In the most recent election for MoD a few people wrote "Domain" instead of "Domais" and had their votes tossed, not that it has any effect on the outcome of the election as it was like 28 to 1. Currently, those votes can't be counted and the typo can't be cured so I have introduced this to fix that problem before it happens in a contested election.

2. Electoral System

(1) Unless otherwise stated, elections held on the regional forums will be conducted via Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).
a. The form of IRV used must be Optional Preferential Voting (OPV); voters may vote for one or multiple candidates in descending order of preference.
b. Should no candidate have an absolute majority once all votes have been counted then the candidate with the least number of votes shall be eliminated from the election. Should more than one candidate have the least number of votes, the candidate with the least number of votes on the next order of preference shall be eliminated. If their numbers of votes are still equal, both shall be eliminated.
c. The votes of those voting for the eliminated candidate(s) will be reallocated based upon the expressed preferences, or discounted if no further preferences are expressed.
d. This process will continue until a candidate has an absolute majority. Should the final candidates have an equal number of votes when all have been allocated, the Election Commissioner will select a method of arbitration. If the method chosen involves chance, then an unaffiliated Discord bot in a public channel will be used to generate a result randomly using a coin toss or some similar set of pre-defined outcomes.

(2) The option to Re-Open Nominations must be included as a "candidate". If elected, the election process for that office shall restart at the nomination phase.

(3) Voters will have the option to cast their vote using either a public or a secret ballot. The method of private voting will be selected by the Election Commission. The method must utilize an unaffiliated account or server, with the method and all votes remaining available for audit. Named ballots are not to be released under any circumstances. Once cast, ballots in forum-based elections may not be altered.

(4) The Election Commissioner shall at the beginning of voting create a thread in which voters may cure any spelling errors in their ballot. Voters may at any point between the casting of their ballot that contains a spelling error and twelve hours after the conclusion of voting may cure such deficiency by informing the Election Commissioner via a forum post that their ballot contains a spelling error and informing the Election Commissioner of their actual intent. The Election Commissioner shall only reject such a notice if it is clear that the voter's initial intent was not the official candidate that they informed the Election Commissioner of, or that voters' ballot was clearly referencing a non-Offical Candidate. Upon accepting such notice the original ballot shall not be altered, rather, during the Proclamation of the Results, the Election Commissioner shall add these votes to the official tally and publish a list of ballots that would not have otherwise been counted if not for the curing process laid out herein.

(45) To be eligible to be included in a voting ballot, any candidate must post a campaign in an area designated by the Election Commissioner. The campaign must prominently include a truthful declaration of all potential conflicts of interest the candidate may have within and outside of the South Pacific.

(This post was last modified: 12-09-2021, 09:14 PM by Domais.)

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I feel I should clarify that, even though I think the Commissioner has the ability to exercise discretion to interpret the intent of a vote, I deliberately instituted the typo rule because I wanted to exclude that possibility. I don't believe that, as a matter of principle, elections should be decided on subjective criteria. If an individual is elected it should be because a majority of the region clearly wanted them there, not because an official thinks that a majority may exist, based on their interpretation of certain votes. I don't think a single person should be trusted with that kind of power of decision, and I certainly don't trust myself with it.

If people want to be able to change their votes then by all means let's amend the law. I think it's common sense that one should check their vote before submitting, but I don't particularly mind giving people the option of editing their votes; if anything, that would mean one less thing for me to check when tallying. I would feel much differently about an amendment that forces the Commissioner to use subjective criteria to tally votes, so much so that I would seriously consider whether I should let someone else handle that sort of responsibility.

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I feel I should clarify that, even though I think the Commissioner has the ability to exercise discretion to interpret the intent of a vote, I deliberately instituted the typo rule because I wanted to exclude that possibility. I don't believe that, as a matter of principle, elections should be decided on subjective criteria. If an individual is elected it should be because a majority of the region clearly wanted them there, not because an official thinks that a majority may exist, based on their interpretation of certain votes. I don't think a single person should be trusted with that kind of power of decision, and I certainly don't trust myself with it.

If people want to be able to change their votes then by all means let's amend the law. I think it's common sense that one should check their vote before submitting, but I don't particularly mind giving people the option of editing their votes; if anything, that would mean one less thing for me to check when tallying. I would feel much differently about an amendment that forces the Commissioner to use subjective criteria to tally votes, so much so that I would seriously consider whether I should let someone else handle that sort of responsibility.

Imo, a policy of no mistakes and no edits would disproportionately disadvantage candidates with hard to spell names - consider someone like Phoenix, whose name has repeatedly been spelled as Pheonix in elections simply because Phoenix is an uncommon word with unintuitive spelling. I think if lots of people voted for "Pheonixofthesun14" they'd still be expressing a pretty clear preference for Phoenix, especially if they are ranking multiple people and the only 'missing' name is Phoenix. Other people who might be disadvantaged are people with names very similar to a existing word, like Libetarian Republics. Like, it would still be incredibly clear who was being voted for, but some people just have harder names or names more vulnerable to autocorrect.

I think we can't have both "no typos" and "no edits" so I'm fine with this. I think the phrasing is a bit much though.

