There are two things I'd like to discuss in relation to the Elections act:

(1) First, clarifying whether campaigning and debates should or should not happen during the voting period.

 Currently, the Elections Act seems to differentiate between a campaigning period and a voting period under 3.2:
 

3. Office of The Delegate

(1) The Delegate will be elected in a two-step process, with the Assembly voting on a slate of nominees on the forums, and the top two candidates in that process being voted on by regional poll on-site.

(2) On the first of every January and July, the Assembly will convene for the first round of Delegate elections.
a. Any eligible legislator wishing to run for Delegate may declare their candidacy, and the Assembly will debate the merits of their platform. Any player who has been banned from World Assembly membership will be considered ineligible and any candidate who is later discovered to be banned from World Assembly membership will be immediately disqualified.
b. The campaign and debate period will last one week, after which the Assembly will vote for 3 days.
c. The two candidates ranked first and second under IRV will move to a second round of voting conducted via a a poll of Native World Assembly members.

and 4.1:
 

4. Offices of the Cabinet

(1) On the first of every February, June and October, the Assembly will convene to elect the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.
a. For the first 6 days of the election period, legislators may declare their candidacy for only one position.
b. After 3 days, a campaign period of one week will start, where candidates may campaign and the Assembly will debate the merits of their platforms.
c. After the week-long campaign period, a voting period of 3 days will start. Legislators will cast their ballots for each position. Legislators may choose to abstain from voting on any or all positions.

 As well as 5.1:
 

5. Office of the Chair
(1) Eight days before the end of a Chair's term, the Assembly will convene to elect the Chair of the Assembly.
a. Any legislator wishing to run for Chair may declare their candidacy, and the Assembly will debate the merits of their platform.
b. The campaign and debate period will last 5 days, after which the Assembly will vote for 3 days.

Since it doesn't explicitly disallow campaigning during the voting period, one could interpret it to say that campaigning can happen until the last moment of voting.

 I would like us to discuss whether Campaigning should or should not be allowed during the voting period, and then to amend the Elections Act to clarify that decision.

- - - - - - - -

(2) The second thing I'd like to discuss is moving away from Approval Voting for the CoA to some other electoral system:
 

5. Office of the Chair
(1) Eight days before the end of a Chair's term, the Assembly will convene to elect the Chair of the Assembly.
a. Any legislator wishing to run for Chair may declare their candidacy, and the Assembly will debate the merits of their platform.
b. The campaign and debate period will last 5 days, after which the Assembly will vote for 3 days.

(2) The voting for the Chair will be conducted using Approval Voting.
a. Voters may vote for as many candidates as they approve of, or vote for none by voting to Re-Open Nominations.
b. The candidate with the highest percentage of approval will be elected.
c. Should no candidate recieve at least 50% approval, the option to Re-Open Nominations will be "elected".

 I would personally suggest changing it so that if it's 2 candidates, it would be FPTP voting, and if it's 3 or more it would be IRV.

- - - - - - - -

Depending on the Poll and the outcome of the discussions, I will draft an amendment to the Elections Act and post it up.

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The elections law was last changed, if I recall correctly, to allow campaigning up through the end of the voting period.

I don't think we need to change how Chair elections work again. The use of approval voting is a) incredibly easy and b) picks a Chair that has a lot of broad support. Both of those are really good things for the role.

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The elections law was last changed, if I recall correctly, to allow campaigning up through the end of the voting period.

I don't think we need to change how Chair elections work again. The use of approval voting is a) incredibly easy and b) picks a Chair that has a lot of broad support. Both of those are really good things for the role.

 I just checked, the last amendment was changing the days for each period, rather than explicitly allowing or disallowing campaigning during the voting period. Namely, nomination period was extended from 3 days to 6, and then a pause of 3 days before the start of the campaigning and debating period.

It was also only a change to 4.1, rather than all Offices.

Either way, it still doesn't explicitly allow or disallow campaigning during the vote.

As for the voting, I think a lot of people are having an issue with the AV system. There has been much disdain of it on Discord, with a few legislators being *for* a change, including the previous CoA.

Even so, the AV system does not work well for a 2-candidate election, mostly because people will either vote for both, essentially making the vote pointless except for a 50% approval, or a vote for one candidate or the other, which is just an FPTP system in everything but name.

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There wasn't a whole lot of disdain the past election. I would hesitate to say there's been much this time around, either. Misunderstanding? Sure. I didn't quote the law, as I posted the thread on my phone while taking the bus home. But a simple understanding doesn't necessitate altering the way we run elections again.

We've gone through this cycle too many times to count. It seems every other election, we're changing the laws and how things work. Maybe that's contributing to the problems?

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There wasn't a whole lot of disdain the past election. I would hesitate to say there's been much this time around, either. Misunderstanding? Sure. I didn't quote the law, as I posted the thread on my phone while taking the bus home. But a simple understanding doesn't necessitate altering the way we run elections again.

We've gone through this cycle too many times to count. It seems every other election, we're changing the laws and how things work. Maybe that's contributing to the problems?

Well, I had a whole thing written but then I navigated to another page and lost it, so I'm just going to say that I've seen your response and don't agree.

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There wasn't a whole lot of disdain the past election. I would hesitate to say there's been much this time around, either. Misunderstanding? Sure. I didn't quote the law, as I posted the thread on my phone while taking the bus home. But a simple understanding doesn't necessitate altering the way we run elections again.

We've gone through this cycle too many times to count. It seems every other election, we're changing the laws and how things work. Maybe that's contributing to the problems?

The goal of this act is not to change how our elections function but to clarify the way they function to new legislators by eliminating vague language.

Edit: Correction there is one change, but the change is in the spirit of my above comment. Byu eliminating what is very obviously an unnecessary system that requires us to use 2 different voting systems based on what office is running (specifically CoA election and Cabinet Elections) we can clear up confusion among legislators about how they should be formatting their vote.

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I feel like whenever this got brought up previously, we've had to deal with the question of what counts/doesn't count as campaigning?

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I feel like whenever this got brought up previously, we've had to deal with the question of what counts/doesn't count as campaigning?

 Well, that's a fair point. We can include a definition of campaigning as part of the amendment.

 Here's what I would say just off the top of my head:

1. Public debates between candidates
2. DM/PM campaigning
3. Posting/updating platforms
4. Posting Campaign Ads 
5. Asking people to vote a particular way

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I feel like pointing out that if I had changed my vote to RON then he would have won...

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Would like to see votes kept private until after a vote is over. Only campaigning I usually get during a vote is to change  a vote I made.

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