Talk:2010 Venezuelan parliamentary election/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Infobox

The three images are different also expand the size of the box. They need to be scaled back like Swedish general election, 2010Lihaas (talk) 09:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I squeezed image size to 100px per image, so the box is now the same width as the Swedish one. I'd be interested in getting rid of the red borders the images have - I can't figure out where it comes from though. Rd232 talk 11:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Controversy section

The section title was reverted saying controversy implies something else. However the first sentence of the section shows it was a controversy. Probs need to reword it then, but it still seems that way.Lihaas (talk) 09:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

"the first sentence of the section shows it was a controversy" - well considering my edit summaries, that's really glossing the key point, isn't it? "Controversy" as a heading implies controversy about the article subject. The events mentioned are part of the election campaign, and the controversy is about those events, not the election. Rd232 talk 11:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Still, either we rephrase or subtitle. The page is definately good for an election thats not happened but it should be like some other election pages, like the UK, or Sweden (that im current working on), even Hungary was quite good.(Lihaas (talk) 19:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)).

Venezuela's problems

I've removed this lengthy addition of description of Venezuela's problems as it not necessary to duplicate the issues in such detail which are already covered in other articles. In addition there were substantial WP:SYNTHESIS (not showing that the details given had any relevance to election - with the exception of crime, which already covered in article as it relates directly to the election) and WP:NPOV issues. In addition, some parts of it duplicated existing content (on crime and 2005 elections), some woefully out of date (Colombia bit) and another (the new Keller poll) was better off incorporated in the table of polls, which I've now done. Rd232 talk 17:03, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

To Rd232 - thanks for your explanation. However, I am still a bit confused why you saw fit to delete everything. First off, everything was factually correct and cited as such. Second, it seems reasonable that any page documenting an entire election should have at least some information about the pertinent issues that Venezuelans are basing their votes on. Private property is a HUGE issue in Venezuela right now. I am happy to link to the much lengthier articles on the topic should users want to read further, but I don't see why a quick paragraph about it shouldn't be in there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.208.56.114 (talk) 15:22, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Please do not undo my edits. They are all factually correct and backed up by citations. Again, unless you can prove that they are incorrect, please stop undoing them. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajones7887 (talk • contribs) 18:50, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

To JRSP, I do not understand why you think the information I posted is not relevant. First, everything is factual and cited. Second, the issues section has a direct correlation to the election. These are the issues that Venezuelans are basing their votes on. Candidates are basing their entire platform on these. Please do not erase them again. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajones7887 (talk • contribs) 21:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I never cited relevancy as a reason, please read the WP:NOR policy, particularly the WP:SYN section. JRSP (talk) 21:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
The primary concerns are WP:SYNTHESIS and WP:NPOV - as can be seen from attempts from several people to start fixing the multitudinous problems in both areas. Most fundamentally, you're trying to impose your view of what the election issues are on to this page (WP:SYN). Whilst it isn't unreasonable to suppose that every problem Venezuela has is an election issue to some degree somewhere in Venezuela, supposition isn't enough (WP:SYN), and in any case even a neutral listing of every problem Venezuela has is not what this type of page is for. Compare with election articles such as United Kingdom general election, 2010, and see how that is handled - it does not include a laundry list of everything wrong with the UK, or everything the 13-year Labour government had done which somebody disagreed with. Compare also with the Events section, where the issues mentioned (crime, and Franklin Brito's hunger strike) are clearly linked by the sources with the election campaign. Rd232 talk 11:05, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Please don't try to edit war your content into the article. If after reading the policies referred to you still don't get the issue, at least try breaking the content into parts - take the part you wish to include which you think is the most justifiably included, and make a case for it here. Rd232 talk 07:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

[1] ties the economy and crime issues to the election.

  • In recent months, Mr. Chávez's popularity has been eroded by recession, a wave of violent crime and the hemisphere's highest inflation, running at 30% in the 12 months ended in August. The president also has had to deal with electricity blackouts and food shortages, amid a scandal in which thousands of tons of food purchased by the government rotted while awaiting distribution.

Other details not covered here:

  • The president has unlimited access to televised media, abundant campaign funds, and election officials that the opposition say are pro-Chávez. A gerrymandered electoral map favors rural districts where he is popular.
  • "What is at stake on September 26 is that I believe we will choose between a Cuban-style Communism that we are being led to, or a Venezuelan-style Democracy," a leading opposition candidate, Maria Corina Machado, said on a broadcast on a government channel last week shortly before the station's signal went temporarily dead.

Yes I think WSJ is biased. I think Wikipedia should cover both sides. Thundermaker (talk) 18:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Re this revert, I agree that a lot of it is poorly sourced, and too much detail here, but there are key points affecting the election which are still missing and which are covered in some of the reliable sources in that edit and in many others (see those I already listed in Further reading): notably crime, corruption and the economy. Thundermaker four days ago pointed out the same POV I saw when I first came to this article this morning, and some of it has still not been corrected or balanced (what is there now is mostly sourced to the partisan Venezuelanalysis.com, and does not give due weight to mainstream reliable sources, particularly wrt crime, corruption, economy, gerrymandering, and abuse of the Constitution and campaign laws). The article is still unbalanced, albeit slowly improving. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Neutralize

Please NPOV this article by including mention of the gerrymandering, Chavez's decline in popularity, and the significance of the results, and decreasing the reliance on a partisan source (Venezuelanalysis.com) while increasing mainstream neutral reliable sources. See NYT, Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, BBC, The Washington Post, Associated Press, The Guardian and many others. I have not tagged the article POV, in spite of the failure to adequately cover the gerrymandering and the overreliance on a partisan source, and because the results are recent, I will wait a while before tagging the article to allow time for an update. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Additional POV

This text is also POV, failing to cover numerous reliably-sourced mentions of abuse and violations of campaign laws by the state. I haven't tagged the article POV, although it is, and will allow time for the article to be neutralized. I've added sources to the Further reading section so the article can be neutralized. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

  • The CNE monitors political advertisements during the campaign, and reported that for a 3-day period at the end of August, opposition ads made up 60% of the airtime given to such ads, across the five main channels Venevisión, Televen, Globovisión, Tves and Venezolana de Televisión.[1] Over half the total opposition ad time of around 80 minutes was on Globovisión.[1] President Hugo Chavez' weekly television program Aló Presidente is suspended during the election campaign (which officially began 25 August, one month before the election), until 3 October.[2]

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Unbalanced

The entire "Events" section is unbalanced towards gov't view-- please balance, and reduce reliance on partisan Venezuelanalysis.com. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:37, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Plagiarism

I have commented out plagiarism, pending someone rephrasing.

Text added

Iván Simonovis, one of nine police officials serving time for participating in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt.

Source wording

Iván Simonovis, one of nine police officials convicted and now serving time for their part in the short-lived Apr. 11, 2002 coup that deposed Chávez for two days.

Please check throughout (and why is this text relevant, anyway?). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:12, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Gimme a break. The reason it looks so similar is because that source was the only one that mentioned the guy, and that was all the info it gave. So in using that info, in my own words, it ended up similar because of WP:V (bearing in mind that close paraphrasing for the sake of it doesn't help). And how is it not relevant? IPS highlighted these candidates. Rd232 talk 16:02, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Then please balance the text by adding the many more significant candidates. He isn't. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:16, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Tagged

Due to reversions of well-cited text from mainstream reliable sources needed to balance the article (much more still needed), I have tagged the article POV.

  1. In this revert, Psychim62 labeled as "blatant bias" well cited text covered in many more sources.[2]
  2. In this revert, Psychim62 removed more well cited text.[3]
  3. In this revert, Psychim62 removed more very well cited text, labeling it "silliness".[4]

Further POV issues are outlined above; sources are included in the article and in Further reading, and the article overrelies on the government's verions of events, per the partisan Venezuelanalysis.com. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

In all fairness, your edits have been uniformly one-sided, and incredibly reflective of your own political perspective. Wikipedia is not the place for these. Start a blog or something. Nightw 17:56, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
In all fairness, it's a bit hard not to make one-sided edits when the other side is already in the article, hmmmmm ?? How does one neutralize POV without adding the missing info? If the personalization of issues here is reflective of ITN, it doesn't speak well for the process, or for your understanding of WP:V or WP:DUE. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:05, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I've reverted a couple of Physhim's edits and added further sources to backup the claims from "left wing" media sources (Xinhua and the Guardian). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
After this little ITN edit war, I can't tell if all of my text was restored, so I've left sources alphabetized in Further reading for incorporation, since this article is still POV. The reader can decide, but this personalization at ITN was most unbecoming. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:31, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) SandyGeorgia, in her comments at WR:ITN and WP:ITN/C, is obviously trying to get her PoV about this election (possibly also about Hugo Chávez) pushed onto the Main Page. Other editors at ITN/C have read the article without Sandy's additions, and deemed it sufficiently neutral. The additions that I removed were simple media comment containing no additional facts: they singularly failed to provide any comparison for the difference in "voter weight" between different electoral districts. Hopefully we can have some stats for the electoral roll in each district so that the readers can decide for themselves: we already mention that the PSUV gained a majority of seats with a minority of votes, but this is nothing unusual (remember Florida 2000?). I shall continue to treat Sandy's "contributions" to this article as I would those of any other potential PoV-vandal. Physchim62 (talk) 18:36, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
No need for bringing your continued sour grapes about FAC into ITN and personalizing issues, Psychim; in fact, other ITN editors reverted you and the article is now at least presentable, although still skewed to partisan sources. Please stop personalizing issues based on your dislike of FAC; surely you've been around long enough not to need a WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA warning. You have reverted very well sourced text-- it has now been mostly restored. The article is still unbalanced, but we'll see how it comes out of mainpage. Reliable sources are listed in Further reading, since you won't allow their inclusion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) With respect I don't think you're being fair. Sandy's edits looked fine to me (and we certainly haven't always seen eye-to-eye) - while the Washington Times isn't particularly reliable there are other more reliable sources saying the same thing. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
With Psychim's removal of reliably sourced text, I lost track of how far I got at incorporating sources and balancing, what was removed, and what remains to be done, but to avoid edit warring, I'll leave further cleanup til after ITN. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:51, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Why don't you just WP:DISGAGE? Physchim62 (talk) 18:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) How can a sentence in the lead starting "As of 27 September, results showed a setback for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez" be considered NPoV? We should let readers decide if it is a setback or not. "Media controlled by the government "[gave] blanket coverage to the PSUV’s campaign and token, hostile interviews to opposition candidates." Who said that? Where is the lead discussion that the opposition parties boycotted the previous elections, thereby artificially increasing the PSOV majority in the outgoing National Assembly? Sandy is trying to push an anti-Chávez PoV down readers throats, instead of discussing the election. I am trying to add data to the article, but I am having my time wasted trying to respond to blatant editorial bias by an editor who should frankly know better. Physchim62 (talk) 18:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Your personal attacks are out of line (again). "Sandy" was trying to ready the article for mainpage, and would have had more time to polish text and continue work if you hadn't started an edit war. Since you did, I can no longer edit, or I'll be part of your disruption, so I can't repair any text now on the page. Stop the personal attacks and work on your AGF. I believe this is about the sixth request for you stop personalizing issues, and engage Wiki policies of WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA and WP:AGF. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:00, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Confused

