[EM] "wrong way elections"

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:00 PM 7/15/2006, Warren Smith wrote:
>My article on wikipedia by that title has now been deleted.
>
>I still do not understand what the complaints were about the article.
>Supposedly it had a "point of view" although nobody was able to figure
>out what it was, and/or it was "original research" although
>nobody was able to figure out what that was either.

Given that we don't have the article, and we don't have the 
arguments, it seems that we can't do much.... [I later found all 
this, see below.]

I will say, right off the bat, that "wrong way elections" does not 
sound "encyclopedic" to me.

POV is a common objection, things are supposed to be expressed NPOV. 
POV is, essentially, opinion, as distinct from reporting and 
testimony. Testimony, directly, does not seem to be encyclopedic, but 
you can quote someone else's testimony and even their opinion, and 
that is reporting. If I say that "Warren Smith claims that Range 
Voting is the Cat's Meow," that would be reporting. If I say, "Range 
Voting is the Cat's Meow," that's opinion.

Wikipedia has a community culture that should be understood if one is 
going to write there.

>The complaint was started by some anonymous person calling her or 
>himself "opabinia regalis".

There is a lot of information missing here. First of all, most people 
writing on wikipedia are anonymous. Identity does not matter for 
Wikipedia, since authors are not expected to be experts. Rather, 
authors are simply bringing material together. It is the *community 
as a whole* which is the expert. Articles tend to move toward a 
consensus, even when they start out pretty warped.

If you want to know about Opabinia regalis, take a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Opabinia_regalis
looks like a fairly interesting person, don't you think?

>Anyway.  If anybody thinks they understand what wikipedia's problem is,
>they can try to write an article themselves about wrong-way elections.

There is no "they." There is only us.

Apparently we don't want an article on "wrong-way elections" on 
wikipedia, at least not yet, and not strongly enough to overcome the obstacles.

However, I'm sure that there would be a place in the many articles 
there on elections and election methods for a description of the 
subject, or at least a pointer to an article elsewhere.

>I looked around wikipedia for over an hour after the deletion came 
>to my notice
>(well, they never notified me)   trying to figure out why it happened, or what
>to do, or the answers to a bunch of other questions, but was unable 
>to figure it out.

Is the article archived anywhere? What about the discussion that led 
to its removal? If you would like to involve a larger community in 
this, we really should see this. And if you don't want that, why are 
you bringing this to us?

>The article was based around the large table at the CRV I mentioned earlier,
>http://www.rangevoting.org/FunnyElections.html
>containing a large number of wrong-way elections thru history.
>I thought this was a worthwhile contribution to wikipedia,
>but some felt it was "inherently" unsuited for some reason, and
>if I made a claim this subject was important, that proved my "arrogance."

Not every important subject should be in an encyclopedia. At least 
not as an article with that kind of title. Nobody is going to look 
for it under that. I'd think of classifying the material under 
Elections/History.

>I guess I'd have to say this strikes me as evidence that Wikipedia is unsuited
>to having stuff abotu voting systems.

It's got tons of stuff about voting systems without any problem. Look 
up Range Voting. Perfectly appropriate. Want to know what Range 
Voting is because you come across the term, you'll look there and you 
will find out. That's encyclopedic.

It is not the content of the article, I suspect, but rather that the 
content was not classified. The term "wrong way elections" is not in 
common usage, as far as I know. If it *is*, then you can make a case 
for having an article by that name. Election Failure might have a 
better chance.

The classic way that an article starts is by having a term or subject 
mentioned in another article that is already considered 
"encyclopedic." Then you create the new article, linked from there, 
to explain the meaning and implications, etc.

My guess is that some of the people tried to tell you this, Warren, 
but.... and then, there are all kinds of people with all kinds of 
bugs who write on Wikipedia. It takes all kinds.

However, what I've seen is that articles *usually* converge, over 
time, on something pretty good. But the assumption is that the 
articles belong there. Absent a text for that article, I'd be at a 
loss to have any better opinion than I've expressed here.

>   I mean, it was clear that none of the people
>at wikipedia, who came in a sudden swarm, knew anythign whatever 
>about voting systems.
>But they still knew it had to be deleted and it was unimportant.

I don't think you understood them, Warren. They were not saying that 
voting systems were unimportant, in themselves. But whether voting 
systems are important or not is not important in this sense: your 
article is not appropriate merely because it is about something 
important, and it might actually be appropriate even if it is about 
something not important. Try to understand "encyclopedic."

Think of the Britannica style. Wouldn't you be a tad surprised to see 
an article, standing alone, with the title "Wrong Way Elections" in 
the Encyclopdia Britannica?

