![]() | This page 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. |
Seeing as this recent absurdity about deletion has brought to light the convoluted nature of this article, we need to seriously discuss how we can make this article better, cleaner, more concise, whatever... So please state here (hopefully in bulletform, short sentences right to the point) what needs to be done to clean this article up. -- kizzle 23:40, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, kizzle, I couldn't put my suggestion in bulleted short sentences. Instead, I wrote it up below, in its own section, Need for a concise generalized summary article (except I'm not sure that such internal anchors work on talk pages). JamesMLane 19:44, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Passage
Remedy: Remove / Change (Paste new like below if needed)
New Passage
Discussion
Blah. -- kizzle 20:59, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
I've rewritten the first paragraph (now two). I thought it important to distinguish two broad classes of controversy: Even some sources that dismiss the idea that Kerry really won, like the New York Times, have been critical of many aspects of the process (inconsistent rules from one state to another, the difficulties many people encountered in registering and voting, etc.). Another change is that "the 2004 election" isn't the same as "the 2004 presidential election". The rewrite includes wikilinks to the articles on the Congressional elections as well. For example, the charges based on analysis of the absentee ballots in North Carolina referred to the votes for the Senate seat as well as the presidential race.
What's now the third paragraph consists of opposing quotations about exit polls, with the context not well explained. Exit polls are only one issue here. To help get the reader into the overall picture more quickly, I think those quotations should be moved down to where exit polls are discussed in more detail. The rest of the introduction should list the major issues. I think the current narrative style is too pokey ("There were reports.... There were also reports.... There may have been.... Another issue is...."). It would work better to use the bullet style. The best way to give the reader a quick overview would be to combine the current paragraph with the "Examples of issues" section but to list issues without all the detail. That would come in the body of the article as each subject was developed. For example, the first sentence ("There were reports of problems with and controversy over electronic and optical-scan voting machines.") and the first two bullet points under "Examples" could all be replaced with the single bullet point "Accuracy and reliability of voting machines, especially those employing electronic voting methods".
The way it stands now, I think the article starts right out bombarding the reader with too much detail. People who've been deeply involved in editing this article, and who have immersed themselves in the torrent of what's been in the media on this subject, have to keep in mind the problem of making the material accessible to people who don't have that background. JamesMLane 06:40, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I do not like the introduction in its current form, especially the added text. The version after I created the introduction section header was better than current in my opinion, it's all over the place now and clarity is rather poor. May clean up or mostly revert now. Zen Master 09:51, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The reference to Cameron Kerry has been there a while, but there is still no link to affirm that he is investigating any claims - shouldn't this part of the sentence be either verified or removed?
(please do not archive this section off the talk page)
This is a list of sources which should not be used in this article, as they cannot provide verifiable information.
What exactly in the page is factually disputed, so we can remove the tag as quickly as possible? Please paste here in the discussion of current passages so as to resolve this dispute. -- kizzle 11:06, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Current (early December) NPOV tag was placed as result of claims of bias in the VfD, the idea being that the bias is obvious if the two sides don't agree. If you can write something so the other side can look at it and say, "ok, that was treated fairly, that'll work" then you are good -- which is how Wikipedia policy explained things should be handled. Now, specifically, from my quick glance at it as a writer, someone who believes objectivity is essential, and who generally thinks their probably were problems in voting and the wrong man one, I think this (and especially all the offshoot articles) are horribly biased toward the idea that there were rampant irregularities. It starts out with a chart with big blatant red colors proclaiming "election day problems" and, after looking at the numbers, we discover that only 0.003% of the total votes were reported as problematic in the states colored red and even fewer elsewhere?! You have got to be kidding me! That's a statistic blip, not even worth noting, that's NOWHERE near anything that would change the election results. The graph is misleading and highly biased and shouldn't even be here. And it just gets worse from there. The article goes through and names everyyyyyyyything any person with a blog can throw at a wall to see if it sticks. You need real sources that are encyclopedia-level sources and you need to limit yourself to a tiny fraction of the total length of this article in order to have a NPOV article that accurately represents its current noteworthiness in the news and the real world. Wikipedia isn't here to advance your political cause, and it's clear that most of the people working on this article don't get that. DreamGuy 10:24, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
Link: http://www.blah.com
Description: Cites conclusively there was no fraud.
