Talk:Electoral reform in the United States

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"Election reform" vs. "electoral reform"[edit]

It seems like a google tossup as to which is the more popular term. The main article here is electoral reform, so I guess we'll go with that. Captain Zyrain 03:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The former article[edit]

Here is the text of the former article:

Election reform is a process for attempting to ensure more fair elections. Although a strictly ideal voting system is impossible to achieve (see Arrow's impossibility theorem), many current voting practices are felt to be very poor measurements of voters' preferences.

Election reform became a popular topic in the United States as a result of the 2000 Presidential Election, which involved considerable debate over the correct result of a presidential vote in Florida. It has also been provoked on numerous occasions by the American electoral college system for choosing a president. This system has allowed presidential candidates who did not win the nationwide popular vote (fewer votes overall) to win the Presidency, including George W. Bush in 2000.

Electronic voting is one reform widely promoted in the U.S. since 2000, suggesting that modernizing voting machines can improve the vote recording process and election tabulation. The problems with paper ballots are often cited by proponents of election reform. They can include errors in punching the ballots for instance, the infamous chads in the 2000 Presidential Election. Other possible errors are poor ballot design, such as the infamous butterfly ballot.

Problems with voting are not limited to voting machines, but include how the voting system is constructed and methods of intimidation and district alignment called gerrymandering that discourage certain groups from voting and encourage others. Many Southern states at one time included fees, tests, or police at voting booths to discourage blacks from voting; these have been abolished.

Other reforms are suggested for resolving the problems the plurality voting system has with deciding races of three or more candidates. One popular method is instant runoff voting, a system of vote counting in which votes for third party candidates can be converted to votes for other candidates if no candidate wins a majority. Many experts believe a form of the Condorcet method (esp. Schulze method), a system similar to instant runoff voting, does a better job of deciding extremely close or ambiguous elections involving three or more candidates.

Campaign finance reform and voting rights/suffrage also are frequently cited as arenas in need of reform. In the U.S., reform of the presidential debates also has become an increasingly contested issue as many citizens object to the debates being controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties via their privately controlled Commission on Presidential Debates.

External links[edit]

Captain Zyrain 03:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

meaning of the first sentence?[edit]

Sorry, I don't understand the first sentence of this article. I'm not a native speaker of English, could someone explain the grammar to me? Thanks. --91.89.23.145 (talk) 17:46, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It was grammatically incorrect. Hopefully I've made it clearer. VoteFair (talk) 05:35, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Removing POV flag[edit]

Over the past 3 days, I've substantially rewritten the introduction and made substantive additions to the article, including, I think, fixing the POV problem -- or at least a substantial portion thereof.

Before I began this effort on June 15, 2012, the article seemed to be a sales pitch for Instant-runoff voting (IRV). The introduction read in part, "Every ten years, after a census, the two major parties have a redistricting fight to determine the boundaries of these districts, and to protect the seats of incumbents. As a result, turnover in the House is low. Democratic representation is also quite low, because under a two-party system with single member districts elected with winner-take-all, any outside challenger would become a spoiler." I have not yet touched the section on "Advocates for electoral reform". That looks like an ad for FairVote. I plan to study the article as it currently stands and then revise that section. As I do that, I plan to remove the POV flag. I haven't seen any discussion of the POV flag on this talk page, which means I don't have any guidance on what was considered POV other than the obvious things I've just described. 209.204.153.104 (talk) 14:31, 17 June 2013 (UTC) (The above was entered by DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:35, 18 June 2013 (UTC) at a time when I was unknowingly logged out of Wikipedia.)[reply]

I think I should further remove the section on "Advocates for electoral reform", mentioning FairVote and Michael E. Arth with the discussion of IRV but not giving as much detail. Previously, the article was primarily about IRV, and this section seemed appropriate. However, the title of the article is much broader than IRV, and with the material I've added, the section on "Advocates for electoral reform" no longer seems appropriate, in my opinion. Accordingly, I plan to remove it ... possibly as early as tomorrow. DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:35, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]


citizens united date ussue[edit]

