Closing Election Loopholes Act of 2016 (PASSED)

[Senator Cris]

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Sponsor: Senator Cris for President Griffin

[tmthforu94]

Just to clarify, under current law, say, there could be a Cris/Tmthforu94 ticket running and also a Griffin/Tmthforu94 running, correct? And this would remove that ability?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Just to clarify, under current law, say, there could be a Cris/Tmthforu94 ticket running and also a Griffin/Tmthforu94 running, correct? And this would remove that ability?

As I understand the current body law, votes in presidential elections are counted as votes for the ticket as a whole, not as separate votes for president and vice president. Thus, in an election where Griffin/Duke receive 25% of first preferences, Cris/Tmthforu94 receive 45%, and Griffin/Tmthforu94 receive 30%, Tmthforu94 would not be able to combine the votes he won as Griffin's running mate with the votes he won as Cris' running mate. The adoption of version A would change this to count votes for president separately from votes for vice president, while version B would continue the "vote for the ticket" practice and prohibit candidates from running as part of more than one ticket.

[Talleyrand]

Just to clarify, under current law, say, there could be a Cris/Tmthforu94 ticket running and also a Griffin/Tmthforu94 running, correct? And this would remove that ability?

As I understand the current body law, votes in presidential elections are counted as votes for the ticket as a whole, not as separate votes for president and vice president. Thus, in an election where Griffin/Duke receive 25% of first preferences, Cris/Tmthforu94 receive 45%, and Griffin/Tmthforu94 receive 30%, Tmthforu94 would not be able to combine the votes he won as Griffin's running mate with the votes he won as Cris' running mate. The adoption of version A would change this to count votes for president separately from votes for vice president, while version B would continue the "vote for the ticket" practice and prohibit candidates from running as part of more than one ticket.

This is correct, and I hope that one of these options will be clarified so we can avoid future issues with this.

As for the twenty minute rule, my idea is to simply abolish editing of ballots. It's not hard to take 5 seconds to look over your ballot to make sure it is accurate to your intention. We've had many pointless controversies over people being asked to edit their ballots because they did not vote the way that someone intended.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Personally, I think 1(b) is the better option. It is quite common for voters to list only the name of the presidential candidate on their ballot: under 1(a), those votes would be ruled invalid (despite everyone knowing who they meant to vote for. Given the prevalence of cross-party endorsements in Atlasia, I don't see the need for a candidate to run as part of multiple tickets.

I'm not sure about barring people from editing their votes entirely: typos do happen, after all. Perhaps we could shorten the time frame to, say, five minutes as a compromise?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I will not vote to repeal the 20 minute rule.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I could get behind shortening it as Senator Truman suggested to help ensure votes are only edited for typos and not due to voter intimidation, but I must agree with Senator Yankee that eliminating vote editing entirely is not something I can support.

[Senator Cris]

I agree with Yankee and PiT on the 20-minutes rule.

[Talleyrand]

How about 5 minutes or 10 minutes as a compromise?

[Adam Griffin]

I will note that I had completely misunderstood Talleyrand's initial request; I thought he wanted to expand the window or eliminate it altogether, allowing people to edit the ballot for the entirety of the election (an idea which I obviously did not like).

Also and in regards to the certification of election results, I would humbly ask that a Senator propose an amendment that requires the certification of regularly-scheduled elections to be conducted no earlier than one week following the closure of the voting booth. We have not had real clarification on this matter and it seems that in the past, there have been several instances in which election results were certified with mistaken counts and without time for proper court cases to proceed. In the real world, once election results are certified, it's over: we need to have a protocol for this very important concept.

[Talleyrand]

My intention was to wipe out the editing period entirely, but if that's clearly not passable, I'd settle for cutting down on it instead. Better than nothing.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

My concern is that even on TWC Extreme Internet, this site is still glitchy as hell and sometimes I find it completely unoperable. That is especially the case in the early morning hours, which with my work schedule is the only time I have to get on. You click post and the post doesn't appear, you have to exit the page to get it to go back to the thread. Then ten minutes later the post appears and because of it, you have now voted twice.

I have never had it happen during an election, but it happens enough in other threads that it could very happen during an election. I am also sure this caused one of the June 2009 votes to be discarded in that 1 vote election, though perhaps I am mistaken.

[Adam Griffin]

My concern is that even on TWC Extreme Internet, this site is still glitchy as hell and sometimes I find it completely unoperable. That is especially the case in the early morning hours, which with my work schedule is the only time I have to get on. You click post and the post doesn't appear, you have to exit the page to get it to go back to the thread. Then ten minutes later the post appears and because of it, you have now voted twice.

