SENATE BILL: Double Posting Leniency Resolution (At Final Vote)

[Sestak]

There is, I believe, a different version of this that's been proposed in the House that only allows a double post to be corrected if it's within five minutes of the original?

I'd suggest that that proposal would be a much better way of going about this.

[Sestak]

I think you guys are forgetting - the provisions in the FEA here are reinforced in Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution itself. The correct way to do this would be via constitutional amendment first - *then* by changing the statute.

For amending the constitution, and fixing the other issues people have brought up, I'd again strongly suggest the Senate take up the proposal introduced by Wulfric in the House:

The No Moderator or Accidental Invalidation Amendment

Article I, Section IV of the 4th constitution shall be amended to read as follows:


The right of citizens of the Republic of Atlasia to vote shall not be denied, except in regards to persons whose account is fewer than 168 hours old, as punishment for crimes of which the accused has been duly convicted, or in consequence of failing to meet such requirements for frequent posting or term of residency as may be established by law; but no ballot shall be counted as valid that should list the candidates for office in a script other than the Latin alphabet, or that has been edited more than twenty minutes after its posting in the voting booth. All posts made in the voting booth shall be considered as ballots, and no citizen shall cast multiple ballots in any one election during the period the voting booth is open, upon penalty of the invalidation of their vote, unless:

1. Evidence exists that the first ballot submitted by the citizen was deleted by a Moderator or Administrator of the Atlas Forum, or

2. The second ballot submitted was clearly accidental as it only lists contests not up for election within the thread it was posted on, in which case only the first ballot shall be counted, or:

3. The second ballot submitted was clearly accidental as it is identical to the first ballot and was submitted within five minutes of the first ballot, in which case only the first ballot shall be counted. 


However, in no circumstances shall a user be allowed to cast a third or subsequent ballot in any election, upon penalty of invalidation of all ballots submitted.

(Keeping the moderator part is up to you, but I think the duplicate ballot clauses here work better.)

[Sestak]

It does not —it brings back the possibility of it, but (a) if we aren't willing to risk Congress making a mistake, what is even the point of this amendment? and (b) including an undefined, unenforceable offense in the Constitution (even, nay especially in a clause removing it from existence) is pretty pointless.

No, the prohibition is still in the statute, we just can't enforce it anymore because BK vs Rpryor. If we modify the constitution to make BK v Rpryor irrelevant without protecting campaigning, the prohibition comes back automatically because we never did remove it from the statute.

Wait, does a provision struck down as constitutional automatically become active again if the constitution is changed? I thought it would need to be passed again?

[Sestak]

Didn't the supreme court previously rule that a ban on campaigning in the voting booth was unconstitutional?

Indeed , and we are amending the constitution as part of this.

But what's the point? Campaigning is a purely subjective term, and that means that the SoFE is singlehandedly deciding which votes are valid and which are invalid. What benefit is there in banning campaigning in the voting booth?

It is true it was subjective in the past, but if you read the language I wrote out, the definition will be clear going forward.

There's really no need for having in the clause about someone's ballot being deleted by a moderator. We shouldn't be rewarding people for ToS violations.

Also the bit about prohibiting campaigning in the voting booth still has too much potential to be abused by future SoFEs.

There is need when the current law allows moderators to singlehandely remove votes. While you may agree with the recent deletions, there may be days you may not, and days when such removal would change results. I know no one really cares about the WB ballot anymore since YoungTexan won by fourteen percentage points, but whether candidates win or lose elections should not be up to the constantly changing standards of behavior on the site over which we have no oversight, but instead based on who actually got the most votes. And it is hardly some huge amnesty - it is ONE re-try. If you get the ballot deleted a second time, then you're out of luck, because at that point, you clearly know the current standards and are just trolling.

If you have a better definition of campaigning, I'm willing to consider it.

You forget that a vote for Young Texan in the Presidential race was removed by a moderator as well. And said moderator made very clear what his policy on handling those types of ballots will be going forward right after deleting the post.

People on this site know what is and isn't acceptable in the ToS, and the votes that have been removed in the last two elections clearly violated it. The most recent decision was backed by another mod and modadmin, who made their opinions very clear when Lumine was wrongfully attacked. There's no excuse for risking your ballot to make a personal attack (or some other violation of ToS). If I somehow screwed up my ballot IRL, I'm not entitled to ONE retry.There's no reason it should apply differently in game, especially when it's clear what does and does not break the rules.

except this last case showed very clearly that it's not clear or objective as to what is a personal attack - WB did not and still does not believe what he posted comes close to a personal attack.

Plus I'm pretty sure mods in question have explicitly stated they would be supportive of such a re-vote provision.