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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

SENATE BILL

To amend the Federal Electoral Act to allow for more leniency in posting in the voting booth

Be it enacted in both Houses of Congress Assembled,

Double Posting Leniency Resolution

Article I Section 4 of the Federal Electoral Act shall be amended 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 have cast multiple ballots in any one election during the period the voting booth is open at the close of voting posted in the voting booth, upon penalty of the invalidation of their vote.

People's Regional Senate
Pending

Sponsor: NC Yankee for AZ
Senate Designation: SB 19:34

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Since this original section was amended to place a strict no policy on making multiple posts in the voting booth we have seen several citizens have their votes invalidated for innocently posting multiple posts by mistake only to find out that if they correct their mistake minutes later their vote has been invalidated. Be it resolved Article I Section 4 be amended to relax the multiple posting rile allowing citizens a reasonable amount of time to fix multiple posting errors.  

Reposting this as an advocacy from AZ since it really is too long to suit as an mission statement for a bill.

[ON Progressive]

I will support this amendment. I’m sure most people on Atlas have accidentally double posted at some point, and it feels wrong to me to invalidate a ballot just because they may have had something like their Internet going haywire.

[Vern]

I agree with On Progressive. This seems like a reasonable thing to do.

[Devout Centrist]

I'm willing to support this resolution.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Technically this is not a resolution, the title is wrong.

I ask unanimous consent to change the title to replace the word Resolution with Act, Senators have 24 hours to object.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

My only concern is that this opens the door to voter intimidation and bullying.

[Lumine]

My only concern is that this opens the door to voter intimidation and bullying.

Which is exactly why this is a bad idea in terms of implementation. It is certainly a noble purpose to think of those who post twice, but if we are to pursue leniency for that we will have to be SPECIFIC in terms of that singular case being forgiven. Otherwise we're just making it clear all that matters is that there is a single vote when the voting booth ends, which could be days after someone voted and is presumably approached by whichever ticket he may have inconvenienced by voting for someone else (and let's not pretend this doesn't happen on a large-scale).

Furthermore, it lets people off the hook regarding pulling stunts in the Voting Booth if they do so but ensure there is nothing left when the booth actually closes.

I'd strongly urge the Senate to either amend this or reject it if it remains on its original version.

[Poirot]

I have a problem with the wording of the Double Posting Leniency Act. By removing the cast multiple ballot during the voting period reference, I think it creates a loophole for changing or editing a ballot after the 20 minutes. A voter could cast a second ballot one day fater a first one and delete the first one and it could legal because there is only one ballot at the end of the election and the ballot was not technically edited after 20 minutes.

If you want the voter to realise and delete the second vote within the 20 minutes maybe deleting ballot could be like editing allowed within 20 minutes.
Maybe if you want to avoid someone changing a ballot by casting a second one you could make deleting a ballot illegal but let the Secretary of Elections use judgement in counting only one ballot seeing the two ballots are the same (since we are talking double posting by mistake), or allowed to delete a ballot with permission of the SoFE but that requires the elections official to be easily accessible during elections.     

[Esteemed Jimmy]

I couldn't support this bill in the House; too much room for abuse.

[Former President tack50]

My only concern is that this opens the door to voter intimidation and bullying.

Would an acceptable solution be to make it illegal to ask a voter to change their vote? I believe that was the norm pre-reset but the rules got changed?

[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.

[tmthforu94]

Poirot brings up a very good point that I think the Senate should consider:

I have a problem with the wording of the Double Posting Leniency Act. By removing the cast multiple ballot during the voting period reference, I think it creates a loophole for changing or editing a ballot after the 20 minutes. A voter could cast a second ballot one day fater a first one and delete the first one and it could legal because there is only one ballot at the end of the election and the ballot was not technically edited after 20 minutes.

