Electoral Reform Amendment/Statute

[12th Doctor]

Really, I didn't veiw it for two days, and I became lost on waht the Hell was going on.  Could someone recap?

[JohnFKennedy]

I would hereby like to formally open the debate.

[WMS]

Nah, it's fine.  I'll probably be putting together another draft of this before not too long anyway, once we (ahem, ahem, people) work out the few details left.

Here, I'll start: do we definitively know that we're going with the random number game idea to resolve unbreakable ties?  Do we have any other options available to us?

I really would like to see this enacted, ahem, before the next election.   Unless our intent is to just wait until the new Constitution...

I believe this bill is still undergoing modification.

[Gabu]

Really, I didn't veiw it for two days, and I became lost on waht the Hell was going on.  Could someone recap?

Maybe I should post the current version of this thing (in this thread, given that we're not done with revisions yet).  I've just about lost track of what's going on too, and I've been following it the whole time.

[Gabu]

I would hereby like to formally open the debate.

Uh, do we have to?   This legislation is not really in its finalized form yet...

[Gabu]

Okay!  I've compiled everything that I've seen so far in this topic, and here's the new version of the legislation.  Tell me what you all think.  If this is good, I'll rescind this version and will introduce the final version in its own topic to finally get put to a vote.

Election and Voter Policy Specification Amendment

§ 1. Article II, Section 2, Clause 4 is hereby amended by appending to the end of it the following text:

"For the purposes of this clause, the amending of one's vote is defined to be the editing of the post containing the vote."

§ 2. The amended version of Article II, Section 2, Clause 4 shall hereby be applied to all federal elections.

§ 3. The following text from Article V, Clause 4 is hereby stricken:

"No one who has attained eighteen posts, is an active member of the forum, and has established an avatar from the United States for at least the time span of the election shall be denied the right to vote. An active member is defined as a person who has participated in other threads at the forum and has not joined for the purpose of trolling."

It shall be replaced with the following text:

"No one who has attained eighteen posts shall be denied the right to register to vote.  No one who is registered to vote, who is an active member, and who has established either an avatar from the United States or a statement declaring his or her registration in his or her signature for at least the time span of the election shall be denied the right to vote.  The Senate shall be granted the power to define what an active voter is through appropriate legislation.  The burden of proof shall be placed on the Secretary of Forum Affairs to prove that a registered voter is not active; if it cannot be proven, the voter shall be assumed to be active."

§ 4. The parts in Section 3 pertaining to the requirement of registered voters to be active members shall not be enforced on voters who have registered prior to the passage of this amendment until they have voted in at least one federal election.

§ 5. The following text from Amendment II, Section 2, is hereby stricken:

"Every registered vote at the forum who has acquired eighteen posts, is an active member of the forum, and are registered with an avatar from the United States".

It shall be replaced with the following text:

"Every person who fulfills the requirements to vote as specified in Article V, Clause 4 of the Constitution".

§ 6. Article II, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution is hereby stricken.

Statute of Election Procedure, Certification, and Challenges

§ 1.

  Clause 1. No election results shall be deemed to be official except those which have been certified.

  Clause 2. The certification of election results that occur following the passage of this amendment as official shall consist of the Secretary of Forum Affairs releasing an official statement, signed by that official, displaying the uncertified results in question and declaring them to be hereby certified.

  Clause 3. All election results in place prior to the passage of this amendment are hereby declared to be certified without requiring a statement from the Secretary of Forum Affairs.

§ 2.

  Clause 1. No election results shall be challenged except those which are awaiting certification or those which have been certified less than seven days prior to the challenge and which have occurred following the passage of this statute.

  Clause 2. To challenge an election result, a formal statement of challenge must be brought before the Supreme Court indicating the challenged result and the reason for challenging the result.

  Clause 3. In considering the challenge, the Supreme Court shall examine relevent parts of the Constitution and Atlasian law, and each member of the Court shall determine whether or not the challenge is legitimate.

  Clause 4. In the event that a majority of the Supreme Court concurs that the challenge is legitimate, appropriate action shall be taken to rectify the challenged section of the result:

    a. If the challenged section is a vote that has been counted, it shall be stricken from the official count.
    b. If the challenged section is a vote that has been disregarded, it shall be entered into the official count.
    c. If the challenged section is the procedure of the election, the election shall be declared invalid and a new election shall be scheduled for the Friday following the declaration of the invalidity of the election.

§ 3.

  Clause 1. In the case that a tie arises in any part of an election, the method described in Clause 2 shall be applied to break this tie.

  Clause 2. The President shall choose a number between one and ten and shall confer this number to the Secretary of Forum Affairs and to the Chief Justice.  Once receipt of this number by both parties is confirmed, the candidates in the tie shall attempt to guess the original number chosen.  Whichever candidate guesses closest to the number shall be declared the winner of the tie.  In the event that two or more guesses are equidistant from the original number, this shall result in a tie, and the process shall be repeated until this event does not occur.

