Voting System Reform Commission

[Sam Spade]

I shall also support Peter Bell for chairman of this commission.

[Sam Spade]

I agree with the general gist that Emsworth and Colin are saying with regards to the constitutionality and potential implementation of a secret ballot, fwiw.

I really have nothing to add right now otherwise on the issue.

[Sam Spade]

1. The requirement that elections to the Senate and the Presidency be by public post is repealed.
2. Under no circumstances shall a polling method which allows a person to anonymously vote be used in any election or vote mandated under this Constitution. This clause shall not be construed to require that a person's vote is publicly disclosed to all citizens.
3. This Amendment shall only become operative if ratified within one calendar year from the date of its submission to the Regions by the Senate.

The Amendment's language seems acceptable to me. I see no problem with the wording, which is quite clear.

Agreed.

[Sam Spade]

I wonder if anybody on this Commission is actually in favor of a secret ballot.

I am willing to vote to let the citizens decide whether they want to change the ballot in order to make a secret ballot.  I am still presently undecided with regards to whether I would vote for a secret ballot bill if presented to the Senate.

[Sam Spade]

Could we possibly have one non-officing member of each major party in Atlasia?  Or each Presidential candidate could appoint one representative to count votes.

But then, what if the candidate appoints a non-serious or non-cooperative poster? For instance, what if Jesus decides to run and appoint opebo?

Also, this would give us a committee of perhaps ten members; to expect all of whom to meet at midnight on the relevant day would not be reasonable.

I highly recommend keeping this committee as small as possible.  From experience on the court, it is surprisingly hard to get three people to be online at the same time to work on something.  Ten people would be highly unwieldy, unless we intend to do this on the forums, which would negate the reason for a secret ballot in the first place.

Agreed.  I think trying to put together any more would be next to impossible.

The problem is, that much like everyone else, I'm struggling with the idea of how we could make this committee be as fair, not open to fraud and logical as possible.

I am still against SC justices being on the committee because of the conflict of interest problem.

I also think it should be a fairly standard body of non-partisan people, mainly government, but also potentially not those in government and most importantly should come from people not in the federal election being watched over.

For my own two cents, I'll throw out my suggestion of who I think it should be:

The GM
The SoFA
A public representative approved of by all party leaders (and by the Senate and President, if necessary) who is not running for election at that time.

If the GM and/or the SoFA are running for election at that time, then they should be also replaced by a public representative meeting the requirements stated above.

[Sam Spade]

If it turns out that non-formation is a reasonable possibility, where should we go from here?

I confess that I have no answer here.

Yep, it's a big problem to put it mildly.

This is also one of the reasons I suggested two official members and one non-official, in the hope that non-formation wouldn't happen.

[Sam Spade]

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I would say as soon as possible after the election.

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Yes, as soon as possible after the election.

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I don't think so; then, it seems rather pointless, I think, to have a secret ballot in the first place.

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I believe that voters should sign a register indicating that a secret ballot was cast; the committee need only correct errors in the register.

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I presume that a quorum would still be allowed to meet. I don't see much else that we can do.

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Once the list is published, we can let the SoFA count.

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Absolutely.

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This could be resolved if each ballot is published without the voter's name attached.

One other issue we must consider is the possibility of a Committee member disclosing the ballots to another voter in order to help him vote tactically.

I would like to basically second Emsworth's comments on these question.

[Sam Spade]

Given a pretty high degree of non-participation to this point, I will summarise where we are at now, bolding points which I feel are still in need of being addressed.

The Committee that will receive and verify votes

The Commission seems to have consensus that the Committee will have three members, though there is some dispute over who these members should be. Sam Spade has suggested using the GM, the SoFA and an ordinary citizen, and obviously we have the original proposal put forward of the VP, PPT and SoFA, followed by a list of office holders. True Indep. suggests the use of party nominated persons to be on the committee.

All seem to agree that the use of ordinary citizens is acceptable, though whether they should be confirmed in some way by the Senate has received little discussion. There is general agreement that the Supreme Court Justices should not serve on the Committee.

Obviously, I support my own plan for how to handle the staffing of the committee.  I also have no problem with ordinary citizens being confirmed by the Senate.  I think it would be mandatory if the President were to make the picks as to who serves on the commission, but should also be done if party organizations choose to pick who's involved.

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I will put my two cents in here and say that I think failure to sign should disqualify.  If people are not required to sign in order for their vote to count, I think it would well increase the possibility of fraud, as anyone could send a secret ballot in without having to sign whether they were a registered voter or not.  Even if the ballots are secret, it is imperative that the committee knows who has voted and who has not voted.  Otherwise, we get ballot-stuffing.

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Considering as this type of quorum appears to be the best way to deal with this matter, I support it, even though it isn't the best.

Now that I think about it, maybe we can appoint an alternate Committee member who is only involved if one of the members doesn't show up.

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This is the reason why the requirement of the register is so important.  Obviously, voting twice should be an automatic disqualifier of one's vote.

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I honestly don't really have any plans in mind to deal with this problem in advance.  The only way it's really come into my thinking so far is in the belief that 2 out of the 3 members of the committee should be the SoFA and GM, the two most non-partisan positions in Atlasia.

[Sam Spade]

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I honestly don't really have any plans in mind to deal with this problem in advance.  The only way it's really come into my thinking so far is in the belief that 2 out of the 3 members of the committee should be the SoFA and GM, the two most non-partisan positions in Atlasia.

One point I am especially concerned about is the exclusive ability of committee members to vote tactically, whereas this is denied to other voters. A committee member may not only cast a tactical ballot of his own, but also may reveal the totals to some other citizen who would then be able to vote tactically.

This is also a very reasonable concern, but honestly I don't know what we can do about that, other than have them match the votes with the names on the register after the voting is over with.

[Sam Spade]

Same here.  If there are any other issues up for discussion, I'd gladly give my opinion, though response #91 conveys my concerns to the present questions in as best a manner as possible.

[Sam Spade]

Given that there is not much discussion on previous topics, we shall move onto what should be our final topic:

Prevention of Fraud

What specific offences on the part of the electoral committee should we criminalise?

Beyond criminalisation, are there any particular safeguards we can put in place to stop fraud?

The following, at the very least, ought to be criminalized:
- Revealing or publicly discussing vote totals, results, or individual votes before the election ends
- Revealing a voter's identity without his consent
- Fraudulently counting the results
- Gross negligence in conducting the election

As to specific measures to combat fraud, I fear that I cannot think of any.

Same here.  This basically encompasses my thoughts as well.

[Sam Spade]

1.  Yes
2.  Yes
3.  #1 or #4, imo.

[Sam Spade]

I concur with the report, Peter.

[Sam Spade]

This is the original discussion concerning a secret ballot.