same as with runoff voting.

As to my tomes, indeed, I write, perhaps, too much. However, there are others who would simply copy text verbatim from FairVote tracts, and much of the sourcing in this article used to be FairVote. To write an article on this topic, and do it right, takes far more consideration and study. Some are not interested in that at all. It's a free wiki, to be sure. But that does not make ignorance equal to knowledge. Nobody has to read my tomes, and I have, certainly, no monopoly on knowledge, and my own analysis is not "reliable source." Again, though, that's not the same as "false."

--Abd (talk) 06:33, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Some votes in plurality have effectively more weight than others, too: if you vote for an unpopular third party, as is common knowledge, your vote will not "count" in having any result on the outcome. And in approval, if you don't vote for either of the top two, again, it is if you had not voted at all. What exactly is the source for your claim that IRV does not result in a single vote being cast? Does it meet the reliable source criteria? I note that you have not responded to my compromise proposal for the Robert's Rules description in the intro. MilesAgain (talk) 06:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) Background discussion does not require reliable source. If I were attempting to put something into the article, yes, other editors could insist upon WP:RS. In Talk we may assert from personal knowledge and opinion. As to the "compromise," it is entirely unnecessary in the introduction. I've seen no justification for it, no reason why it is important for it to be there, and I can only speculate that it is important for the reasons I've stated. It's spin. But show a reason why, for example, a reader is likely to be confused without it, or it makes the meaning more clear, any of this, and I'll certainly consider it. And sock puppets should be careful about engaging in edit warring, which MilesAgain is. Both. Working out a compromise when the parties are not yet in agreement, by making one edit after another in the article, isn't a great idea. If MilesAgain were removing alleged POV language, it would be one thing, and I've frequently assented, during discussion, that such language be out pending consensus. But he's not doing that. He's trying to demand language in the introduction that is part of an argument actively being promoted by FairVote. Why? I do not know who he is a sock of, all I can tell is that he is quite knowledgeable about IRV and the issues around it, he's not a stranger to the topic, and he is going after certain critical propaganda points, the same points as were of great concern to the IRV cabal that once ruled here. --Abd (talk) 07:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Nice insinuation there, Abd. I don't have anything to do with FairVote or any other IRV organization or advocate. I'm a computer programmer and this is a sock because my old account (which I haven't used for more than a month) is my real name, and I don't want my new employer or anyone else to google me and decide I'm wasting time. Anyway, let's review the record:

• You brought up the fact that IRV is equivalent to SINGLE transferable vote.
• You brought up the fact that a court case found problems with multiple marks on a ballot violating one-man one-vote
• You refuse to provide any reasons why someone visiting this article might have questions about whether IRV casts more than a SINGLE vote
• You refused to provide any sources, reliable or otherwise which agree with your claim that IRV violates one-man, one-vote; if that is your reason for removing material, then yes, I think you do need a source for it
• You refused to even respond to the statement about Robert's Rules which was modified in response to your concerns

If I find that I can modify material in response to your concerns, I will. To ask me to refrain from doing so because we don't agree is preposterous: if we agreed, then we wouldn't need to compromise. The least you can do is respond to the proposal instead of reverting it without discussion. MilesAgain (talk) 07:13, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

MilesAgain registered and immediately dove into this article, promoting precisely the agenda that had been promoted by the IRV cabal, working to restore what had been in the article and which had been taken out and apparently settled, raising old controversies, such as the whole Robert's Rules issue. Robert's Rules and preference voting are already accurately described in the article, a desire to have it in the introduction, in sound bite form that only picks a positive spin and eliminates all negative aspects, is POV-pushing. Sure, he might have abandoned his old account, but we know nothing about the implications of that. I have not pursued SSP charges against MilesAgain because I think having knowledgeable IRV supporters editing the article is useful. However, there is a limit.

As to the points, he has recited some of the evidences that I provided to establish spin, a POV motive for including the wording "single vote" in the introduction, when it clearly reads accurately and clearly without it. Given that this is the introduction, what is included is *critical*, and possibly controversial detail should not be in the introduction unless *necessary*. I have shown that there is possible political spin involved in that language, a possible intention to use the Wikipedia article intro to convey a point to the public. Now, certainly it is quite possible that MilesAgain has no connection with FairVote, but, lest we forget, the Executive Director of FairVote was banned from editing this article quite recently, indefinitely banned from Wikipedia, but as an IP editor. And a well-known banned puppet master was cooperating with him. So we may be a little touchy about socks here. These editors were maintaining exactly the same positions as MilesAgain. Sure, it could be a coincidence. But why so much energy on that one edit, the "single vote" in the intro, when it clearly is not necessary for understanding? Coincidence? Perhaps.

I have responded about Robert's Rules many, many times, voluminously. This particular language was in the article for a long time, and it was quite a battle to move it to where it currently is. The other IRV supporters editing this article had accepted this, it appeared. But this was, I suspect, seen as a serious loss. Why must it be in the introduction? Is it necessary in order to know what IRV is? Indeed, it could be argued that other detail should be removed from the introduction, particularly anything that could be seen as promotion or fanfare, such as transient information implying that there is some wave of IRV adoption when, in fact, there have been very few actual IRV elections, and fewer still where the expense of the method made a difference, in the U.S. So, come to think of it, I may take that language out too, I'll review it. It too is redundant to what is elsewhere in the article, where it is balanced with additional information that puts it in perspective.

MilesAgain has continually made controversial changes to the article without prior discussion, knowing that consensus has not been reached, yet, apparently, he thinks that I should refrain from removing them without discussion, even though these are changes that have been attempted quite a few times before, that have been discussed to death, as anyone can see by looking at Talk. (He also, by the way, makes useful changes, he is not always disruptive.)

--Abd (talk) 08:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

arbitrary section break

What do you mean, "without consensus"? Who do you think agrees with you on these points? And as for your continued insinuations, I have only been discussing this "single" stuff for a few days, while you've been fighting with another editor about it for weeks. If I'm the director of FairVote, I am sure slacking off. I am not. Cut it out. MilesAgain (talk) 08:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, let's deal first with the implied allegation. I did not insinuate or imply that MilesAgain was the Executive Director of FairVote, nor do I think nor have I suspected that he is, and his style is quite different. He is a sock, but I do not know of whom. Rob Richie has no account, to our knowledge, he was an IP editor. As to agreement on the points, there are a limited number of editors active here at this point. I've discussed these issues with many others, and I assure MilesAgain and others that I'm not alone in most of my opinions. Should I invite some to come here and comment? I wouldn't do that without consent here, it could be considered meat puppetry. A "consensus" of editors is not precisely defined, but when there are four active editors, and three of them clearly have a POV, one or two of them with a Conflict of interest, and the third is a sock with unknown affiliations but a quite apparent attachment to the subject of the article as an advocate of it, aligned in arguments and particular detailed interest with a long-standing edit cabal that *did* include that Executive Director, and the other is the only active representative (not formally appointed, only acting to balance the article from that POV as NPOV requires) of the substantial community critical of the article topic, there is no consensus unless that individual critic consents. Wikipedia is not based on vote, it is based on cogency of argument, and there is dispute resolution process to deal with failure of consensus, for it is quite well known that there can be severe participation bias. Votes do not determine article policy.