Discussion
We need to add this as soon as possible! -- kizzle 20:59, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
With all of this alleged dependence on weblogs, & unverifiable internet sources (I'm using weasel words here because I haven't taken the time to trace every source quoted in the article), why hasn't anyone bothered to quote or cite Greg Palast, an investigative reporter who writes for the BBC & the Guardian? AFAIK, he's the prime source for material on this topic -- & I remember hearing him on Air America Radio not only set forth the evidence for incidents in both states on 3 November, but he also claimed that there were irregularities in New Mexico that were suppressed by the "So-Called Liberal Media". Some of his writings can be found on his website. -- llywrch 18:07, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
We should add this info but I am not certain how and where. Basically an electronic vote machine company gave 4 years free to Reno Nevada just prior to the election in August: http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04490.html
Zen Master 10:17, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've scraped a list of sources from here , and it currently resides at User:RyanFreisling/SourceDigest. Take a look! -- RyanFreisling @ 02:52, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Removed Diebold’s election-systems division is run by a registered Democrat" and source URL [4], which points to an article on Diebold's site [5] which merely repeats the statement without naming the Democrat. if this passage refers to Radke, it can be re-insered and edited properly. Source? -- RyanFreisling @ 05:13, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Link: http://countingcoup2004.blogspot.com/ http://countingcoup2004.blogspot.com/
Description: Great resources for news, found on the BBV forum.
Discussion
My friend Jeff got these emailed to him, and posted them on his site. [10]
(i deleted the section i just made before, as zen pointed out that we already have that link.) Kevin Baas | talk 20:27, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
historical election data [11]
and late pre-1am exit poll listing of all states with timestamps! [12] Kevin Baas | talk 20:35, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
Votergate Movie [13], [14] -- RyanFreisling @ 04:56, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"6,200 votes were counted twice because of human error while transferring data to the computer reporting system"
This occured in the Governor's race, but it casts further doubt on the accuracy of the elections process, and begs the question of how many other such "irregularities" have gone undetected on the local or national levels.
Volusia now added.
Also see
this report too. It has a lot of information, can someone summarise it and add it to the BBV investigation section?
FT2 03:03, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Here is a brand new (Nov 17th) analysis of Univ of Penn Professor Steven Freeman's paper The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy, where the Professor had claimed, among other things, that the odds against unusual "anomalies" in three key states -- Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio -- "are 250 million to one".
While the analysis finds much to fault in Freeman's paper, it does admit that, "If NEP were to provide the the actual [probability of exit poll sampling error]... the real odds that this happened by chance alone are still probably at least 1,000,000 to 1. In a business where we are typically "certain" when there is a 5% chance of an error (e.g. 1 in 20), one in a million is still pretty darn certain" noosphere 05:16, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC)
There's a new version of Freeman's paper available. I've updated the article to reflect the new findings and text. However I deleted an out-of-date chart and didn't update it, because what I've read of Wikipedia policies suggests that copyright issues don't allow its inclusion. But I'm fairly new at this, so I won't be offended if anyone disagrees. Avenue 13:15, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
A Democratic candidate for Ohio Chief Justice got 257,000 more votes than Kerry [18]
"Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket... Many voters simply don’t vote for Supreme Court justices. It is highly improbable that Connally’s vote totals would be so much higher than Kerry’s" noosphere 17:06, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)
James Tobin, who was the top Bush campaign official for New England and formerly the Republican National Committee's regional director, is being accused of ...attempting to "disrupt communications" by clogging the Democrats' phones on Election Day [2002] through repeated hang-up calls. [19] noosphere 17:35, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)
(archived due to name change)
(archived due to sub page creations)
The article tries to point out that the discrepancies between exit polls and actual results were greater at e-voting places, but the cited reference [20] does not give a mathematical calculation of this (1 in 50,000 refers to the chance that Bush did better than exit-polls preedicted over-all). Does anyone have a reference for the e-voting discrepancies? If not, it could be fairly easy to calculate given the raw data (by performing a chi-squared test or similar - I assume that someone, somewhere, has done this). The article says that the discrepancies at e-voting booths are significantly greater, but this is a precise statistical term and should be backed up with numbers. — Asbestos | Talk 23:23, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't that information be in the "...controversies, voting machines" article? It wasn't there when I just checked, where did it go? If the images are too big we can put much of it in tables. Zen Master 22:20, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This section is out-of-date and lacking a lot of important information. This may be due to size considerations.