"More than 66 percent of Venezuela’s 17 million registered voters cast ballots. That compares with 61 percent in 2007 and 70 percent in another referendum to lift presidential term limits in 2009." And it's already mentioned in the second sentence of the Results section. Rd232 talk 17:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, thanks! Pushing to complete article before ITN. I missed that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:12, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Query irrelevant

Why is this irrelevant? Past elections have been riddled with irregularities, and some observers refused to participate-- broad independent observation is relevant. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

FYI, I think you're way beyond WP:3RR, Physchim. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Give me stats and I'll self-revert: any neutral admin will see who is driving the dispute instead of disengaging. Physchim62 (talk) 01:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Could you please answer the question; why is that text irrelevant in your opinion? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Hold on, are you serious here? The sentence lists various intergovernmental bodies that are known to regularly send election monitors, from all shades of personal political opinion, and all well trained to keep their neutrality, and then mentions a single political party from a foriegn country, a party known for its opposition to Chávez, invited by only one of the sides, and you pretend that the two sets of observers should be treated the same way. Maybe you should remember that Venezuela gained its independence from Spain almost 200 years ago. Physchim62 (talk) 02:05, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I didn't pretend anything; I asked you a question. I'd like to know how you relate the relevance of that text to past irregularities and concern about observers in Venezuelan elections. There are reasons outside observers are requested, "various [well trained] intergovernmental bodies" have refused to attend in the past, and you seem to have deleted today a lot of reliably sourced text without explanation or discussion. You might make more progress if you turned down the heat. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

PSUV and PCV vote totals

are vote totals for the PSUV and all its allies (PCV, CMR, etc) being lumped together or have they yet to be counted in light of delayed election result returns? also is it known if any of these parties has gained seats independently of the PSUV? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.176.15.219 (talk) 07:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Original research and synthesis

  • In mid-August 2010 El Nacional sparked an international outcry when its frontpage publication of a graphic archival photo of bodies in a morgue, to illustrate a story about rising crime rates, led the government to temporarily ban such publications.[3] The ban was later overturned.[4] El Nacional editor and proprietor Miguel Henrique Otero, leader of the opposition movement Movimiento 2D, said that "The editorial reasoning behind the photo was to create a shock so that people could in some way react to a situation that the government has done absolutely nothing about."[5] The incident brought further international attention to the issue of Venezuela's crime rates (having already received widespread attention as a leading issue of public concern[6]), and was followed by a New York Times article claiming Venezuela's murder rate was higher than that of Iraq,[7] although the comparison used Iraq Body Count's numbers derived from media reports rather than the World Health Organization's survey-based estimates, which are three times higher. The article mentioned the recent creation of the Bolivarian National Police, and Experimental Security University, but omitted the government's claim that as a result of these and other measures, Venezuela's homicide rate had fallen 18% in three months in the first half of 2010.[8] A September 2010 poll conducted by Alfredo Keller & Associates confirmed that crime was the top concern for Venezuelans heading into the September 26 parliamentary elections,[9] as it had been for some time.

Several instances of synthesis, uncited text, and no relevance established to this article for a good portion of the text. On the other hand, the numerous mentions of the importance of crime, corruption, the economy, and Chavez's declining popularity that are covered by all reliable sources are not found in the article. What reliable source establishes the El Nacional photo as relevant to this article, and why isn't the crime issue more generally discussed (see all mainstream reliable sources)? Why is the partisan Venezuelanalysis.com the only source used here? Sources are strung together in synthesis to draw a conclusion, while the fact that Chavez lost at the polls due to escalating crime and corruption and a declining economy is not covered here. Where does "... although the comparison used Iraq Body Count's numbers derived from media reports rather than the World Health Organization's survey-based estimates, which are three times higher" come from? And why is an election article being used to coatrack Venezuelanalysis.com vs. The New York Times in issues unrelated to this article? Synthesis, OR, lack of balance still present here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Where does "... as it had been for some time" come from (uncited OR)? To my knowledge, prior to the Chavez administration, crime had never been a major factor in elections (although like the Chavez regime, corruption and the economy had). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:31, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
How do you get "before Chavez" from that sentence? It's clearly "before the Sep 2010 election". Rd232 talk 13:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
It's not clearly anything because 1) it's uncited, and 2) it fails WP:MOSDATE#Precise language. I don't know what it means, but for now, it's OR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh gimme break. The meaning is clear, and the claim made uncontroversial to anyone familiar with Venezuela: crime has been an issue for a decade or more. And I have to say this is another example of your nitpicking wasting everyone's time. You could have easily sourced it in the time taken to complain about the wording of an uncited but basic and uncontroversial fact. Rd232 talk 13:26, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

M2D and more synthesis, lack of balance

And many others as well. Why is this text here (and then repeated again in the very next section)? Where is a reliable source connecting this text to this rticle? Why aren't all supporters of the MUD mentioned? This information is already in the M2D article; why is it repeated twice here, while others are left out, both wrt Chavez and the opposition? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:39, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

It's relevant to both sections. Your apparent implication that other things were left out deliberately would be an WP:AGF failure. Rd232 talk 12:38, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Could you please point to where I implied anything deliberate? Please delete or balance, as we are unfortunately running a POV article on the main page. There were numerous one-sided deletions yesterday, and yet no critical analysis of most of the text, so the article is still POV. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The repetition of "why" gives that impression, together with the heading. Again, if you want to add stuff, add stuff. Rd232 talk 14:11, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Original research, uncited

Uncited, original research, incomplete, and unbalanced. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:42, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

None of the above is true (well OK, it's not cited here). Sources and details are in the linked article Venezuelan parliamentary election, 2005. Rd232 talk 12:28, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Please bring a balanced citation over to this article, telling all sides, since all of the other Ven/Chavez articles are incomplete and POV, and this article needs to stand on its own and tell the full story, to avoid POV. We have an uncited statement here that has problems, and we can't rely on other articles to sort that for the reader, particularly when the entire suite of articles is POV. Ven stories are never straightforward, and if it's mentioned here at all, it needs to be 1) cited, and 2) balanced. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Polls

  • Opinion polls vary widely, but the government-aligned GIS XXI (directed by former Chavez interior minister Jesse Chacón) consistently gives poll predictions more favourable to PSUV than other pollsters. GIS XXI's predictions for the February 2009 constitutional referendum just before polling day tallied closely with those of the independent Instituto Venezolano de Análisis de Datos (IVAD),[35] and both closely matched the outcome (a nearly 10 percent margin of victory for approval); opposition-linked companies were predicting heavy defeat as late as December 2008.[35]

Why is text unrelated to this election even here? It is clear which polls were correct-- why are we comparing incorrect polls for this election to past elections? With a marginal source, no less (Counterpunch). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

This was an analysis of polling accuracy, using the previous national vote as a reference. It's relevant because polling figures in Venezuela vary so very dramatically. Rd232 talk 12:32, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
What is the point of doing OR on poll accuracy of past elections in this article? It's clear which poll was correct anyway. This looks like a past attempt in this article to convince readers that Chavez had a large majority. Now that the voters have spoken, the text looks rather silly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
WP:OR? What are you talking about? Comparing two figures is not OR. And I don't know where you're coming from with the rest of your insinuations, or your claim that it now looks silly, or how you can claim it's now clear which poll was correct (still no final popular vote totals). Ease off the accelerator, Sandy. Rd232 talk 12:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Synthesis to imply certain polls in this election may be more valid (and they weren't anyway, so we do we need this text in this article, as it's unrelated to this election?) Please don't start personalizing-- I thought we saw enough of that yesterday. We have a mess of an article on the mainpage, so why shouldn't we address these issues as they are pointed out? Further, since it is unlikely we will ever see correct popular vote totals, and if we do they will be the subject of much controversy, the text becomes even more speculative. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
You're right, it's on the main page - so prioritise what you want to improve. This section is fine, it sticks to the facts, and your speculation about the conclusions being proven wrong is unhelpful (and with the lack of very recent polls, it's not quite clear anyway what they are). That said, post-election it's probably in need of revision, maybe with updated analysis about polling accuracy for this election. But, y'know, it's fine for now. Rd232 talk 13:22, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Electoral reform

An editor wishes to have some discussion about the redistricting in Venezuela last year, but I fear that the current section is irretrievable. One of the references does not support the claim it is attached to, merely saying that the redistricting was "controversial". The main claim comes from Business Week, which says that "The changes mean that 20,000 people in pro-Chavez Amazonas state elected a single lawmaker, giving them the same representation as 350,000 people in the opposition-controlled capital of Caracas." Now the population of Amazonas is 142,200 (2007 est.), and it elects three representatives (according to the Consejo Nacional Electoral). The Venezuelan Capital District has a population of 2,097,400 (2009), and elects ten representatives. Now that's a fairly big disparity, although one that is not uncommon when comparing extremes of electoral districts in other countries. What is interesting is that Business Week's figures are obviously wrong: there are about 200,000 people (including children) per representative in Caracas and 47,000 people (including children) per representative in Amazonas, a ratio of just over four-to-one. When an otherwise-reliable source is obviously wrong by simple arithmatic, it is not only acceptable but also necessary to remove it, especially when it is promoting one particular interpretation at the expense of others. Physchim62 (talk) 19:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

In which case why not go for something along the lines of what the Guardian say: "The opposition said it had won 52% of the popular vote but that controversial changes in electoral rules favouring rural areas, where Chávez is popular, meant that support failed to translate into proportional seats." -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
The fact that the opposition won a majority of the popular vote is a no-brainer to be included, and even emphasized. I'm hoping that the Consejo Nacional Electoral will give us some figures for the electoral roll in the single-member districts (the full electoral roll is publically available, but it's a bit long to work through when the figures must be available somewhere else). But we shouldn't forget that any electoral system with fixed district boundaries will fail produce a proportional result: this is nothing special about Venezuela, and shouldn't be given WP:UNDUE weight to suggest that it is. Physchim62 (talk) 20:38, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I've just realized that I forgot to include the other problem with the Business Week comment about "20,000 people in pro-Chavez Amazonas state [having] the same representation as 350,000 people in the opposition-controlled capital of Caracas": the opposition controls the governorship of Caracas, but the PSUV won seven out of the ten National Assembly seats. Again, it is nothing unusual to have different parties taking the votes in local and national elections. Physchim62 (talk) 20:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