Charging "personal attack" can be a personal attack. Indeed, an administrator was recently de-sysopped largely because he interpreted a criticism of an argument of his as a personal attack and responded with a block, claiming "personal attack." Later, he or his supporters attempted to claim that the block was justified as protective of an important template, but ... he could not change the fact that he had cried "personal attack" with the block. [this was unsigned, or sig was lost, was from User:Abd

So whenever I ask you to stop making insinuations, you're just going to make more? Charging that attacks are being made is not an attack if it is true that attacks are being made. (Your example is ridiculous. Surely the complaints were about blocking another user than charging personal attacks.) And now you say that I am "aligned in arguments and particular detailed interest with a long standing edit cabal." Exactly what arguments and particular detailed interests do I have that haven't been being discussed at extreme length before I took an interest in them? If you can't substantiate that claim, you will either have to stop making it, or face the consequences. MilesAgain (talk) 04:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The blocking admin claimed personal attack as the reason in the block log. Community consensus in arbitration was that it had not been an attack. As to the detailed interests, there is most notably the placing of the Robert's Rules mention in the introduction. Originally that is all there was, no detail. So I added detail, which was *correct and from the source*. It was reverted out: too much detail for an introduction. After some attempts to satisfy the pro-IRV editors, I took it out of the intro, and it was simply gone for a while. Then someone, it might have been me, put it deeper in the article, where it belonged in the first place, with detail. Originally the detail was summarized, but the pro-IRV editors -- there were no neutral editors active, most of the time -- continually reverted it out. So I finally just quoted RONR exactly. Still grumbling that it was too much detail, but it sat that way for a long time. Then MilesAgain, I think it was, put it back in the intro, and he's been very active in insisting that it be there. Why is this important? Isn't that obvious? An expert publication, extremely well-known, "recommends IRV"? Believe me, if I were affiliated with FairVote and did not have any qualms about political manipulation of Wikipedia, I'd be doing exactly the same thing. So that is one point of coincidence. I could examine the record and pull up others, I believe, but I won't bother unless a need appears. Believe me, if formal process starts, I can get very succinct.

What claim am I making? I'm claiming that, from the beginning, it was obvious that MilesAgain was a sock. He knew that, which may explain why, when I challenged him with this, he acknowledged being a sock. He gives an explanation that may be legitimate, or may not (I can say that it's fishy, though, his reason is that he doesn't want his boss to know he's writing for Wikipedia, but he's not a voluminous editor and he's active at times when, if he's in the U.S., he probably is not at work, and, frankly, I'm not thrilled that an editor here would basically be stealing time from his employer, when he should be working.) But this is moot. I have not, yet, decided to pursue any process against this sock, and I merely, above, warned that if *he* pursues process, he might not like the results. WP:SSP suggests that socks, if legitimate, should avoid contentious editing. And he has been editing contentiously, reverting a controversial piece of text back in, over and over, the alleged recommendation of Roberts Rules, in the introduction, which should be scrupulously NPOV and accurate without question. If he thinks I'm making frivolous arguments he has recourse. He could formally warn me on my Talk page, and he could ask for admin assistance. He could place an RFC tag to get other opinions. He could request mediation. But I think on the "frivolous arguments" possibility, he'd fall flat on his face.

Some more history. Look at my Talk page, where a neutral (or pro-IRV) editor intervened, see User_talk:Abd#IRV_2. He made a number of objections to my conduct, and one was, "Please stop editing the IRV article to suggest that Robert's Rules of Order recommends a system "similar" to IRV. The system is IRV." I responded to him, and, bless his heart, he read the response, which was lengthy, as usual. He edited his original complaint to strike it all out, and replied, "Please forgive me, I had been operating based on hearsay without having reviewed your edits. I won't do that again. Captain Zyrain 06:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)" And then he nominated me to be an administrator. Thankfully, the community took one look at how many edits I have and how inexperienced I was with Wikipedia and resoundingly rejected it. (Today I made some comment on that on my Talk page if anyone is interested.) "Hearsay." Where did that happen? Someone contacted him to ask him to reprimand me, it would appear. It seems to have backfired. --Abd (talk) 04:26, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Against my better judgement, I attempted to rewrite the opening, expressing IRV beyond a singular election method, and also the process itself used within a wider runoff process, including usage of post-IRV balloting to confirm a winner with higher threshold. Okay, not wonderful, but the best I could do. Hopefully it can be improved rather than rudely reverted. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:28, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm a newcomer to this article, so I haven't read all of the discussions that has occurred on this talk page (though some of it probably should be archived). Anyway, I just wanted to clarify some of the information about the treatment of IRV in Roberts Rules of Order (RONR). According to Official Interpretation 2006-5 (http://robertsrules.com/interp_list.html#2006_5 written by the authors of RONR) a blank ballot (one in which no preference for any candidate is indicated) would not be counted toward determining the number of votes required for a majority. However, as indicated in the text of the book, under the preferential voting system described, ballots that do not rank all of the choices continue to be counted in determining the vote required to elect, even after the ballot has been exhausted (and thus leaving open the possibility for an election held not to result in somebody being elected). meamemg (talk) 00:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. A bit of a technicality it seems - differiating between an unmarked ballot and an exhausted ballot. It seems a voter ought to be able to MARK what his failed rankings mean - abstaining from further preferences, or desiring to block a decision. Well, good to know anyway - I tried to write it up the intepretation the intro. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:04, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The question is not "blocking a decision," it is that RONR requires, by default, a majority of those voting to vote for the winner, and that's not what the voters have done in the case described. Sure, a procedure could be added, by bylaw, that would allow a voter to specify "exclude my ballot from the majority basis if it is exhausted," but that would be a waste of ballot space. If the voter doesn't care about who wins the election if it is not one of his favorites, the voter can simply rank the rest of the candidates according to hunch or random selection or donkey vote, or, as I describe below, add write-in(s) if allowed. Yes, it's not quite as easy as checking a box to effectively abstain in case of exhaustion, but how many would check that box? It would be voting against your favorites, effectively, for if you did not check the box, there would be further process and your favorite might win. This, by the way, is a clear counterexample to the common claim that voting for a lower ranked candidate cannot hurt your favorite. If there is a majority requirement, it can.