I noticed a discrepancy between the citizens united section and the citizens united main page. One says the ruling happened in 2013 the other says 2010. I believe the main page is right so this one should be fixed. I hope I did this right, this is my first time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.231.167.129 (talk) 11:05, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Thanks for reporting this. The ruling was in 2010.
  2. Your change took on the Talk page (here) but NOT in the main article; I just fixed it.
  3. The only way I know that for changes to be lost is if "Save page" at the bottom left of the edit window does not get properly registered. (It's recommended to first click "Show preview" and check to see that your change actually appears correct. I once saw a Wikipedia article with notice of a syntax error with the Wikimedia markup language. I fixed the syntax error, and a whole section of text reappeared that had been suppressed by the syntax error!)
  4. Your comment was "signed" by a bot using your IP address. I'd encourage you to "Create account" (upper right) if you haven't already, and "Log in" once you have, then sign your changes on Talk pages and in the edit summary with ~~~~. DavidMCEddy (talk) 15:09, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Name change[edit]

Because the term reform means to move from something universally recognized as "bad" to something universally recognized as "good," the choice of the word "reform" in the title is clearly WP:POV.Student7 (talk) 18:31, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I respectfully wish to quibble: I doubt if anything is "universally recognized as" either "bad" or "good". At the founding of the republic in the eighteenth century, only about 60% of adult white males could vote. Most of the founders, including George Washington, thought that the only men who had proven their judgment by acquiring substantial property should be entrusted with the franchise.
I read reports that some groups have purged lists of registered voters allegedly to remove the names of people cannot legally vote. This perhaps should be mentioned in this article. That discussion should include citations to articles claiming that many (most?) of those purges were partisan, designed to disfranchise minorities, poor people, and elderly who are less likely to have a birth certificate. Both major parties may do it to try to eliminate people likely to vote for their opposition. However, the articles I've seen have mostly been about Republican officials working to deny the vote to people who would likely vote Democratic.
Besides, this article has had this title since 2007, if I understand the history. Because of this, I suggest it might be better to leave the title as it is, even if it's inappropriate from some perspectives. DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:10, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note that there are partisan groups who register "anybody," which suggests to outsiders that illegal immigrants vote. Also, opposition to identify voters is frequently thwarted by one party. Would it be considered "reform" to ask voters to identify themselves properly?
I agree that the Founding Fathers had no indication that property-less citizens would ever be allowed to vote. While the country has "changed," calling this enfranchisement "reform" is pov. Wikipedia does not favor (or disfavor) enfranchising property-less voters. It happened in the U.S. An npov term should be used to describe it, however. Student7 (talk) 19:53, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Proposals for electoral change in the US"[edit]

The title should be "Proposals for electoral change in the United States."Student7 (talk) 18:31, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is a separate article on electoral reform. Should the title for that article be changed also? (If I read its history correctly, it's had that title since 2002.) DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:10, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The proper place to discuss that is in that article, which I am not watching. Student7 (talk) 19:53, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that if the title for that article is to change, it must be discussed there. Talk:Electoral reform hints at this question, mentioning also separate articles on electoral reform in Canada, electoral reform in New Zealand, and electoral reform in Virginia. In 2007 Captain Zyrain suggested the latter name be changed to "voting laws in Virginia", suggesting "new WikiProject" on that topic.
Perhaps the titles should all be changed to something like "voting laws", "voting laws in the United States", etc. That would remove your POV concern while broadening appropriately the potential coverage of each article. The right titles could attract other contributors.
My bottom line: If the title for one of the "electoral reform" articles is to change, I think they should all change. However, I don't have the compelling drive at the moment to champion that discussion across all the "electoral reform" articles.
English (and Wikipedia) is defined by usage not by people who write dictionaries ;-) DavidMCEddy (talk) 14:41, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree on the "English" part. Another editor uttered a good line the other day. He said that while even reliable sources are not always pov, Wikipedia editors should strive to be. (rephrased). The point is that we are not the media, nor are we striving to be.
"Proposed electoral change" would be better. If we can get an agreement here, we can try a WikiProject. I do not propose to fight dozens of editors on articles they believe they own. There may be a number of articles that don't have pov titles.Student7 (talk) 18:52, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can we poll major contributors to related articles? It seems to me that your concerns about the title of this article apply equally to the other "Electoral reform" articles: If we change the title to one, we should change the title to all at roughly the same time. (Apparently, we can't ask Captain Zyrain, whom I mentioned above. The Wikipedia info indicates on that user says, "retired". The last entry on the associated Talk page was June 2013.) DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:56, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Polling" other editors of other articles normally fails. If you and I can agree for this article, that is enough for now. You or other editors may change other articles, if they wish. Student7 (talk) 23:25, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but I won't agree to changing the title for this article. "Electoral reform" is a standard term, POV or not. Googling for "Wikipedia electoral reform" identified separate main articles for electoral reform in Canada, the US and New Zealand plus for 14 US states. Beyond that, there are numerous other articles with "Electoral reform" in the title. Changing the title for this one article would make it harder for readers, because they'd wonder why this one article has a non-standard title.
This article could use work so it better represented concerns of people who do not support the reforms listed. I'm willing to work with others to implement things like that. However, I'm not eager to do a lot of additional research. DavidMCEddy (talk) 22:58, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unbalanced voting in the electoral college was deliberate[edit]

