Sam Spade v. Secretary of Forum Affairs

[Sam Spade]

Let me be succinct and say that I have suing over the Deputy SoFA's certification of votes in the Southeast Senate contest.  There are three main areas of contest:

1) The Deputy SoFA failed to count legitimately cast preference votes for a legitimately registered candidate under Amendment X, namely me, Sam Spade.
2) The Deputy SoFA counted 2 illegitimately cast votes by AHDuke99 and TCash101 that occurred after the voting booth officially closed at 5:00 PM Sunday.
3) Alternatively, the Deputy SoFA counted 1 illegitimately cast vote by BrandonH that occurred prior to the elections required start between 12:00 AM Friday and 12:01 Friday.

If the candidate from the Pacific wishes to join this action, he may feel free to.

More into the legal argument later.

First, I would like to motion for a temporary injunction that will postpone the absentee balloting for the runoff election in the Southeast until this matter may be fully disposed of by this court.

That is all, for now.

[Sam Spade]

Fair enough, I withdraw the second claim.  Misread.

[Sam Spade]

I'm going to drop the third claim as well, and merely focus on the first, which is the lynchpin to the whole suit anyway.

[Sam Spade]

Sam never accepted the write-in votes before the ballot closed, and thus I cannot count them, even if he was a legitimate candidate for a write-in candidacy.

How can my votes be "write-in" when I was listed as a candidate on the ballot?

[Sam Spade]

Yes, but does the "shall be a Senator" language prohibit a "candidate for Senator" from receiving votes in an election?  Most certainly this requirement would forbid him from swearing the oath of office and assuming his duties, but receiving votes?

As I said to Inks, I think there is a very strong argument (made by Peter) that deregistration under present law does not affect the candidacy of a person who falls under a particular set of circumstances, as I do.

After all, at this present moment in time, there is certainly nothing prohibiting me from becoming a Senator.

You'll have my brief before Friday at 6PM, as always.

[Sam Spade]

The undersigned Plaintiff respectfully petitions this honorable court to accept the attached Brief.

                                    Sam Spade v. Secretary of Forum Affairs

                                                           Amicus Brief

                                                      Statement of Facts
Suffice it to say, Torie's statement of facts is good enough for me.  I would just point out additionally that after I re-registered Deputy SoFA declared all votes for me invalid and redistributed their preferences, along with exhausting the vote of Dem Hawk.  If my votes had been counted as valid, I would have won the election by a total of 4-2 over Downwithdaleft.

                                                 Question Presented
Once again, Torie's QP pretty much mirrors about how I would state the question.

                                                        Argument
To begin, we must first examine the Constitutional clauses that address the requirements of registration and candidacy in federal elections.  Most of the voter registration and rules requirements are found in Article V, Section 2.  The two requirements that bear the most strongly on the case at bar are the enabling clause in Article V, Section 2, Clause 3 which gives the Senate the power to define activity requirements concerning voter registrations and Article V, Section 2, Clause 4, as amended by Amendment X.  Specifically, the latter clause, as it relates to candidacy will have been met by the plain facts of the case if not defeated by a later statutory provision.  Sam Spade was a candidate in an election because he was a registered voter 10 days before the election.

Another argument has been asserted by amicus brief that must be addressed.  Specifically, Article I, Section 1, Clause 2 says that "No Person shall be a Senator who has not attained a hundred or more posts, and is not a registered voter in the District or Region that they represent."  It is asserted by counsel that this clause invalidates the votes of Sam Spade because his status as a non-registered voter means that he could not be a Senator.  This argument is clearly erroneous.  First, graphically this clause is placed within the organizational clauses of the Senate, rather than in Article V, Section 2 which contains the voter registration provisions.  Second, the right of Sam Spade to receive votes in an election as Senator does not relate to the actual requirements of being a Senator.  After all, persons elected to the Senate through elections do not become actual Senators in the organizational sense until they are sworn in and assume their duties.  And those voters who have elected Senators who meet the requirements to be elected as Senator, but fail to meet the requirements to act as Senators have a remedy - expulsion.

After the preliminaries, we must address the relevant law at hand.

Deregistrations have had a long and interesting history in Atlasia.  After numerous voters had requested to deregister during the middle of 2005, President Siege40 made an executive order (the first in the history of Atlasia) forbidding the SoFA from accepting the deregistrations.  Soon after, President Joe Republic rescinded this executive order allowing deregistrations to occur.  To the Joe Republic administration, these registrations were considered "dormant".  As he described:

"However, from now on, any such individual's registrations will become 'dormant'. They will not be permitted to vote, or be considered an Atlasian citizen, until such time that they declare their wish to return. If they return within the same length of time that they would have naturally been removed from the rolls, then their registration will be treated as if they had never left."