  Clause 3. In the event that any of the office holders listed either are themselves candidates present in the tie or are not present to fulfill their duty, those in the aforementioned situation shall be replaced by the highest office holder in the following list who is not a candidate present in the tie and who is present to fulfill the duty:

    Vice President
    President Pro Tempore
    Secretary of State
    Secretary of Forum Affairs
    Attorney General
    Secretary of Defense
    Secretary of the Treasury
    Senior Associate Justice
    Junior Associate Justice
    1A Senator
    1B Senator
    2A Senator
    2B Senator
    3A Senator
    3B Senator
    4A Senator
    4B Senator
    5A Senator
    5B Senator

  Clause 4. In the event that all office holders listed in Clause 3 either are candidates in the tie or are not present to fulfill the duty, the President shall appoint one to three citizens able to fulfill the duty, depending on how many are needed to fill the vacant positions, and the citizen(s) shall then be required to be approved by the Senate by a majority vote before the number shall be selected.

§ 4.

  Clause 1. Tie-breaker tampering, defined to be the action of conferring the number to be guessed upon to anyone not stated in Section 3, Clause 2, is hereby declared to be a crime in Atlasia.

  Clause 2. Anyone found to have committed tie-breaker tampering shall have his or her voting rights suspended for no less than five months, but no greater than seven months.

  Clause 3. The Supreme Court shall be given the ability to enforce this section through appropriate sentencing.

§ 5. An "active voter", as the term appears in Article V, Clause 4 of the Constitution, is hereby defined to be one who has posted at least twenty-five times since the last federal election in which he or she voted, or one who has not been given the chance yet to vote in any federal election.

§ 6. This statute shall be applied to all federal elections.

Notes:

1. I made the action of telling the secret number to anyone other than the people listed a very serious crime, for obvious reasons.

2. I recognize that Clause 4 of Section 3 of the statute sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I figured we might as well have it there just in case some freak occurance makes it necessary.

3. I moved the definition of "active voter" to the statute per Peter Bell's very helpful legal advice.

I think that's it.

Sooo... anything else we need to change?

[12th Doctor]

Hmmmm... I don't like the idea of settling a tie via secret number.  That's what we used to do to decide election in high school.  It is childish and unfair to the candidates.  I would much rather just hold another election, or go by preference votes until one candidate has more 1st, 2nd or 3rd -if need be- prefence votes than the other guys.

[Akno21]

If it is a truely unbreakable tie, it would make more sense to split the term in half between the two candidates than to resort to number picking.

[7,052,770]

Yeah, I really don't like the idea of randomly picking numbers.  Maybe the other 9 senators could vote to break the tie.

[12th Doctor]

If it is a true tie, then I think that the governors should vote.  A majority of 3 wins.

[WMS]

Hmmmm... I don't like the idea of settling a tie via secret number.  That's what we used to do to decide election in high school.  It is childish and unfair to the candidates.  I would much rather just hold another election, or go by preference votes until one candidate has more 1st, 2nd or 3rd -if need be- prefence votes than the other guys.

Well, Senator Gabu and I have been trying to figure out ways to break ties at all levels. Bear in mind that I strongly oppose using preferences to determine the final round of an election, as that gives some votes more weight that others - I prefer a runoff in the event of a final round tie.

[Gabu]

Well, it's about time some other people chimed in on this.

I'll address alternate ways of breaking ties that have been mentioned:

1. Senate vote - The reason that I didn't want it put to a Senate vote is that all that will do is make the partisan nature of the government more slanted towards one side or the other.  I think that we all can agree that a highly partisan government is a bad thing.

2. Governor vote - I hadn't thought of this one before.  It's far enough detatched from federal politics that it actually might be good idea, now that I think about it.  Let's consider that one.

3. Runoff - The only problem is that this could lead to yet another unbreakable tie.  I suppose we could do a runoff first and then do whatever comes after that.  It's just that we want a method that will always work for breaking a tie, and a runoff doesn't satisfy that.

4. Consideration of each level of preferencing - As Senator WMS pointed out, this goes completely against what IRV was supposed to do.  IRV is supposed to eliminate the idea that one vote is worth more than another.

Regarding the idea that we proposed, the way I see it is not childish; rather, it's quite possibly the most objective method of them all, except for the idea of a runoff.  I consider it unfair to penalize a person for not being in the ideology that the rest of Atlasia voted for, which is what would happen if we had the Senate vote, a Presidential appointment, or whatever.

At any rate, maybe we could do #3 and then the random number thing?  Or perhaps #3 and then #2?  I did actually kinda like #2, because, as I said, regional politics is not (or at least is not supposed to be) connected to federal politics.