As to RONR and blank ballots, my recollection of RONR -- my copy is somewhere here -- is that meamemg is correct; my comment about blank ballots was incorrect; the way to make a protest vote is to write in the name of any eligible candidate whom one would prefer to elect. Normally, this would be sufficient, and only if the bylaws make only officially nominated candidates eligible for election would this fail. RONR requires counting the ballot if it contains a vote for an eligible candidate.

As to the truncated and interpreted reference to Robert's Rules in the introduction, this is POV-pushing. It is indeed notable that RONR describes preference voting, including the particular form of sequential elimination that has come to be called IRV for political effect, but it is crucial for NPOV balance that the reference be balanced and accurate. It's not true that RONR "recommends" "IRV." It would be closer to say that it recommends preference voting for a particular limited situation, but it does *not* recommend creating that situation, it prefers something else. It then notes that there are many forms of preference voting, and then gives a *particular* form of preference voting, and I've been told that it gives this one not as a recommendation of it, but because it is the most common one in use, it is descriptive, not prescriptive, and then it couples this mention with a specific criticism of that exact method (not necessarily of all preference voting). To extract and exaggerate the reference, interpreting a "description" into a "recommendation" and to omit the simultaneous warning about the problem described -- which is a very important one, societies can come unglued due to failure to elect a compromise winner and instead elect the candidate with the largest "core support," for which we might read "fanatic support" -- is to turn the article into advocacy, particularly when this new, fabricated "sound bite" is placed prominently in the introduction, with detail reserved for later in the article. It is not necessary there except to one who wishes to promote IRV, and to get that message across quickly to people superficially reading about it.

A very substantial series of edits were made over the last few hours, and I simply don't have time tonight to review them all. Given that at least one of these edits is definitely edit warring, readable as POV-pushing, some sort of dispute resolution may indeed be necessary. Editors should be aware that formal dispute resolution or administrator intervention at various levels can result in an article freeze -- forget about the removal of the POV tag, which I thought we might be approaching, and forget about featured article status --, and possible sanctions against editors, from being banned from editing this and related articles to general edit bans. Wikipedia practice greatly prefers that editors attempt to find consensus through discussion, directly, and administrators who have to intervene can sometimes conclude, rightly or wrongly, "a pox on all of you," I've seen it happen. [this was unsigned, or sig was lost, was from User:Abd

Abd, you really make my head hurt. As far as I can tell, there's no consensus possible. Everything heads down hill and I have no hope for this article as long as you're around. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:34, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Tom. I'm sorry about the headache. Perhaps if you relaxed a bit, maybe even try to understand what is being said; if it is too hard, how about asking questions? What I saw happening was that the article was gradually proceeding toward a consensus. Then we got a new editor who started raising all the old issues. I'm not sure he's "new." He's a sock, very knowledgeable about the politics of IRV, focusing very tightly on key points. And very, very active, and not generally discussing what he does except to repeat the same arguments over and over, often with deceptive wikilawyering. There is a good example of this in Talk for Instant-runoff voting controversies where he raised the "fork" argument, repeating what had been in the failed AfD for that article. Let me suggest, Tom, that you assist in helping us deal with one issue at a time. When there are a dozen edits, and significant numbers of them are over points that are clearly controversial among us, it becomes impossible to work them out. You are right, perhaps. If I went away, it might be easier for you, but what do you think would happen? The article would go back, perhaps, to the state it was in when Rob Richie was maintaining it. Perhaps you think that a good thing, in which case you really ought to take a hike, you don't belong here editing voting systems articles. But it's always seemed to me that you were not that way. On the other hand, if I left, I'd tell the election methods world about it. Are you really aware of the general opinion of instant runoff voting among those who understand election methods? IRV looks good in comparison to Plurality, and Richie and others really want that to be the only comparison on the table. Hence all the effort to keep mention of other systems out of this article. Look at the discussion below about implementation and operating costs for IRV. Then consider the costs for Approval. It's hard to beat free (i.e, no more expensive than Plurality). Bucklin, because it meets the Summability criterion, is very cheap. See that red link? It's red because there has been a concerted and long-term effort to remove from Wikipedia information that can be used to criticize IRV. It's not just in this article. So we've been taking the bus to work, and it's getting old, and someone wants to sell us a car. An expensive car. Definitely, it will be better. But wouldn't we, before buying the car, look around and see if there is something more suitable? How about someone offers to loan us a car, just pay the operating expenses, no more than we were paying for the bus? And then we can decide, later, if we want something fancier? No, it's essential that if there is to be argument in this article for Instant Runoff Voting, that there be argument against it, or the article is POV, and "argument against it" includes other reasonable possibilities as options. Take an ibuprofen. --Abd (talk) 03:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Practical implications - cost issue again

Practical implications

Where is the substantiation for this claim?

"IRV is usually less expensive than two-round runoff voting, because polls need to be staffed, and ballots need to be printed only once. When an election would not have required an actual runoff round, IRV may be more expensive. Records of the San Francisco Department of Elections show that before IRV, a runoff round was required far more often than not in that city, where in 2000, 9 out of 10 contested races went to runoffs.[9]"

The fact is that with IRV, you always have to print more ballots, you must have specialized computer systems, more voter education, and more outreach programs. Always. San Francisco spent at least a million on IRV software for its machines, and now is looking at a $12+ million 4 year contract with Sequoia.

--Ask10questions (talk) 08:13, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I looked that up and added it myself. I used to live in San Francisco, and I know that a citywide runoff for mayor, district attorney, etc. generally cost in the $3-5 million range. MilesAgain (talk) 08:24, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Since here in Australia we use IRV, I looked up the Australian Electoral Commission, which has the cost of all Australian elections to 2004 http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Australian_Electoral_History/Cost_of_Election_1901_Present.htm . We have a bicameral system, i.e. there are two houses (House of Representatives and Senate), so two sets of ballots and counting and preference allocation at each Federal election. For purposes of comparison, we also had a Referendum in 1999 (two simple yes/no questions, which obviously involve no IRV). (Plus if you want to go further back we had 4 Referendum questions in 1988). As a first order approximation, let us assume that a referendum costs about the same as an election without preference allocation (though I'm guessing a referendum actually costs significantly less because there are no candidates to register or individual seats to allocate and declare).

The 1998 Federal election cost $96.7 million, the 1999 Referendum cost $66.8 Million, and the 2001 election cost $67.3 million. ($1 Australian is historically about $0.80 US). Even accounting for the fact that the 2001 number looks too low (like a misprint), it looks like a referendum costs about 2/3 of a full Federal election. In other words, based on Australian experience, an IRV election is cheaper than 2 referendums, so we can safely say that one IRV election is cheaper than a 2 stage runoff election. Peter Ballard (talk) 09:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

This is interesting, to be sure. First of all, as to San Francisco, I'm suspicious of the claim that 9 out of 10 contested elections went to runoffs. However, of course, they went to runoffs because the method was not Plurality, it was top-two runoff, requiring a majority, I presume. (We should get some detail.) By implementing IRV, indeed, if that statistic is correct, they may save money, though the analysis above neglects startup costs, which as Ask10questions has pointed out, can be very significant; but another cost of this is elections without majority wins (in the correct sense of majority).

