Look what the court just did...

[Leinad]

While I agree with the other two decisions (I take Kalwejt's opinion on the Xahar case, and strongly encourage Congress to do something on the matter before the December midterms), the decision in Bacon King vs. SoFE is absurd, and obviously politically motivated (of course, no surprise there--this is what happens when you let Adam put his right-hand-man on the Court).

From my standpoint (and Homleycooking's) any opinions should be considered "campaigning"--as the legendary former SoFE said, it's not a discussion thread.

Now, I can put basically anything in the voting booth, and if it isn't outright attacking the other candidate, or praising my own, it counts. That's [freaking] absurd.

Congress needs to make laws clarifying this, because the Supreme Court--led by a major Labor operative--have ushered in an era of chaos for the sake of stealing the election for Blair.

[Wisconsin+17]

I'm all for banning all languages other than English. It's common sense legislation. Xahar's asshattery shouldn't make a hard job unnecessarily harder.

As for campaigning, most jurisdictions effectively ban campaigning within the poll booth itself. I think the only way to enforce it would be to invalidate the ballot of the one posting anything other than a ballot. We should be able to tighten it up a bit.

[Kingpoleon]

The Supreme Court's ruling is the law of the land. The Supreme Court deserves our respect. If you find yourself unable to respect this ruling for the sake of the sanctity of the Court, I ask that you respect this ruling for the sake of Atlasia.

[Lincoln Republican]

Forget about multiple languages.  English is the only language all forum members understand.

This is an online based forum, not an actual country.

And get a President elected!

[Leinad]

The Supreme Court's ruling is the law of the land. The Supreme Court deserves our respect. If you find yourself unable to respect this ruling for the sake of the sanctity of the Court, I ask that you respect this ruling for the sake of Atlasia.

Lovely cliches, but completely irrelevant. Did you even read what I said?

I didn't say the ruling should be overturned, I just disagree with it (apologies for my thoughtcrime), I feel it was done due to partisanship, and I called on Congress to make better laws when it comes to elections, so as to clarify things.

[Virginiá]

First, I think there are serious constitutional issues with throwing out votes due to anti-campaigning ban in general. Sure, it's a good idea, but not something the Atlasia constitution currently seems to permit unless you're interpreting the amendment so broad that it essentially allows the govt to deny votes for any reason it wants.

Second, at least from my perspective, insulting someone in the ballot hardly seems like campaigning. Are we saying that anyone stating any opinion of a candidate counts as campaigning? Basically anyone who weighs in on an election would be campaigning then, no? The voting booth should be for votes only and not side opinions or insults, but to call it campaigning is a bit of a stretch.

Third, isn't there a big conflict of interest here? Why is the sec. of federal elections allowed to supervise their own election? Everything else aside, that is crazy! Someone else should have at least been temporarily assigned duties for this particular election.

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Definitely something that is needed. The campaigning law needs to be clarified. The right to vote in the constitution needs to be made less ambiguous and there needs to be a way to avoid conflicts of interest like this situation as well.

[Kingpoleon]

The Supreme Court's ruling is the law of the land. The Supreme Court deserves our respect. If you find yourself unable to respect this ruling for the sake of the sanctity of the Court, I ask that you respect this ruling for the sake of Atlasia.

Lovely cliches, but completely irrelevant. Did you even read what I said?

I didn't say the ruling should be overturned, I just disagree with it (apologies for my thoughtcrime), I feel it was done due to partisanship, and I called on Congress to make better laws when it comes to elections, so as to clarify things.

I did read it. I am afraid I misunderstood. I believed, due to your attacks against the ruling, that you were demanding it be overturned. I am afraid you and I spoke with opposite meanings, there.

[Wisconsin+17]

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What part of "ballots are for ballots" is so hard to understand?

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Yes. It's not a discussion thread.

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Anything that's not a ballot doesn't belong in a ballot thread. Ballots that are spoiled are invalidated. If you write Dicks out for Harambe on your ballot, it's still spoiled and invalidated.

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Let's see. You've appointed a Supreme Court Justice from a temporary president who just happens to be a laborite, pissed all over an election where the due winner North Carolina Yankee still hasn't been seated.

And you're complaining about partisanship? FFS.

Gass should be tossed toute de suite.

[Anna Komnene]

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Let's see. You've appointed a Supreme Court Justice from a temporary president who just happens to be a laborite, pissed all over an election where the due winner North Carolina Yankee still hasn't been seated.

And you're complaining about partisanship? FFS.

Gass should be tossed toute de suite.

Chill out.  She just joined the game a week ago and didn't do any of that.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

i for one am glad the court managed to stop the feddies from stealing the election

[Wisconsin+17]

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Then why are you ramming through Gass as a supreme court nominee? If she's just goined the game a week ago she is not qualified.