I think that this section should include a chronological description of legal developments with links to specific legal documents such as those on http://www.votecobb.org/.
Does this merit a new article?
In any case, I think that this is currently the weakest part of the article, and should be addressed. Kevin Baas | talk 17:40, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
On the George W. Bush article there is a dispute that you might be interested in. Kevin Baas | talk 18:48, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
I added a news source, but it should be mentioned in the exit poll tome somewhere... [21]. Basically:
Google news queries:
Google web queries:
Specific pages:
A new VfD has been added, as well as another not-NPOV tag. What gives? Was one attempt to delete this article and mark it as not NPOV enough? Can the 'other side' (whatever that means) actually contribute TO the article, rather than attempt to delete or suppress it?
The neutrality tag points here, but those who have marked it so have not commented here. Make your opinions and thoughts known, and put them under discussion, or those tags are coming off. -- RyanFreisling @ 17:05, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The second VfD and the VfDs of all of the subarticles have been defeated. But will there be another? And another? Am I the only one who's frustrated at having to expend time and energy defending the very existence of these articles rather than focussing on improving them? Can any action be taken to make sure this past set of VfDs is the last? Or are we going to be bickering about this until the end of time? noosphere 10:35, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)
Snowspinner stripped a link out, what do folks think? I personally think it's a bad idea, as we edit and reduce the content we can removelinks as we remove any unneeded content, but to remove links outright without discussion here, seems a bad idea. -- RyanFreisling @ 18:06, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think the time has come, because we now have sub pages and a much better page organization, to do away with the "Examples of issues" section. Any non redundant content should be moved to the appropriate section or sub page. What do people think? zen master 09:23, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
My idea for cleanup, several weeks ago, was to rewrite the lead section in what I considered a much more summary and neutral fashion. That rewritten section was multiply reverted with the argument that it downplayed the statistical analysis that was said to be the heart of this article. My reaction was, OK, I'm not trying to eliminate that detailed statistical analysis, but there needs to be an article that does not have statistical analysis at its heart. Therefore, I created one: 2004 U.S. election voting controversies. It was my impression that there was consensus for having the more general/summary article, while this one focused on statistics about "irregularities".
The latest edits seem to be creating a hybrid. This article retains its old "Introduction", which I didn't like, one using the unexplained phrase "data irregularities" in its very first sentence. In fact, it makes it less like what I think a lead section should be, by inserting a list of numbers of incidents by state. Then, after the ToC, it copies the more generalized lead section that I'd written, and which, after it didn't find favor here, I'd used in 2004 U.S. election voting controversies. The result is that this article now repeats some information that was already contained in its "Introduction". Even in using that more general list of issues, though, this article reflects the heavy focus on data about EVM-related issues, the focus that led some editors to revert my earlier edits that substituted this passage as the lead section. That's reflected in that the bulleted list of issues that I wrote now has appended, as a separate bullet point, a quotation about the source code in EVM's. This quotation is obviously one fact under the point concerning EVM's, not its own separate issue.