I don't think anyone contests that IRV saves money *compared to two polls*, but neglecting conversion costs. However, there are other means to accomplish that end that are generally considered by election experts to be better functioning than IRV, and the savings are simply not there if elections that go to runoff are sufficiently rare. Just how much as Takoma Park, Maryland saved? Mostly unopposed elections. Further, voters in Plurality may make the necessary compromises in voting, so even if an IRV election shows an apparent avoidance of a runoff, voters may have voted differently if the method were not IRV. I do not doubt, to be sure, that IRV shows some important improvements over Plurality, but top-two runoff is used where it is considered important to gain an actual majority, and then IRV comes and is sold as guaranteeing a majority winner, when, in fact, it simply finds a way to analyze the vote to create an apparent majority that isn't.

San Francisco spent a huge sum converting to electronic voting machines that could handle IRV, and it just may find that those machines cannot be used due to certification problems. The general opinion among the people on the mailing lists I follow, including engineers, is that the whole voting machine thing is a huge boondoggle, votes should have continued to be paper ballots. You don't buy expensive equipment to use it once a year or so. My own opinion is that it's been possible to scan and count paper ballots since I was a child, which is over fifty years ago, and the equipment to do it is essentially free. I've got a scanner here and a computer, I could do it, it just takes some software. But hand counting of ballots is fine. IRV does take substantially more hand counting process. As those who have followed Talk here know, I propose Approval voting because it provides the main benefits of voting reform at practically zero cost, over Plurality. It is essentially counted the same as Plurality, just Count All the Votes. Reading over the edits that were just made, I noticed some language that may have been there for quite some time that is POV and slanted, about Bucklin voting. It's alleged that voting for a lower rank can hurt your favorite, and that is technically true, but practically irrelevant, it requires voting for the two frontrunners. Bucklin is really very similar to Approval voting, except that it allows ranking and can thus satisfy, unquestionably, the Majority Criterion. It is also called "preference voting," and could thus claim to be "recommended by Robert's Rules, but it does not have the center squeeze problem that RONR tags IRV with. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 04:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Adopting IRV is like adopting a pet pony - the upkeep is expensive and is year round. While IRV means you don't pay for a runoff election, it ALSO means that you pay for printing more ballot papers, special voting equipment, specialized poll worker training and voter education.

Lets look at the annual expenditures of the San Francisco Elections Department - look at the exra $10 million budgeted for 07-08, and in the fine print: $12 Million for a 4 year contract with Sequoia. What after that 4 years?

2000-2001 Actual . 9,024,000 [20]

2001-2002 Actual . 13,872,000 [21]

2002-2003 Actual . 8,610,553 [22]

2003-2004 Actual 15,204,781 [23]

2004-2005 Actual 10,400,868 [24]

2005-2006 Actual 11,930,228 [25]

2006-2007 Budget . 9,126,318 [26]

2007-2008 Budget 19,809,917 [27]

We only have the budgeted figures for 07 and 08 at this time. This is very expensive for a jurisdiction that is using optical scanner voting systems. It is about 4-5 times the average during years 2000-2007, and about 10 times that of the average optical scan jurisdiction. --Ask10questions (talk) 07:37, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Can we stay on topic here? The question was, is IRV cheaper than two elections (first round plus runoff)? I'd suggest the Australian experience makes it clear that it is. Peter Ballard (talk) 03:59, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Your argument might better be that Hand Counted Paper Ballots are less expensive to hold elections with than other voting systems.

Your argument might be fine if IRV was limited to Australia, or if the Australian experience was typical of the rest of the world.

Your argument might be fine if we ignore the fact that thanks to STV (another form of IRV) that Scotland has abandoned their hand counted paper ballots and switched to computerized voting.

Your argument might be fine if the typical ballot and or elections in the US were anything at all like Australia. But the typical US ballot has anywhere from 24 contests on the ballot to 55 + . The Australian ballot may have two contests at best. That is why they hand count their elections.

How can this wikipedia article be honest if it ignores the truth about the US and Scotland, for example?

We have seen that promoting IRV has meant incentivizing computerized voting.

--Ask10questions (talk) 15:19, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Ask10Questions is raising issues on point. The cost is not just the operating cost, it is also the set up cost, amortized. Further, few think that *after setting aside amortization of setup costs* IRV is not cheaper than holding an election and a runoff; however, there are many ways of avoiding runoffs, and IRV is only one of them, and, even with no measures taken, i.e., Plurality with a top-two runoff in the event of majority failure, not every election will result in a runoff, the reported experience in San Francisco is rare, actually. Those are nonpartisan elections in a major city where, apparently, lots of candidates run for office, thus there is lots of vote-splitting and thus, without some better election method, lots of runoffs. Many jurisdictions are implementing IRV that don't see a need for runoffs at all, such as Takoma Park, Maryland. IRV raised their costs, period. As to alternate means of avoiding runoffs, there is eliminating the majority requirement, for starters, that's what most jurisdictions do, and it is not commonly a problem because spoiler candidates are rare. I don't like that solution at all, but IRV in a many candidate situation as in San Francisco is resulting in winners who less than 40% of the electorate voted for; they could have gotten the same result by simply getting rid of the runoff requirement. (well, not exactly the same, but I think my point is made). Approval also makes it much easier to get a majority winner, in a much simpler way that election methods experts generally think better for single-winner than IRV. No cost over Plurality. Easy to understand. Well-behaved, no weird surprises.

I think Mr. Ballard misread the claim that was questioned: "IRV is usually less expensive than two-round runoff voting." That claim is misleading. It depends on conditions, and, in fact, in most elections in the U.S., even where there is two-round in place (which is a minority), a second round is not the norm. It is possible that if we looked at the statistics, we would see something like a break-even for operating costs, but a loss when initial costs are considered. The question was *not* IRV vs two elections, it was an IRV *system* vs. a two-round *system*. And you pay for the setup costs even if additional rounds are never needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 06:12, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

The title of the category is "Practical Implications", and it would seem that the full costs related to IRV would be a practical consideration for any jurisdiction considering this election method. Certainly it is being sold as a cost saver in North Carolina.

Why discuss costs at all? Is the goal of the article to infer that IRV saves jurisdictions money? If so, why not tell the full story, that overall, IRV could increase net annual expenditures for elections departments?

