Wikipedia:WikiProject Voting systems

First, an important note for everyone to remember:

A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about Voting systems. These are only suggestions, things to give us focus and to get us going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!

For info on voting systems used by English Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, see Polling is not a substitute for discussion and Wikimedia Foundation elections. -

Scope
This WikiProject's primary focuses are:
 * Defining a standard format for editing pages on individual voting systems
 * Editing information about voting systems not specific to any one voting system, especially criteria for evaluating voting systems
 * Importing and editing the large amount of public domain information that exists on the internet on voting theory

Structure
There is an overview of voting systems on the "Electoral system" page on English Wikipedia.

Ensure that every article has a category:
 * Category:Electoral systems e.g. Single Transferable Vote
 * Category:Voting theory e.g. Tactical voting
 * Category:Voting theorists e.g. Marquis de Condorcet
 * Category:Voting system criteria e.g. Monotonicity criterion

Avoid putting an article in multiple categories.

Issues to consider
Voting systems (more commonly known as "electoral systems") are a domain that has been analyzed from sharply different and contrasting disciplines: game theory, sociology, political science, decision science, cognitive science and economics. Our articles should give a clear summary of the analysis from as many of these domains as we can get, without overly relying on jargon from any. Where there is jargon, find the article that explains the jargon, and link to it. If there isn't yet an article, perhaps it's time time to create an article (see Help:Your first article to learn how to do this). If you do create an article, make sure that the terms of art are clearly explained.

A note on English
In general, avoid using terms that are ambiguous when it comes to describing a voting system. The Australian English term elector, for example, should be replaced with the more general voter so it is not confused with special "electors" such as the electoral college or the electors of the Holy Roman Empire.

If there are multiple synonymous terms used to describe something, prefer the one that is the title of a Wikipedia article. So, use tactical voting instead of strategic voting, and plurality instead of first past the post or FPTP.

Wikipedia style is to decapitalize things that do not explicitly need to be capitalized. This conflicts somewhat with the style often used in writing about voting systems, in which names of systems and criteria have every word capitalized. Make things lowercase whenever this makes sense. Observe that one page was moved from Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping to cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to Schulze method.

Advice
Remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so avoid minor specific details about the mechanics of counting or obscure criteria.

In general, avoid comparisons with other systems (and POV advocacy, in particular), however contrasting notable differences to similar systems and clarifying names is usually ok.

Try to describe how a voter interacts with the system, and what ballots look like - what the voter expresses (e.g. approval, disapproval, a ranked preference per candidate) and what they are told the mark means. Also describe how the winners are determined. Give one or more examples if they help, and feel free to copy sample data from articles such as Instant runoff - for single-winner systems, the example using the state of Tennessee and this map can be used quite effectively. Examples should strive to demonstrate possibilities for tactical voting, to be explained in the section below. They should also strive to demonstrate differences in outcomes between this system and other, similar systems, as well as unusual rules for the system.

A section on controversy, issues, and advocacy is usually appropriate. This may be related to other sections, in particular information about tactical voting, the effect on factions, candidates, and the jurisdiction, as well as information on the voting system criteria the method passes and fails. Tactical voting can usually be explained fairly well in a short section.

See WikiProject Voting systems/Included methods and criteria for a discussion of criteria to use. In general, criteria worthy of mentioning on Wikipedia are likely worthy of mentioning in a voting system article, however they may best be moved into a sub-article if the voting system article becomes too long.

Articles that are currently a mess

 * John F. Banzhaf III, biography fails to mention the Banzhaf index, an alternative to the Shapley–Shubik index for simple (cooperative) games
 * Duggan–Schwartz theorem
 * Instant-runoff voting
 * Plurality voting system
 * First past the post (Not the same as plurality?!)
 * Simple majority voting
 * Condorcet methods

These articles are in need of some sweet, sweet cleanup and love.

Requested articles
These articles would be useful to have.
 * Popular vote (representative democracy)
 * District Plus (multi-member proportional electoral system)

Similar Wikiprojects
The Electowiki has fantastic, detailed information on voting systems, both new, old, and obscure. Be aware, however, that much of the content on Electowiki is either POV or original research, which are not appropriate for Wikipedia. Electowiki uses the CC BY-SA license like Wikipedia does, however, so when you see some worthy content there that can be made encyclopedic feel free to copy it.

Some voting concepts, e.g. majority of the entire membership, fall within the purview of WikiProject Parliamentary Procedure.

See also: WikiProject Democracy (on votings within the Wikiverse).