I created the more general article because, frankly, I gave up any hope that issues other than exit poll discrepancies/EVM/statistical analysis could be dealt with adequately in this article. There's just too much data on those subjects that people insist on including and including prominently. As noted above, the current status of the "Introduction" and the bulleted list of issues reflect that problem.
So here's my prescription: Any material from this article that's not already in one of the daughter articles should be moved there, with the creation of new daughter articles if necessary to accommodate it all. (Someone may VfD a new daughter article but it seems like most VfD voters will reject such attempts.) Eventually, this article would be phased out or become a redirect. What's now at 2004 U.S. election voting controversies would remain a generalized, summary, encyclopedic article, not buried in data, and not giving such heavy emphasis to one issue area that all others are crowded out. It will include links to all the daughter articles. One or more of the daughter articles would allow people to tabulate incidents by county and to quote software engineers to their heart's content, but the summary article would be kept rigorously clear of that level of detail. As to the question of how to deal with ongoing developments, the summary article should also be kept ruthlessly free of another problem that's afflicted this one, namely turning it into a newsfeed instead of an encyclopedia article. There would be no day-by-day chronology as there is here. People who want to maintain a day-by-day chrono can include it in the existing U.S. presidential election, 2004 timeline article, or include specific events in the daughter article to which they relate, or start a new article on the "controversies timeline", or whatever. The summary article wouldn't try to report each day's developments.
I'm not trying to stop people from developing the statistical analysis in great detail. I just think it's not appropriate for the article that would serve as the gateway to the election controversy for most readers, many of whom will just want a general overview of the issues that have been raised concerning the election. JamesMLane 19:33, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There's some stuff at [22] and I'm sure there's lots in the google news query. Kevin Baas | talk 19:46, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)
Theers also a page here and here to look at. FT2 15:10, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)
Seeing as there has been outright fraud, such as Volusia county, if and when there is enough material, it might help to disillusion some people. But I'm concerned that the ultra-right-wings will have a fit. What is the balance between being informative and relinquishing to people's POV for the sake of peace? Kevin Baas | talk 19:57, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)
![]() | This page 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. |
Seeing as this recent absurdity about deletion has brought to light the convoluted nature of this article, we need to seriously discuss how we can make this article better, cleaner, more concise, whatever... So please state here (hopefully in bulletform, short sentences right to the point) what needs to be done to clean this article up. -- kizzle 23:40, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, kizzle, I couldn't put my suggestion in bulleted short sentences. Instead, I wrote it up below, in its own section, Need for a concise generalized summary article (except I'm not sure that such internal anchors work on talk pages). JamesMLane 19:44, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Passage
Remedy: Remove / Change (Paste new like below if needed)
New Passage
Discussion
Blah. -- kizzle 20:59, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
I've rewritten the first paragraph (now two). I thought it important to distinguish two broad classes of controversy: Even some sources that dismiss the idea that Kerry really won, like the New York Times, have been critical of many aspects of the process (inconsistent rules from one state to another, the difficulties many people encountered in registering and voting, etc.). Another change is that "the 2004 election" isn't the same as "the 2004 presidential election". The rewrite includes wikilinks to the articles on the Congressional elections as well. For example, the charges based on analysis of the absentee ballots in North Carolina referred to the votes for the Senate seat as well as the presidential race.
What's now the third paragraph consists of opposing quotations about exit polls, with the context not well explained. Exit polls are only one issue here. To help get the reader into the overall picture more quickly, I think those quotations should be moved down to where exit polls are discussed in more detail. The rest of the introduction should list the major issues. I think the current narrative style is too pokey ("There were reports.... There were also reports.... There may have been.... Another issue is...."). It would work better to use the bullet style. The best way to give the reader a quick overview would be to combine the current paragraph with the "Examples of issues" section but to list issues without all the detail. That would come in the body of the article as each subject was developed. For example, the first sentence ("There were reports of problems with and controversy over electronic and optical-scan voting machines.") and the first two bullet points under "Examples" could all be replaced with the single bullet point "Accuracy and reliability of voting machines, especially those employing electronic voting methods".