Taxpayers have to pay for all of the costs of operating elections, which are considerably more than just what happens on election day. San Francisco isn't spending its $12 Million for voting machines on election day. This is a 4 year contract, so more millions will be spent again in just a few years. Salaries aren't just paid on election day, training isnt' just on election day, ballots aren't just printed on election day. Where is the whole story? Just like a free pony, the expenses are the day to day ones, and they add up. Just like in San Francisco. --Ask10questions (talk) 05:06, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

You think all the increases are due to IRV? If I remember correctly, California voting pamphlets, and ballots now have to be in several additional languages, whereas in 2006 they only had to be in four languages where I live. I don't know the details, but I doubt all the increases are due to IRV. MilesAgain (talk) 07:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Why discuss costs? Because we are comparing IRV to first round + runoff. The point is that IRV is cheaper, more practical, and less hassle for everyone, than a first round + a runoff. Especially if there is a runoff 9/10 times, as cited above. I would have thought that was self-evident. But the Australian costing basically proves it.

And the voting machine argument is a straw man. Australia doesn't use them. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:17, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

We do know this: in 2004, San Francisco spent $776,000 on IRV related voter education , with $210,000 specifically allotted to the community organizations for their efforts. 700 public outreach events were held. [28]

We do know that SF's Dept of Election’s proposed budget FY 07-08 is $19,809,917, which is $10,683,599 or 117.1 percent more than the original FY 2006-2007 budget of $9,126,318. Part of that is due to the upcoming 4 year contract with Sequoia Voting Systems for IRV compatible voting machines. [29]

IRV doesn't require voting machines, but Fair Vote seems to think Voting machines are very important and has several pages on their website dedicated to drafting legislation requiring IRV compatible voting machines.

Fair Vote even has an Election Services page where they offer consultation including on Internet Voting and Vote by Mail, and also recommend vendors. [30]

While Australia may very well hand count their ballots, they have very little on the ballots to count. The US has very few HCPB jurisdictions in the US and the number decreases every day.

Having multi languages is not new for San Francisco.

It would be misleading to tell a jurisdiction that their annualized budget will decrease or even stay the same by implementing IRV. Taxpayers will have to pay for the new machines, increased training and voter education, and additional ballots that have to be printed for every single election. --Ask10questions (talk) 22:18, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

If you're worried about Fairvote's practices, create a "Fairvote" page and put it there. But the Australian experience proves that IRV does not need voting machines. End of story. Peter Ballard (talk) 06:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

This is called "entirely missing the point." IRV does not need voting machines, and the article correctly indicates, if I'm correct, that it is hand-counted in places. But hand-counting with IRV is *much* easier if ballots can be physically sorted, and when a single ballot has *many* races on it, as has been noted, that becomes increasingly impractical, for if the ballots will be counted for one race, sorted into piles by first place candidate, election officials, and the public, will not want to wait for the first election to be completed before examining the next, so if they sort on that vote, the candidate sort for the first is lost, and if it needs a resort due to majority failure in the first round -- and IRV makes that far more likely to happen --, the votes will have to be resorted all over again. If the sort can remain in place, all that would be needed for sorted ballots is to redistribute the ballots for eliminated candidates. And since the first round ballots have been counted already, the second round, etc., ballot numbers are just added. IRV is complicated to count, compared to most other methods, but doable if ballots are confined to single elections. That is quite possibly not practical in the U.S., though this is a separate issue we have not addressed.

As to FairVote, they already have their article, but critics have mostly left it alone, I think. At least I have. The Executive Director of FairVote also has his own article, Rob Richie and, again, no attempt has been made to make this into some kind of hit piece. Possibly criticism of FairVote does belong in that article, but that's not the point of what Ask10Questions raised. In the U.S., FairVote is indeed making voting machine recommendations, and I do think that Ask10Questions may already have done some research on possible conflict of interest there. But the importance in this particular discussion is the U.S. situation, where political debate over IRV is hot and, at least on one side, funded. Ask10Questions, as far as I noticed, did not claim that IRV can't be hand-counted. But mostly, in the U.S., it isn't, the Cary experiment she has described was hand-counted because it was a one-off experiment, and cannot be repeated, and I doubt anyone was willing to pony up the costs to machine-count it. But most elections in the U.S. are machine-counted, much to the chagrin of may election security experts, and that is its own can of worms.

--Abd (talk) 23:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The claim about costs is overly broad and misleads by omission. It should be amended to an accurate statement (if it can be proven) that "IRV costs less when voting machines are not purchased or used." Or IRV costs less in Australia.

While IRV can be hand counted,it incentivizes complex technology. Its adoption in Scotland (as STV) in 2007 led to the purchase and implementation of computerized voting in the form of optical scanners. This led to a major election meltdown of epic proportions.

IRV is costing San Francisco alot of money in specialized voting machinary that they can only get from one vendor, increased ballot printing expenses, as well as specialized worker training and voter education.

If IRV is only more expensive in San Francisco - then it should be stated in the article.

Since this is an article about Instant Runoff Voting, and not IRV in Australia, then any broad sweeping claims should be either documented and proven, or amended to provable claims.

Cary NC manually counted the 2nd round of votes in a pilot program because the brand new optical scan machines cannot record nor tabulate IRV. Neither the software nor the hardware can accommodate IRV.

As is now, a broad and unproven, possibly disproven to an extent - has been left in the article.

--Ask10questions (talk) 23:18, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Be bold. Don't complain about it, fix it! Raising relatively vague objections is never going to motivate contentious editors to remove their POV from the article. Sometimes I might step into the breech, but that's actually a pretty bad idea, because I end up looking like the Lone Ranger. If something is POV, either balance it or remove it; if you think something is questionable and needs source, place a citation needed tag on it. --Abd (talk) 05:30, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

On the San Francisco 2000 election

I think we have some garbage in above, leading to some garbage out. The article currently has, as Ask10Questions noted, "Records of the San Francisco Department of Elections show that before IRV, a runoff round was required far more often than not in that city, where in 2000, 9 out of 10 contested races went to runoffs.[31]" First of all, that source does not contain that statement. If it is true, the reader must do the analysis. This claim is not properly sourced by Wikipedia standards. But I'm not, myself, averse to a little original research. I don't attempt to remove claims from the article that I consider true and balanced, placed there by someone else, merely because it is not properly sourced. Others may. So can I confirm it?

The runoff results for the December 12 election show two-candidate runoffs in Supervisor districts 1, 3-6, 7-9, and 11. Out of 11 districts, there were runoffs in 9. One district was not contested, district 2.

These were the election results by district. The first number is the total vote. The rest of the numbers are vote percentages for candidates on the ballot. Write-ins in the contested elections were a small percentage. The ultimate winner is shown in bold.

