Electoral Reform Amendment/Statute

[Gabu]

Okay, well, I looked into it given that Peter Bell isn't around, so here's my split up version of the previous amendment.  Since they're closely related, I'm putting them both on the same post.  I've also included the other stuff StevenNick suggested regarding the definition of an "active voter" as well as a few other bits (see the "Notes" at the bottom).  It is okay to have two pieces of legislation in the same thread, right?  If not, I'll stick the statute in its own thread.

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.  For the purposes of this clause, an active member is defined to be one who has posted at least twenty-five times since the last federal election in which he or she voted.  The burden of proof shall be placed on the Secretary of Forum Affairs to prove that a registered voter has not posted twenty-five or more times; if it cannot be proven, the voter shall be assumed to be active.  If a person is registered to vote, and no federal election has passed since registering to vote, that person shall be counted as an active member."

§ 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 bill 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 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 the last round of preferential voting, the candidate in the tie who has received the greatest number of first-preference votes shall be declared the winner.

  Clause 2. In the case that a tie arises in the last round of preferential voting and no candidate in the tie has received a greater number of first-preference votes, non-first-preference votes shall be included one level at a time (second-preference votes first, then third-preference votes, etc.) until one candidate has a greater number of votes than anyone else.

  Clause 3. In the case that no candidate with a greater number of votes than anyone else emerges once every level of preferencing is considered, this event shall be declared an "unbreakable tie".  Differing procedures shall be followed depending on the type of election that contains an unbreakable tie:

    a. If the election is for the presidency, the Senate shall vote on who shall be President.  No candidates may be voted upon except for those who are present in the tied vote.  A majority in the Senate shall be needed to elect a candidate as President.
    b. If the election is for the Senate, the President shall choose from the candidates in the tied vote one candidate who shall be Senator.
    c. If the election is for any other new office created in the future, no procedures shall be set in place upon passage of this amendment, but no new office shall be established without specifying the procedures of handling an unbreakable tie.

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

I think that covers everything.

Notes:

1. I realized that Article V, Clause 4 does not at all differentiate between the requirements to register to vote and the requirements to actually vote.  I've made that differentiation.

2. Amendment II, Section 2 effectively duplicated the requirements to vote, which would require that it be amended every time we amend Article V, Clause 4.  I've changed it to effectively say "see Article V, Clause 4" instead, to prevent that hassle.

[WMS]

Based on the excellent second report from our SoFA, StevenNick, I would like to introduce the following Constitutional amendment in an attempt to rectify the problems he has laid out:

Election Procedure, Certification, and Challenges Amendment

[snip]

§ 5.

  Clause 1. Article II, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution is hereby stricken.

  Clause 2. In the case that a tie arises in the last round of preferential voting, the candidate in the tie who has received the greatest number of first-preference votes shall be declared the winner.

  Clause 3. In the case that a tie arises in the last round of preferential voting and no candidate in the tie has received a greater number of first-preference votes, non-first-preference votes shall be included one level at a time (second-preference votes first, then third-preference votes, etc.) until one candidate has a greater number of votes than anyone else.

  Clause 4. In the case that no candidate with a greater number of votes than anyone else emerges once every level of preferencing is considered, this event shall be declared an "unbreakable tie".  Differing procedures shall be followed depending on the type of election that contains an unbreakable tie:

    a. If the election is for the presidency, the Senate shall vote on who shall be President.  No candidates may be voted upon except for those who are present in the tied vote.  A majority in the Senate shall be needed to elect a candidate as President.
    b. If the election is for the Senate, the President shall choose from the candidates in the tied vote one candidate who shall be Senator.
    c. If the election is for any other new office created in the future, no procedures shall be set in place upon passage of this amendment, but no new office shall be established without specifying the procedures of handling an unbreakable tie.

§ 6. Sections 3, 4, and 5 shall be applied to all federal elections.

[snip]
 

As I'm sure you all know by now, I strongly oppose the first preference rule. The point of having a preferential voting system is so that people can vote however they wish without being a spoiler. But the first preference rule (or any rule based on the number of preferences - what is this, "Survivor"?) violates the spirit of preferential voting by once again enabling people to act as spoilers if they choose to vote how they truly want to.