But an article on Election Methods would be completely appropriate, 
and likewise a history of the use of election methods, which would 
include what can be called "wrong way elections." But that does not 
seem to be a good term to me. What would it be? I used "Election 
Failure," above, but that already has a meaning: an election that 
produces no winner. So what exactly *is* a wrong-way election?

I'm not sure you can answer that question without POV. I.e., method A 
suggests winner B, but the "right" winner would have been C. This is 
POV. To say that the Condorcet winner would have been C, based on 
poll or other information such as detailed ballot analysis in an IRV 
election, that might be NPOV. But the very term "wrong way" is 
essentially a judgement rather than a report. Hence, I suspect, the 
claim that the article was intrinsically POV.

>I will, however, be happy to
>include my wrong way elections article in the EM electowiki thing, 
>provided anybody
>is able to figure out how to get the article from wikipedia (where 
>is apparently
>no longer exists) and put it there.

You might find the article in the wayback machine. If you are lucky. 
I think you would have to have a URL.

Okay, it's on google. And google has a cache. Because that might 
disappear at any time, it is at the end of this post. I can see why 
the article was deleted. Nice paper, in some ways. Not encyclopedic. 
Definitely POV. I also found the discussion page archived at
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Fb0yBObGOA4J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_elections+%22wrong+way+election%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a

(if that works for you. if you try to go to the article at
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_elections&e=15206
you will get a missing article notice. From there is a link to the 
deletion discussion at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wrong-way_elections

>Warren D Smith
>I am assuming some of you know the answer to these questions a heck of a lot
>better than I do.   When I saw these complaints about my article, I 
>figured they
>were ludicrous on the face of it and hence would never be taken 
>seriously, but evidently
>I was wrong in that estimation.

Below is what was posted by Opabinia regalis that was supposedly 
ludicrous. Warren, it is cogent and clear. And, except for some 
opinion in it that may be a personal judgement ("poorly written"), 
but which is actually backed up by specific examples (i.e., "poor" 
means "not satisfying Wikipedia standards"), it is basically correct. 
And then this is followed by many pages of argument from you that 
apparently ignored what was being said to you.

Read it again, Warren. This is a person who knows what (she?) is 
talking about, she is as much of an expert in her field as you are in 
yours. That doesn't mean she's always right, but what you were being 
told was valuable information for you.

>Poorly written and inherently POV article with a title that is a 
>total neologism - the only Google hit for the term outside of 
>Wikipedia is to <http://www.rangevoting.org>RangeVoting.org, which 
>is an advocacy site. Contested prod and prod2. 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Opabinia_regalis>Opabinia regalis 
>18:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
>
>Addendum for Warren's sake, a more detailed description of the 
>problems with this article:
>    * The idea of a "wrong" winner of an election implies that one 
> or more "right" winners exist, which is inherently biased. The idea 
> that the "right" winner is defined as the one that "most of the 
> populace would have preferred" is also biased, because some voting 
> systems are explicitly designed to use other factors than plain majorities.
>    * The text is biased. Wrong-way elections are "pathologies" and 
> "alter history, presumably usually for the worse"?
>    * The examples are poor. Other than the Gore-Bush election, 
> which is adequately covered elsewhere, the only example is that of 
> Allende. The article even admits that the sole source cited in this 
> example uses its references inappropriately.
>    * The mathematical properties of voting systems are already 
> covered in the articles 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system>Voting system and 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_different_voting_systems_under_similar_circumstances>Effects 
> of different voting systems under similar circumstances.
>
>I have no objections to the suggested creation of a 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_elections_in_which_the_winner_received_fewer_votes_than_an_opponent&action=edit>List 
>of elections in which the winner received fewer votes than an 
>opponent, but such an article would be able to retain so little from 
>this one that I'd suggest deleting this and starting the new one 
>afresh. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Opabinia_regalis>Opabinia 
>regalis 23:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

And here is what Google had for your article:



Wrong-way elections




 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_elections#column-one>navigation, 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_elections#searchInput>search

By a "wrong-way election" we do not mean a wrong election result 
caused by fraud or fakery (such as the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=US_presidential_election_1876&action=edit>US 
presidential election 1876), but rather an apparently "legitimate" 
election in which, due to the flawed mathematical properties of the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system>voting system used, the 
"wrong" winner X won, i.e. despite the fact that most of the populace 
would have preferred Y over X.

Such wrong-way elections happen fairly often to alter history, 
presumably usually for the worse.

The most recent extremely major USA occurence was in 2000, when Bush 
beat out Gore for the US presidency because of a 537-vote margin in 
Florida. (There were also allegations of fraud and manipulation. We 
shall ignore those allegations for the present purpose and simply 
take the official vote totals at face value.) Meanwhile, Nader got 
97488 Florida votes, placing third, and it was known Nader voters in 
2000 Florida favored Gore over Bush. So a voting system which 
incorporated the views of all voters would have easily elected Gore. 
In fact, essentially every voting system ever seriously proposed 
would have elected Gore in Florida 2000 except for the "plurality" 
system actually used.