There are some problems with the Guardian quote. First, the 52% figure is an unverified claim by a spokesman of the opposition and second, it is not clear what he means by "popular vote". More probably, he referred to the party list vote, Venezuelan system is mixed with 2/3 of the seats being elected on a first-pass-the-post system and 1/3 by party list and these votes are independent, an elector can vote in their district for the candidate of one party and choose the list of the other party, list candidates are not the same people than district candidates. Assuming that he referred to party list vote his figure in not consistent with CNE partial results. The information in Business Week is not correct, Amazonas State has 3 representatives (2 nominal, 1 list) while Capital District has 10 (7 nominal, 3 list). JRSP (talk) 20:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Despite having looked into it this evening and found some info, I still haven't really got a handle on what the electoral reform (LOPE) really entailed. It changed the proportion of list and single-seat districts, but it seems this wasn't uniform across states. I suspect some population-based formula explains it but I don't see it. And what exactly happened in terms of redistricting? How was the balance changed toward rural states? Anyone? Rd232 talk 22:07, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know the answer for Venezuela, but what usually happens is that you have a rule that says there is a minimum number of seats per administrative unit (in this case, a state) and then additional seats per population (again with a minimum of one additional seat). This is very roughly the system in Spain, and causes a bias towards rural districts. The same thing happens anytime you give a fixed number of seats to an administrative reagion regardless of its population – the more populated regions will always lose out. In many cases, the asymmetry of votes is considered worthwhile to give distinct populations a say in parliament that they otherwise wouldn't have: for example, Na h-Eileanan an Iar (UK Parliament constituency), better known to English speakers as the Western Isles, has an electorate of about 20,000, less than a quarter of the average for a UK Parliament seat; the situations of Wallis and Futuna and Saint Pierre et Miquelon in France are even more extreme.
I've now found the details of the Venezuelan 2010 constituencies here, so I'll try to do a more accurate analysis than the one above. Physchim62 (talk) 22:27, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Please try to avoid original research and synthesis based on primary sources, which seems to be the way this is headed; we have plenty of reliable sources without doing original research. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
And please try to avoid cherry-picking your sources, and placing references which don't substantiate your claims, as you have already been shown to do. You would be better off simply disengaging, to be quite honest, you've wasted enough of everybody's time already. Physchim62 (talk) 22:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
The neutrality I added to the POV article I found this morning seems to still be there. Physchim, you really need to stop personalizing issues here. It's becoming old hat. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:45, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Unlike yourself, I prefer discussion over arrogance. Unlike yourself, I am trying to avoid an edit war by raising issues on the talk page. You are being disruptive of valid discussion, so please stop. Physchim62 (talk) 23:03, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I still don't have the details of where it happened, but the result is quite clear: the number of party list seats was cut, while retaining a minimum of two party list seats per state. So any state with less than 2 million in population got two party list seats, and the four states with more than 2 million in population got three party list seats. As there are 25 "states" (including two "special areas") in Venezuela, that's quite a skew to the countryside, even if the uninominal seats (2⁄3 of the total) are much more evenly distributed. Physchim62 (talk) 23:03, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
No, Amazonas State has only one party-list seat. JRSP (talk) 00:06, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The Consejo Nacional Electoral link here says it has two party-list seats. There's no point in having a party list for a single member seat, it is the same as first-past-the-post. Physchim62 (talk) 00:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, you're right. The 2/3 1/3 rule does not hold here. Same thing happens in other States with low population like Apure, Cojedes, Delta Amacuro, Nueva Esparta and Vargas; on the other hand high population States (Zulia, Carabobo, Miranda, Distrito Capital) have less than 1/3. Perhaps there is some population-based round-up rule. JRSP (talk) 00:48, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The result is simple: states with more than 2&million population get three party-list seats, states with fewer than 2 million inhabitants (such as Lara, 1.90 million) get two such seats. Physchim62 (talk) 01:06, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps if y'all keep at it long enough, it will become clear to you just why reliable sources use the term "gerrymandering". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
And if you keep it up long enough, you will be topic banned. Physchim62 (talk) 01:03, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Although "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth", it is helpful to find original research supports what was reported by so many reliable sources: gerrymandering. That was entirely missing from this article until a few hours ago. Now, there are other pieces of OR in the article that need attention; stop the threats, Physchim-- you've no basis for such statements. I don't think our readers would have been served by putting the POV article that this page was this morning on the main page-- at least it's slightly better now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:16, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, you've been fighting across multiple fora to say that this article was PoV (instead of engaging on the talk page); you have added statements that were both demonstrably false (without resorting to WP:OR) and also not supported by the citations you attached to them. After having attacked the use of official statistics as "primary sources", you then went on to defend the inclusion of Chávez' tweets. I have repeatedly asked you to WP:DISENGAGE from the discussion, and yet you seem unable, despite your long experience on Wikipedia, to let people explain things among themselves when you wish your opinion to prevail. Physchim62 (talk) 01:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Please see WP:OWN and WP:CIVIL, refrain from personalization and unfounded charges, and stick to discussing the article, its (still) POV state, and sources. Back on topic; could someone please source the numbers in the infobox? Also, a recent change made the size of the box take over the page; reducing the images in the box from 100px to 75px might help that. Since the article is on the main page, it would be good to be able to see the text in the lead, instead of having it dominated by an oversized infobox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:48, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The semi-proportional distribution (3 seats per state, 3 for indigenous representatives, ~91 (depending on rounding result) proportional according to population) did not change; it is in the constitution since 1999. What changed is the electoral system within the states. It used to be an MMP system that did not function as an MMP system because parties split for the personal (60%) and list (40%) part (see EU EOM 2005 report, section 4.4), so in practice it was a parallel voting system as it is now.

The list part consists now of 2 seats (not really a PR system with that little seats) for most states and 3 seats for the 4 states with more than 9 total seats. I.e. the list part is less than before for most states (particulary the large ones), but grew for the smallest state (Amazonas). It depends on the result which side profits from the change. If the PSUV had a better result, it would have secured a 2/3 majority, but with the actual ~50:50 popular vote the opposition is better off in states like Zulia. If the opposition had some more votes, the majority would more rapidly reverse than with the old election system. The new system behaves simply more as FFTP than the old one.

There is no clear indication for gerrymandering within the states. Some constituencies are advantageous for the PSUV, but others favour the opposition, particulary in Barinas.

The figures for representation in many news sources seem to refer to the list part of the election system only, but that is meaningless because the list part has very different proportions to the total seats per state (2/3 in Amazonas, 1/5 in Zulia). The number of seats per population differs by a ratio of 5:1 between Amazonas and Zulia, but it did since 1999 by design of the constitution. --84.151.28.196 (talk) 19:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

"by design of the constitution" - where? Which Article? Or else a secondary ref? Thanks. Rd232 talk 09:22, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Article 186. The number of seats per state (combining party list seats and FPTP seats) has barely changed between 2005 and 2010; the difference is that there are now more FPTP seats and fewer party list seats. It's not clear that this necessarily favours one side over the other, although it obviously favours the party that wins the largest plurality of votes (as do all FPTP systems). Physchim62 (talk) 12:18, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Page improvement

To make reading/navigation take a look at Sweden general election, 2010 (particularly the result section) where "analysis" enhanves the page, and more importantly the results show the change from last election.Lihaas (talk) 23:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Physchim62 decided this page wouldn't have an Analysis section, which had barely been started.[5] It seems he doesn't like the fact that Chavez is one of the world's leading Twitterers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:54, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I didn't "decide" that the page wouldn't have an analysis section at all: I judged that the the "analysis" section that had been written was so ridden by PoV and RS problems that it would be better to start again from scratch, preferably once we had have a full set of sources and so are not just parroting what our readers can obtain from their usual news channels. The idea that Chávez' tweets are somehow notable but that adding up figures from the official election results is WP:OR is, in my mind, despicable: it only goes to show the low level of esteem that the editor has for any kind of encyclopedic writing. Physchim62 (talk) 00:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
On the other hand, if you hadn't started deleting and editwarring, others might have had time to finish their work, and if you read the sources, you'll find that Chavez hasn't really responded yet other than Twitter (and he is quite the proud Twitterer). Some of us have a high level of esteem for reliable sources and collaborative editing over editwarring, but now, we have no Analysis section, when it had barely gotten started. Please try to work on your WP:AGF, Physchim. BTW, since you're concerned about OR, there's still quite a bit of it in the article, but since editwarring took hold here, I won't be addressing it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
At least you've learnt to spell my username, Sandy. Physchim62 (talk) 00:41, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
On to more important matters: the issue of the abuse of the New Constitution with violation of campaign laws remains unaddressed in the article, as is the due weight according to reliable sources of the impact of these results, which happened in spite of gerrymandering and abuse of campaign laws. A better analysis of turnout is also needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:22, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
We still have no Analysis section, but we do have Twitter still. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

To answer Lihaas' original point, the last elections were boycotted by the opposition, but only one day before they were due to take place. Since then, Chávez lost the Venezuelan constitutional referendum, 2007. There are discussions above as to the nature of what some people have called "gerrymandering". What should we compare things to? If there is to be an analysis, it should be a calm analysis once the results are in, not the hysterical parroting of the U.S. media that my interlocutor seems to prefer. Anyone can go to Google News and find what the world's media are saying about the election: Wikipedia should provide the background to understand that, as far as we can with our limited resources. At the moment, we cannot confirm the claim that the opposition won more votes than Chávez, although it seems very likely. It is not the business of Wikipedia to redistribute "factoids": it is our strength that we can say "hold on" once in a while when we realize that certain information that is circulating is not as clear as it might be. All of this requires intelligence and judgement, and fortunately we have a lot of that (although it's obviously not universal, no more on Wikipedia than in real life). Physchim62 (talk) 00:41, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The boycott decision should be mentioned too and the change thereof perhaps in "background" at the beginning, then in the results table (as per other electoral pages) a comparision of changes to how many seats were held last time. Sure if one didnt take part than its all gain, for the others it would be a loss. It doesnt matter if they didnt take part last time.
As for the analysis section, improvement is not a reason for deletion. A tag on the section to indicate its under discussion would draw readers who could them improve it. If someone feels there are issues, then they are perfectly free to be WP:Bold and change it until WP:BRD. Analysis need be cited to WP:RS, not the judgement of wikipedia editors. Lihaas (talk) 15:17, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

We now have vote totals?

