District 4- questionable result

[WMS]

And this race goes into extra innings, it appears...

[WMS]

In the disitrict 4 election, a vote cast by Democratic Hawk was thrown out for being edited.  If that vote were counted, the final count would have been a 7-7 tie, with Harry being declared the winner for having more first preference votes.  The announced result was 7-6 WMS.

I was just perusing the constitution for the relevant clause.  Here it is:

Article II
Section 2. (Presidential Elections)

Clause 4.  All elections must be public vote. No person shall vote unless he or she has an avatar declaring the state from which they are from. All votes cast shall be deemed official and may not be amended or rescinded by the voters.

This appears in Article II, section 2, dealing with presidential elections.  No such statement appears in the section of the constitution dealing with senatorial elections.

Harry, if you want to take me to court for declaring WMS the winner,  I don't mind, really!

Well, this may set a dangerous precedent. If voters in Senatorial races can alter their ballots at will, what does that do to election integrity?

And have there been other cases of this? Perhaps one of the Supreme Court Justices or the Attorney General can determine how the issue of altering votes in Senatorial races has been decided in the past?

[WMS]

Posts that were edited have been counted in the past, as long as the vote itself wasn't altered. Removal or addition of extraneous text that does not in any way affect the vote itself has been permitted.

Obviously no one wants ballots to be able to be changed at will. I'm pretty sure we all agree to that; clearly I do. But I think the issue of what exacty is a vote is open to interpretation. If the law said that the post may not be edited, it would be clear. I think one could argue that while the post was edited, the vote wasn't, and thus it should stand.

A flaw in the law...just like real life.

[WMS]

And this STILL isn't settled. Well, I doubt anyone was predicting that the D4 race would be this controversial...

[WMS]

Since the vote was deleted, there is no hard copy of the vote and therefore it no longer exists.

OK, that's yet another thing I wasn't expecting...

[WMS]

What I meant by that was, the vote was deleted so there is no hard evidence. Which means the vote in question NEVER existed.

So...does that mean I won? O_O

[WMS]

So it's still not - quite - determined yet, Nym?

[WMS]

Shades of 2000 here...oh well, into the judicial abyss we go!