Only gerrymandering has anything close to npov support as being clearly unfair. The rest are simply proposals designed to benefit one group over another. Proportional division of the electoral vote, for example, was deliberately given to protect small states in the original Constitution. That is, even the smallest state has at least 3 votes in the Electoral College and cannot be "dismissed" as unimportant in a close election. So the benefit in changing to proportional voting is entirely in favor of the largest states. Candidates would no longer bother with campaigning in states with fewer that (say) 7 electoral votes. Winner take all prevents this mentality.Student7 (talk) 18:31, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a citation for this? I may not understand what you are trying to say. To me, "Winner take all" seems like a separate issue from proportional division of the electoral vote. In recent general elections, I've heard that presidential candidates have allegedly focused almost exclusively on Swing states (also called "battleground" or "purple" states). They stop in other states primarily to attend major fund raisers. This system seems to effectively disfranchise the voters in non-battleground states (except those with millions of dollars to invest in elections). DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:10, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(answer to electoral college bias only) Have an article. See bottom of lead to Electoral College (United States). Small states (Rhode Island, Delaware, for example) were alarmed at the power the larger states (New York, Virginia, for example) would have in the Constitution. The electoral college was established, deliberately biased in their favor, to assuage their feelings on this topic. Without this, the smaller states would not have ratified the Constitution and there would have been no United States.
It seems to me that while that bias is still retained, without "winner take all," the bias becomes, if not meaningless, less meaningful.
Note that the affect of "winner take all" is inflation of the electoral college over the popular vote. So a president may claim an electoral landslide, even if s/he won 55-45%. So this "inflation" may enhance the power of the president. Whether that is good or bad is another topic. Student7 (talk) 19:53, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Other sides[edit]

The others have arguments against them as well.

Sure. So add appropriate mention of those other sides. You've made over 61,000 edits in 7 years with Wikipedia. I've made over 1,300 in 3 years. You clearly know this system better than I do. DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:10, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Template title[edit]

The template title should be changed, as well. Student7 (talk) 18:31, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "template"? The table with section heading "Organizations supporting specific reforms"? What do you want? "Organizations supporting specific changes"? I prefer the current section heading. However, if you want to change it, please do so. I won't revert it. DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:10, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If the change to an npov title was accepted, the title of Template:U.S. political divisions electoral reform (at the bottom of the page) would be affected, as well. Student7 (talk) 19:53, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Two sections biased[edit]

The section on crony capitalism manages to overlook the contributions of the labor unions and rich elites such as George Soros.