[Kingpoleon]

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Then why are you ramming through Gass as a supreme court nominee? If she's just goined the game a week ago she is not qualified.

... He was clearly referring to Virginia joining a week ago.

[Virginiá]

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What part of "ballots are for ballots" is so hard to understand?

Seriously? I'm speaking to the constitutionality of the law in general that allows him to throw out votes, not about what the statute says about "ballots are for ballots." Look, if you want to get an attitude here, that's fine I guess, it seems to be pretty common around this topic so far, but at least take a second to read what I said.

I'm saying that there is, imo, a strong case to be made that by the Atlasia constitution on who can be the denied the right to vote, that laws regulating things like this are not constitutional.

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Look, if you want to argue about the party affiliations of Supreme Court justices, that's one thing. But in this case we are talking about a election supervisor who is running in the election he is supervising. There is a direct conflict of interest that, if you were to rank it with the SC issue, would rank higher.

And your "whataboutism" doesn't make this issue moot. The election supervisor should not be managing his own election. Period.

-

Are you saying I'm not qualified? If so, not qualified for what? I'm just having a discussion here.

[Wisconsin+17]

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[Anna Komnene]

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Then why are you ramming through Gass as a supreme court nominee? If she's just goined the game a week ago she is not qualified.

I'm not ramming through anyone.  I'm not on the Senate, so I don't have a vote on that, but personally, I think President Truman should have let the new president make the appointment like Windjammer suggested.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Yes, you are talking about ballot regulations. That's the entire topic of the thread. Should there be campaigning in the voting booth? No. You've said you agree with the ban. Tossing out spoiled ballots is an appropriate consequence for spoiling your ballot.

Don't want your ballot spoiled? Don't spoil your ballot.

Everyone else managed to correctly cast a ballot without spoiling it. Obviously every other voter was well aware of the ban on campaigning on the thread. So ignorance is not a defense.

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Spoiling your ballot is not the same thing as 'being denied the right to vote'. You had the right to vote, you just didn't do it properly. Follow directions like the other 75 people who successfully cast a ballot and you'll do just fine.

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Did the Labor party file a complaint about Rpryor prior to this election?

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This isn't rpryor's first rodeo. Clearly the Labor party was ok with him before. Why the change now?

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Great. Then you can point out to the principle of the constitution that says that.

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It was unclear as to whether Siren was referring to Gass, whom Labor is attempting to ram through, or yourself.

If you've been here a week, you have a lot of ground to cover. Invalidation for campaigning has been enforced all the time I've been here.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Same. I'm not a Federalist either and I think that Truman should step down as Temporary president due to abuse of his office.

[Virginiá]

Spoiling your ballot is not the same thing as 'being denied the right to vote'. You had the right to vote, you just didn't do it properly. Follow directions like the other 75 people who successfully cast a ballot and you'll do just fine.

They used the write-in field to air their grievances. They didn't just pepper the post left and right with extras. Is there some sort of regulation that specifies the exact format, keyboard characters, spacing, etc for the write-in field? If not, then they used that space properly.

So by doing that they didn't spoil their ballot. Their ballots were thrown out for a separate activity that as I said, the constitution doesn't seem to give the govt the ability to regulate (even if the regulation is reasonable, as I believe it is)

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I dunno.

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I just got here. I'm a member of Labor but I do not represent the party's collective opinion on this, if there even is one, so you're just asking the wrong person that question.

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It's my personal opinion. Such a setup sounds like a North Korean election to me.

(ftr I don't think pryor entered into this with the goal to game anything, just that this conflict of interest should have been mitigated beforehand)

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So what? Are you saying "It's been going on for a while" makes a law constitutional?

[Anna Komnene]

I don't think anyone has a problem with rpryor personally.  It's just really awkward when the SOFE is a candidate in the election and is making controversial decisions that effect the outcome.  People are going to have a hard time trusting that, whether the decisions are right or wrong.  That's why I introduced a bill in the House to have the president appoint an acting election administrator when the SOFE is a candidate.  It didn't seem too popular but it passed and went to the Senate, so we'll see what happens with that.  As far as other changes to the constitution, I'm open to ideas on what to do on that.

Also, it's just not true that people haven't been making comments in the voting booth since pretty much... ever.  I don't know why they do it, but it's happened quite a few times and the votes were always valid.  Maybe there should be a law about that.  I don't know, but acting like this has never happened just isn't true.

I am pretty sure that the justices take their job seriously.  We haven't even seen their written opinions yet and people are jumping down their throat accusing of every horror in the book.  Maybe we should at least wait and see what the opinion says?

