The Election Commision, as currently written, simply does not work. We've built a multi-person permanent institution, except none of what it is supposed to do actually happens.

As written, the EC should work something like this: 

• A permament membership is created of the three members
  
• The roster is maintained and its membership changed as needed
  
• The Justice and CRS EC jointly run the election, with the Admin EC observing and approving the election
  
• The ECs remain on until they need to swap out
  

In reality for at least the past several elections it worked more like this:

• A few days before election it is noted in the CRS the need to figure out EC
  
• The Justice decides their EC, usually themself or Feirmont.
  
• The Admin decides their EC so the CRS knows who is left, usually ends up being Kris.
  
• The CRS tries to find the one person left that is neither in office nor doing a different EC. Usually picks Feirmont if the Justice hasn't already.
  
• One of more of these EC slots are occasionally not even filled.
  
• One EC member, usually Feirmont, successfully runs the whole election singlehandedly while the others (if applicable) end up doing nothing, simply because there isn't enough for the others to do.
  
• The whole thing is forgotten about until the next election happens
  
• Basically, usually Feirmont does everything despite not being Admin, Justice, or CRS.
  

We have a whole system for the but it practice none of it ever happens. The ECs are never decided far in advance because of trying to figure out who is going to run. The three ECs don't work because there isn't enough election work to require more than one person. No one ever really needs to recheck the count in pretty much any normal election. I don't really have any concrete ideas for a new sy, but the system is broken and needs to be replaced. 

Two ideas I do have though: 

1. Make the EC one person again. To keep current elements, perhaps make them jointly appointed by the Justice and CRS.
   
2. Add a "recount" mechanism. the only part that should need checking besides legal disputes are private votes, and I feel we can trust the admins there.
   

(This post was last modified: 11-29-2018, 07:03 AM by Amerion. Edit Reason: Edited the title from 'Election Commision' to the current title )

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Given the corruption displayed by Hileville, one person overseeing everything isn't a good idea. If the current ECs aren't doing a satisfactory job, then isn't the answer to replace them?

All of this stems from the Justice, CRS, and Admins not actually doing what the law intends. That is, the Election Commission being a permanent job, just like a justice in the High Court. If it were actually treate that way, then things would run more smoothly, I imagine. This isn't the first the complaint's been raised-- I usually tell the CRS and other admins that we aren't doing things the way the law says we should, pretty much every election.

Either way, making it two people plus the admin observer isn't the problem, and going to one person again history shows isn't a real solution.

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All of this stems from the Justice, CRS, and Admins not actually doing what the law intends. That is, the Election Commission being a permanent job, just like a justice in the High Court. If it were actually treate that way, then things would run more smoothly, I imagine. This isn't the first the complaint's been raised-- I usually tell the CRS and other admins that we aren't doing things the way the law says we should, pretty much every election.

For several elections now the Elections have basically just been run by the Justice EC. Last group of elections I don't think the CRS or admins even appointed anybody, (EDIT: Checked Discord, seems we got names last minute) it was just the Justice EC Feirmont doing them all. When there are additional ones they just sit there because there's no work they need to do, and there's never anything to check. We can talk about better enforcement, but when this has been a recurring issue for a year or two at least it's a systemic problem that highlights a need for change.

Given that we already have several people who count the public vote even not as EC I don't think we even need to necessarily check in most situations. The only time a review should even be necessary is if the private votes affect the result, hence my recount suggestion. For legal disputes such as what happened with Hileville we have a requirement to consult the courts which should be kept.

(This post was last modified: 09-16-2017, 06:03 PM by Farengeto.)

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Given the corruption displayed by Hileville, one person overseeing everything isn't a good idea. If the current ECs aren't doing a satisfactory job, then isn't the answer to replace them?

All of this stems from the Justice, CRS, and Admins not actually doing what the law intends. That is, the Election Commission being a permanent job, just like a justice in the High Court. If it were actually treate that way, then things would run more smoothly, I imagine. This isn't the first the complaint's been raised-- I usually tell the CRS and other admins that we aren't doing things the way the law says we should, pretty much every election.

Either way, making it two people plus the admin observer isn't the problem, and going to one person again history shows isn't a real solution.