I see that popular vote totals have been put in. What is the source for that? Most of the sources I've consulted thus far are all saying that vote totals have not been released. Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:48, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The infobox is unsourced (and huge-- reducing the size of the images to 75px would help). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
That might give you some practice in editing articles, heh Sandy? Instead of just criticizing and obstructing. Go for it, editing is fun! Physchim62 (talk) 01:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it would be if we could all violate 3RR equally ... I did my editing before the reverts started. Now, please stay on topic and stop personalizing issues and disrupting productive discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:00, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
El Universal appears to be quoting the same vote totals, but I'm not sure where they got them from either. The CNE page is more or less useless for results. Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:05, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The CNE seems to have results pages that we can use... it might take a bit of time ;) Physchim62 (talk) 02:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, probably a whole lot of time. We may have to make a decision about whether we're going to use El Universal's figures in the meantime. As far as I can figure out, the reporting of the figures is from that newspaper alone at this point. Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Zachary, do you read Spanish? If not, I (or one of us) could translate what El Universal claims is the basis for those numbers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Have a look at the link I just put in for El Universal above. That's the article I'm basing this on - the article says that they got this from the vote list for the states, but doesn't identify where this vote list is to be found. All I could find on the CNE site was an incomplete listing for how the single-seat districts voted, so I'm presuming they don't mean they got the info from there. It's possible they're not quoting the CNE at all. That's why this is so confusing. Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:28, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The CNE is almost always confusing. I would be in favor of using the EU source and quoting them, while noting where they say they got their numbers from and that no official count has been released yet. I can translate if needed. Please ping me at my talk if I'm needed and not replying; I'm not watching WP too closely at the moment (sorry!). Awickert (talk) 02:32, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
CNE (government-controlled) will be confusing when the results aren't the desired ones -- they may be very slow in coming. In the meantime, we should at least add a source for that info, and we should attribute it to EU. If you need help translating, just ask. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Translation's not the issue, the issue is whether the "vote list" totals come from the opposition or from an official source. At this point, the best I could do would be to cite El Universal because I really don't know why they think these are the official figures. The paper may be trustworthy, but they don't cite the official source for the data, so these could be challenged as the real figures. Anyway, I'll go ahead and cite the source. Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:43, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! This looks much better on my screen, but I'm pretty sure that XXxXX is deprecated on Wiki, and it should just be 70px. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it was a temporary expedient. I don't know how they normally do this so the logos look right. Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Infobox looks very good now; thanks for your work! Awickert (talk) 04:08, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I see no rush to add the popular votes numbers. Let's wait for the official announcements. The fact that the Opposition says that it took the 52% does not mean that they are necessarily trustworthy.--Yannismarou (talk) 09:12, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Chavez claims victory in the popular vote

BBC Radio is now reporting that Chavez's party is claiming a narrow plurality of the popular vote, according to official totals (and contrary to the opposition party's claims). I see the Al Jazeera is also reporting this, and I wonder if we might be advised to change our article page accordingly (especially as the current version makes the opposition's claim seem "official"). CJCurrie (talk) 07:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the popular vote totals on the article page. There are currently two competing sets of figures, neither of which is official. I think the only sensible course of action is to refrain from presenting either as unbiased fact (although we can certainly reference the rival claims elsewhere in the article). CJCurrie (talk) 07:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
This is pretty suspicious. Are there any reports from election observers on the behaviour of the CNE in counting votes? It's odd that the only vote totals left uncounted are ones that the opposition suspects they led, and that the CNE can release popular vote totals for the Latin American Parliament, but not for the National Assembly. Zachary Klaas (talk) 15:26, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The international observers have submitted their reports to the CNE today [6]. No news (yet) of any serious problems, although I've heard more positive comments from election observers than those quoted here. The CNE is saying that some of the results are very close, which I guess is meant to be an explanation for the delays. Physchim62 (talk) 16:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Balance on hunger strike

  • At the end of August the death of Franklin Brito due to a hunger strike led to widespread domestic and international media coverage. He had since 2004 launched a series of unsuccessful legal challenges and dramatic public protests (including a series of hunger strikes) against an alleged government confiscation of part of his farm. The government maintained that his protests related to land legally owned by his neighbours, and that his final hunger strike came after the disputed land titles had been withdrawn from his neighbours. The government accused the Venezuelan opposition of acting like "vultures" and desiring Brito's death for their own political ends in the context of the coming election.[34]

Relevance? Synthesis? The entire off-topic story is presented only so it can conclude with on claim about the Opposition, while significant election issues are covered nowhere in the article? And why does the Events section contain nothing whatsoever for balance, failing to mention any issues from the opposition? There are a plethora of reliable sources listed in the Further reading section of the article, yet we consistenly find only one story here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

What are you talking about? It's essentially the lead of Franklin Brito, with the government point clarifying the link with the election. It was clearly a major event, with massive national and international coverage, and it happened during the election campaign, and was used by the opposition as a political weapon. Rd232 talk 12:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Lots of things "happened during the election campaign" and aren't reported here. Please provide sources for this article indicating this item is due weight here (not in his article), and then if this is left, please balance it with issues of much more substance that are clearly highlighted by all mainstream reliable sources. This text looks like a long stretch to try to smear the opposition, and I've seen no mainstream sources indicating it was a significant factor in the campaign, while the significant issues are still uncovered in this article. Honestly, I expect Wiki readers to be scratching their heads, trying to figure this article out-- a whole lot of synth-y coatracky OR, but nothing of the issues of substance in the election! In fact, the article still doesn't mention the magnitude of this defeat for Chavez (see numerous sources some listed in Further reading). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:41, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Then add the lots of things; Brito was a massive issue especially internationally and it would be bizarre not to cover it. And the magnitude of the defeat is vastly exaggerated. The relevant election to compare with is obviously not Venezuelan parliamentary election, 2005 (boycotted) but Venezuelan parliamentary election, 2000. Oh, what's that, MVR on 44%? And in 2010 PSUV on about 50. Hm. Rd232 talk 13:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
For a massive international issue with respect to this article (the elections), it's strangely missing from all mainstream reliable sources. Could you please provide some sources so we can establish the due weight of an entire paragraph devoted to "something that happened during the election", while the article doesn't even yet cover issues that are mentioned by all mainstream reliable sources? Re "the magnitude of the defeat", please let reliable sources speak to that-- they have, Wiki hasn't. The significance is loss of supermajority, and what will happen next as Chavez seeks other ways to consolidate the power lost-- pls read reliable sources, and avoid talkpage speculation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
"it's strangely missing from all mainstream reliable sources" - Franklin Brito and also news.google.com. See also WP:IMPERFECT - stop complaining and start adding. Sure, the supermajority is significant, but PSUV only had it because of the boycott, so claiming its loss proves anything politically is wrong regardless of how much mainstream sources parrot the claim. Rd232 talk 13:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I think that it is the right of Sandy and of any other editor to criticize an article, or a part of it, without wanting necessarly to edit it. I honestly do not understand your repetitive insistence on "adding stuff"! This is irrelevant! The issue is whether we have a problematic paragraph here or not? And my conclusion is, yes! We do have! The paragraph is problematice and unbalanced in favor of the one side. It is a paragraph about the death of a man, but the balance suddenly shifts to what the government says, while, at the same time, the reader has already forgot the fact that a human life was lost. Only half sentence on the arguments of Brito ("an alleged government confiscation of part of his farm"). And then two long sentences (half the paragraph) about what the government argued! And nothing about what the opposition said or responded to the government! Well, in my opinion, there is clearly a problem here!--Yannismarou (talk) 15:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

"Two highest vote-getters nationwide"

Shocking. A 28 Sep LAT source not yet incorporated... on 28 Sep. Rd232 talk 12:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Goodness, I thought talk pages had a use 'round here :) Rd, there is no need for sarcasm; I've added it so that others can incorporate it over the day. Stay on topic, pls; sarcasm isn't helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:46, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
My goodness indeed. I've lost count how many sections on this page you've started complaining about various issues... Was there really no complaint element to this one, even though you've previously asked why Ivan Simonovis was highlighted as an opposition candidate, and previously used the EL section for new sources to be used? Never mind then. Rd232 talk 13:40, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
In between planes, and I see my suggestions before I headed to the airport have been met with bullheadedness. Are all editors expected to edit 24/7, or are talk pages the place to lodge suggestions so others can work on them? I must be on the wrong Wiki !!! Goodness indeed, indeed, Rd-- why the huff? I'll check when I land later tonight to see if anything has been acted on, or if the article remains POV-- none of this was very hard, all all of the sources are available. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:00, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
If you're editing on the run I'll excuse you not grasping my explanation above, which incidentally was not "huff"y. Rd232 talk 20:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, I'm editing on the floor-- the only place I can find a plug. If I'm understanding your point, Ivan Simonovis was not mentioned to the extent Machado is in mainstream reliable sources relative to this election (I think that's what you're implying). Anyway, two very prominent opposition candidates, both of whom were persecuted by Chavez were the highest vote getters, and that hasn't been included yet, as far as I can tell. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:53, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Aha :) been there. No that wasn't my point. Look, of all the concurrent wastes of time on Wikipedia I've got going on, this is the least worth pursuing, since nothing's going to happen as a result of clearing up any remaining misunderstanding. Forget it. Rd232 talk 21:03, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Interim results table

I find this table also impossible to comprehend-- perhaps it's only me. Is there any way to make it more digestible? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

You are absolutely right! This was exactly my thought, when I saw the table. It is really complicated.--Yannismarou (talk) 14:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Some of the complication is reflecting the system: having both party lists and districts is bad enough, but then some of the districts have multiple legislative seats. I'm not great with tables - I'm sure it could be displayed more clearly. And perhaps the two PSUV columns could be merged in the same style as the others. Things would be slightly easier if we had the numbers for party lists by state. Rd232 talk 15:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I third the opinion, it seems only experts on Venezuelan politics can decipher it. See the section above about improvement.Lihaas (talk) 15:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
How about two separate tables, one for the "uninominal" seats, and the other for the party list seats? Physchim62 (talk) 16:36, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The two can fit in one table, but just needs a better layout/clarification.
The last 4 columns need to be broken down, and the first 3 can be decreased in size. With the totals in bold so as not to confuse them/Lihaas (talk) 17:12, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Now it is better.--Yannismarou (talk) 12:55, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

PSUV parliamentary seats

Is it 97 or 98 seats won by PSUV? The AlJazeera link on the article says 98... Which is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.242.135.226 (talk) 15:38, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

We don't know yet, there are still at least two seats to declare. Physchim62 (talk) 16:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
At the moment, it's 96 seats with one seat still to declare. Physchim62 (talk) 23:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Article review

I just went through and edited one section (results) and the article needs a copy edit and review for POV, clearly visible in the section i have now copy-edited. Even the table needs a cleanup(Lihaas (talk) 17:19, 28 September 2010 (UTC)).