Participants
Please add yourself to Category:WikiProject Voting systems participants if you would like to participate in WikiProject Voting systems. Alternatively, you may add yourself to the outdated list below, which contains users that haven't been editing English Wikipedia for years:


 * - Interested in Politics and helping in elections.
 * Mostly interested in Proportional representation and Australian electoral systems.
 * - Willing to assist anyone in any way I can.
 * –Sincerely, A Lime 21:06, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * – just a lay interest, my current preference is Copeland+IRV.
 * - voting theory from a mathematical perspective
 * &mdash;I've mostly been nursing Condorcet method, and I'd like to improve its organization to be more consistent with other articles.
 * -- saw development of IRV/Ranked Choice Voting in San Francisco, and then Berkeley and I believe Oakland.
 * - I'd like to help develop an example that highlights the differences between the Condorcet methods.
 * , ex-physicist, Condorcet method fan, and author of | MaximumMajorityVoting
 * - General interest in politics and everything related to it. I can't wait until I can vote...
 * - Go on then.... :-)
 * - I'm not sure what is the status of the WikiProject, but I'm happy to help improve the voting theory category of Wikipedia.
 * – Lately I've tried to overhaul IRV, STV, Borda count and the three STV quota articles. A long time ago I added articles on the Supplementary Vote and Sri Lankan SV. Oh, and CPO-STV.
 * - I can't be given responsibility, but I do try to improve articles as strikes my fancy
 * - County clerk and election administrator in Michigan
 * : I prefer the Tideman method.
 * , just rewrote Coombs method article according to template, so I guess that counts as joining.
 * LT.lolicon reporting for duty sr!
 * , if I can help
 * - New around here but I'm a Kiwi and doing Political Studies at Uni
 * (talk) - Added several of the criteria from ElectoralMethods.org a while back, looking forward to continuing to contribute in the hopes that we might find out that Arrow was wrong (ha!). That reminds me, I also added the first version of the voting criteria table at Voting system, from material at ElectionMethods.org.  Most of those criteria were judged original research and removed from the table, but I'm glad it spurred discussion.
 * Finds minuscule differences in Single Transferable Ballot/Instant run off voting fascinating. Australian Political/Union background.
 * - Contributions Single transferable vote, Single non-transferable vote, Limited vote, plus a few more here and there...
 * Rob C (Alarob) - Interested because of the sore need for understandable info about voting systems, especially in my native land.
 * - I thought I "joined" a long time ago, but hey, I suppose its not too late -- 17:20, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * primary interest transferable-vote systems.
 * - I'm joining in, working on NPOV and making the articles correspond to Wikipedia style. Most of these articles were written in one burst by a bunch of users of the election-methods mailing list. This is a list where people are used to driving home a point in very POV arguments, and not used to writing in Wikipedia style.
 * - I've been doing a lot of this work without knowing this project even exists! I'll be working on making Single Transferable Vote as perfect as I can, as a start.
 * 03:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC) - I'm an avid supporter of Democracy and wants to help in times of elections.
 * 18:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * - I want to help with some small stuff about the various options available to put on ballots that are not candidates such as RON and NOTA.
 * - I'v developed my very own voting method
 * - sick of 2-party systems, which plurality/FPTP/winner-takes-all has forced on the USA and the UK
 * - amateur mathematician, mostly interested in proportional representation
 * - I've written multiple articles and am interested in helping out!
 * - I thought I "joined" a long time ago, but hey, I suppose its not too late -- 17:20, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * primary interest transferable-vote systems.
 * - I'm joining in, working on NPOV and making the articles correspond to Wikipedia style. Most of these articles were written in one burst by a bunch of users of the election-methods mailing list. This is a list where people are used to driving home a point in very POV arguments, and not used to writing in Wikipedia style.
 * - I've been doing a lot of this work without knowing this project even exists! I'll be working on making Single Transferable Vote as perfect as I can, as a start.
 * 03:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC) - I'm an avid supporter of Democracy and wants to help in times of elections.
 * 18:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * - I want to help with some small stuff about the various options available to put on ballots that are not candidates such as RON and NOTA.
 * - I'v developed my very own voting method
 * - sick of 2-party systems, which plurality/FPTP/winner-takes-all has forced on the USA and the UK
 * - amateur mathematician, mostly interested in proportional representation
 * - I've written multiple articles and am interested in helping out!
 * - sick of 2-party systems, which plurality/FPTP/winner-takes-all has forced on the USA and the UK
 * - amateur mathematician, mostly interested in proportional representation
 * - I've written multiple articles and am interested in helping out!