Your Honour,

On the proposed remaking of the Chair's decision

I agree with the previous briefs that the Court must strike down the Chair Cryo's aforementioned actions.

However, I would ask the court not to entertain the Legislator Bleakfoot's suggestion of admitting the change of vote or re-running the vote. The argument they present relies on the fact that the right to vote is protected by Article III, Section 4 of the Charter. While this is true, it does not consider the context of the action.

First of all, the belief that the vote was to end at 9:30pm EST was founded in an error in the time formatter, which we can reasonably assume was not caused by any malicious action from the Chair. However, it still stands that the actual deadline to the vote was 9:08pm EST, exactly 5 days after the vote was opened. This was confirmed by the Chair in their press release, and can be ascertained by using the time the vote was posted to the forum. While the use of the time formatter is mandated by the Times Act, this is not a constitutional law, while the Legislative Procedure Act, which mandates that the vote length is 5 days exactly, is. Therefore, the displayed time is only a reference, provided for the convenience of legislators. It cannot change the deadline of of the vote, nor can it be argued that a belief based on said time stamp should overrule a deadline stated in the Legislative Procedure Act. The right to vote does not apply outside of the time provided for the vote - therefore the Legislator philipmacaroni's request to change their vote should not be accepted.

Secondly, there is the matter of the right to vote itself. While the right to vote does guarantee that a legislator may cast a vote, it does not guarantee that the vote may be changed after it is cast. While traditionally we allow this to happen in the case of an assembly vote, this is an additional privilege given by an unformalised precedent. It is also reasonable to assume that the right to vote does not infer this privilege. To "vote" is merely to "express your choice or opinion" (as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary), not to change that vote after the fact. While this should not permit this privilege from being granted only to some people and not others, it does mean that it should not be guaranteed as a right given in the charter, and that the court has no obligation to uphold this privilege.

Both of these reasons lead to my conclusion that the request by the Legislator philipmacaroni to change their vote should not be accepted despite the error in the displayed time. The belief was founded on a reference which has no authority to change the time of the vote, and the request is not claiming any actual right granted by law. In addition, since the Legislator philipmacaroni founded their belief on a reference without authority, and this reference was not erroneous due to any malice on the part of the Chair, there is no reason to re-run the vote. This leads to the only reasonable option left, as stated by the Legislator Bleakfoot - to refuse to admit Legislator philipmacaroni's change of vote, and declare the result according to the counted votes at the close of poll.

As requested by the court, I will remain at the Court's disposal to answer any questions that the Court may have in relation to my brief.