Southeastern Election Regulations

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The recent concerns over the Midwestern election have caused me to decide to issue some regulations specifying how the election provisions of the Southeastern Constitution shall be implemented.  What follows are draft regulations which are submitted for public comment.

Southeastern Election Regulations

§ 1. Duration of voting
All elections and referendums conducted shall last at least 60 hours and shall conclude at the first occurence of 11:59pm Central Time after 60 hours of voting has occurred.

§ 2. Opening of the polls
Polls shall be opened by the Governor between midnight and 11:59am Central Time on the day appointed for the election to begin.  In the event that the polls shall not have been opened by 6:00 am Central Time on the day appointed for the election to begin, any official authorized by the seventh section of Article I of the Constitution to act in the event of the inability of the Governor shall be authorized to open the polls and conduct the vote.

§ 3. Declaration of Gubernatorial Candidacy
In order to be listed on the ballot, a candidate must have announced an intention to run before noon Central Time on the day before the day appointed for the election to begin.

§ 4. Eligibility to Vote
In order for a vote to be valid, a voter must be registered with the Atlasian Secretary of Forum Affairs as a voter of a Southeastern state during the entire time that the poll is open.

§ 5. Method of Voting
(a) In non-runoff gubernatorial elections, approval voting shall be used with voters listing in any order all candidates. including any who may not be listed on the ballot, who they approve of.
(b) In runoff gubernatorial elections, plurality voting shall be used with voters listing a single candidate that is on the ballot as their favored choice.
(c)  In referendums and confirmation votes, voters shall vote either yes or no.

§ 6. Counting of Ballots
As soon as possible after a vote has concluded, an official count shall be posted in the same thread as the vote by the offical conducting the vote.  Any attempts to vote that are disallowed shall be listed in that same post along with the reason for the disallowal.  In the event that that two or more candidates shall have received the largest number of approvals in a non-runoff gubernatorial election, then a runoff shall be held in a seperate thread.

§ 7. Contesting of a Ballot or Election
Only a person who voted or attempted to vote in a vote has standing to dispute the determination of the offical conducting that vote.  In the event that the resolution of a dispute could affect the conduct of a runoff, then the runoff shall be delayed until the dispute is resolved.  The chief judicial officer of the Southeastern Region shall make a determination of both fact and law.  Appeals to the Supreme Court of Atlasia are allowed only if there is a question of federal law involved.

EDIT: Minor edits to clarify the language have been made.

[Peter]

§ 3. Declaration of Gubernatorial Candidacy
In order to be listed on the ballot, a candidate must have announced an intention to run before noon Central Time on the day before the day appointed for the election.

Unconstitutional.

The Candidacy Declaration Amendment applies to all elections in the context of Article V. Candidacy deadline must be 7 days before an election.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Nullify it!

[Jake]

Nullify it!

Yes, Ernest please do.  This is an attempt by the government to restrict how we conduct our own elections.

[JohnFKennedy]

Nullify it!

Can he do so with Constitutional Amendments? After all, they pass a public vote too!

[Bono]

Nullify it!

Can he do so with Constitutional Amendments? After all, they pass a public vote too!

My opinion is that the public vote violates the constitutional spirit. I plan on proposing an ammendment that would repeal the nationwide vote and require a majority of 2 thirds of the regions. I'm just waiting for the crisis to be settles(which would be much easy if senators actually discussed the Powers Ammendment.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

§ 3. Declaration of Gubernatorial Candidacy
In order to be listed on the ballot, a candidate must have announced an intention to run before noon Central Time on the day before the day appointed for the election.

Unconstitutional.

The Candidacy Declaration Amendment applies to all elections in the context of Article V. Candidacy deadline must be 7 days before an election.

Your argument assumes that Article V applies to Regional elections.

Amendment IV Section 1 explicitly states: "Each region has the right to govern themselves and carry out regional elections as they wish."  I would hold that in that context, the proposed regulation is constitutional as the time frame for declaring a candidacy is falls squarely from that sentence.  The wording of the Candidacy Declaration Amendment leads me to conclude that the intent was to cause it to apply to only Federal elections as was the case for the then existing Article V Section 5 and to not interfere with the privledge of complete control over Regional elections by the Regions guarenteed under Amendment IV.