The Deregistration Act, codified by the Eleventh Senate, more clearly defined this executive order.  It allowed the right to deregister, with its greatest concern being about preventing voters from using this power to change states more than once every sixty days, this being an original concern that lead to Siege40's executive order.  Furthermore, it allowed the SoFA to create regulations to "as necessary to specify how requests for deregistration should be made."  Notably, the Act addresses the fact that the deregistered person is not able to vote, but fails to address whether that deregistered person is unable to be a candidate under Amendment X. (through the activity requirements enabling clause).

Similarly, the CESRA fails to make mention of how deregistration affects the electoral process.  That silence should not be interpreted by this court as a reason for improper judicial action.  The only clause that come close to giving the Deputy SoFA a reason to disallow votes is Section 6, Clause 12 of CESRA.  The author of this Constitution dismissed this argument quite easily, saying:

"Even if we are prepared to interpret Sam's deregistration as a concession (an arguable proposition), his deregistration was clearly before end of voting, and thus can have no effect here."

I think I'm done, actually. ya, i wish the brief could have been better, but i've been busy
 
                                                       Conclusion

My votes should count, thus making me the winner of the Southeast Senate election. 

Respectfully submitted,

Sam Spade, Plaintiff

[Sam Spade]

Amicus Brief

Statement of Facts

Yeah well, the court's been made aware of most of the facts already. I would just like to add that according to Section 8 of the Consolidated Electoral System Reform Act and more expressly the Candidate Regulations (especially Section 3f, but see all of Section 3 - no mention of possible candidate withdrawals after the filing deadline except for vice presidential candidates), the question of whether Sam was ineligible for the office during the election is irrelevant. What is relevant is only that he was eligible at the time of the filing deadline.

Question(s) Presented

Yeah well, the Candidate Regulations are quite clear on the issue, so the only questions of law that I see are whether they violate law or the constitution (seeing as they are a mere executive order) and whether the DSoFA's on the spot decision to change the rules can be considered a new executive order that amends this one.

Argument

Yeah well. I don't see where in the law or the constitution it says anything to contradict the Regulations, but maybe I didn't look properly.
As to the second question - several parts of the Candidate Regulations have been flaunted repeatedly by SoFAs with impunity, especially Section 2d, and noone's ever complained. But of course that's because most people never knew of the Section's existence. In principle, a SoFA of course has the right to change his predecessor's Executive Order, although one would wish that it were done in a more formal manner (note to self in case I ever take the office again: Promulgate an Executive Order that repeals Section 2d).
However, the decision that deregistration for a period of time between the filing deadline and the certification - for Sam reregistered before the certification - renders one's candidacy declaration null and void came after Sam deregistered. That seems to jump into the face of all accepted standards of jurisprudence. At the time Sam deregistered, he had every right to assume the Candidate Regulations to be valid, and his deregistration to not affect his ballot status. (Whether he actually did make such an assumption is neither here nor there, I think. ) There's a legal term for that, but it escapes me right now. Anyways, it's a commonly accepted principle in all democracies all over the world, including I believe in Atlasia.

Conclusion

There's no basis for discounting Sam's votes.

Did you file that as Sam's official brief?

No, it's an amicus brief by an uninvolved party. I'm not a lawyer, and Sam doesn't need one, seeing as he is a lawyer.

Not yet on the lawyer part. 

[Sam Spade]

I have a couple of questions that both parties can address...

The plaintiff's brief quotes Article I, Section 1, Clause 2 ("No Person shall be a Senator who has not attained a hundred or more posts, and is not a registered voter in the District or Region that they represent.").

My question is, how important is the fact the article, if quoted correctly, uses the term "and" rather than "or" to join the two requirements.  Is the court unreasonable in reading the clause to require both the condition that of less than 100 votes AND registration prior to candidate disqualification?

Or do implicit policy reasons (namely being a registered voter, ala resident of, the represented district) demand this court go beyond the absolute literal text of this article and possibly stretch, which I personally am heistant to do, an interpretation of it?

My position is rather simple:  This clause does not relate to a registered voter's candidacy as Senator.  It does not relate to whether he may receive votes as a candidate for Senate.  Nor does it relate to whether he may be duly elected as Senator, noting that being elected as a Senator and taking office as Senator constitute two different acts.  It relates to his basic requirements to act as a Senator under the Constitution. 

The placement of the clause within the basic structure of the Senate in Article I, Section 1, rather than the requirements of voters and candidates in Article or the requirements of elections in Article I, Section 4 demands this result.

Furthermore, the Constitution only mentions the word candidate or candidacy in two places as referring to Senatorial elections: 

Article I, Section 4, Clause 6 says that:

"The Senate shall have necessary power to determine regulations for the procedure of and the form of Senate elections and shall have necessary power to determine a procedure for declaration of candidacy for such elections. All elections to the Senate shall be by public post."