In addition to that, any and all rules based on using preferences as tiebreakers violate the standard of 'one person, one vote', since under preference rules some votes are worth more than others. Thus a tie is turned into a victory for one candidate by 'weighting' certain votes differently.

Instead of preference rules, a runoff should be held between the top two candidates in the event of a tie. If there is a continued tie, then Clause 4 can go into effect.
Senator WMS

Okay, I can see your point.  Can we bring debate into this topic, however?  There's a newer version based on Peter Bell's recommendations in that topic.

Done. My point remains.

[Sam Spade]

I support WMS's changes wholeheartedly and urge my other senator to support it also, as well as the whole Senate. 

It is a much fairer way to decide elections in Atlasia and allows preferential voting to achieve its purpose, instead of making one vote more important than another.

[WMS]

I support WMS's changes wholeheartedly and urge my other senator to support it also, as well as the whole Senate. 

It is a much fairer way to decide elections in Atlasia and allows preferential voting to achieve its purpose, instead of making one vote more important than another.

Exactly!
Thanks for the support!

[Gabu]

So, basically, the idea is that we skip the consideration of each level of preferencing and go straight to breaking the tie?

I could live with that.  I see your point about it not correcting what preferential voting is supposed to correct, which is the idea that one vote is more important than another.

[minionofmidas]

One problem with both Gabu's bill and WMS' change, and also the reason we got the first preference rule:
What to do with a tie in the earlier rounds?
For example, we had an election where
Keystone Phil received 5 first pref. votes
Umengus received 3 first pref. votes
Migrendel received 3 first pref. votes

Migrendel beat Umengus on second pref.s*, and went on to beat Phil 6-5.
In this kind of situation (which Gabu's bill doesn't address), a tie-breaker is needed, while in a tie in the final tally, you can have a revote instead.


*in a fashion I thoroughly abhor: Republicans boycotted preferential voting, absurdly claiming not to see any difference between Migrendel and Umengus. All Umengus voters had put Migrendel at second, but only two Migrendel voters had put Umengus at second as the third one, HockeyDude, hadn't understood the election law and cast a vote that looked like DemoHawk's original one. In essence, Umengus got punished for having the most informed and sensible voters of the lot. The current rules place a premium on ignorance. Of course, the only way to fix this would be to require voters to list all candidates, in which case Umengus would probably have won with Rep. 2nd prefs, or to switch to Condorcet in which case there would have been an unbreakable tie, and a revote, between Umengus and Migrendel.

[StevenNick]

For the purposes of this clause, an active member is defined to be one who has posted at least twenty-five times since the last federal election in which he or she voted.  If the person has not voted in any federal election since registering to vote, that person shall be counted as an active member.

The language of these two sentences needs to be changed.  This would allow a member to register and potentially sit out every election and still be classified as an active member.  I would suggest amending this to read, "For the purpose of this clause, an active member is defined as one who has posted at least twenty-five times on the Atlas Forum in the period between any two federal elections.  First time registrants will be considered active, regardless of the number of posts after registration, until the first federal election following their registration, at which point registrants will be required to post twenty-five times between any two federal elections."

Anyway...Great job on writing the bill and the amendment, Gabu.

[PBrunsel]

Finally some action from the Senate when it comes to Election Reform!

I comend Senator Gabu.

[Gabu]

One problem with both Gabu's bill and WMS' change, and also the reason we got the first preference rule:
What to do with a tie in the earlier rounds?
For example, we had an election where
Keystone Phil received 5 first pref. votes
Umengus received 3 first pref. votes
Migrendel received 3 first pref. votes

Migrendel beat Umengus on second pref.s*, and went on to beat Phil 6-5.
In this kind of situation (which Gabu's bill doesn't address), a tie-breaker is needed, while in a tie in the final tally, you can have a revote instead.


*in a fashion I thoroughly abhor: Republicans boycotted preferential voting, absurdly claiming not to see any difference between Migrendel and Umengus. All Umengus voters had put Migrendel at second, but only two Migrendel voters had put Umengus at second as the third one, HockeyDude, hadn't understood the election law and cast a vote that looked like DemoHawk's original one. In essence, Umengus got punished for having the most informed and sensible voters of the lot. The current rules place a premium on ignorance. Of course, the only way to fix this would be to require voters to list all candidates, in which case Umengus would probably have won with Rep. 2nd prefs, or to switch to Condorcet in which case there would have been an unbreakable tie, and a revote, between Umengus and Migrendel.