Perhaps just

4. Voters are permitted to correct spelling errors by publicly informing the Election Commission within 12 hours of casting their vote as long as it does not alter the original intent of the vote.

Some discretion will probably still have to be present but like, I trust an EC can distinguish between "oops I misspelled Libetarian as Libertarian" and "oops I misspelled Roavin as Apatosaurus".

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I respectfully disagree. I don't think the Commissioner should be in a position of deciding after the fact what each voter meant, nor should voters be explaining after the fact what they meant. The intent of a vote should stand on its own without needing an individual to interpret it, and potentially causing disruption to the process along the way.

If we want to allow people to change their vote while voting is underway, either because they changed their mind or they noticed a typo, then I'm all for it. If we want to have the Commissioner accept different variations of a name then I'm also all for it, and in fact I accounted for that in the Voting Booth thread during the recent election. There is no reason why anyone can't approach the Commissioner and confirm if a name would be accepted, even if the simpler and more logical option would be to simply copy the name that is stated in the ballot.

BALLOT

• Domais
  
• Moon
  
• Re-Open Nominations

* Moonfungus will be recognised as a valid name for Moon.
** RON will be recognised as a valid name for Re-Open Nominations.

Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator.
I do not participate in the regional server, but I am happy to talk through instant messaging or on the forum.

Legal Resources:
THE MATT-DUCK Law Archive | Mavenu Diplomatic Archive | Rules of the High Court | Case Submission System | Online Rulings Consultation System

(This post was last modified: 12-09-2021, 11:55 PM by Kris Kringle.)

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Honestly, it’s not a lot to ask people to literally copy and paste a ballot that is provided for them in perfectly spelled form, and then change around the order of names. If you don’t copy/paste the ballot, you take on the risk of making a mistake on your own.

I’m fully 100% against allowing any editing of ballots, for any reason. If you want to debate whether or not the EC should be forced to accept typos, that’s fine. But we banned editing for a reason, and all those reasons still apply. Even if I somehow found a way to get edit history into MyBB, the EC would then have to review that history to verify nothing suspicious went on. Running elections is hard enough, stop trying to make it harder or you’ll soon find nobody wants to be EC (just as nobody wants to be LegCom, barely anyone wants to be Chair, because of how nonsensically difficult we’ve made those jobs). People can take 15 seconds to do their due diligence in typing correctly and reviewing their ballot before hitting send.

(This post was last modified: 12-10-2021, 09:45 AM by sandaoguo.)

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Wait ... we're not counting ballots with typos?

What about if you use a nickname? Does that mean that if we vote for "Glen" it won't be counted because we might not mean sandaoguo? What if someone had used "Dom" instead of "Domais"?

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I mean I was pretty certain that my vote for Reagan (and the associated joke) wouldn’t count, and I’m pretty sure that Apatosaurus also knew that when he voted for the shitty ginger wizard.

I think we probably should be able to trust the Commissioner to be sensible and know that a vote for “Bels” or “Belshaft” is for me and count them accordingly, and the Elections Act already allows for the Commissioner to arbitrate any disputes. It’s certainly been the case that such have been counted in the past - the problem here seems to be that Kris is being overly strict. He’s certainly operating within his remit but I’m not sure the policy is entirely reasonable.

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(This post was last modified: 12-10-2021, 10:42 AM by Belschaft.)

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I do think asking the EC to change policy is much more reasonable than amending our election laws here.

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I disagree with disallowing ballots to be edited. However, I think allowing a voter to clarify innocent typos (like Domais autocorrecting to Domain, or things of that variety) that clearly do not alter the intent of the original vote should be accepted. 

Wait ... we're not counting ballots with typos?

What about if you use a nickname? Does that mean that if we vote for "Glen" it won't be counted because we might not mean sandaoguo? What if someone had used "Dom" instead of "Domais"?

Per Kris' post during the opening of the voting booth (emphasis mine), 

The Election Commissioner will not exercise discretion to interpret the intent of votes that do not name a candidate exactly as they are listed on the official ballot. Any vote containing preferences for unrecognised candidates will have such preferences removed from the tally. Any vote only containing preferences for unrecognised candidates will be removed from the tally.

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(This post was last modified: 12-10-2021, 01:54 PM by Quebecshire.)

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I disagree with disallowing ballots to be edited. However, I think allowing a voter to clarify innocent typos (like Domais autocorrecting to Domain, or things of that variety) that clearly do not alter the intent of the original vote should be accepted. 

Wait ... we're not counting ballots with typos?

What about if you use a nickname? Does that mean that if we vote for "Glen" it won't be counted because we might not mean sandaoguo? What if someone had used "Dom" instead of "Domais"?

Per Kris' post during the opening of the voting booth (emphasis mine), 

The Election Commissioner will not exercise discretion to interpret the intent of votes that do not name a candidate exactly as they are listed on the official ballot. Any vote containing preferences for unrecognised candidates will have such preferences removed from the tally. Any vote only containing preferences for unrecognised candidates will be removed from the tally.

I'm with Glen and Bels that an EC policy change would be the best way to handle this. And, I'm with Nakari that the EC should be able to make minor changes here.

If we're not going to use common sense — which, is up to Kris's discretion and although I disagree with his decision, I understand his logic — 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.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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