(12-10-2021, 07:38 PM)Tsunamy Wrote: I think that needs to be made crystal clear so people can cut and paste ballots as needed. In the past, I've certainly voted for Glen, Bels, Pen, and even tsu, which seemingly would not be counted under the current setup. This is Kris' prerogative as EC, but the voting public needs to know the standards prior to voting.

(12-10-2021, 09:25 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote:

(12-10-2021, 07:38 PM)Tsunamy Wrote: I think that needs to be made crystal clear so people can cut and paste ballots as needed. In the past, I've certainly voted for Glen, Bels, Pen, and even tsu, which seemingly would not be counted under the current setup. This is Kris' prerogative as EC, but the voting public needs to know the standards prior to voting.

 

It's worth clarifying that the warning about when votes might be considered invalid was included in the opening post of the Voting Booth thread. Any legislator who took a minute to read through that thread would have understood that they had to use candidate names exactly as written in the ballot. I also hope that any legislator would check their vote before sending it in order to avoid any typos, particularly considering how even before I implemented the no-typos rule there was already a law preventing edits.

Moving forward, and assuming I remain Election Commissioner, I think there is merit in providing a read-to-copy ballot code in the Voting Booth for legislators, so that we can reduce the risk of invalid votes. That said, I strongly believe that reading instructions and ensuring that one complies with them is a matter of personal responsibility. It should not be the job of the Commissioner to keep track of how many nicknames a candidate might have and figuring out what each voter meant when they could have make it simple and used the names on the ballot.

My proposal doesn't require the EC to figure "...out what each voter meant when they could have [made] it simple and used the names on the ballot." All my proposal does is allow people to declare that they made an error in spelling and allow them to have their vote counted. All you have to do is read the declaration. If it is "Domain" instead of "Domais" you would accept it and add it to the final tall. If it was Peaches and they said they meant to vote for Domais then you would reject such declaration. 

This is not about personal responsibility, this is about ensuring that our elected officials are representative of the region's voters. Like I said in discord it would be unjust to have someone be elected solely because some people made typos in their ballots. Like person A got 15 votes but 3 were tossed because of spelling errors that can't be cured while the other person got 13 votes. They would win the election under current rules. This is unfair to the candidate, and the region as a whole because the said candidate is not legitimate in my opinion.

(12-10-2021, 09:54 PM)Domais Wrote: My proposal doesn't require the EC to figure "...out what each voter meant when they could have [made] it simple and used the names on the ballot." All my proposal does is allow people to declare that they made an error in spelling and allow them to have their vote counted. All you have to do is read the declaration. If it is "Domain" instead of "Domais" you would accept it and add it to the final tall. If it was Peaches and they said they meant to vote for Domais then you would reject such declaration. 

This is not about personal responsibility, this is about ensuring that our elected officials are representative of the region's voters. Like I said in discord it would be unjust to have someone be elected solely because some people made typos in their ballots. Like person A got 15 votes but 3 were tossed because of spelling errors that can't be cured while the other person got 13 votes. They would win the election under current rules. This is unfair to the candidate, and the region as a whole because the said candidate is not legitimate in my opinion.

Somehow related, but I think I've figured out the way to use forms for voting purposes, which would remove the need to manually type in candidate names. I've only begun testing it, but I'm encouraged by the results so far.

(12-10-2021, 09:25 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote:

(12-10-2021, 07:38 PM)Tsunamy Wrote: I think that needs to be made crystal clear so people can cut and paste ballots as needed. In the past, I've certainly voted for Glen, Bels, Pen, and even tsu, which seemingly would not be counted under the current setup. This is Kris' prerogative as EC, but the voting public needs to know the standards prior to voting.

 

It's worth clarifying that the warning about when votes might be considered invalid was included in the opening post of the Voting Booth thread. Any legislator who took a minute to read through that thread would have understood that they had to use candidate names exactly as written in the ballot. I also hope that any legislator would check their vote before sending it in order to avoid any typos, particularly considering how even before I implemented the no-typos rule there was already a law preventing edits.