Yes, that's a excellent point to bring up.  I hadn't thought about ties occurring before the final round... I'll have to think about that one.

EDIT: I thought that maybe we could require that people list every candidate, as you said, but then we'd still have to make higher preferences worth more, and that doesn't address WMS' concerns.  Hmmm...

For the purposes of this clause, an active member is defined to be one who has posted at least twenty-five times since the last federal election in which he or she voted.  If the person has not voted in any federal election since registering to vote, that person shall be counted as an active member.

The language of these two sentences needs to be changed.  This would allow a member to register and potentially sit out every election and still be classified as an active member.

Wouldn't they be removed from the list of registered voters after missing two elections, though?

I see your point, though.  I'll change that.

PS: I also added a tidbit saying that the burden of proof will be on the Secretary of Forum Affairs to prove that someone has not posted 25 times since the last federal election.  I figured that this is fair due to the "innocent until proven guilty" protocol that is standard.  As I suggested in another topic a while back, it wouldn't be that difficult for the SoFA just to record the number of posts each voter has at the time of voting for future reference.

If there's any argument with that part, we can change it.

PPS: I also added another section in the amendment below that section clarifying what will happen with people who are already registered to vote before the passage of this amendment.

PPPS: I added a small phrase to the end of Section 2, Clause 1 of the statute that says that only future elections may be challenged.  I just realized that the wording of "those which have been certified less than seven days prior to the challenge" meant that any idiot who decided to get extremely technical could actually challenge any election in Atlasian history in the time span of seven days following the passage of that statute, given that the statute automatically certifies them all.

[Gabu]

Finally some action from the Senate when it comes to Election Reform!

I comend Senator Gabu.

Thank you, Mr. President, but StevenNick should take at least half of the credit; I was following the recommendations in his report.

[WMS]

One problem with both Gabu's bill and WMS' change, and also the reason we got the first preference rule:
What to do with a tie in the earlier rounds?
For example, we had an election where
Keystone Phil received 5 first pref. votes
Umengus received 3 first pref. votes
Migrendel received 3 first pref. votes

Migrendel beat Umengus on second pref.s*, and went on to beat Phil 6-5.
In this kind of situation (which Gabu's bill doesn't address), a tie-breaker is needed, while in a tie in the final tally, you can have a revote instead.


*in a fashion I thoroughly abhor: Republicans boycotted preferential voting, absurdly claiming not to see any difference between Migrendel and Umengus. All Umengus voters had put Migrendel at second, but only two Migrendel voters had put Umengus at second as the third one, HockeyDude, hadn't understood the election law and cast a vote that looked like DemoHawk's original one. In essence, Umengus got punished for having the most informed and sensible voters of the lot. The current rules place a premium on ignorance. Of course, the only way to fix this would be to require voters to list all candidates, in which case Umengus would probably have won with Rep. 2nd prefs, or to switch to Condorcet in which case there would have been an unbreakable tie, and a revote, between Umengus and Migrendel.

Yes, that's a excellent point to bring up.  I hadn't thought about ties occurring before the final round... I'll have to think about that one.

EDIT: I thought that maybe we could require that people list every candidate, as you said, but then we'd still have to make higher preferences worth more, and that doesn't address WMS' concerns.  Hmmm...

Crap. Lewis has a point. I'll be thinking about tie-breaker procedures on rounds before the final one as well, although I am still opposed to using the preference rule. Would Condorcet being used on a tie before the final round work out?

[Gabu]

One problem with both Gabu's bill and WMS' change, and also the reason we got the first preference rule:
What to do with a tie in the earlier rounds?
For example, we had an election where
Keystone Phil received 5 first pref. votes
Umengus received 3 first pref. votes
Migrendel received 3 first pref. votes

Migrendel beat Umengus on second pref.s*, and went on to beat Phil 6-5.
In this kind of situation (which Gabu's bill doesn't address), a tie-breaker is needed, while in a tie in the final tally, you can have a revote instead.