What do you think should be said about this? Do you have credible references that you think should be cited? DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:16, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The section on monetary incentives to "news" channels manages to overlook the fact that three out of four major channels are liberal and air liberal programs. Doesn't seem to affect their advertisers, who presumably hold liberal ideas as well. Why is is okay for some advertisers to hold liberal ideas, but not okay for others to hold conservative ones? Student7 (talk) 17:41, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused by your comment. I can't find the words "liberal" or "conservative" used in the sections you mention.
Is it POV to suggest that media organizations must please both funders and audience? If they don't have funds, they can't disseminate content. If they don't attract an audience or if the audience doesn't do what the funders want, the funders will eventually disappear.
I recently found citations to several research papers documenting how deficits in media coverage translate into political corruption. See Charles Lewis (2014) 935 Lies (Public Affairs, p. 166, esp. note 40 on p. 310). I recently summarized those papers in the section on Political corruption#Media, just mentioned.
Could you please be more specific with your concern? I don't understand. DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:16, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I now don't remember the concerns I had on 3 May! :(
The country must provide each person with "one vote" (one person, one vote for redistricting). This is law. Are we just talking law here or philosophy or implementation? Maybe it could be clearer in the introduction? If just law, then skip the other two entirely. The article seems to treat everything on the same level. statute=constitution=philosophy=implementation.
If implementation, then some history might be in order. So legislatures couldn't be "bought", the Constitution was amended for direct election of Senators. This seems to have been the intent of no geographical representation (one man/one vote) of the Supreme Court in the 1960s. To address the Freedom of Speech, it allowed Citizens in 2014 or so (no capping of contributions).
If philosophy, is it better to have smarter, richer, better educated, less-easily led people making decisions, or less smart, poorer, less well-educated, more easily led people making decisions? The article seems to assume the latter, which the media usually does, as well (they particularly like the "more easily led" which leads to more television/website advertising!). Allowing poorer people to vote would include the elimination of Poll Tax (per capita tax) as well. In most states, this requirement was hardly anything when the Supreme Court eliminated it. Not really a barrier except to people "who couldn't be bothered." Now even totally uninformed, uninterested people can vote? Is that all good? Student7 (talk) 20:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Approval Voting?[edit]

User:Ben.kaspar recently added a section on "approval voting". Could someone please add a citation or at least a link to another source that contains citations?

This addition could be useful. However, without a reference, it might get reverted as a violation of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view: Wikipedia's NPOV policy says, "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."

Without an appropriate citation, how can anyone claim that "approval voting" represents a "significant view that has been published by a reliable source"? DavidMCEddy (talk) 14:09, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I added a link to the Wikipedia page on Approval voting. If no one beats me to it, I intend to cite some of Steven Brams work on the subject. Ben.kaspar (talk) 22:39, 5 October 2016 (UTC)ben.kaspar[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Stance[edit]

@ParkerFriedland:: What's "Stance"? Thank you for your recent edits, expanding the table. I don't understand the word "Stance". DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:24, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@DavidMCEddy:: For each of the supreme court rulings on that table, "Stance" is what each organization would have preferred the Supreme court ruling to be. For example, Wolf PAC disagrees with the Buckley v. Valeo ruling that individuals can give large amounts of money to politicians because money is speech and free speech is protected under the first amendment. That ruling was insane. If money truly was speech, then it wouldn't be illegal to give money to prostitutes because you are simply using your first amendment rights to express your gratification of them. Thus, Wolf PAC's stance on this ruling is that money is not speech.ParkerFriedland (talk) 03:32, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I wonder if changing "Stance" to "Position" might communicate better?
I like your analogy: Campaign contributions are only bribery if there is an explicit quid pro quo. Similarly, I don't think it's illegal to give money to a prostitute, and I don't think it's illegal to have sex with a prostitute: It's only illegal if there is an explicit quid pro quo.  :-) DavidMCEddy (talk) 23:19, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

references unrelated to content?[edit]

@WMSR: Could you please explain why you think the following reference was "unrelated to content"?

<ref name="ArthMichael">Arth, Michael E., ''Democracy and the Common Wealth: Breaking the Stranglehold of the Special Interests,'' Golden Apples Media, 2010, {{ISBN|978-0-912467-12-2}}.</ref>

And why did you delete the reference to the Mother Jones article? It was clearly relevant.

I'm reverting those changes. DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:38, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@DavidMCEddy: The source I removed was not Mother Jones (which was never properly cited in the first place), it was a self-published book by Arth. Such a book fails WP:RS. That particular citation was a vestige from when somebody went in and added a ton of irrelevant information to this article citing Arth's theories. The content is gone, but the citation somehow remained. I strongly recommend leaving my edit. WMSR (talk) 03:43, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@WMSR: What do you mean, "The source I removed was not Mother Jones": I just checked: Your single edit removed both the two citations to that book by Arth and the reference to an article in Mother Jones.
And why do you say Mother Jones "was never properly cited in the first place"?
I just checked that article: It clearly provides documentation behind the claims for which it was cited.
DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:21, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DavidMCEddy: I see, my bad. Not sure how I accidentally removed both references; I did not mean to remove MJ. I'm going to try again without using the visual editor. WMSR (talk) 04:29, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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