Admins aren't even allowed to do anything in the election. So, frankly, the argument that any of us should be prohibited for running for office when literally, all we do is check the Vote Collector votes, is silly.

If we really want this, then we need to have an Election Commission area where we appoint people so everyone knows who they are. Really, they should be the PJ and two other people. Then there isn't an issue.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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That's how it's supposed to be, yeah. Just ideally that there's an admin who usually isn't running. The PJ makes sense that the one running the elections primarily. The CRS member is there for second opinions and security oversight. And the admin is observing to make sure the other two aren't doing anything wrong.


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To be honest, I also don't see the issue of having one person run the election in practice, even if it's technically two people plus an observer. So long as it works and we can have faith that the election is conducted fairly (which, as far as I can tell, has been the case so far), it should be fine.

Really, the only improvement I could actually think of is to have private votes be posted publicly (anonymized). TNP has an interesting system that we could look at for inspiration. And even so, that's very much a nice-to-have at best.

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I think before we go to a full re-count mechanism, I'd definitely support a anonymized public posting of private votes. Whether at the end of the election, or as they come in, I think posting the vote as well as the exact timestamp of the vote would go a long way. 

This way, if individuals see that their private vote didn't show up or was tampered with, they can easily call that affair out without any mystery. Having been in a few places where this system is in place, it's rather effective and generally cuts down on any discontent on potential rigged elections.

Regarding the current status of EC's, I think that there's not much issue of a single person doing the primary organizing of it as long as there's clear oversight of the situation that ensures that any potential corruption doesn't get swept under the rug.

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Formerly Banned For Still Unspecified "OOC Toxicity"

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I think before we go to a full re-count mechanism, I'd definitely support a anonymized public posting of private votes. Whether at the end of the election, or as they come in, I think posting the vote as well as the exact timestamp of the vote would go a long way. 

This way, if individuals see that their private vote didn't show up or was tampered with, they can easily call that affair out without any mystery. Having been in a few places where this system is in place, it's rather effective and generally cuts down on any discontent on potential rigged elections.

Regarding the current status of EC's, I think that there's not much issue of a single person doing the primary organizing of it as long as there's clear oversight of the situation that ensures that any potential corruption doesn't get swept under the rug.

If posting of the ballots is done it should be done after the election and in a random order with no timestamp. Posted as received or with timestamps makes it vulnerable to context guessing. But I'm opposed to revealing them. There's still the opportunity for guessing no matter what you do, and when I vote privately I intend for it to be private.

Posting the private ballot doesn't really make it that much more secure either. Checking your own vote might help in some cases but That's not the most reliable. That also doesn't account for "ballot stuffing" potential. There's no reasonable way to verify them all without ruining their privacy. And someone should only need to verify if private votes do swing an election, at which point someone else trusted should review the actual messages.

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TNP's system is not to post timestamps, but rather that ballots are submitted with a random number. The ballots are then posted in the public vote thread anonymized with that random ballot number included. That way, no context guessing.

The problem with keeping private votes private is that we don't have FPTP anymore, and so any member that wishes to simply recount what the EC did can't. Using the above system, that would be possible again.

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Going to revive this yet again, after going through yet another round of trying to find ECs. (SPOILER ALERT: Another almost six months later the system still doesn't work as intended.)

I know people don't like a single EC because of Funk and Hile, but those were both a political office ignoring election law. And in the Hile case he chose to not let the court resolve the dispute and did it unilaterally. Removing the political aspect as we have done helps, but no law will stop the incident of people ignoring the law.

ECs end up being appointed immediately before the election as needed, based on whoever isn't running that time. Half the time the other two aren't filled, the other half they never do anything. Let's just get rid of the extras.

We already have non-political EC appointments, so we can just make one with a joint CRS-PJ appointment. Legal disputes get handled by the court, and legally the result is forced to wait until disputes are resolved. We could add some more explicit mechanism to contest/appeal a result (via court or admin?), but there's not much further we can go. The admins won't want to check anything unless they're forced to. As it stands under a single EC system, any corruption would have to be by someone approved by the CRS and Court. If we can't trust those two then we have much bigger problems.

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