At 02:56 PM 8/30/2013, Richard Fobes wrote:
Abd ~
Thank you for warning us about this Wikipedia article ("Electoral
reform in the United States") being a battleground partly populated
with IRV-FairVote soldiers.
I'm choosing other "fronts" for my election-method reform efforts,
which is why I don't have time for these edits.
Richard Fobes
(aka VoteFair)
Well, the article was most recently heavily edited by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DavidMCEddy
This editor does not appear to me to be a "FairVote soldier," but
only an ordinary editor, not terribly sophisticated as to Wikipedia
RS requirements, just trying to make the article more complete and to
improve it in certain ways.
Rather, early editing on the article was done by someone who actually
was a "FairVote solider." Or who became one for a time.
I don't see the article as a true "battleground" yet. It has not
attracted enough attention. Mostly it's been neglected.
My *general conclusion* about Wikipedia is that editing it can be
far, far too cumbersome, and the results are unstable, whenever
"battleground" conditions arise. One can go to enormous lengths to
develop editorial consensus. Look back a few years later, and the
results may have disappeared, with old, already resolved issues,
being asserted again.
I could show examples from the Instant Runoff Voting article. I'll
provide a clue.
In theory, there should be no references in the lede of the article,
which briefly explains the topic and *what is not controversial about
it.* But when an article becomes a battleground, a faction will want
to assert its position in the lede, and then may be challenged, and
so references are added. But that misses the point. To put something
in the lede is not just about "truth," or "verifiability," but rather
establishes the context in which the article will be read. A POV
faction will cherry-pick the available facts to assert them in the
lede. Perhaps only "positive" or "negative" facts will be so asserted.
From the current lede for the IRV article, you would have no clue
that there is any controversy over it. There is only promotional
information. I notice that FairVote is still cited as if FairVote
were Reliable Source. By definition, it is not. It's an advocacy
organization. At one point, all this was cleaned out. FairVote was
listed as an advocacy organization. That's been removed, because it's
listed as if it were a "reliable source," and it is generally not
done to add additional links to reliable sources, i.e., to sites
already referenced in the article.
Everything in the lede should be covered in the article, and that is
where references would be (or sometimes, a partiuclar point is
covered in another article, which will be cited in the main body of
the article, and references might be there. Again, such a summary
should reflect high consensus.
User RRichie continues to edit the article. Rob's edits are often
helpful, but he has a consistent point of view. (He was actually
blocked at one point, for behavior violating policy, while editing
anonymously. I confronted that, it was my first experience with
enforcing Wikipedia policy. I also supported his unblocking, provided
he edited open with disclosed conflict of interest. The same with our
friend from Vermont, Terry Bouricius. He'd also been blocked because
he'd been supporting the anonymous Richie and a sock puppet of
another banned editor.
I became much more involved in Wikipedia policy in general, and moved
away from tending the IRV article.
There has been, perhaps, a little slippage on the matter of IRV and
Robert's Rules of Order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting#Robert.27s_Rules_of_Order
Originally, Robert's Rules was listed in the lede as recommending
IRV. I added to that the rather negative comments in RRONR about the
method. It is suggested only as an option, based on actual practice,
not as a normative suggestion. And the method they actually describe
is critically different from what is implemented on FairVote
recommendations. I requires a true majority for election, not the
faux "last round majority."
FairVote argued bitterly against this. I was called a liar, even
though it was blatantly clear from RRONR. Now, with my later
perspective, with much more experience with Wikipedia policy, I was
doing a kind of Original Research. That is sometimes allowed, and so,
about this point, maybe. In the end, it would depend on editorial
consensus, but if only one faction is paying attention to an article,
there you go! I see it all the time: a faction slips in an edit and
nobody notices.
I've seen totally outrageous edits, seriously violating policy,
slipped in, nobody noticed, and even when the editor is banned,
nobody does anything about it, because it simply isn't realized the
implications of the edit. Only someone who is aware of the various
POVs and how they are pushed will notice it.
Notice the implication from the RRO section: repeated balloting is
"impractical." Yet the most widely implemented election reform, for
over a century, has been real runoff voting. It's obviously not
intrinsically impractical! RRONR points out the serious problems
raised by IRV, and the RRONR version asserts those *even if a
majority is required*. They would never recommend the FairVote
version of IRV, not for single-winner elections.