As mentioned below, this is merely the enabling clause.  We must examine the statute to see what effects exist.

Article V, Section 2, Clause 4 as amended by Amendment X says that:

In order to vote or be a candidate in an election, a person must have been a registered voter on the tenth day before that election.

That clause places the only constitutional requirement upon a candidate - he "must be a registered voter 10 days before the election".  There is no requirement that he be able to vote, (note the disjunctive use of *or*, intending that the ability to vote and the ability to be a candidate is separated) nor is there any requirement that he must be registered at any period after that 10 day period.  Under any definition of election, therefore, Sam Spade was clearly a registered voter as such, according to Mr. Moderate's timeline under the Constitution.

The last refuge for Defendant lies in statute.  He attempts to draw a connection between deregistration and the lack of an ability to vote, but his transitive attempt to bring candidacy and an ability to vote through the Deregistration Act fails.  Reading an ability to vote into a requirement of candidacy is not intentioned by the constitutional text, either directly or indirectly. 

I would point out that the Constitutional text specifically, as mentioned above in Article I, Section 4, Clause 6, delegates the power of *declaration of candidacy* issues to statute.  If seems fairly obvious that if the Senate wished to write into statute that declared candidates who are unable to vote or are deregistered forfeit their rights to be declared candidates, such legislation would be Constitutional.  But the Senate has not done so, in any explicit terms.  In fact, this inaction extends to other types of voters, including inactive voters. Moreover, the Deregistration Act Defendant relies on fails to mention candidate or candidacy one bit.  Therefore, the only requirement to be a candidate that can be read into the Constitution is the one in Article V, Section 2, Clause 4.

Sorry for being so long on this one. 

[Sam Spade]

Second...the Deputy Secretary relies upon Second Constitution, Article 5, Section 2, Clause 4 which states, "In order to vote or be a candidate in an election, a person must have been a registered voter on the tenth day before that election...."

The court is wondering if there are factual circumstances regarding the plaintiff's registration which would run afoul of this clause.  In short...how many days before the election did deregistration occur?

If Mr. Spade's registration does not violate this clause, then I personally cannot buy the DSoFA's transitive claim.

But supposing the deregistration brought this clause into play...it would seem to conflict with my reading of Article I, Section 1, Clause 2.  Which clause should i rely more upon?

I personally defer to Mr. Moderate's timeline on this, which is self-explanatory.  This clause is not brought into play.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

My position entirely.  I should also note the absence in the CESRA of mandating candidacy requirements to voting requirements, including inactive voters, as mentioned in the last post.

[Sam Spade]

I have a question for the counsel that is also related to the Dereigstration Act Section 2, but concerning the implications of Clause 3: "Should a citizen who has deregistered, re-register with Atlasia within sixty days of their deregistration, then they remain bound by the requirements of Article V, Section 2, Clause 7 as amended by the Seventh Amendment."

That clause makes a reregistration within sixty days the same as if it the person had never deregistered as far as place of residency is concerned. An expansive reading of Clause 3 would thus imply that a reregistration makes a deregistration null and void in other circumstances as well.  I'd like for counsel to address why an expansive reading would or would not be appropriate.

Well, I mentioned a little bit of the history behind deregistration in order to address the scope of what Senators at that time might have had in mind when writing the Act.  This clause, perhaps the most specific of all of the clauses, dealt with the most important deregistration  problem at that time - posters (named Philip) either deregistering or deleting their names in order to move between states before the two-month period was over.

I think the language is pretty clear concerning the statute's intent, it should read narrowly

However, the specificity of this clause and the problem that it was supposed to address signifies that other clauses, such as the one pointed to by Defendant should not be given a broad scope (i.e. inability to vote silently implies inability to not be a declared candidate)

[Sam Spade]

I'm done with insights for the moment.  In fact, I intend to go out in a few minutes, actually. 

[Sam Spade]

If you have any more questions to ask of me, I'll be willing to answer, but quite frankly otherwise, I rest my case and await the court's decision.

[Sam Spade]

I would like to add one more question for the court to ponder, if it so pleases them:

Is the court really willing to rule that a person who is clearly ineligible to hold a senate seat eligible to win that senate seat?  The fact that Sam Spade re-registered is irrelevant, if he was not registered when he was voted for, at that time he was ineligible to be a senator.

Let me pose a hypothetical:

Say a voter with 75 posts registers to vote and declares his candidacy for Senate more than 10 days before the general election, 25 posts below the needed requirement to be Senator.  He is an active voter (having 15 posts in the last eight weeks), or for the sake of argument, we can say that he is an inactive voter, because no language in CESRA requires a candidate to be an active voter.