If you want the voter to realise and delete the second vote within the 20 minutes maybe deleting ballot could be like editing allowed within 20 minutes.
Maybe if you want to avoid someone changing a ballot by casting a second one you could make deleting a ballot illegal but let the Secretary of Elections use judgement in counting only one ballot seeing the two ballots are the same (since we are talking double posting by mistake), or allowed to delete a ballot with permission of the SoFE but that requires the elections official to be easily accessible during elections.     

[Pragmatic Conservative]

My only concern is that this opens the door to voter intimidation and bullying.

Would an acceptable solution be to make it illegal to ask a voter to change their vote? I believe that was the norm pre-reset but the rules got changed?

It is already illegal to or delete your vote after and revoting after 20 minutes after a vote is cast. 
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=315530.0

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

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.

Yes, this is my bill. Allows a double post to be corrected only if it's within five minutes of the original or if it's like Dipper's where it only listed contests not up for election in that thread. Also allows one re-posting if a mod deleted your ballot.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Poirot's concern is the basis for mine basically. The circumventing of the 20 minute rule is the very thing that opens the door to intimidation of people to get them to change/replace their votes.

[ON Progressive]

Should this bill be amended to allow 20 minute to delete a double post then?

[Vern]

I would be ok with that.

[Devout Centrist]

I second Senator Vern

[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.)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Isn't that a little to wordy for the constitution though? I recall Truman desiring to keep things in the Constitution simple and where further clarity was needed such as this, it should be left to statute for the sake of simplicity. Perhaps this situation necessitates it, but I would like to have his input on the matter first since I recall him saying that back in the convention.

[Former President tack50]

I wonder if instead we could instead remove/alter that constitutional article so that all regarding what votes are counted are handled by statute.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I wonder if instead we could instead remove/alter that constitutional article so that all regarding what votes are counted are handled by statute.

Depending on how exactly you did this, this may bring back the old prohibition against campaigning in the voting booth as that is still in (currently unenforceable) statute, which just adds another layer of confusion for users and gives election admins an opportunity to fraud results. Just a word of warning.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Isn't that a little to wordy for the constitution though? I recall Truman desiring to keep things in the Constitution simple and where further clarity was needed such as this, it should be left to statute for the sake of simplicity. Perhaps this situation necessitates it, but I would like to have his input on the matter first since I recall him saying that back in the convention.

The reason why we have the no multiple ballots thing in the constitution is because of Blair vs. Rpryor, which ruled in pertinent part that we cannot invalidate votes for reasons not specified by the constitution. Before that case, multiple ballots and foreign language ballots were only prohibited by statute.

And even if adding exceptions to a rule falls outside the bounds of Blair vs Rpryor, you would still get a situation where the constitution contradicts statute, in which case the constitution controls. So you accomplish nothing without changing both constitution and statute. I guess it doesn't matter which you change first though.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Isn't that a little to wordy for the constitution though? I recall Truman desiring to keep things in the Constitution simple and where further clarity was needed such as this, it should be left to statute for the sake of simplicity. Perhaps this situation necessitates it, but I would like to have his input on the matter first since I recall him saying that back in the convention.

The reason why we have the no multiple ballots thing in the constitution is because of Blair vs. Rpryor, which ruled in pertinent part that we cannot invalidate votes for reasons not specified by the constitution. Before that case, multiple ballots and foreign language ballots were only prohibited by statute.

And even if adding exceptions to a rule falls outside the bounds of Blair vs Rpryor, you would still get a situation where the constitution contradicts statute, in which case the constitution controls. So you accomplish nothing without changing both constitution and statute. I guess it doesn't matter which you change first though.

Well yes you would have to amend the constitution to authorize statute making authority. There is another point you missed and that was to make sure that the areas of invalidation were indeed listed in the constitution and thus rather protected along with the vote itself to guard against problems. It was a reasonable thing to consider at the time but it was also rather concise to write as such.

I am not against putting all of this in the constitution, I am just concerned that it may be a direction we were trying to avoid in terms of the constitution and complexity.