*in a fashion I thoroughly abhor: Republicans boycotted preferential voting, absurdly claiming not to see any difference between Migrendel and Umengus. All Umengus voters had put Migrendel at second, but only two Migrendel voters had put Umengus at second as the third one, HockeyDude, hadn't understood the election law and cast a vote that looked like DemoHawk's original one. In essence, Umengus got punished for having the most informed and sensible voters of the lot. The current rules place a premium on ignorance. Of course, the only way to fix this would be to require voters to list all candidates, in which case Umengus would probably have won with Rep. 2nd prefs, or to switch to Condorcet in which case there would have been an unbreakable tie, and a revote, between Umengus and Migrendel.

Yes, that's a excellent point to bring up.  I hadn't thought about ties occurring before the final round... I'll have to think about that one.

EDIT: I thought that maybe we could require that people list every candidate, as you said, but then we'd still have to make higher preferences worth more, and that doesn't address WMS' concerns.  Hmmm...

Crap. Lewis has a point. I'll be thinking about tie-breaker procedures on rounds before the final one as well, although I am still opposed to using the preference rule. Would Condorcet being used on a tie before the final round work out?

How would the Condorcet method work?  I can't think of anything that doesn't value higher preferences above lower preferences at this moment, so I'm open to suggestions.

[WMS]

One problem with both Gabu's bill and WMS' change, and also the reason we got the first preference rule:
What to do with a tie in the earlier rounds?
For example, we had an election where
Keystone Phil received 5 first pref. votes
Umengus received 3 first pref. votes
Migrendel received 3 first pref. votes

Migrendel beat Umengus on second pref.s*, and went on to beat Phil 6-5.
In this kind of situation (which Gabu's bill doesn't address), a tie-breaker is needed, while in a tie in the final tally, you can have a revote instead.


*in a fashion I thoroughly abhor: Republicans boycotted preferential voting, absurdly claiming not to see any difference between Migrendel and Umengus. All Umengus voters had put Migrendel at second, but only two Migrendel voters had put Umengus at second as the third one, HockeyDude, hadn't understood the election law and cast a vote that looked like DemoHawk's original one. In essence, Umengus got punished for having the most informed and sensible voters of the lot. The current rules place a premium on ignorance. Of course, the only way to fix this would be to require voters to list all candidates, in which case Umengus would probably have won with Rep. 2nd prefs, or to switch to Condorcet in which case there would have been an unbreakable tie, and a revote, between Umengus and Migrendel.

Yes, that's a excellent point to bring up.  I hadn't thought about ties occurring before the final round... I'll have to think about that one.

EDIT: I thought that maybe we could require that people list every candidate, as you said, but then we'd still have to make higher preferences worth more, and that doesn't address WMS' concerns.  Hmmm...

Crap. Lewis has a point. I'll be thinking about tie-breaker procedures on rounds before the final one as well, although I am still opposed to using the preference rule. Would Condorcet being used on a tie before the final round work out?

How would the Condorcet method work?  I can't think of anything that doesn't value higher preferences above lower preferences at this moment, so I'm open to suggestions.

I was hoping you knew. I'm having the same problem, unless we have multiple rounds of runoffs. Maybe Lewis has an idea, since he brought Condorcet up in the first place.

[Gabu]

Seems kind of long-winded to have a whole new vote just to break a tie for second place, though.  Isn't there anything else?

Maybe not; I dunno.

[WMS]

Seems kind of long-winded to have a whole new vote just to break a tie for second place, though.  Isn't there anything else?

Maybe not; I dunno.

Yes; that's why I didn't initially suggest it. I'm still thinking about that one.

[Gabu]

Come to think of it, wouldn't having an entirely new vote just be basically the exact same as just considering the second preferences if we required everyone to give everyone a preference?  A vote between the second-place tying candidates would be asking, "Which of these two would you prefer to have as president?", which is basically the exact same as preferencing one higher than the other.

[WMS]

Come to think of it, wouldn't having an entirely new vote just be basically the exact same as just considering the second preferences if we required everyone to give everyone a preference?  A vote between the second-place tying candidates would be asking, "Which of these two would you prefer to have as president?", which is basically the exact same as preferencing one higher than the other.