 1. 24211   22%    3%   28%    9%   38%
 2. 27070   92% (uncontested)
 3. 20714   15%   13%   11%   11%    3%   11%   37%
 4. 24617   17%    2%   44%   15%   16%    3%    3%
 5. 30125    4%    2%   42%   12%    3%    0%    4%   29%    2%    1%    1%
 6. 18738    1%    4%    2%   14%    3%    3%    3%    2%   12%   16%    1%    3%   32%    0%    1%    1%    3%
 7. 30229   44%   11%    2%   22%    9%   12%
 8. 34178    6%   50%   34%    3%    4%    4%
 9. 20972    5%    6%   14%   68%    7%
10. 19764    3%    9%    4%   33%    5%    2%   21%    4%    8%    9%    2%    1%
11. 21409   10%   29%    4%    2%   19%    4%    2%   27%    2%

There is a discrepancy in the report of election data. The candidates shown as for District 10 on the first election are given in the runoffs as District 9 (which did not have a runoff).

I find these numbers extraordinary. Yes, there were seventeen candidates on the ballot in District 6. The reason why there are so many runoffs is that a very unusual number of candidates are running, the vote is being heavily split. Top-two runoff (and IRV, as well as other reforms beyond Plurality) encourage additional candidates to run. Thus a majority failure problem that might be rare with Plurality becomes the norm with Top-two, at least in this environment. What do we see with other elections on that ballot?

U.S. Senator:

 307853    0%      72%     0%      1%      0%      15%     11%

U.S. Rep, District 8:

 274162    9%      2%      66%     1%

U.S. Rep, District 12:

  58547    2%      78%     3%      16%

State Senate, District 3:

 146335    14%     6%      80%

State Assembly District 12:

 128469    18%     82%

State Assembly District 13:

 146892    6%      78%     15%

BART District 7:

  31166    27%     53%     10%     10%     1%

BART District 9:

 100221    76%     23%

(I have not reported results for two multiwinner elections.)

Is the statistic true that in 2000, 9 out of 10 contested elections went to runoff? What elections? The report is obviously considering only Supervisor elections. I don't know if a majority is required for the other city elections on the ballot (The two BART districts, though those aren't actually city elections, I think.). I'd guess not. There were 11 supervisor elections, with extraordinary fields of candidates. That's what top-two runoff can do, likewise IRV, and other preferential voting systems and Approval could do the same, particularly with non-partisan elections. However, the Plurality elections (definitely the Federal and State elections would be that) are uniformly generating majority victories in 2000. Looks to me like top-two runoff is creating a need for IRV or other such reform in San Francisco.

Why did they have top-two runoff? Likely because it is considered desirable to have a majority winner; however, almost certainly, they would usually have a majority winner with Plurality. (That is, there would be not so many candidates, or minor candidates would not so effectively split the vote.) But for the exceptions, they want runoffs. Now, comes IRV and promises to do this in one election. Sounds good. However, problem is, IRV not only can fail to deliver a majority winner, in fact, but it actually is doing that in San Francisco. I'll get to the fact of that later, but consider the logic: We have top-two runoff because we want a majority winner, but we can save election costs with IRV, thinking we'll get the same result. But we don't. Instead we get Plurality winners, at least some of the time. One of those runoffs in 2000, it can be noticed, had a 50% vote in the first round for the ultimate winner. That is, it was 50% after roundoff (or exactly 50%, not a majority). They held a runoff for the last half percent, at most, to reach a majority. One can see why some jurisdictions have reduced the necessary win to 40%, only holding a runoff below that point.

Notice that the eleven elections, in eight cases, simply reproduced what Plurality would have done; plus we can assume that with top-two runoff, there is greater sincere voting than with Plurality; quite likely with Plurality, most or all of the other three cases would have had the same winner. The argument for Plurality is stronger than many of us might think.

But there is a better and far cheaper way: let people vote for as many as they like, Count All the Votes, candidate with the most votes wins. Or, if one insists on being able to designate a favorite, Bucklin voting. Precinct summable, counts on standard equipment, no voting machine conversion costs. No method guarantees a majority winner, to be sure, except repeated balloting, which sometimes takes a *lot* of ballots.

As to what is in the article, it's misleading. For starters, to figure out what was happening, I had to analyze the results. This was original research and interpretation. The exclusion of the uncontested race from the statistic is arbitrary. More neutral would be a report that nine out of eleven Supervisor races, due to a majority victory requirement, required a runoff. But saying this without pointing out that top-two runoff could be causing an increase in candidates, thus causing increased incidence of majority failure, introduces bias. It's not going to be simple to get unbiased presentation of this information into the article; I suspect that the situation in San Francisco is quite unusual. No wonder they were the first major city to implement IRV! We will need more information, and I have a strong hunch that we won't have reliable source for it.

I'm taking it out, not because it is not true, but because, without better explanation and context, it's reducing a complex question to a simple summary, making IRV look necessary. (Some claim that SF doesn't have IRV at all, and they sure don't call it that; the limited ranks, with large candidate fields, make exhausted ballots and resulting plurality elections much more common. That is, San Francisco's Ranked Choice Voting encourages more candidates to run, but the ranks are limited. Interesting question: why didn't they call it "Instant Runoff Voting."?

And wouldn't STV for the Board of Supervisors do a better job representing the city? Single-winner districts leave huge chunks of the population, often over have the voters, not to mention the population, without chosen representation. Here my own opinion would converge with the goals of FairVote. --Abd (talk) 05:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

United States - Minnesota lawsuit

The other day I updated the Minneapolis section about IRV usage to indicate that a lawsuit had been filed Dec 20, 2007 to block implementation of IRV. (No one else had added anything about the lawsuit to this section before me.) I noticed today that it had been changed somewhat. The description I had used was straight from the news article. Isn't it important to know the nature of the lawsuit? I have seen ample discussion about the Minnesota lawsuit on this discussion page.

Today I re-did that section on Minneapolis - "A citizens group filed a lawsuit on December 20, 2007 challenging the constitutionality of the system and to block its implementation.[9]"

Next, I changed the external link to a better extrenal link that does not require wikipedia users to have to register to view that link.

This is the new and more accessible link: [32]

--Ask10questions (talk) 07:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the format for the Minnesota reference follow that of the other items in the United States section?

Someone doesn't seem to feel that way. Yet another edit has been made to the United States section. Again, its the Minneapolis, Minnesota lawsuit.

The latest change - another alteration to external links documenting the issue of the lawsuit.

Someone has created one footnote that when clicked on takes you to a line down the page that has two footnotes. I looked in this section, and this reference is the only one where you have to click, click and then click again in order to access the actual external references.