I have never had it happen during an election, but it happens enough in other threads that it could very happen during an election. I am also sure this caused one of the June 2009 votes to be discarded in that 1 vote election, though perhaps I am mistaken.

This is a good point. It has happened to me on more than one occasion - including once while voting (in the December 2014 At-Large Senate Election). Thankfully, no one saw my duplicate post in the few minutes that it was up and I was able to delete it - good luck invalidating my vote now!

In fact, that particular instance made me create this thread on the Atlas board, in which I complained about the problem (among other forum slowdown issues)...only for the problem to happen with that particular post, leading to the thread itself being duplicated:

I was trying to make a post earlier, and it was doing the typical "it's going to take 10 minutes for your post to go through". I clicked stop on my browser, closed the window up and reopened Atlas to check if the post had went through (it hadn't; sometimes it will even though it still appears that it's trying to post from your reply tab). I then tried to make the reply again a few minutes later, and after a couple of minutes, it did go through. Every time that this has happened in the past, there has never been an issue of duplicate posts. This time, however, it appeared that both posts went through and at roughly the same time (I didn't check exact timestamps before removing the duplicate, but they were definitely within the same minute). The first attempted post was in a browser window that had been stopped and closed several minutes before attempting the second one, and only after my second one went through did both show up.

Very strange stuff. Maybe the (MySQL?) database is somehow lagging when it comes to reflecting submitted posts, or something?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

INVALGHAZI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE MUST HOLD HEARINGS NOW!!! 

[Senator Cris]

Sorry, I thought there was the intention to raise the period or to make possible to edit the ballot for the entire election.
I'd be ok with a 5-10 minutes rule.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

INVALGHAZI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE MUST HOLD HEARINGS NOW!!! 

Those communist fascist godless theocratic cronies won't get away with this!

[Prince of Salem]

I agree with Yankee and PiT on the 20-minutes rule.

[Adam Griffin]

So, do I take this that there is no interest in ensuring that we have a clarified process for certification of elections? I've just never liked the idea that we often seem to certify election results within less than 24 hours; on more than one occasion, this has led to the formal, recognized vote totals for one or more candidates being in conflict with who and which votes were eligible. It has never been a discrepancy that led to a coup in terms of who would win, but one only need to look back to the June 2013 Presidential Election to find the most recent example of how it could happen. Probability is a bitch: sooner or later, it will happen if we stay the current course.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

So, do I take this that there is no interest in ensuring that we have a clarified process for certification of elections?

Dkrol introduced a separate bill to address this.

[Adam Griffin]

So, do I take this that there is no interest in ensuring that we have a clarified process for certification of elections?

Dkrol introduced a separate bill to address this.

Ah, glorious news! I missed it because it was actually introduced before Cris sponsored this bill.

Can someone please clarify for me, however, what the status is on the executive slot? Unless something was changed, it was my understanding that we added an executive slot for legislation a couple of years ago, and that the President did not need legislation to be sponsored on his behalf by a Senator in order for it to be introduced.

[Senator Cris]

The DKrol's bill addresses another point, not this.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So, do I take this that there is no interest in ensuring that we have a clarified process for certification of elections?

Dkrol introduced a separate bill to address this.

Ah, glorious news! I missed it because it was actually introduced before Cris sponsored this bill.

Can someone please clarify for me, however, what the status is on the executive slot? Unless something was changed, it was my understanding that we added an executive slot for legislation a couple of years ago, and that the President did not need legislation to be sponsored on his behalf by a Senator in order for it to be introduced.

A "couple of years ago"? If it was before October 2014, it would have been wiped out with the overhaul of the rules.

So, do I take this that there is no interest in ensuring that we have a clarified process for certification of elections? I've just never liked the idea that we often seem to certify election results within less than 24 hours; on more than one occasion, this has led to the formal, recognized vote totals for one or more candidates being in conflict with who and which votes were eligible. It has never been a discrepancy that led to a coup in terms of who would win, but one only need to look back to the June 2013 Presidential Election to find the most recent example of how it could happen. Probability is a bitch: sooner or later, it will happen if we stay the current course.

I never recall saying that there was no interest. However, I fear that with a full week lag time between the vote an certification you 1) run the risk of votes being deleted or just diappearing on this crazy site and 2) the concern about special elections who normally take office immediately after the election.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I offer the following amendment:

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[Clark Kent]

I agree with Yankee and PiT on the 20-minutes rule.

I also prefer version 1a to version 1b.

[Senator Cris]

Senators have 24 hours to object.