Hmm...maybe. But that would only work if everyone was required to preference every candidate, since there were votes cast with only one candidate preferenced - in part due to the preferencing rule. I mean, my Midwest Governor's vote had only one name on it because of the first preference rule, and I believe that motivated StatesRights' vote for me as well. Otherwise, we'd have the same problem.

[Gabu]

Well, maybe we should make it so that everyone has to preference each candidate.  I don't think that it would be a lot to ask of the voters and it would certainly provide the simplest solution.

[WMS]

Well, maybe we should make it so that everyone has to preference each candidate.  I don't think that it would be a lot to ask of the voters and it would certainly provide the simplest solution.

As long as there are no preferencing rules used in the final round, this might work. Of course, there are some voters who are extremely resistant to this, judging by past voting controversies, and we haven't heard from them yet...(looks at the Vice President)

[Gabu]

Well, maybe we should make it so that everyone has to preference each candidate.  I don't think that it would be a lot to ask of the voters and it would certainly provide the simplest solution.

As long as there are no preferencing rules used in the final round, this might work. Of course, there are some voters who are extremely resistant to this, judging by past voting controversies, and we haven't heard from them yet...(looks at the Vice President)

Okay, so what we have is this:

1. If there is a tie in any round that has at least three or more candidates in it for last place, lower preferences are considered until a person with more votes than anyone else emerges.
2. If there is a tie in the last round, Clause 3 in Section 3 in the statute is applied.

There's one other issue, however: what happens when there's an unbreakable tie for last place?  I just thought of that.

[WMS]

Well, maybe we should make it so that everyone has to preference each candidate.  I don't think that it would be a lot to ask of the voters and it would certainly provide the simplest solution.

As long as there are no preferencing rules used in the final round, this might work. Of course, there are some voters who are extremely resistant to this, judging by past voting controversies, and we haven't heard from them yet...(looks at the Vice President)

Okay, so what we have is this:

1. If there is a tie in any round that has at least three or more candidates in it for last place, lower preferences are considered until a person with more votes than anyone else emerges.
2. If there is a tie in the last round, Clause 3 in Section 3 in the statute is applied.

There's one other issue, however: what happens when there's an unbreakable tie for last place?  I just thought of that.

1. At this point, yes...
2. Is this where the President chooses someone, or is this part undefined yet? In the last round, I support a tie leading to a runoff election.
(3.) Last place? Do you mean before we've reached two candidates?

[Gabu]

2. Is this where the President chooses someone, or is this part undefined yet? In the last round, I support a tie leading to a runoff election.

Undefined, for the most part.  That was just an idea I threw out that is not in any way set in stone; we can resolve what to do about an unbreakable tie later.

(3.) Last place? Do you mean before we've reached two candidates?

Well, consider this possibility:

We have candidates A, B, and C.

First preferences look like this:

A: 9
B: 3
C: 3

But B and C both get 6 second preferences (say, 6 from A's voters for B and 3 from A's voters and 3 from B's voters for C) and 6 third preferences (say, 3 from A's voters and 3 from C's voters for B and 6 from A's voters for C).  That leads to an unbreakable tie for last place.

[WMS]

2. Is this where the President chooses someone, or is this part undefined yet? In the last round, I support a tie leading to a runoff election.

Undefined, for the most part.  That was just an idea I threw out that is not in any way set in stone; we can resolve what to do about an unbreakable tie later.

Ah, OK, this is the part I've been focusing like a hawk on.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Well, consider this possibility:

We have candidates A, B, and C.

First preferences look like this:

A: 9
B: 3
C: 3

But B and C both get 6 second preferences (say, 6 from A's voters for B and 3 from A's voters and 3 from B's voters for C) and 6 third preferences (say, 3 from A's voters and 3 from C's voters for B and 6 from A's voters for C).  That leads to an unbreakable tie for last place.
[/quote]

Understood. This would bring us back where we started on this one, huh?

[Gabu]

Understood. This would bring us back where we started on this one, huh?

I suppose, though, let me check the logic of the situation that I gave; something about it doesn't seem quite right...

[WMS]

Understood. This would bring us back where we started on this one, huh?

I suppose, though, let me check the logic of the situation that I gave; something about it doesn't seem quite right...

Well, tell me what you come up with.

Geez, the entire electoral system is going to be designed by three people... ;-P