At any rate, feedback would be super.

[Akno21]

Split the term into two two-month terms instead of one four monther. Candidate A serves until the next group of Senators are sworn in 2 months later. It makes more sense than letting the Governor's decide, that is not their duty.

[Gabu]

Split the term into two two-month terms instead of one four monther. Candidate A serves until the next group of Senators are sworn in 2 months later. It makes more sense than letting the Governor's decide, that is not their duty.

Maybe we could have both Senators serve, increasing the size of the Senate by 1?  I'm not sure about that idea, but I don't think it's really fair to the one serving the first half if that person wants to run for re-election.  If we do go with that idea, how would we pick which senator gets the first term and which gets the second?

Also, that wouldn't solve ties that occur before the last round in an election, and in the unlikely but nevertheless possible case that we have, say, a three-way unbreakable tie between candidates, we don't want to just keep splitting up the term.  I feel that there must be a better way.

[Akno21]

Split the term into two two-month terms instead of one four monther. Candidate A serves until the next group of Senators are sworn in 2 months later. It makes more sense than letting the Governor's decide, that is not their duty.

Maybe we could have both Senators serve, increasing the size of the Senate by 1?  I'm not sure about that idea, but I don't think it's really fair to the one serving the first half if that person wants to run for re-election.  If we do go with that idea, how would we pick which senator gets the first term and which gets the second?

Also, that wouldn't solve ties that occur before the last round in an election, and in the unlikely but nevertheless possible case that we have, say, a three-way unbreakable tie between candidates, we don't want to just keep splitting up the term.  I feel that there must be a better way.

I feel that better represents the will of the people than having people who aren't even their district decide. They would pick on their own, perhaps one could have 3 months, than the other guy gets a month plus incumbency.

I don't think there is a better way that uses the will of that district and not the will of the nation as a whole.

[WMS]

*bump*

Those who objected to what Gabu and I came up with really need to go into detail on why their ideas are better.

[Akno21]

*bump*

Those who objected to what Gabu and I came up with really need to go into detail on why their ideas are better.

No secret numbers. Split the term. Other than that, it's good.

A long, hard campaign shouldn't be decided in a totally random fashion. Splitting the term is a fair way to do it, and one that leaves both sides not feeling cheated. It also keeps the decision in the hands of the voters, and doesn't let someone all the way across the country decide.

[Jake]

Splitting terms is a terrible idea.  What senator serves the first half and which serves the second half.  It wouldn't happen in a real government and it is not at all good for Atlasia. 

The only way to settle an unbreakable tie is some sort of random contest. A coin toss is not plausible, but the random number game is a perfectly random way to decide the election.

I agree a runoff should be held before the random # game is done.

[12th Doctor]

The only approuch that I will sign my name to is having the governors decide.

[Akno21]

Splitting terms is a terrible idea.  What senator serves the first half and which serves the second half.  It wouldn't happen in a real government and it is not at all good for Atlasia. 

The only way to settle an unbreakable tie is some sort of random contest. A coin toss is not plausible, but the random number game is a perfectly random way to decide the election.

I agree a runoff should be held before the random # game is done.

Why decide it randomly? A tight campaign should never come down to luck in that way.

Who cares that it wouldn't normally happen in the real world?

I think the two candidates could work it out between themselves. Also, I would be in favor of giving one 3 months and the other 1 month plus incumbency.

[Gabu]

I really hope that this doesn't hit deadlock over this rather trivial issue.  How about this, for a compromise between the ideas that I've heard, as something that leaves it up to the candidates:

In the case of an unbreakable tie:

1. A runoff is held.  If a winner emerges, that winner is the winner of the election.  If not...
2. The candidates are given the option to either do the random number idea or to split the term up among the candidates as they decide.  If a consensus regarding which action to proceed with is reached within one week of the end of the election, that action is undertaken.  If not...
3. The governors vote on which Senator should win (this would only be a problem if there were five, ten, etc. candidates in the tie, and the probability of this is so unfeasably low that I don't really feel like thinking about what to do in this case).

This basically lets everyone's suggestion be an option and leaves it up to the candidates to pick which is done.

[Akno21]

I like it.

[12th Doctor]

No term splitting or sharing.  Terrible idea.

[Gabu]

No term splitting or sharing.  Terrible idea.

Well, if every single candidate is perfectly okay with it (if even one isn't, it doesn't happen, and then we go to your idea), what's the harm in it?  I don't think it'd be too complicated; we could just require that a set end date of the term(s) could be set, and once that date is reached, the current senator would step down and the next senator could swear himself in.  As was seen with True Democrat, you don't need a full four-month term for it to be worth it.

I don't know; if nobody likes the idea, I guess we could scrap it, but I personally think that it's doable.

[JohnFKennedy]

Gabu, could you point out the most recent version of the amendment and statute so we can begin voting?