The way it stands now, I think the article starts right out bombarding the reader with too much detail. People who've been deeply involved in editing this article, and who have immersed themselves in the torrent of what's been in the media on this subject, have to keep in mind the problem of making the material accessible to people who don't have that background. JamesMLane 06:40, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I do not like the introduction in its current form, especially the added text. The version after I created the introduction section header was better than current in my opinion, it's all over the place now and clarity is rather poor. May clean up or mostly revert now. Zen Master 09:51, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The reference to Cameron Kerry has been there a while, but there is still no link to affirm that he is investigating any claims - shouldn't this part of the sentence be either verified or removed?
(please do not archive this section off the talk page)
This is a list of sources which should not be used in this article, as they cannot provide verifiable information.
What exactly in the page is factually disputed, so we can remove the tag as quickly as possible? Please paste here in the discussion of current passages so as to resolve this dispute. -- kizzle 11:06, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Current (early December) NPOV tag was placed as result of claims of bias in the VfD, the idea being that the bias is obvious if the two sides don't agree. If you can write something so the other side can look at it and say, "ok, that was treated fairly, that'll work" then you are good -- which is how Wikipedia policy explained things should be handled. Now, specifically, from my quick glance at it as a writer, someone who believes objectivity is essential, and who generally thinks their probably were problems in voting and the wrong man one, I think this (and especially all the offshoot articles) are horribly biased toward the idea that there were rampant irregularities. It starts out with a chart with big blatant red colors proclaiming "election day problems" and, after looking at the numbers, we discover that only 0.003% of the total votes were reported as problematic in the states colored red and even fewer elsewhere?! You have got to be kidding me! That's a statistic blip, not even worth noting, that's NOWHERE near anything that would change the election results. The graph is misleading and highly biased and shouldn't even be here. And it just gets worse from there. The article goes through and names everyyyyyyyything any person with a blog can throw at a wall to see if it sticks. You need real sources that are encyclopedia-level sources and you need to limit yourself to a tiny fraction of the total length of this article in order to have a NPOV article that accurately represents its current noteworthiness in the news and the real world. Wikipedia isn't here to advance your political cause, and it's clear that most of the people working on this article don't get that. DreamGuy 10:24, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
Link: http://www.blah.com
Description: Cites conclusively there was no fraud.
Discussion
We need to add this as soon as possible! -- kizzle 20:59, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
With all of this alleged dependence on weblogs, & unverifiable internet sources (I'm using weasel words here because I haven't taken the time to trace every source quoted in the article), why hasn't anyone bothered to quote or cite Greg Palast, an investigative reporter who writes for the BBC & the Guardian? AFAIK, he's the prime source for material on this topic -- & I remember hearing him on Air America Radio not only set forth the evidence for incidents in both states on 3 November, but he also claimed that there were irregularities in New Mexico that were suppressed by the "So-Called Liberal Media". Some of his writings can be found on his website. -- llywrch 18:07, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
We should add this info but I am not certain how and where. Basically an electronic vote machine company gave 4 years free to Reno Nevada just prior to the election in August: http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04490.html
Zen Master 10:17, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've scraped a list of sources from here , and it currently resides at User:RyanFreisling/SourceDigest. Take a look! -- RyanFreisling @ 02:52, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Removed Diebold’s election-systems division is run by a registered Democrat" and source URL [4], which points to an article on Diebold's site [5] which merely repeats the statement without naming the Democrat. if this passage refers to Radke, it can be re-insered and edited properly. Source? -- RyanFreisling @ 05:13, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Link: http://countingcoup2004.blogspot.com/ http://countingcoup2004.blogspot.com/
Description: Great resources for news, found on the BBV forum.
