- The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by PFHLai (talk) 04:09, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
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Makoto Hirayama
edit- ... that Makoto Hirayama was elected to Japan's House of Councillors despite getting less than 0.02% of the vote?
- ALT1:... that Makoto Hirayama received only 11,475 votes in Japan's 2007 election, but still managed to win a seat?
- Reviewed: Take Back
- Comment: There are no percentages given in the article, but it is a case of simple arithmetic (11475 / 58.9m).
Created by Athomeinkobe (talk). Self-nominated at 04:52, 26 January 2016 (UTC).
Well, the article is long enough and new enough, and seems to be neutral. Assuming good faith on the Japanese sources, you're good to go. QPQ is completed. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 01:37, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I've struck both hooks, as they are misleading. They both say he was "elected", but the article says that he entered the House, because someone resigned their position... While it is interesting that he received so little votes in 2007, yet was able to assume a position without election in 2009, the hook does not clarify this. Jolly Ω Janner 07:48, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
ALT2: ... that Makoto Hirayama entered Japan's House of Councillors in 2009 despite getting less than 0.02% of the votes in the 2007 election? --PFHLai (talk) 11:37, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- ALT3: ... that Makoto Hirayama entered the upper house of Japan's National Diet after all candidates ahead of him for his seat in the 2007 election decided that they preferred a seat in the lower house? --PFHLai (talk) 11:37, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't find ALT2 interesting enough. There were 242 members in the house, so personally receiving 0.02% of the entire country's vote is not interesting. ALT3 has potential, but doesn't have inline citations at the end of sentences. Jolly Ω Janner 03:26, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- Jolly Janner, I appreciate how the original hook may seem misleading on the face of things. However, I believe the word "elected" is properly used as that is the term used in the official notice distributed by the government agency (the PDF that is reference #1). Perhaps you do not read Japanese, but if you insert 当選人 into Google translate you will see it returns the English as "elected person". It appears several times in the document, most prominently against his name in the final line of paragraph 1. I think it is wrong to say he assumed the position "without election" in 2009. By way of explanation, in Australia if a federal Senator dies their replacement is appointed by the relevant State parliament. So in that situation it would be correct to say the replacement assumes the position without election and the use of the word "elected" would be entirely misleading. However, in Japan a replacement is determined based on the original election results. In Japan it is possible for a candidate to contest a constituency and also be "double listed" in the PR block list as a backup. If they are successful in the constituency, the person below them in their party's block list inherits the votes. So the passing on of votes happens at the election, plus it is also quite common after elections due to the death/resignation of politicians. According to the Japanese wiki article that explains the system, in the last 20 years there have been 41 people in the lower house and 38 in the upper house elected via this system.
- If you are still not convinced, how about just replacing "elected" with "entered" in the original hook? As for the proposed alternatives, I think ALT2 is too vague; the 2-year gap makes it sound like there was a separate election contested. ALT3 does not accurately describe the situation; it was not "all candidates" but only one sitting member and one other candidate who belonged to his party that opted to contest the lower house election. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 04:11, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- Would "both candidates ahead of him in the 2007 election..." be more accurate? He was third behind the same two candidates, so i do not understand why it's not accurate. --PFHLai (talk) 12:25, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- "both candidates" in ALT3 sounds a bit better, but the problem is that there were many other candidates also ahead of him from other parties, which would need clarification. Also the initial winner Tanaka was not merely a candidate, but served for two years. I think ALT3 could be improved if "all candidates ahead of him for his seat" was replaced with simply "two candidates ahead of him".
- Having said that, the issue of the total number of members in the house (242) raised above is not that important, as most are elected to represent a prefecture (voters vote for a prefecural candidate plus a national candidate/party). Hirayama was contesting the national block, in which 159 people were chasing 48 seats. Ignoring the votes where people chose a party rather than a person, there were 17.36m votes for individual candidates, so his 11 thousand was still a tiny 0.066%. The highest candidate got a million personal votes and a couple of others got about half a million. 8 candidates from the LDP alone got 10x more than Hirayama but couldn't win a seat. So I think the original hook best illustrates how lucky he was considering how little support he had. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 02:40, 16 February 2016 (UTC)