Could you be more specific about the section you feel is PoV, and why you feel that way? Simply tagging an article in the way that you have done is immensely unhelpful. Physchim62 (talk) 18:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Pls review this talk page from the top for unfinished items needed for balance-- there are numerous sources in Further reading, yet this article is still incomplete and unbalanced. It's all detailed on the page already. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
TLDR, especially as most of it seems to be the tiresome PoV-pushing of a single editor. As it was Lihaas who placed the tab, I would be interested in knowing what his/her concerns are. Physchim62 (talk) 21:06, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Two-thirds or three-fifths for the "special decree" powers?

I've seen both figures. Is there a source that definitively says when the President might benefit from these powers, according to the written law in Venezuela (rather than the opinion of involved parties)? Zachary Klaas (talk) 18:38, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

This is important, as the PSUV is near the three-fifths of seats mark, but not near the two-thirds of seats mark. Zachary Klaas (talk) 18:39, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Three-fifths, according to article 203 of the Constitution of Venezuela (page 75 of this English translation, page 134 of this Spanish version). Physchim62 (talk) 19:09, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I can see why we're getting disparate reports. Three-fifths is the amount for the National Assembly to pass an enabling law to allow the President to do something beyond the scope of the Constitution. Two-thirds is the amount for the National Assembly to pass an organic law which changes the Constitution. Those are similar, but not the same. An enabling act doesn't permanently change the Constitution, but still gives the President the power to ignore the Assembly. An organic law permanently changes the Constitution. Thanks for the clarification. Zachary Klaas (talk) 19:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Correct (the sources already listed in Further reading anticipated something like this, which is likely why the tally is delayed ... perhaps a faster way to finish this article is to incorporate the reliable sources already listed). That Chavez will not cede control even if he loses is covered in the reliable sources and all over the news. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:19, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Please read WP:CRYSTAL, and let this article report what we actually know: "reliable sources" of what Chávez will do in the future are notoriously, erm, unreliable. Physchim62 (talk) 20:04, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Just a remark to Zachary comment, organic laws cannot change the constitution, they are just "high level" laws, in case of contradiction between an ordinary law and an organic one, the latter prevails but in case of contradiction with the constitution then this prevails. All mechanisms to change the constitution eventually need a popular referendum. JRSP (talk) 23:11, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Distinction understood, I think. Usually, organic laws are laws which are understood to implement the constitution as a functioning part of its fundamental framework. Constitutions often make reference to specific organic laws that will need to be passed in order to implement constitutional principles. It looks like organic law as the Spaniards understand that term may be similar to the way it is understood in Venezuela, as being intermediate between the constitution itself and an ordinary statute law. But thanks for making this clear. Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the description of organic laws in the Venezuelan constitution looks very similar to the system we have here in Spain. Physchim62 (talk) 00:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I am a bit confused! In my country (Greece), organic laws have the same legal status with all the other laws, and they are adopted with a simple or (in some cases) absolute majority. In any case, even if they are adopted with a special majority in some countries (like Venezuela here), they do nothing more but to analyze and specify the Constitution itself. They do not alter it. So, why are they so important for Chavez? Are we sure that this is actually the issue here? Unfortunately I did not have the time to read the consitution in its entirety (it is huge!), but the 2/3 majority needed for a consitutional reform looks more important to me than the organic laws majority. Although, again, a referendum is needed to finalize the reform, and, as a result, the powers of the 2/3 majority are not unlimited. Maybe, those speaking for "special decree powers" refer to certain specific organic law of particular importance, like the ones regulating the emergency (or exception) state? Or is there some other article(s) of the Constitution that I am missing?--Yannismarou (talk) 13:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
This discussion is perhaps a little too confusing - the basic point is that organic laws are "fundamental" to the state. They aren't mere laws, they're laws of constitutional importance, the laws which "organise" the state. It's not correct to say they "do nothing more but to analyze and specify the Constitution itself". They're part of the constitutional framework. Black's Law Dictionary defines the term as "The fundamental law, or constitution, of a state or nation, written or unwritten; that law or system of laws or principles which defines and establishes the organization of its government." 2/3 consent is required to pass an organic law in Venezuela because they understand that term there to mean the same as changing the fundamental structures of government. Zachary Klaas (talk) 14:03, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
As for "special decree powers", article 203 says that these are powers that are delegated from the National Assembly to the President "with the rank of law". So they are not limited to emergency situations. They can be used to change any normal law, but not an organic law or the Constitution. A common (in the worldwide sense) and uncontroversial use of this type of power is codify existing laws, that is to put several related laws into a single document. Physchim62 (talk) 14:14, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Lead information about lack of long-term international observers

I've tried a couple times to add information in the lead about how this year, Venezuela did not invite long-term international election observation organizations, such as the OAS, the EU or the Carter Center, to observe the National Assembly elections this year, as they had in numerous other Venezuelan elections, including the 2005 National Assembly elections. This is a major change from the last elections, and given that there is currently a dispute over the popular vote, it's also highly relevant that the organizations which certified previous elections as valid to the world community were not invited to do so this time around. Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Does this really belong in the lead? Maybe it would be better to have an "International observers" section which discusses the absence of many of the "usual" observers (as well as mentioning the presence of other international observers). Physchim62 (talk) 00:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
But there were no technical observers who were not invited by the electoral alliances themselves. This is somewhat a convenient way for the PSUV-led government to arrange things...this way, if someone invited by the MUD sees electoral irregularities, this can be dismissed as exactly what you would expect someone associated with the MUD to say. The organizations with international credibility who would be seen as evenhanded and impartial were not invited as anything more than houseguests during the last few days of the elections, to make it look like they had been consulted - they were not invited to scrutinise the results as they had been in past elections. It's a huge, and highly disconcerting, change. Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:23, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

New numbers

Now we see the deal ... CNE is separating PPT from the opposition, making it look like the opposition didn't win the popular vote, when PPT is aligned with opposition. I found a recent source saying exactly that, we need to footnote the table, but I have to board a flight-- perhaps someone can find that source. PPT is opposition-- if they are included, opposition won the popular vote, so naturally, CNE separates them. It's on Google news somewhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:17, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

PPT is an opposing party, but they're not part of the Unidad alliance, so that's a proper distinction. Myself, I do think that there's some slippery business going on with the results, but I don't think this is it. The PSUV-led alliance would be right to distinguish PPT from the Unidad group. The numbers we had been seeing, however, didn't make the claim that PPT was counted in with Unidad. Chávez has made the claim that oppositionists were lumping in MPE (a member party of the PSUV-led alliance) with the opposition vote. I don't know whether that's true, but if CNE would get off its collective rear and post the results, maybe we'd be able to evaluate that claim. Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:00, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
As the PPT ran party lists in all states against the MUP lists, it is perfectly valid to consider them a third party. The figures I've posted (collated from the CNE results, and hopefully without typing errors) don't count the MPE with the opposition vote. Physchim62 (talk) 23:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
As for "footnoting the table", the table is already perfectly clear that the PSUV gained 48.20% of the popular vote in the party lists. It's impossible to calculate a popular vote for the nominal seats, because some districts return two deputies, and those districts appear to work on a multiple vote system. I don't know about the math in loolahland conspiracy-country, but around here 48.20% is less than 50% and so not a majority. Physchim62 (talk) 23:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
CNE has not and almost surely will not publish official list vote national totals because it makes no sense for allocating any seat. On the other hand, they have published Latin Parliament total because this was an election at a national level. Same thing has happened with governor and other local elections, they only publish totals for presidential elections or referenda or, in this case, the Latin Parliament election. JRSP (talk) 23:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Fair point. However, they have published results from each state for the party lists, and it is not difficult to add 24 numbers together to get a national total. Physchim62 (talk) 23:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
MEP is a member of the PSUV-led list in some states, but ran own lists in other states (particulary the federal district). So their votes are divided between "PSUV" and "Others". 48.2% is less than 50% but more than 47.2%, so every side can claim that the other did loose the popular vote.
The table should be clearer that the 3 seats for indigenous peoples aren't included (but it doesn't make sense to include them because they're based on extra votes). --84.151.27.28 (talk) 00:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 Done Physchim62 (talk) 00:27, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

CNE spin on election results

Rd232 just attempted to add this content:

The Director of the National Electoral Council (CNE) said that districts were drawn according to a standard national formula, and pointed out that in four states (Zulia, Tachira, Anzoategui and Nueva Esparta) PSUV obtained over 40% of the vote, but won only 7 seats against the opposition's 27.

I will admit it is "vaguely original research" to calculate how many seats the opposition would have gotten if the election had been purely proportional, but only very vaguely, as anyone could do the same with access to the numbers - it's a simple matter of doing basic math. When I did it, I got that these four states would have given the MUD 19 seats and PSUV 15 seats.

Nevertheless, I did cite directly the officially released party list vote totals for those four states directly after the point I added:

This is true, but in those four states, the MUD slate received 54.80% (Zulia), 56.45% (Tachira), 52.21% (Anzoategui) and 57.98% (Nueva Esparta) of the party list vote, which allots seats proportionally to party strength.

The MUD had clear majorities in all four of those states, so anyone can see that a purely proportional system would have given them a majority of the seats from these states.

The entire reason for the posting of this obviously contrived nonsense from the director of the CNE is to delegitimize the point made by the El País reporters who noted that a proportional election would have given both the PSUV and the MUD around 80 seats, because they were very close in the popular vote total.

That is true, and it is also just a matter of doing the basic math. The PSUV would have had 80 and the MUD would have had 78.