Discussion
My friend Jeff got these emailed to him, and posted them on his site. [10]
(i deleted the section i just made before, as zen pointed out that we already have that link.) Kevin Baas | talk 20:27, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
historical election data [11]
and late pre-1am exit poll listing of all states with timestamps! [12] Kevin Baas | talk 20:35, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
Votergate Movie [13], [14] -- RyanFreisling @ 04:56, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"6,200 votes were counted twice because of human error while transferring data to the computer reporting system"
This occured in the Governor's race, but it casts further doubt on the accuracy of the elections process, and begs the question of how many other such "irregularities" have gone undetected on the local or national levels.
Volusia now added.
Also see
this report too. It has a lot of information, can someone summarise it and add it to the BBV investigation section?
FT2 03:03, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Here is a brand new (Nov 17th) analysis of Univ of Penn Professor Steven Freeman's paper The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy, where the Professor had claimed, among other things, that the odds against unusual "anomalies" in three key states -- Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio -- "are 250 million to one".
While the analysis finds much to fault in Freeman's paper, it does admit that, "If NEP were to provide the the actual [probability of exit poll sampling error]... the real odds that this happened by chance alone are still probably at least 1,000,000 to 1. In a business where we are typically "certain" when there is a 5% chance of an error (e.g. 1 in 20), one in a million is still pretty darn certain" noosphere 05:16, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC)
There's a new version of Freeman's paper available. I've updated the article to reflect the new findings and text. However I deleted an out-of-date chart and didn't update it, because what I've read of Wikipedia policies suggests that copyright issues don't allow its inclusion. But I'm fairly new at this, so I won't be offended if anyone disagrees. Avenue 13:15, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
A Democratic candidate for Ohio Chief Justice got 257,000 more votes than Kerry [18]
"Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket... Many voters simply don’t vote for Supreme Court justices. It is highly improbable that Connally’s vote totals would be so much higher than Kerry’s" noosphere 17:06, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)
James Tobin, who was the top Bush campaign official for New England and formerly the Republican National Committee's regional director, is being accused of ...attempting to "disrupt communications" by clogging the Democrats' phones on Election Day [2002] through repeated hang-up calls. [19] noosphere 17:35, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)
(archived due to name change)
(archived due to sub page creations)
The article tries to point out that the discrepancies between exit polls and actual results were greater at e-voting places, but the cited reference [20] does not give a mathematical calculation of this (1 in 50,000 refers to the chance that Bush did better than exit-polls preedicted over-all). Does anyone have a reference for the e-voting discrepancies? If not, it could be fairly easy to calculate given the raw data (by performing a chi-squared test or similar - I assume that someone, somewhere, has done this). The article says that the discrepancies at e-voting booths are significantly greater, but this is a precise statistical term and should be backed up with numbers. — Asbestos | Talk 23:23, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't that information be in the "...controversies, voting machines" article? It wasn't there when I just checked, where did it go? If the images are too big we can put much of it in tables. Zen Master 22:20, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This section is out-of-date and lacking a lot of important information. This may be due to size considerations.
I think that this section should include a chronological description of legal developments with links to specific legal documents such as those on http://www.votecobb.org/.
Does this merit a new article?
In any case, I think that this is currently the weakest part of the article, and should be addressed. Kevin Baas | talk 17:40, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
On the George W. Bush article there is a dispute that you might be interested in. Kevin Baas | talk 18:48, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
I added a news source, but it should be mentioned in the exit poll tome somewhere... [21]. Basically:
Google news queries:
Google web queries:
Specific pages:
A new VfD has been added, as well as another not-NPOV tag. What gives? Was one attempt to delete this article and mark it as not NPOV enough? Can the 'other side' (whatever that means) actually contribute TO the article, rather than attempt to delete or suppress it?
