Ruling on the suit brought by Speaker Inks.LWC against the Mideast Region
1. Which questions need to be answered?Should the ballot cast by drj101 in the May Mideast Gubernatorial election be thrown out for campaigning in the booth, and what is the appropriate interpretation of the law forbidding campaigning in the booth in general?
2. Plaintiff’s Case:Under Article IV of the Third Constitution, which states:
under Article IV of the Mideast Constitution, which states:
and under the
Mideast Campaigning in the Booth Statute, drj101’s vote calling Governor ZuWo and Lt. Governor Cathcon “boring” was intentionally attempting to convince voters to cast their ballots against ZuWo and Cathcon. This vote was counted as valid by the Governor at that time, Tmthforu94.
The plaintiff also argues that simply because the federal SoFE has not been upholding campaign laws does not mean those laws cannot and should not be upheld by the Mideast region.
3. The Government’s Case:The government cites a litany of past ballots with more egregious examples of campaigning within the voting booth and argues that couting drj101’s vote as invalid would be a considerable deviation from historical precedent. Furthermore, the defense argues that the Court does not have the ability to rule in a way that differs from the current federal understanding of how campaigning in the booth is defined. The defense argues that since past booth administrators have interpreted the law differently than the position of the plaintiff, any deviation from the historical precedent would require a constitutional amendment.
4. How the Court Answers These Questions:The Court agrees with the defense that the Governor’s decision to count drj101’s vote as valid is in line with the decisions of past booth administrators both on the regional and on the federal level. However, that does not necessarily guarantee the unchallenged decisions of previous administrators are in line with the law.
The Court recognizes the Supremacy of the Federal Government and the authority of the SoFE in conducting federal elections; however, this election was not a federal election and was thus not administered by the SoFE. The Supremacy of the Federal Government does not command that all regional elections be conducted in the same manner as those conducted by the federal government. Regions are able to enact their own elections laws as long as those laws do not conflict with federal law or the federal constitution. In this case, the text of the federal constitution recognizes the additional authority of law.
The Mideast Region has, in her wisdom, chosen to lay out specific guidelines for what does and does not constitute campaigning in a voting booth. Admittedly the law in itself includes some degree of subjectivity. The definitions of “campaigning” in the law relevant to this case are:
To proceed to apply this standard to drj101’s ballot, the Court must, unfortunately, attempt to discern her intent when casting the ballot. As to the latter definition, drj101 followed up calling ZuWo and Cathcon “boring” with calling them “not bad people”, so the Court cannot reasonably assume she was intending to insult them. The former definition requires that drj101 used the statement to encourage voters to vote for or against ZuWo and Cathcon. The Court accepts the plaintiff’s interpretation that this provision is meant to include encouraging voters to cast their ballots either for or against a candidate rather than simply for, since the two are clearly correlated. However, this also requires that the statement encourages to vote against ZuWo and Cathcon, and the Court cannot agree with the plaintiff’s argument that drj101’s comment actually does this. No statement her directs voters, either overtly or subtextually to vote for or against anyone.
Still, the Court must consider the possibility that drj101 may have engaged in campaigning in the booth that, while not specifically outlined in statute, is still in violation of both or either constitutional prohibition on campaigning in a voting booth. The plaintiff and the Court agree with Merriam Webster’s definition of the verb campaign, “
a connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result <election campaign>” that campaigning requires
intent. The Court cannot believe that drj101, intending on convincing voters not to cast their ballots for ZuWo and Cathcon, wrote in Russian that they are “pretty boring but not bad people”. If she intended to influence voters, she would have clearly written that comment in English so that most voters would actually read it. However, this should not be misconstrued to mean that in the future insults or statements clearly encouraging voters to cast their ballots in a particular way are not engaging in illegal campaigning in the voting booth simply because their write in a language other than English.
Since drj101's vote cannot be found to be in violation of either constitution or the statute, it must be counted. The Court recognizes that this decision is a subjective judgement of drj101's intent and believes that voters should be aware of future booth administrators and courts potentially counts their votes as invalid if they write extraneous marks that are deemed to be campaigning. The Court encourages, but does not have the legal authority to mandate, voters to use their ballots only for writing preferences to avoid such potential challenges in the future.
5. Ruling:The Court finds that the governor correctly counted drj101’s vote in the original certification, but only because drj101’s vote was cast licit with the relevant sections of the federal and Mideast Constitution and the Mideast Campaigning in the Booth Statute. However, the Court orders the Mideast Governor and any other Mideast voting booth administrator to act in accordance with statute when determining whether or not a vote is valid even if past booth administrators have not done so.
Regarding the Supremacy Clause, the Mideast Superior Court has the authority to rule regional elections that are conducted in violation of federal law.