Here is the section with the chaos:

"A citizens group filed a lawsuit on December 20, 2007 challenging the constitutionality of the system and to block its implementation.[9]"

Click on the [9] and you get this:

^ [3] and [4]

Then you get to click again. The reference footnotes of this segment should be uniform with the rest of the items, and in fact were before the last edit. --Ask10questions (talk) 15:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I linked in the website of the organization creating the lawsuit, seemed helpful, but admittingly confusing as I did it. I don't care of someone wants to remove the second link or make it more clear. Okay, I'll try making it more clear. Tom Ruen (talk) 17:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Cleaning up links

On Dec. 7, editor hmwith removed many links, citing guidelines regarding external links. She is, in my view, correct that there are too many links; however, what links are included and what are not included could be important to some editors, and so my opinion was that there should be *specific* discussion of what links are to be removed, and if some might be replaced by master links, i.e., say, to FairVote's web site rather than to subpages. Those who wish to participate in this should read WP:EL and WP:NOT#LINKFARM first, to understand guidelines, but WP:NPOV may trump those, if links are necessary for balance. Previously, I reverted the editor's changes,diff and I am now, since she has reminded me of the need for this by protesting my revert, listing the complete set of links here for comment. Please comment below under each link, if you care to preserve it. If anyone has proposed a link for deletion, the default will be "delete." For each link that she deleted, since she wrote that she considered the deletions well, I am entering a simple "Delete" comment, which she is welcome to remove or strike out, I am doing this only to conserve her time. She is an administrator, working tirelessly, as many admins do, to improve the encyclopedia, and she is to be commended for that; it is part of our task as ordinary editors to make her job easier while at the same time applying our particular knowledge of the field.

Please do not delete links, unless they violate policies, until this discussion is done. Because the overall balance of links is important for NPOV, I assume we will propose a tentative entire links section for comment after we have received comment on each link. Further, let's not debate what is not controversial: if nobody proposes a link be deleted, I assume it will remain, and if nobody contests a delete comment, I presume it will be deleted; but balance might require some adjustments.... --Abd (talk) 19:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I was concerned these were links from the article body...but see they are just from the list at the end. I think we should follow whatever Wikipedia format suggests..they are generally useful, but definitely excessive.Tbouricius (talk) 21:09, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Advocacy organisations

• Instant Runoff Voting at FairVote
  • History of IRV

Delete per hmwith

• Political Reform Program at New America Foundation

Delete per hmwith

• League of Women Voters of Vermont
• Better Ballot Campaign IRV for Minneapolis (Hosted by FairVote Minnesota)

Delete per hmwith

• instantrunoff.com, by the Midwest Democracy Center [33]

Delete per hmwith

• FIRV (Ferndale, Michigan for Instant Runoff Voting)

Delete per hmwith

• Californians for Electoral Reform

Delete per hmwith

• California IRV Coalition

Delete per hmwith

• US PIRG

Delete per hmwith

• Coalition for Instant Runoff Voting in Florida

Delete per hmwith

• Green Party (United States)

Delete per hmwith

• History of Use in Ann Arbor

Delete per hmwith

• Minnesota Council of Nonprofits

Delete per hmwith

• Democracy North Carolina

Delete per hmwith

Opposition positions

• "The Problem with Instant Runoff Voting"

Delete per hmwith

• IRV page at the Center for Range Voting

hmwith edited to * IRV compared to "range voting"

• Flaws in IRV compared to ranked pairs
• Minnesota Voters Alliance
• Straight Talk On So-Called "Instant Runoff Voting" or Why the "Cure" Is as Deadly as the "Disease"

Delete per hmwith

• Instant Runnoff Voting Report Values and Risks Report by the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting
• Libertarian Reform Caucus "Anyone for a Bullet in the Foot? Instant Runoff!"

Delete per hmwith

• Instant Runoff Voting Facts Verses Fiction

Delete per hmwith

Analysis

• Nonmonotonicity in AV Article by Eivind Stensholt.
• Comparison with Condorcet Voting by Blake Cretney

Delete per hmwith

• Voting methods: tutorial and essays by James Green-Armytage (for IRV, see e.g. 1 2 3 4 5)

Delete all but first link per hmwith

• A Handbook of Electoral System Design from International IDEA
• Electoral Design Reference Materials from the ACE Project

modify per hmwith to * Electoral Design Reference Materials

• ACE Electoral Knowledge Network Expert site providing encyclopedia on Electoral Systems and Management, country by country data, a library of electoral materials, latest election news, the opportunity to submit questions to a network of electoral experts, and a forum to discuss all of the above

Delete per hmwith

• Simulation Of Various Voting Models for Close Elections Article by Brian Olson.
• Preferential voting in Australia
• Chuck Herrin, certified IT certificaton specialist "I think that IRV is a fabulous goal, long term....[however] IRV introduces a more confusing system in terms of auditability and security"

IRV in practice

Delete per hmwith

• [34] San Francisco Department of Elections on its IRV elections

Delete per hmwith

• [35] City of Burlington, Vermont on its IRV elections

Delete per hmwith

• [36] Blog focused on implementation of IRV in Pierce County, Washington

Delete per hmwith

• [37] City of Takoma Park, Maryland on its IRV elections

Delete per hmwith

• [38] City of Cary, NC

Delete per hmwith

• [39]City of Hendersonville, NC

Delete per hmwith

Examples

Delete subhead per hmwith

• IRV Poll For 2008 U.S. Democratic Party Nominee at ChoiceRanker.com (formerly Indaba.org)

Delete per hmwith

• IRV Poll For 2008 U.S. Democratic Party Nominee at demochoice.org

Delete per hmwith

• IRV poll for U.S. President, 2004 by the Independence Party of Minnesota

Delete per hmwith

• OpenSTV -- Open source software for computing IRV and STV

Delete per hmwith

• Favourite Futurama Character Poll

Delete per hmwith

• ¿Quién fué el preferido en la simulación de Votación Presidencial por el Sistema de Rondas Simultánes? in Guatemala

Delete per hmwith

• IRV Flash Animations

Delete per hmwith

General comments

I've found many of the links proposed for deletion to be quite useful researching IRV. The categorization of links into Advocacy, Opposition, Analysis (should be neutral, with no special POV), IRV in practice, and Examples also seem useful to me, with the Examples category probably needing some better categorization. Some of the links are also found in the notes, but won't necessarily be found so easily by users there. Many of the links may be more appropriate for the article Instant-runoff voting controversies, which is a recent creation. "See also" should also be expanded to include, for example, the subarticles. --Abd (talk) 19:56, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the links are part of the reason readers come to Wikipedia. That is why I first came to this article, for research purposes. If the article is to be a resource, then I can't understand doing away with it.