He wins, but fails to vote or cannot vote (due to his inactivity) in the election.  After the election he has only 80 posts, still 20 short of the necessary amount.  Before the swearing-in day, however, he manages to reach 105 posts, 5 posts past the sufficient amount to be Senator.

Do you think that simply because he lacked 100 posts when he was elected as Senator, although he was a validly registered candidate and a registered voter *10 days before the election*, his votes should be counted as invalid for purposes of electing him a Senator.  What part of the statute or Constitution mandates that result?

If you don't think his vote should be counted, then functionally where is the distinction between his dilemma and mine?

[Sam Spade]

Am I correct in remembering that in real life, in the United States, it does not matter how old a candidate is when (s)he is elected to say the senate, or the presidency as long as (s)he met the requirement at the time (s)he assumed office?

That's an age requirement, there is no logical way in which they could NOT meet the age requirement.  If I correct a candidate could not live in Rhode Island, be elected senator of Utah and then move their before the term started.  I know representatives do not have to reside in their district, but that's how the law is written.  This law is written that the person MUST live in the region to be senator, and when Spade was voted for he did not "live" in the region

So what is your (collective you, anyone chime in) opinion of write in ballots for candidates who are real life personas?

It seems to me we have a tradition of accepting those votes, even when they are cast in jest, and registering them in the tabulations, even if they do not change the end result for the atlasian candidates.

The statute specifically forbids the counting of write-in votes, unless that person accepts that candidacy.  I think it is fair to presume that the word *countable* means counting votes for the purpose of the election.  Therefore, that tradition, or whatever, is specifically forbidden by statute since it was passed.

Section 1, Clause 5

"In order for write-in votes for a candidate to qualify as countable votes, the person written-in must formally accept the write-in candidacy before the end of voting in the given election."

[Sam Spade]

Taking apart the Court's decision:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Once again, I fail to see how the Deregistration Act's prohibition of voting by deregistered persons relates to filing of candidacy petitions, which is clearly covered by Article I, Section 4, Clause 6 and the CESRA and is absent from the Deregistration Act. 

Moreover, the example the court points to as a *problem* with *restoration of the prior registration view* is irrelevant to the present situation.  In this scenario, I was not deregistered when I filed my candidacy, I was a validly registered voter.  Therefore, any hypotheticals the court can dream up to with regards to deregistered individuals trying to vote have no application to a registered voter filing a candidacy, deregistering, and then reregistering again to claim the fruits of his candidacy.

Furthermore, the broad application the court gives the Deregistration Act in concluding that reregistration is not restoration of the old registration is clearly absent from the text, if not explicitly barred by prior Executive Orders not invalidated by the Deregistration Act.

First, absent sufficient language to the contrary, this court lacks grounds to conclude that since Clause 3 provides that residency is carried over, all other aspects of that person's rights as a citizen start anew.

After all, Clause 1 says that:

"A right to deregister, specifically, the right to have oneself removed from the voter rolls, is hereby granted to all citizens of Atlasia."

The court, in this decision, determines that the right to remove oneself from the voter rolls is essentially the same as the right to remove all rights a person had as a citizen prior to deregistration.  In other words, removal of oneself from the voter rolls via deregistration is now the same as removal of that person's rights as a citizen in Atlasia, absent, amusingly, the ability to change states every two months.  I note that this inference is made primarily from the Court's interpretation of the Constitutional text, but this reasoning naturally extends to the Deregistration Act.

And although I consider this argument not the strongest, sufficient language to the contrary has already been provided by the executive order given by Joe Republic.

"I have hereby decided to rescind an executive order imposed by an earlier administration, which deals with voters who no longer wish to be Atlasian citizens. As was previously, voters who had stated their wish to be removed from the voter rolls were summarily ignored.

However, from now on, any such individual's registrations will become 'dormant'. They will not be permitted to vote, or be considered an Atlasian citizen, until such time that they declare their wish to return. If they return within the same length of time that they would have naturally been removed from the rolls, then their registration will be treated as if they had never left."

Obviously, Clause 6 of the Deregistration Act says:

All Executive Orders issued in contradiction of this Law in the past or future are void.

But there is simply no need to read Clause 3 as a contradiction to this previous Executive Order.  Rather, and the history of how SoFAs interpreted the Executive Order makes this clear, the SoFAs simply decided not to follow the Executive Order to the letter and kept allowing reregistrants to change states.  So, Clause 3 was clearly not meant to overturn the past Executive Order, but rather supplement it.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Obviously Sam Spade could not be a Senator.  Article I, Section 1, Clause 2 demands it, immediately upon deregistration.  Once again, this point is irrelevant and does not need an examination of the citizen's *privileges*, as conducted hence, in order to make the conclusion.

I'll deal with the Constitutional argument later...