[Wisconsin+17]

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Well, then Labor should withdraw the allegations of a conflict of interest.

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Labor's complaint is based on the conflict of interest - which as you've stated is based on a situation prior to the election being conducted. If Labor had issues with rpryor conducting this election, despite being a candidate, then they should have filed the case then. They did not.

I'm not aware of any constitutional issues barring folks from running in elections as SofE. It's not stated anywhere I can see. We already have a hard enough time filling these thankless tasks.

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And the current situation is better? Tossing out election results you don't like sets a horrible precedent for future atlasian elections.

Yankee still hasn't been seated for an election he won over a month ago. The election is over, Labor lost. They need to move on and let Yankee serve the term he's earned.

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Why not just remove every single non-Laborite while you're at it? Frankly I trust rpryor much more than I do Labor, especially given how they've conducted themselves this election.

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Yeah, the votes have been tossed out before. This is just an issue now because Labor lost because their voters couldn't follow the rules.

[Wisconsin+17]

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That's not what the ballot box is for. They can make political comments in every other thread here on Atlasia, just not that one.

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If you believe the regulation is reasonable then you should obey the regulation when it's contrary to your own best interests.

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Well, then. If there's nothing constitutionally against Rpryor doing so, then I can't see how you have a leg to stand on.

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Absolutely. Did Labor do so? Nope. They waited until after they lost the election to file the complaint. Apparently rpryor's impartiality only came into question after they lost, not before.

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Which brings us back to my earlier point. There are plenty of ballot regulations. Are those unconstitutional too? Seems pretty important that if the vast, vast majority of people here know the rules of casting a ballot that those rules remain the same. Changing the rules when you lose isn't exactly cricket.

If, as you've stated, that the rules are the issues - seat Yankee and change the rules after.

[Blair]

 Lets read what Dereich; someone who I voted against becoming a Supreme Court Justice said. A former sitting member of the Supreme Court, appointed by a federalist and rejected by a Labor Senator said this about Baconking v SOFE I'm not going to get in a back and forth over this case.

Right, I've given up on writing anything as deep as I wanted and literally just am throwing stuff unedited from IRC and PMs while ignoring some things but here are my thoughts on BaconKing v. SoFE and what I'd consider if I was still a Justice.

I really don't like BK's "none of the other SoFEs have done it!" argument. The person's judgment on how to enforce the law (along with their activity level) is THE THING that differentiates candidates for the position; different people SHOULD handle it differently as long as there isn't a SCOA bright line on the matter.

BK's "freedom of speech" argument should fail as well. Regulation of both speech and voting are permitted and expected by the constitution; just as yelling fire in a crowd is ban-able, so too should attempts to use peer pressure in the voting booth. This pits two rights against each other, speech and the right to vote as you please without intimidation. The Court here should defer to the Legislature's power to create appropriate regulations regarding these boundaries. As the regulation serves a substantial government interest and is narrowly tailored to not suppress speech rights any more than necessary to protect other rights there's no problem on that front.The Court earlier collectively decided that the statue thing was unimportant; that can be ignored. The Due Process claim doesn't work for me either; the SoFE explained his justification for the ban and the aggrieved voters are currently having their day in Court.

For me, the sole issue that has merit in BK's case is that of the right to vote and of the definition of campaigning. As I said above, the right to ban campaigning should be constitutional and a lack of prior enforcement shouldn't necessarily preclude its use here.

When looking at just that issue my question is "Was the SoFE justified in calling the activity of the voters campaigning?" Rpryor actually got the question exactly right: "could those votes reasonably be construed as a direct attempt to influence how future voters cast their ballot."

In some circumstances, I'd think that was a jury question but since this has already gone on for a million years I'll just go ahead and assume the Court won't do that. I'll admit; I'm really really torn on this case. "F**k Kingpoleon," is not, to me, prima facie enough to ban a vote. But I also think Rpryor as SoFE should be the one determining these things, not the Court. If I was still on the Court, I guess my final vote would be the allow the votes in, only because I think voting is the crux of this game and this ONE TIME while anti-campaigning laws were not well understood the voter's rights could outweigh the SoFE's power but I can't say I'm sure enough that any decision the Court makes will be wrong.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

anyways— all of these cases were open-and-shut deals. likely part of the reason it took so long is that the esteemed justices wanted to avoid exactly this kind of reäction from federalists mad that their attempt to steal the election was thwarted.

[ASPN]

 Maybe we should at least wait and see what the opinion says?

I like that idea. Lets go with that.

[LLR]

This is exactly why I quit this game.

Y'all get so worked up over a court doing its job. Not allowing people to have fun in the voting booth and write in a different language or "campaign" () against the candidate they're voting for? It's ridiculous and it's the worst thing about this place.