Also, I believe that the general public will not view or find the Instant-runoff voting controversies .I think that page should be for the more opinionated items, rather than what we are trying for here. --Ask10questions (talk) 01:36, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It's pretty clear to me that some of the links should go. If any are important to you, please indicate "keep" above for them, and it would be helpful to state why. As an example of what might go, all the links to various IRV local advocacy organizations might be replaced by a single link to a FairVote page, or just to FairVote. I agree with the importance of the link resource; it is far, far more useful than Googling "IRV," particularly categorized. --Abd (talk) 05:12, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to ask that the external links be left alone for the time being; at least until the outstanding RFC issues are resolved. They may be excessive, but nowhere near extreme. MilesAgain (talk) 09:04, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I support keeping in the links under "opposition" and "analysis" as they are each to unique sources and would not be found on any one site. Keep them, that is - if you want people to come to the wikipedia article for research. --Ask10questions (talk) 06:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

meaning of name "instant runoff"

Earlier today, I realized that a section of the introduction was problematic, and I deleted it. My edit summary was "Unsourced analysis, see Talk"

However, responsibilities for my children arose and I was unable to discuss the edit as I had planned. It was reverted by Tbouricius[40], with the comment: "Such general and BASIC concepts are inappropriate to source in an introduction. It's like sourcing the fact that a cat is a vertebrate mammal."

Here is the text involved, and, note well, this is in the brief introduction to the article.

The term "instant runoff" is used because IRV simulates a series of run-off elections, counting a vote on each ballot for the highest ranked candidate who has not been eliminated. Although voters can mark multiple candidates in preference order, the elimination process results in only a single vote cast for each seat, which differentiates IRV from a number of other preference voting systems such as the Borda Count and the Condorcet Method.

Some of this language was recently introduced. This particular section was designed to maintain reference to a "single vote" cast for each seat. As Tbouricius should know, this is an interpretation, one which is actually legally controversial at this time. But there are other problems with this paragraph. That this "single vote" differentiates IRV from other systems is an interpretation. It is not allowed, strictly, to interpret sources, much less to make up analysis that is controversial. Condorcet methods are likewise one-person, one-vote systems. Borda Count is really in a different class, it's "preferential voting" only because it uses a preferential ballot.

These problems are fatal to that language being in the introduction unless reliably sourced *and* balanced. It is not required that the source be actually referenced in the introduction; facts in the introduction will presumably be referenced later in the article. Those claims were not.

But what actually struck me most strongly with the reason given why the term "instant runoff" is used. IRV is *not* a simulation of a series of Runoff voting elections, except for a very particular kind, the kind called Exhaustive ballot. (But there is a form of "IRV" which is, in fact, a simulation of top-two runoff, so there is, indeed, that, but this is not what is promoted, generally, as "IRV.") Why was the word used? It was used as a political invention, quite recently, to promote single-winner STV in the United States. By using "runoff voting," advocates could play on the familiarity of Runoff voting, making it seem familiar and creating a particular impression. If we are going to say why the term is used, I'd want to see actual history reported. It exists. We have information about who coined the term, and in what context. Reliable source on that? I don't know. I think repeating the promoted "explanation" of this political neologism is promoting IRV. On the other hand, it can be reported in an NPOV manner, which requires attribution. *Who* claims that IRV is that? And this should not be in the introduction. The method is the method, and readers will understand it with a simple explanation of how it works, and the briefest summary of the most notable applications. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 04:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

outrageous editing by MilesAgain

See this diff, [41] look at the edit summary. Deceived by that summary, I just looked at the top ... and overlooked the massive edits MilesAgain had made to the article, restoring old POV language. I'm going to undo my own edits to get back to this and undo it. Under cover of "seeking compromise..." It's too much.

There may be some legitimate edits in there, but making a huge number of edits all through the article, rather than one section at a time, makes it difficult and tedious to deal with them. This technique could be inadvertent for a new editor. MilesAgain is not a new editor, and, as I recall, this problem has been pointed out to him before. If it happens that other editors then edit after such a massive edit, it becomes a huge amount of work to undo it without removing later edits as well, because undo conflicts will be created. I had to undo my own edits to get back to his. I did continue back one more edit to remove Tbouricius' revert of my last previous edit...., which I had done previously. --Abd (talk) 05:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how that happened. I thought I was editing just the intro. I must have clicked on some prior version. Those other edits were NOT intentional. MilesAgain (talk) 09:24, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I see what happened, I was studying diffs, and got a window with a recent version confused with an older one, and applied my changes to the latter. You can see that I have never edited some of the sections that were reverted by my mistake. You can "(edit)" any version, even an old one, and are not required to undo edits one-by-one. MilesAgain (talk) 11:23, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Apology accepted. Actually, I could have saved myself some work by doing the same. For some reason, never thought of that. Thanks. Hope I don't have to do that! --Abd (talk) 16:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Access for Disabled Removed from Practical Considerations

Yesterday I added a section under Practical Considerations:

Access for Disabled Voters: According to a poll collected by Disability Scotland an organization advocating for the rights of the disabled, 36% stated that STV (their name for Instant Runoff Voting) made it more difficult to vote, in comparison to 16% who stated that it made it easier to vote. [42]

Here we have someone removing a poll of disabled voters. Why?

For the record, Disability Scotland does not express a position on IRV, unlike what is seen with the usual press releases accompanying IRV "exit poll" results.

What is the rationalization for removing this entry? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ask10questions (talk • contribs) 00:56, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Ask10questions, look at the Article History to see the list of edits and edit summaries. The edit was reverted by User:Tbouricius, and he stated the reason in the edit summary: "(This poll dealt with a different voting method (proportioanl representation with multiple winners, not IRV. Also the percentages inserted masked the fact that 64% said it was no harder or easier.)" U don't think he was correct that this was PR, but he is welcome to show that I'm wrong. These appear to be single-winner parliamentary elections. The method called IRV in the U.S. is called STV in Ireland (that's in the article) and I think this is so in Scotland too. In any case, the ballot is the same. As to the percentages not shown, I thought it was obvious that the dregs were "no difference" or "no answer," but I've made that explicit. I actually thought it would have been 48% no difference, I forgot to think of "no answer." I'm not entirely sure what this poll means, but, then again, I'm not entirely sure what all the IRV polls in the U.S. mean either, there is some argument for removing all of them. --Abd (talk) 04:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Can we archive/subpage any talk content?

I find this talk page impossibly long to read or follow any active discussion for so many long sections. Can someone archive something here? (Or MOVE active sections into subpages, like Talk:Instant-runoff voting/RRNR maybe? Tom Ruen (talk) 23:40, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Subpages might be a good idea, actually. It's okay with me. Certain issues have been discussed over and over. The standard archives make things hard to find, but this Talk page has definitely gotten too long. --Abd (talk) 04:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

It's still unacceptable long, but I moved about 35% to Talk:Instant-runoff voting/archive3. Tom Ruen (talk) 07:46, 8 January 2008 (UTC)