[Peter]

Indeed you are correct. My apologies.

I would however ask that you try to keep the election processes in the regions as similar to the election process at the federal level so as to avoid confusion.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Existing Southeastern practice has been to allow candidates to get on the ballot as late as just before the voting thread is created.  I don't feel comfortable with changing that to seven days by an adminstrative regulation.  I justified to myself the twelve hour period as providing enough time to enable the ballot to be prepared and finalized, but I can't justify seven days for that.  If there is going to be a seven day requirement here, it'll have to come by legislation not regulation.

[King]

You are really working hard, Ernest.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

In light of the controversy over NHPolitico editting his vote, I'm revising section 4 of the draft regulation to:

§ 4. Valid ballots
(a) A voter's ballot is valid only if the voter -
   (1) is registered with the Atlasian Secretary of Forum Affairs as a voter of a Southeastern state during the entire time that the poll is open;
   (2) makes only a single post in that election thread; and
   (3) does not edit or delete a post after the next post has been made.
(b) Posts made by an election offical in an election thread to administer that election must be seperate from a post used to cast that official's ballot and do not count as posts for the purposes of subsection (a).

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The following Southeastern Election Regulations are hereby made official as of November 23, 2004

Gov. Ernest

Southeastern Election Regulations

§ 1. Duration of voting
All elections and referendums conducted shall last at least 60 hours and shall conclude at the first occurence of 11:59pm Central Time after 60 hours of voting has occurred.

§ 2. Opening of the polls
Polls shall be opened by the Governor between midnight and 11:59am Central Time on the day appointed for the election to begin.  In the event that the polls shall not have been opened by 6:00 am Central Time on the day appointed for the election to begin, any official authorized by the seventh section of Article I of the Constitution to act in the event of the inability of the Governor shall be authorized to open the polls and conduct the vote.

§ 3. Declaration of Gubernatorial Candidacy
In order to be listed on the ballot, a candidate must have announced an intention to run before noon Central Time on the day before the day appointed for the election to begin.

§ 4. Valid ballots
(a) A voter's ballot is valid only if the voter -
   (1) is registered with the Atlasian Secretary of Forum Affairs as a voter of a Southeastern state during the entire time that the poll is open;
   (2) makes only a single post in that election thread; and
   (3) does not edit or delete a post after the next post has been made.
(b) Posts made by an election offical in an election thread to administer that election must be seperate from a post used to cast that official's ballot and do not count as posts for the purposes of subsection (a).

§ 5. Method of Voting
(a) In non-runoff gubernatorial elections, approval voting shall be used with voters listing in any order all candidates. including any who may not be listed on the ballot, who they approve of.
(b) In runoff gubernatorial elections, plurality voting shall be used with voters listing a single candidate that is on the ballot as their favored choice.
(c)  In referendums and confirmation votes, voters shall vote either yes or no.

§ 6. Counting of Ballots
As soon as possible after a vote has concluded, an official count shall be posted in the same thread as the vote by the offical conducting the vote.  Any attempts to vote that are disallowed shall be listed in that same post along with the reason for the disallowal.  In the event that that two or more candidates shall have received the largest number of approvals in a non-runoff gubernatorial election, then a runoff shall be held in a seperate thread.

§ 7. Contesting of a Ballot or Election
Only a person who voted or attempted to vote in a vote has standing to dispute the determination of the offical conducting that vote.  In the event that the resolution of a dispute could affect the conduct of a runoff, then the runoff shall be delayed until the dispute is resolved.  The chief judicial officer of the Southeastern Region shall make a determination of both fact and law.  Appeals to the Supreme Court of Atlasia are allowed only if there is a question of federal law involved.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

In order to codify the rule used in the last election that resulted in the determination that two ballots were invalid, I hereby amend the Southeastern Election Regulations as of January 1, 2005 by replacing the existing section 4(a) with the one given below.

Gov. Ernest

(a) A voter's ballot is valid only if the voter -
  (1) is registered with the Atlasian Secretary of Forum Affairs as a voter of a Southeastern state during the entire time that the poll is open;
  (2) makes only a single post in that election thread;
  (3) does not edit or delete a post after the next post has been made; and
  (4) clearly identifies the contest in which a vote is intended to be applied.