No number of crazy scenarios from the CNE is going to make that any different. Indeed, if their point was that in those four states, the PSUV got 8 fewer seats than they would have proportionally, what that would mean is that the PSUV would have had 24 more seats than they should have had from the remaining states, because in total they got 16 more seats than they would have proportionally. The CNE director's argument is thus a highly misleading argument, and I don't care if the highest electoral official in Venezuela was the one who said it, it's a deliberate misuse of statistics which anyone can refute with the numbers released by the CNE itself. Zachary Klaas (talk) 17:34, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

The El País article was not pretending to compare the result with a proportional representation system: the Venezuelan system is obviously not proportional representation, but then neither are the electoral systems of most other countries. El País claims to have compared the actual results with the results that would have been obtained under the 2005 system, to support the argument of "gerrymandering". Now I added that reference; I've not had time to fully check it against the CNE results, but it is a reliable source which gives numbers. I did check the results for Amazonas, Caracas and Zulia: the redistricting did not change the result in Amazonas, gave two additional seats to the PSUV in Caracas and cost the PSUV one seat in Zulia. If that is gerrymandering, it is an incompetant attempt at it! Physchim62 (talk) 18:05, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
I find the El Pais claim suspect - it says " con la ley anterior y estos mismos resultados, el PSUV y la Mesa de la Unidad hubiesen empatado a 80 diputados. " But the pre-2009 situation wasn't proportional (it was 60% nominal seats, 40% state-based party lists), so why should the result have been proportional? It sounds an awful lot like a comparison to a fully proportional system, given that PSUV and MUD got about 48% each. As noted in the article, Venezuela first used Mixed member proportional representation PR in 1993 at national level (the source for that has lots of detail on how variations of it were used at local and national level, and various aspects of it were tweaked this way and that for years). Rd232 talk 18:23, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
I find the El País claim a bit suspect as well. El País is a left-leaning newspaper, but that doesn't mean that it is pro-Chávez in the slightest (Chávez is seen as a bit of joke in Spain): I can imagine they have just taken some opposition claim at face value without checking it. But, for WP:NPOV, we have to check the opposition claims as much as the government claims. It is possible to recalculate the results on the basis of the 2005 districts using publically available information, but it's quite a big job – that's why I only did three states! The Venezuelan electoral system is majoritarian, that is it gives a disproportionate advantage to the party that wins most votes: that in itself explains why the PSUV came out many more seats ahead with only a small lead in the popular vote. Physchim62 (talk) 18:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't understand your comment here any more than I understood your addition. The CNE director merely pointed out that the disproportionality is not uniquely in favour of PSUV - it is built into the national method of allocating seats, and in some areas favours the opposition. The system is not as disproportionate as complete first-past-the-post (like the US Congress, say), but it's hardly designed to be nationally proportional at all: it's proportionalish at state level, with state-level party lists somewhat compensating for the district seat disproportionality; but then at national level the "minimum 3 legislators per state" favours the small states a bit (much like the US Senate). Your addition after the CNE comment seemed designed to contradict it but actually didn't say anything contradictory; it feels like you misunderstood it (but maybe it's me). Rd232 talk 18:23, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

The pre-2009 situation was supposed to be proportional on the state level, but it wasn't because of Las Morochas (separate party systems for list and nominal votes, see example ballot 2005). In practice, the 2005 system would have given almost the same distribution of seats as the actual 2010 system. Most likely, PSUV would have had 1-3 seats more (depending on constituency boundaries).

If the old election system did work as an MMP system is supposed to work, the distribution were 85:74:3; a truly proportional system on the national level would give 79:78:5. This isn't absolute basic math, because the results depend on the apportionment method. The election law uses Jefferson/D'Hondt for the distribution of the list votes. This favours large parties; a more proportional method is Webster/Sainte-Laguë. Both methods give the same result for the distribution of list seats according to the 2005 and 2010 systems and on the national level, but results differ for proportional distribution of all seats on the state level in some states. 

State        Popul.     Seats  2-3 List  40% List  Jeffers.   Webster

D. Capital  2100977  6.60  10   1  2  0   2  2  0   5  5  0   5  5  0
Amazonas     152437  0.48   3   1  0  1   1  0  0   2  0  1   1  1  1
Anzoategui  1573621  4.94   8   1  1  0   1  2  0   4  4  0   4  4  0
Apure        508320  1.60   5   1  1  0   1  1  0   3  2  0   3  2  0
Aragua      1745031  5.48   8   1  1  0   2  1  0   4  4  0   4  4  0
Barinas      810867  2.55   6   1  1  0   1  1  0   4  2  0   3  3  0
Bolivar     1639448  5.15   8   1  1  0   2  1  0   4  4  0   4  4  0
Carabobo    2335867  7.34  10   1  2  0   2  2  0   4  6  0   4  6  0
Cojedes      319036  1.00   4   1  1  0   1  1  0   3  1  0   3  1  0
D. Amacuro   163872  0.51   4   2  0  0   2  0  0   3  1  0   3  1  0
Falcon       954571  3.00   6   1  1  0   1  1  0   3  3  0   3  3  0
Guarico      786323  2.47   5   1  1  0   1  1  0   3  2  0   3  1  1
Lara        1896420  5.96   9   1  1  0   2  1  1   4  3  2   4  3  2
Merida       891023  2.80   6   1  1  0   1  1  0   3  3  0   3  3  0
Miranda     3010511  9.45  12   1  2  0   2  3  0   5  7  0   5  7  0
Monagas      916657  2.88   6   1  1  0   1  1  0   4  2  0   4  2  0
N. Esparta   465389  1.46   4   1  1  0   1  1  0   2  2  0   2  2  0
Portuguesa   922297  2.90   6   1  1  0   1  1  0   4  2  0   4  2  0
Sucre        959682  3.01   6   1  1  0   1  1  0   3  3  0   3  3  0
Tachira     1244427  3.91   7   1  1  0   1  2  0   3  4  0   3  4  0
Trujillo     751630  2.36   5   1  1  0   1  1  0   3  2  0   3  2  0
Vargas       342353  1.08   4   1  1  0   1  1  0   2  2  0   2  2  0
Yaracuy      633129  1.99   5   1  1  0   1  1  0   3  2  0   3  2  0
Zulia       3825601 12.01  15   1  2  0   3  3  0   7  8  0   7  8  0

Sum        28949489 90.91 162  25 26  1  33 30  1  85 74  3  83 75  4

--84.151.28.175 (talk) 20:11, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I hope we're not going to lose perspective with all the verbiage above. I disagree that this is not basic math. The objective of a mixed member proportional system (which Venezuela does not have, by the way - please actually read the article about what MMP is) is to top up the constituency seats with party list seats until proportionality is reasonably approximated. Venezuela's system is mixed member majoritarian, because the constituency seats obviously count for a great deal more than the party list seats, and the result is vastly disproportionate. Admittedly, lots of other countries have disproportionate electoral systems, but few claim, as people still try to claim in Venezuela, that they have a mixed member proportional representation systems when they don't.

The 79:78:5 calculated above are essentially my numbers. I rounded up for a decimal .5 or over, but yes, there are umpteen different possible rounding rules. I didn't want to get into that because it only changes things at most by a seat. I said 80 for PSUV because I calculated 79.54, and 78 for MUD because I calculated 77.83. I got 5.17 for the PPT, so 5 is right there as well. Our math is the same on that. It is basic math. Don't convolute this with a bunch of tangents here.

The opposition's point here is not really about "what if we had MMP with certain qualifications and using Saint-Lague for rounding", but "what if the vote were basically proportional". If it were, PSUV would have around 80 seats, MUD would have around 78. Zachary Klaas (talk) 20:47, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I do know what an MMP system is. The election system in Venezuela has been almost exactly the same as that for elections to the Scottish Parliament until 2009. The difference is that Scottish parties that run candidates in the constituencies tend to also have lists, while Venezuelan parties did not.
The opposition's point as depicted in the article isn't a comparison to a proportional system at the national level, but the electoral reform of 2009. Then one can compare either to the old MMP system on the state level as such systems usually are supposed to work (yielding 85:74:3) or to the way it actually worked before 2009 (yielding something about 98:62:2, depending on the constituencies; if the full results at district level were available in machine readable form, it would be easy to calculate the result with 2005's constituencies). --84.151.28.175 (talk) 21:45, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
See what I say below. The only sensible comparison is to a purely proportional system. There's no point comparing 2010's vastly disproportionate vote to the 2005 moderately disproportionate vote. The proper comparison is to what would have been the case if the election were entirely proportionate. A small deviation from absolute proportionality is, of course, typical for most countries. But we don't get a true picture of how disproportionate an election is unless we compare it to proportionate, not another (albeit less) disproportionate election. Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:51, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

More on the proportionality issue

Here is the "basic math" to which I was referring. 

	Votes	Percent	Seats
PSUV	5451422	48.20%	79.54
MUD	5334309	47.17%	77.83
PPT	354677	3.14%	5.17
Others	168737	1.49%	2.46
	11309145

Calculate it yourself. Percent of Votes * 165 = Seats.