The neutrality tag points here, but those who have marked it so have not commented here. Make your opinions and thoughts known, and put them under discussion, or those tags are coming off. -- RyanFreisling @ 17:05, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The second VfD and the VfDs of all of the subarticles have been defeated. But will there be another? And another? Am I the only one who's frustrated at having to expend time and energy defending the very existence of these articles rather than focussing on improving them? Can any action be taken to make sure this past set of VfDs is the last? Or are we going to be bickering about this until the end of time? noosphere 10:35, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)
Snowspinner stripped a link out, what do folks think? I personally think it's a bad idea, as we edit and reduce the content we can removelinks as we remove any unneeded content, but to remove links outright without discussion here, seems a bad idea. -- RyanFreisling @ 18:06, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think the time has come, because we now have sub pages and a much better page organization, to do away with the "Examples of issues" section. Any non redundant content should be moved to the appropriate section or sub page. What do people think? zen master 09:23, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
My idea for cleanup, several weeks ago, was to rewrite the lead section in what I considered a much more summary and neutral fashion. That rewritten section was multiply reverted with the argument that it downplayed the statistical analysis that was said to be the heart of this article. My reaction was, OK, I'm not trying to eliminate that detailed statistical analysis, but there needs to be an article that does not have statistical analysis at its heart. Therefore, I created one: 2004 U.S. election voting controversies. It was my impression that there was consensus for having the more general/summary article, while this one focused on statistics about "irregularities".
The latest edits seem to be creating a hybrid. This article retains its old "Introduction", which I didn't like, one using the unexplained phrase "data irregularities" in its very first sentence. In fact, it makes it less like what I think a lead section should be, by inserting a list of numbers of incidents by state. Then, after the ToC, it copies the more generalized lead section that I'd written, and which, after it didn't find favor here, I'd used in 2004 U.S. election voting controversies. The result is that this article now repeats some information that was already contained in its "Introduction". Even in using that more general list of issues, though, this article reflects the heavy focus on data about EVM-related issues, the focus that led some editors to revert my earlier edits that substituted this passage as the lead section. That's reflected in that the bulleted list of issues that I wrote now has appended, as a separate bullet point, a quotation about the source code in EVM's. This quotation is obviously one fact under the point concerning EVM's, not its own separate issue.
I created the more general article because, frankly, I gave up any hope that issues other than exit poll discrepancies/EVM/statistical analysis could be dealt with adequately in this article. There's just too much data on those subjects that people insist on including and including prominently. As noted above, the current status of the "Introduction" and the bulleted list of issues reflect that problem.
So here's my prescription: Any material from this article that's not already in one of the daughter articles should be moved there, with the creation of new daughter articles if necessary to accommodate it all. (Someone may VfD a new daughter article but it seems like most VfD voters will reject such attempts.) Eventually, this article would be phased out or become a redirect. What's now at 2004 U.S. election voting controversies would remain a generalized, summary, encyclopedic article, not buried in data, and not giving such heavy emphasis to one issue area that all others are crowded out. It will include links to all the daughter articles. One or more of the daughter articles would allow people to tabulate incidents by county and to quote software engineers to their heart's content, but the summary article would be kept rigorously clear of that level of detail. As to the question of how to deal with ongoing developments, the summary article should also be kept ruthlessly free of another problem that's afflicted this one, namely turning it into a newsfeed instead of an encyclopedia article. There would be no day-by-day chronology as there is here. People who want to maintain a day-by-day chrono can include it in the existing U.S. presidential election, 2004 timeline article, or include specific events in the daughter article to which they relate, or start a new article on the "controversies timeline", or whatever. The summary article wouldn't try to report each day's developments.
I'm not trying to stop people from developing the statistical analysis in great detail. I just think it's not appropriate for the article that would serve as the gateway to the election controversy for most readers, many of whom will just want a general overview of the issues that have been raised concerning the election. JamesMLane 19:33, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There's some stuff at [22] and I'm sure there's lots in the google news query. Kevin Baas | talk 19:46, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)
Theers also a page here and here to look at. FT2 15:10, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)
Seeing as there has been outright fraud, such as Volusia county, if and when there is enough material, it might help to disillusion some people. But I'm concerned that the ultra-right-wings will have a fit. What is the balance between being informative and relinquishing to people's POV for the sake of peace? Kevin Baas | talk 19:57, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)