So the text, "and then the instant runoff voting method is detailed"
is *wrong.*
That text is an example of synthesis, of the interpretation of a
source by an editor. Essentially, RRONR does "detail" a method. Is
that method the same as IRV? It is certainly similar, but there is a
critical difference. They never redefine "majority," as the IRV
method as applied under FairVote recommendations does. The RRONR
description is quite explicit: if there is no majority found, the
election *fails and must be repeated.* They don't give accepting a
plurality result as an option, and the definition of majority used by
FairVote *cannot fail to be found,* because, essentially, all
contrary votes have been eliminated, excluded from the basis for majority.
This is one way that FairVote has managed to promote deception: they
have discovered facts, that if alleged, are defensible as true, at
least in some way. If the fact is alleged, people then make certain
assumptions. The *counting method* is generally described, and I
remember how long it took me to notice the actual difference between
the FairVote method and the RRONR method, so thoroughly had I been
led -- by the FairVote quoting of that section, which they actually
do quote -- into thinking that this was "IRV." It is *exactly* the
method, with only one exception!
A crucial exception, that, if applied to, say, the San Francisco RCV
elections, would require many of them -- almost everyone where there
was an "instant runoff -- to be repeated, thus kind of blowing the
utility of RCV out of the water!
Now, what can be done about this? I don't know. Wikipedia process is
so cumbersome that no particular approach is reliable. It is often a
matter of convincing "neutral editors" that a change is okay. The
problem is that "neutral editors" generally are ignorant on the
topic, and easily misled. It can be very tricky. Wikipedia is
"anti-expert." There is something appealing about this, but it also
leads to serious problems where accurate interpetation of sources is
involved. Non-experts may easily misunderstand sources!
In this case, a parliamentarian would quickly realize the
implications of "majority." But most editors aren't parliamentarians!
Here is a remarkable recent edit that can illustrate the problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Instant-runoff_voting&diff=561293057&oldid=560680057
The editor claims, in his edit summary, that
(There is no such thing as an "absolutely majority" (nor, a
correctly spelled "absolute majority"). A majority is defined as
more than half.
There was an obvious error there, but in voting system descriptions,
"absolute majority" refers to "majority of the votes." It's distinct
from the IRV "last round majority," or the "majority of votes for
candidates not yet eliminated. In Australia -- and Wikipedia is about
the world, not just the United States, for sure -- the term "absolute
majority" is used with the "majority of all the votes" meaning, that
is, all *legal votes.* Australia requires that, to be a legal vote,
and in "absolute majority" jurisdictions, the voter rank *all* the
candidates, so an absolute majority is guaranteed by the rules. In
some Australian jurisdictions, "OPV," or Optional Preferential
Voting, is allowed, and the term "absolute majority" is then changed
to the modified majority that excludes some legal votes as part of the basis.
This editor still left "absolute majority" in the text, a few words
later. The change was not wrong, but betrays an ignorance of the issues.
The section on IRV procedure is effectively designed to be "true" but
to suppress recognition of the difference:
The process repeats until one candidate achieves a majority of votes
cast for continuing candidates. Ballots that 'exhaust' all their
preferences (all its ranked candidates are eliminated) are set aside.
Notice the inserted phrase "cast for continuing candidates." That
excludes many votes, such that, *often*, IRV winners don't actually
have the support of a majority of voters, in spite of major
propaganda in implementation campaigns that IRV is a way to find such
majorities. Thet explantion, "set aside," matches the RRONR
description. Those ballots are literally "set aside" in manual
counting procedures, i.e., they are no longer counted. But what does
not change in the RRONR procedure is the definition of majority. It
was calculated at the beginning, in the first round, and it remains the same.
Most people don't think of or realize the implications of candidate
elimination. They tend to think very simply, of a situation like Gore
v. Bush v. Nader. They think of eliminated candidates as minor ones.
Yet, in fact, IRV can eliminate a candidate who would, in a pairwise
election, beat every other candidate, but this candidate simply has
less first-preference votes than two others. Lower-preference votes
for the candidate may exist, underneath votes for the "top two" as
identified by IRV. That is, IRV can decide a winner *against* the
expressed preference of a majority, and it's been known to do that.
This is why RRONR criticizes IRV, when they refer to a "compromise
choice." That means a choice that is *actually acceptable to a
majority of voters.*
Every attempt to explain this in the article was shot down by
FairVote advocates. It's not that they have the power to control the
article. It's that they became skilled in presenting misleading arguments.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