Contents

[hide]
    * <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_elections#Frequency>1 Frequency
    * 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_elections#Disputedness_and_Importance>2 
Disputedness and Importance
    * 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_elections#Additional_References>3 
Additional References
    * <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_elections#Navigation>4 
Navigation

[<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wrong-way_elections&action=edit&section=1>edit]



Frequency

The commonly used <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality>plurality, 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_runoff>instant runoff, and 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runoff_voting>runoff voting (plurality 
with top-2 runoff) systems all are comparatively flawed voting 
systems in this sense, and hence with them, such pathologies are 
comparatively frequent.

It is an important question for the designers of 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracies>democracies to ask just how frequent.

A large <http://www.RangeVoting.org/FunnyElections.html>table of 
apparently wrong-way elections throughout history was given by the 
<http://www.RangeVoting.org>Center for Range Voting (CRV). The CRV 
recommends a different voting system, called 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting>range voting.

One thing that table shows that of the 56 US presidential elections 
before 2007, 7 of them (i.e. one-eighth) arguably were wrong-way. 
More precisely, the presence of one or more "spoiler" candidates 
fairly clearly altered the election result, i.e. changed the name of 
the new president.

A different reckoning, which also came to the same conclusion that 7 
of the first 56 US presidential elections were wrong-way (but one of 
its 7 differed from the CRV's list) was given in Richard Winger: How 
many parties ought to be on ballot? Election Law Journal 5,2 (2006) 170-200.
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wrong-way_elections&action=edit&section=2>edit]



Disputedness and Importance

(1) Some wrong-way elections have extremely important 
history-altering consequences, indeed in some cases they can destroy 
governments.
(2) Many wrong-way elections undoubtably escape notice - or the 
conclusion that they are "wrong-way" is disputable or unclear.

Here is one example of both. Donald G. Saari on page 1 of his book 
Basic geometry of voting (Springer 1995) claims that the 1970 Chilean 
presidential election (won by Allende) was wrong-way in the sense 
that Allende would have lost a head-to-head election with either one 
of his opponents. (This is entirely mathematically possible in the 
plurality voting system when the two opponents "split the vote." The 
official plurality vote counts were Allende 36.3%, Allesandri 35.8%, 
and Tomic 27.9%.)

Saari then noted that Allende died in a 1973 CIA-aided coup which 
plunged Chile into a long dark dictatorial period, and observes that 
this all could have been avoided had Chile simply employed a better 
voting system. (Saari's book recommends the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count>Borda count.)

Saari said the reason we knew Allende would have been a 
pairwise-loser to either opponent was Chilean pre-election polls. 
However, Saari did not cite any poll and only cited (with a somewhat 
incorrect citation to boot) a book on that election by Francis.

Francis's book did not mention any such poll, and indeed it is 
unlikely that any poll would have asked voters "how would you vote in 
a head-to-head X versus Y election?" because such questions normally 
are only asked in countries in which there is a possibility of a 
head-to-head "runoff" second-round to the election. Further, 
Allende's third-place opponent Tomic supported - and threw the 
support of his Christian Democrat party behind - Allende in the 
Chilean Congress (into which the election fell after none of the 
three candidates got over 50% of the vote) with the result that 
Allende won the congressional vote 153-to-35 over Allesandri and was 
confirmed as president. Further, Allende's party won the 1971 
municipal elections over Allesandri's party. All this renders Saari's 
claim that Allende would have lost pairwise to Allesandri, at least 
subject to dispute.

However, Francis told the author that he is confident Tomic would 
have won versus Allende head-to-head, because Allesandri was 
rightist, Tomic centrist, and Allende leftist, and the Allesandri 
voters therefore would have preferred Tomic as the "lesser evil." So 
apparently Saari was correct that Allende was a wrong winner in a 
different sense than what he said: Tomic would have won pairwise 
versus either opponent despite the fact he finished last in the 
official plurality vote. If this revised analysis is correct, then it 
is interesting to note that the "right winner" Tomic also would have 
lost under both the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_runoff>instant runoff and 
"plurality plus seperate top-2 runoff" systems.
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wrong-way_elections&action=edit&section=3>edit]



Additional References

Michael J. Francis: The Allende Victory, an analysis of the 1970 
Chilean presidential election, University of Arizona Press 
(Comparative government studies, #4) Tucson 1973. (ISBN=0816504113)

W.J.M. Mackenzie: Free elections, George Allen & Unwin Ltd. London 1958.

Roy Morris, Jr.: Fraud Of The Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel 
Tilden And The Stolen Election Of 1876, Simon and Schuster 2003.

Hannu Nurmi: Comparing Voting Systems, Kluwer 1987.

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