Never mind all that stuff in the last section of this talk page. A purely proportional system would be one where these seat calculations would be correct. Yes, all systems deviate slightly from pure proportionality, but the oppositionist point was that Venezuela's differs greatly from proportionality. The PSUV got 16-17 more seats than it should have (depending on how you round 79.54). Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:12, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Anyone can work out the proportions of the popular vote, but most countries do not use a completely proportional electoral system. To comment on what the repartition of seats would have been under a hypothetical system which has never been used in the country in question is irrelevant. What would have have been the repartition of seats in the UK this year under a proportional system? who would have been U.S. President in 2000 under a proportional system? The fact that the Venezuelan system is not proportional can be seen from the percentages and seat numbers in the infobox: the rest is WP:UNDUE. Physchim62 (talk) 21:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
I wholly disagree. The opposition claims that the voting system is disproportional. In order to evaluate the claim of how disproportional it is, you must present what purely proportional would look like. I am showing you what purely proportional would look like. This is a question which can be settled with numbers, not "they said, they said". Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:29, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Also, nothing I am doing here would not be equally appropriate to evaluate the disproportionality of US or UK elections (or Canada elections...I live in Canada, and we can easily include them - Canada has vastly disproportionate elections.) None of those countries even purport to use a proportional representation system, though. Venezuela does. Up until a few minutes ago, this page still said that Venezuela uses a "mixed member proportional" system, when it does not. Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:39, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Nobody claims the system is proportional, so you are inventing an argument where one doesn't exist. I challenge you to find a single country of the size of Venezuela which uses a completely proportional voting system for its parliament. Physchim62 (talk) 21:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
I will not accept that challenge. It is accepted methodology to evaluate deviations from proportionality from the perspective of a hypothetical purely proportional system. Have a look at the Gallagher Index if you doubt this. Venezuela is not being treated differently than any other world nation in that respect. Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:39, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, this election is being treated differently from other elections. Take a look at United Kingdom general election, 2010, for example: is there any discussion that the UK voting system is not proportional? Our coverage already includes the proportions of the popular vote, which show that the PSUV and the MUD got almost identical shares, while the PSUV gained significantly more seats; there is nothing unusual in this, despite the PoV-pushing that has gone on around here. Al Gore got more votes than George Bush in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, but he still lost on the voting system in place. These things happen. You cannot suddenly pretend that proportionality is the sole criterion on which we are to judge the "democracy" of a voting system, as many societies have chosen other criteria without obvious problems. Physchim62 (talk) 22:06, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
There should be some discussion of that on the UK page - the Tories made a commitment to the Lib Dems to have a referendum on reforming the electoral system because the Lib Dems ran on electoral reform as a campaign issue. And are you seriously telling me the 2000 US presidential election page contains no reference to the fact that Gore got more votes than Bush? He did, lots more. I am also not saying it's the sole criterion to judge Venezuela on, but they did just change the electoral system between parliamentary elections and were roundly criticised by the opposition for fixing electorates in such a way as to maximize the number of seats the PSUV would be likely to take. I wholly disagree with everything you've said there. Zachary Klaas (talk) 22:47, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
I note that the United Kingdom general election, 2010 page does discuss "Voting problems" at length, and the description of the Tory-LibDem 2010 coalition agreement does discuss attempts to reform the UK's vastly disproportional system. The United States presidential election, 2000 page mentions that Gore got the majority of the popular vote in the lead and most of the article is taken up with describing vote improprieties, alleged and real, which occurred on Election Day. The idea that people are somehow ganging up on only Chávez is risible. Zachary Klaas (talk) 22:54, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
You seem to be confusing the "practical" voting problems (the only one's discussed on the UK2010 page, and quite correctly so) with the voting system itself. Everybody knows that the UK voting system is hugely unproportional, and everybody knows that that you can win the popular vote but lose the U.S. presidential election: neither system is intended to be proportional. The issue on this page is whether the 2009 electoral changes in Venezuela unduly favoured the PSUV or not: we're not here to design an entirely new electoral system for Venezuela, after all. My feeling is that the changes didn't unduly favour the PSUV over the system in use in 2005; more importantly, I don't think your calculations based on entirely proportional systems are relevant in the slightest. Physchim62 (talk) 23:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Great, but one set of actors in the election (the MUD) thought it was very relevant, and criticised the electoral system change and the results they seem to have wrought. This wasn't the only thing the Chavistas changed in between 2005 and 2010 - they also changed whether internationally respected long-term election observation organisations were going to be permitted to observe the elections as they had in every election Chavez or his party have ever participated in up to this point. A lot of interesting changes to electoral arrangements took place while they had sole control of the national legislature, don't you think? Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:52, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually the electoral reform slightly favoured the opposition, although it might have been designed to secure a 2/3 majority. The comparison with proportional shares is completely misplaced under the heading "electoral reform". It would be appropriate to discuss it in Constitution of Venezuela and Elections in Venezuela. --84.151.28.161 (talk) 23:51, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
On what planet did it slightly favour the opposition? What possible numbers do you have to support that claim? Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:54, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Well let's take the state of Zulia: the MUD won 12 seats, the PSUV won three seats. Under the 2005 system (assuming exactly the same votes), the MUD would have won 11 seats and the PSUV four. Those are calculations from public CNE figures. Physchim62 (talk) 00:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
PSUV would have 8 additional list seats, MUD 4. The additional seats of MUD in Anzoategui and Zulia could hardly come from PSUV constituencies. One additional PSUV seat in Zulia must come from a MUD constituency, in several states there are chances. PPT would gain a seat in Lara (could come from PSUV or MUD) and probably lose one in Amazonas to PSUV. --84.151.28.161 (talk) 00:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
In Zulia, the PSUV would have had two more list seats but would have lost a nominal seat, making a net gain of one under the 2005 rules. In Amazonas, it would still have been two to the PPT and one to the PSUV under the 2005 rules, but only just. Physchim62 (talk) 00:22, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
The two 2005 constituencies of Amazonas would both have gone to PPT according to the nominal votes, but in both the PSUV has more list votes. So the nominal votes seem to have some dependence on the candidates, and at least one constituency would have had other candidates. That means that the result with 2005's constituencies is highly speculative. --84.151.28.161 (talk) 02:19, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Of course, but such are the approximations you have to make. The very fact that the election was so close means that any minor variable (such as a popular local candidate) would have a big effect on the end result. Physchim62 (talk) 02:40, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

To the IP editor - by your own calculations, the PSUV overall would have gotten 85 seats under the old system as opposed to the 96 they got. How are you getting that the opposition did better under the new system? What matters is who does better for control of the whole Assembly. Obviously a system that magnifies the role of geographic constituencies is going to benefit whoever can win the geographic constituencies. In the country as a whole, that'd be the PSUV. In Anzoátegui, Nueva Esparta, Táchira and Zulia it will benefit the opposition because they won decisive majorities in those states. But what matters is which party gets the most geographic constituencies over the whole country, and that's obviously the PSUV. People knew that before and after the election. Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

You still don't seem to realize the difference between an MMP system that works as it is supposed to be and the real system in Venezuela. The crucial point is the handling of excess seats (overhang seats). In Venezueal (as in Scotland or recently in Sweden), excess seats are taken away from the contingent that is distributed proportionally. Every constituency won by a party that runs no list gives an excess seat, and no party in Venezuela that has a real chance to win a constituency runs a list. Instead, it has a shadow party that runs a list. In 2005, they were MVR and UVE for today's PSUV. The consequence was that every constituency seat was an excess seat, and that means that the system did behave exactly like a parallel voting system.
The PSUV would have gotten 85 seats without such doubling of parties, but would have gotten less seats in a real election under the old system than with the new system. The electoral reform did increase the FFTP share in the large states, where it turned out that the opposition is generally stronger than the PSUV. So it's absolutely natural that the MUD profited from the higher FFTP share. --84.151.28.161 (talk) 02:19, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Venezuela's system is not an MMP system. A system has to approach proportionality to be considered MMP. Venezuela's system is mixed member majoritarian. And MUD did profit in the states where their concentration of vote is located, but not as much as PSUV profited from the states where their concentration of vote is located. I calculated this before - the MUD gained 8 seats over their proportional share in those four stronghold states, but that means PSUV gained 24 seats over their proportional share in the other states, because overall they were at 16 seats over their proportional share. Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Yet again you are assuming that proportionality to the national popular vote is the only criterion to be applied to the election results. I cannot accept that, as it is not a criterion that is applied to other national election results on Wikipedia. The question that should be asked is "was the election objective between parties?" Your PR-PoV neglects that. Physchim62 (talk) 03:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Every example you gave of how it is not I believe I refuted. The UK 2010 election had electoral reform front and center as a campaign issue; the US 2000 presidential election is filled with material about the electoral system and how Gore won the popular vote. Furthermore, I brought up my own examples about how the disproportionality of voting in Canada is still a problem, and certainly any explanation of the 1966 Quebec election has to bring the disproportionality of the voting system into view because that election was spectacularly disproportionate. If you want to say that the Venezuelan election was no more disproportionate than the disproportionate elections we've seen elsewhere in the world, go ahead. That's objectively true. If you want to say the PSUV said there was no big problem with the electoral system and the MUD said there was, say that. That's objectively true. But if you want to say the election results were proportional, that's something we can objectively evaluate, and it's clear that they were not. Zachary Klaas (talk) 03:27, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
The MUD gained 9 seats over their proportional share using the real apportionment method (Zulia 4, Anzoategui 3, Nueva Esparta 1, Tachira 1). The PSUV gained 21, PPT gained 1. Net result is PSUV +11, MUD -10, PPT -1. You cannot compare to the national share because the system isn't supposed to be proportional at the national level. PSUV profits from the disproportional distribution of seats among the states and also profited from FFTP, but they did not profit from the extension of FFTP in the large states, where they are rather weak.
Okay, but how much did the PSUV gain by your calculations over their proportional share? That's the issue. Are you not mentioning this because it's a lot? I presume you're trying to be fair here, so I'd like to hear what you have calculated for that. Zachary Klaas (talk) 18:43, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Venezuala's system formally has been an MMP system until 2009. Almost no MMP system that allows 2 separate votes (nominal and list) is proportional in reality, although all claim to be. Venezuela is just an extreme (but not uncommon) case where proportionality was reduced to the list part of the election system. --84.151.28.161 (talk) 03:30, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it's an extreme case. If you agree that's the case, could you back me up on attempting to represent this in the article? Zachary Klaas (talk) 18:41, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Proportionality calculation

Here are the Venezuela totals listed with the four states the CNE director mentioned. As you can see, my initial claims are correct about that as well, using the formula Percent of Votes * 165 = Seats.

Venezuela	Votes	Percent	Seats	
(165)	PSUV	5451422	48.20%	79.54	
	MUD	5334309	47.17%	77.83	
	PPT	354677	3.14%	5.17	
	Others	168737	1.49%	2.46	
		11309145			
					
Anzoátegui	Votes	Percent	Seats	
(8)	PSUV	278717	44.96%	3.6	
	MUD	323701	52.22%	4.18	
	PPT	5326	0.86%	0.07	
	Others	12172	1.96%	0.16	
		619916			
					
Nueva Esparta	Votes	Percent	Seats	
(4)	PSUV	78656	40.82%	1.63	
	MUD	111735	57.98%	2.32	
	PPT	1345	0.70%	0.03	
	Others	968	0.50%	0.02	
		192704			
					
Táchira		Votes	Percent	Seats	
(7)	PSUV	216393	42.10%	2.95	
	MUD	290217	56.46%	3.95	
	PPT	1672	0.33%	0.02	
	Others	5771	1.12%	0.08	
		514053			
					
Zulia		Votes	Percent	Seats	
(15)	PSUV	670974	44.44%	6.67	
	MUD	827350	54.80%	8.22	
	PPT	6967	0.46%	0.07	
	Others	4414	0.29%	0.04	
		1509705			
					