Moving forward, and assuming I remain Election Commissioner, I think there is merit in providing a read-to-copy ballot code in the Voting Booth for legislators, so that we can reduce the risk of invalid votes. That said, I strongly believe that reading instructions and ensuring that one complies with them is a matter of personal responsibility. It should not be the job of the Commissioner to keep track of how many nicknames a candidate might have and figuring out what each voter meant when they could have make it simple and used the names on the ballot.

This is good to know. Although, I feel like a change of this caliber could probably have used a bit more promotion.

For a number of reasons I'm not the archetypical case, but I, for one, don't read all the instructions for voting each election, and I don't know if it's fair to expect people who have voted in multiple elections to re-read the instructions each time trying to determine how the EC changed the requirements from the last election.

Why don't we just codify that the EC can use discretion to count votes in which there may be typos? I don't think that a vote for Kaufman should be discounted because someone wrote Kaufmann instead.

(12-11-2021, 01:39 AM)Tsunamy Wrote: For a number of reasons I'm not the archetypical case, but I, for one, don't read all the instructions for voting each election, and I don't know if it's fair to expect people who have voted in multiple elections to re-read the instructions each time trying to determine how the EC changed the requirements from the last election.

I suppose then I shouldn’t bother setting up detailed voting booth threads and worrying if anything isn’t clear enough, like I do with all elections, because clearly it isn’t fair to expect people to read that and ensure that they aren’t missing some key information. I don’t know what I was thinking, expecting people to read the questions before answering the test.

I don’t meant to come off like an ass (alright, maybe a little), but this really annoyed me. I spend time doing my best to make sure elections run smoothly. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that people read whatever instructions are in place before participating in the process. If any instructions concern them, then at the very least there would be time to address those concerns then rather than once it’s too late.

(12-11-2021, 02:19 AM)Jay Coop Wrote: Why don't we just codify that the EC can use discretion to count votes in which there may be typos? I don't think that a vote for Kaufman should be discounted because someone wrote Kaufmann instead.

I don’t think anyone here, including me, thinks that the EC can’t use discretion, rather the issue is that I decided not to use discretion because I don’t believe that is a fair or convenient way to administer elections.

In any case, this issue should be largely irrelevant come next election (which should be Chair) if I get my way of forgoing manual posts and instead using polls and forms.

Quote:I suppose then I shouldn’t bother setting up detailed voting booth threads and worrying if anything isn’t clear enough, like I do with all elections, because clearly it isn’t fair to expect people to read that and ensure that they aren’t missing some key information. I don’t know what I was thinking, expecting people to read the questions before answering the test.

I don’t meant to come off like an ass (alright, maybe a little), but this really annoyed me. I spend time doing my best to make sure elections run smoothly. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that people read whatever instructions are in place before participating in the process. If any instructions concern them, then at the very least there would be time to address those concerns then rather than once it’s too late.

This wasn't intended as a personal attack, and you've certainly done a great job of handling multiple elections in competing, changing and overlapping formats well.

But, when did you make this change — this election? Because the clause you're citing seems to be absent from the election in October?

It's either naive or disingenuous to think that someone who voted in the last regularly scheduled elections as recently as October, is going to delve into all the details of this specific election because the election commissioner might change something without notice. In the real world, changes like this are accompanied by announcements and news stories and signage precisely because people are going to assume that this election will be just like the last election.

I don't think an Assembly announcement — or at least bolding the information in the Voting Booth post — would have been out of the ordinary for a change of this caliber.

(12-11-2021, 10:21 AM)Tsunamy Wrote: I don't think an Assembly announcement would have been out of the ordinary for a change of this caliber.

Let's not blow things out of proportion. The fact remains that people should read the instructions before voting and check their vote before submitting it, so this codification of policy should've been of no surprise to anyone and certainly did not need any announcement of that sort.

(12-11-2021, 10:21 AM)Tsunamy Wrote: or at least bolding the information in the Voting Booth post

That makes sense. I will remember to clearly mark in the future any text that relates to policy changes, should there happen to be any.

If anyone is interested, I welcome feedback on this thread and the accompanying voter form. You will notice that attempting to respond to the thread takes one directly to the voter form, sidestepping the issue of typos for all except private voters.