		4-state total	14.84	PSUV
	         		18.67	MUD
		        	0.19	PPT
The disproportionality has been reported heavily in the news (because it is so much greater than usual for a congressional election), so we can gather sources from there, giving it reason for inclusion. Following something like that up with a routine calculation is not WP:OR. Awickert (talk) 21:47, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Darn right, it's not.  :) Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:52, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Here's an article from the English version of El Universal which specifically calls attention to the gap between percentage of vote and percentage of seats. That's the definition of "proportional" that reputable sources in Venezuela are going with, and it also happens to be the definition electoral geographers and political scientists use. (The article is admittedly from before when accepted vote totals had been released by the CNE, but the point stands even with our revised vote totals.) The article also directly references the opposition's concern that rural areas are being over-represented precisely because it's PSUV country. Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Except that the overrepresentation of rural areas didn't change in the slightest with the electoral reforms. Nor is an over-representation of rural areas something that is specific to the Venezuelan system. Physchim62 (talk) 00:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
This article quotes a professor at the University of Central Venezuela disagreeing with exactly what you just said about this not changing with the electoral reforms. Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:37, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
The professor is simply and demonstrably wrong if he is talking about the recent reform. In no state has the total number of seats changed by more than one, and the vast majority of states have exactly the same number of seats in 2010 as they had in 2005. The professor quotes the situation in Amazonas (which is not even the extreme of unproportionality), but the PSUV lost Amazonas 1–2 and would have done on the 2005 rules. What happened with the reform was that party list seats were converted into nominal seats, making the system more majoritarian: it's possible that this was done to try to scrape a 2/3 majority from a 55% popular vote, but it could also have given the MUD a 2/3 majority on a 55% popular vote (percentage is a guess, not an accurate figure). Physchim62 (talk) 00:58, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I think I finally understand what you're arguing. Are you actually claiming there was no over-representation of rural areas, that it was somehow a more random thing which area gets over-represented, and the MUD might have equally well benefitted? It is known that the PSUV polls better in rural areas, and that rural areas are benefited with extra representation by the new law. Are you just assuming if the MUD had won in the rural areas and PSUV in the urban areas, it just would have been unfair but the other way, but who could have known it would turn out the way it did? Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:02, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
No. I'll try to summarize my "argument" in three points:
1. The recent electoral reform did not favour rural areas over urban areas, and it is simple propaganda to suggest that it did.
It's not propaganda. The reason you can't see it is that the 2009 reform continued a trend that was already going. At one point, the system was actually close to proportional, but then it was changed to a 60% nominal/40% list mix (for 2000-2005)...so the system was already majoritarian rather than proportional...and the recent reform upped it to 70% nominal/30% list. That's worse, but you're not going to notice the changes by just looking at 2005-2010 because the system was already bad. You conceded yourself that you thought Chávez might have done this to get his 2/3 majority (though I suppose you'll couch this as "but the opposition could have gotten that 2/3 majority too.") Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:37, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
2. The long-standing Venezuelan electoral system does favour rural areas over urban areas but, IMHO, not to any greater extent than systems in other countries; hence, the article should not place undue weight on this aspect of the Venezuelan electoral system in discussing the results.
It's not undue weight. Daniel Johnson beat Jean Lesage in the Quebec general election, 1966 because Johnson's voters were all in the over-represented rural areas of Quebec. Lesage's Liberal voters lived in the city, Johnson's UN voters lived in the country, and everyone knew that before the election. It's not a stretch to say that the system favoured the UN over the Liberals. (And that was a far worse case than Venezuela, Lesage won the popular vote by 7 percentage points over Johnson!) Absolutely the inequity of the voting system mattered in both cases, and should be represented in the articles. Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:37, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
3. It is by no means clear that the recent electoral reform actually favoured the PSUV; the reform made the system more majoritarian (but still within the norms of other countries), and perhaps the PSUV were expecting to do a bit better in the polls when they adopted it, but, again, we have to be careful about undue weight and sheer speculation.
Then say the opposition "speculates" this. They do. A lot. Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:37, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
I think the MUD didn't expect to do as well as it did, which is why it complained loadly about the electoral system before the vote began: a few more votes and it would be laughing now. Physchim62 (talk) 01:19, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
They nearly won the popular vote and don't even have 40% of the seats! Why shouldn't they be complaining? Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:37, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Every state gets 3 seats plus a proportional share. The rural states are over-represented because they tend to be the smaller ones. There's no systematic over-representation of sparse populated states like in Norway, where seats are distributed according to a formula including area. The MUD would have needed at least 60% of the popular vote to get a 2/3 majority, because the distribution of seats among states favours states which tend to vote for PSUV (like Labour tends to get a majority on a 50:50 popular vote in the UK). History of seat distribution among states is here (last page). --84.151.28.161 (talk) 01:40, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Again, I don't know how your comment about the MUD getting 60% and getting a 2/3 majority in the Assembly (that's 67%) jibes with your correct assertion that the rural states are overrepresented and favour PSUV. If that's true, it will take more than 67% of the vote to get 67% of the seats for the MUD. It's the PSUV that would be able to get 67% of the seats for a smaller percentage of votes. Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Not true. The Venezuelan electoral system is majoritarian, that is it tends to favour the party that gets most votes by giving them a disproportional number of seats. Many of the nominal seats were very tightly fought, and either party could have gained big time with only a few tens of thousands of extra votes. Physchim62 (talk) 02:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
You're acting like who people vote for in rural vs. urban areas is an accident of fate, when in most places there are clear and regular relationships known to the public. I keep referring to my Quebec example, because we've had numerous elections here where the Liberal Party has either come close to winning the popular vote or actually won it, but because rural voters voted against them, they lost by about 30 seats out of 125 (I'm thinking of the 1994 and 1998 elections in particular there.) In order to win the election, they have to be several percentage points ahead, but if they can do that, then they can win in a landslide. Basically that's what we have here. The MUD would have to be several percentage points ahead, like 5-10% ahead, before they could win in this system given that their strongest support comes from the urban areas. Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
As a rule of thumb, a party that is the largest party in states holding 2/3 of the seats will get a 2/3 majority under FFTP rule. Constituency distribution within the states may matter too. --84.151.28.161 (talk) 02:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
You should visit Canada sometime. It typically doesn't work that way here. We have a federal party which only operates in Quebec, the Bloc québécois, which gets around 50 of 308 House of Commons seats despite the fact that it normally also gets around 10% of the vote. The New Democratic Party, by contrast, spreads its typical 20% of the vote around the country so it usually gets around 20-30 seats. So FPTP is well-known here for accentuating regionalism and devaluing national unity. Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Regional parties are rather irrelevant here. The only party that can be considered to be regional in Venezuela after taking common lists into account is PPT in Amazonas and Lara. Of course, strong regional parties profit from FFTP (as PPT in Amazonas), but they won't get a 2/3 majority, because they are the largest party at most in a minority of states. --84.151.28.161 (talk) 03:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
I agree that regional parties didn't play a role in the 2010 Venezuela election. I'm trying to establish that I am not simply criticising Venezuela, that I have proportionality problems with many other governments, including both of my own (I'm American-Canadian, dual citizenship, and both the US and Canada have massive proportionality problems with their electoral systems.) I resent the debating tactic that implies my view of this is not objective because of where I live. I am citing objective statistics which show Venezuela's system had definite proportionality problems in the 2010 elections, and I'd say that if I lived on Mars. Zachary Klaas (talk) 18:47, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Of course you're right about the other point - I live in Quebec, a Canadian province which has had historic problems with over-representing rural areas. See Quebec general election, 1966 for a great example of this. Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:40, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

This is all really quite off-topic - it's not up to us to decide how proportional the Venezuelan electoral system should be (Crisp and Rey (source in article; p176) indicate that from 1958 to 1998 Venezuela had a new electoral law on average every 2.3 years - fiddling with the system is hardly a novelty). What we need to be clear about is things like the distinction between mixed member proportional and mixed member majoritarian, and some of the fine details of the system (which should also go into the relevant section of National Assembly of Venezuela). Now Crisp and Rey describes the 1993-8 Chamber of Deputies system as MMP; the only difference I know for sure with the later system is that the nominal/party list split was 50/50 instead of 60/40 and then 70/30. What reliable sources show that this shift justifies a name change/; and perhaps more to the point, what reliable sources clarify the relationship between the nominal and party lists, on which the distinction seems to hang? Rd232 talk 10:21, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem coming up with that kind of source. IDEA (the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has a warehouse of references on electoral system design, and has an extensive number of sources on things relating to proportional representation. If you check their source [7] on page 91, paragraph 129 reads "Under MMP systems, the PR seats are awarded to compensate for any disproportionality produced by the district seat results. For example, if one party wins 10 per cent of the vote nationally but no district seats, then it will be awarded enough seats from the PR lists to bring its representation up to 10 per cent of the seats in the legislature." I think we can all agree that nothing even close to that is happening in Venezuela.
I can see an argument for changing the text to reflect that Venezuela could be considered "sourced" as an MMP system which nevertheless does not fit the definition given in that source of what MMP is. Indeed, lower on down the page, IDEA says that Venezuela's pre-2009 system was considered MMP (the nominal-to-list ratio for the old system is given in their table). But the standard for what counts as MMP is in what I have just quoted, and anyone can see that the disproportionality in the nominal seats was addressed in a grossly insufficient fashion by the addition of the list seats. The PSUV got 48.20% of the vote but 58-59% of the seats (depending on whether one is using the 165 total seats or the 162 non-indigenous seats as the divisor). Unless you want to say that the point of Venezuela's "MMP" was to compensate with the list seats for disproportionality in the nominal seats, but by an amount that is nowhere near enough to establish even remotely proportional results. Zachary Klaas (talk) 15:29, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Reading further, in paragraph 131 on page 95 of the same source, we have this "Although MMP is designed to produce proportional results, it is possible that the disproportionality in the single-member district results is so great that the list seats cannot fully compensate for it. This is more likely when the PR electoral districts are defined not at national level but at regional or provincial level. A party can then win more plurality/majority seats in a region or province than its party vote in the region would entitle it to. To deal with this, proportionality can be closely approached if the size of the legislature is slightly increased: the extra seats are called overhang mandates or Überhangsmandaten. This has occurred in most elections in Germany and is also possible in New Zealand. In Lesotho, by contrast, the size of the legislature is fixed, and the results of the first MMP election in 2002 were not fully proportional (see the case study)." So in this case we have a situation where the size of the legislature was fixed, they did use smaller PR units (the states), and the results were not only "not fully proportional", but wildly disproportional. Zachary Klaas (talk) 15:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
  1. ^ a b (in Spanish) El Universal, 2 September 2010, CNE: Oposición tiene 60,3% de la propaganda electoral en TV
  2. ^ Vheadline.com, 23 August 2010, Presidential 'Alo Presidente' radio/TV shows suspended until October 3
  3. ^ BBC, 18 August 2010, Venezuela bans 'violent' photos in newspapers
  4. ^ Venezuelanalysis.com, 20 August 2010, Venezuelan Court Retracts Ruling in Graphic Image Controversy
  5. ^ CNN, 18 August 2010, Venezuelan newspaper owner defends photo that spurred investigation
  6. ^ Venezuelanalysis.com, 30 March 2009, Crime in Venezuela: Opposition Weapon or Serious Problem?
  7. ^ Simon Romero. New York Times, 22 August 2010, Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Wonders Why
  8. ^ Venezuelanalysis.com, 3 June 2010, National Police Deployment Reduces Homicides in Venezuela’s Most Dangerous Municipalities,
  9. ^ El Universal, 3 September 2010, Election campaign for new National Assembly heats up
  10. ^ (in Spanish) El Nacional, 26 February 2010, Movimiento 2D apoyará a Mesa de la Unidad para comicios del 26-S
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