Secret Ballot Procedure Bill

[Colin]

I oppose this bill. We have had calls for a private vote before and I have been against them at that time as well. This leaves the election process too open for fraud, corruption, and vote editing. This puts the entire election in the hands of a few men when an election should be decided by the entire nation. Even though I don't like the votes being open for all to see it is better than a few people counting the ballots in secret and possibly changing those ballots. I am sorry Joe but I cannot support this.

[Colin]

So far there seems to be only one valid arguement and non-technical against a secret ballot (King's idea to "decentralize" the electoral process is so insane that I'm assuming it's a joke. Hey, why not flog the contract to the highest bidder? ) and that is the possibility of fraud. The same concerns exist in the real world and I do not see any attempts to scrap the secret ballot. As for the trust issue, if we can't trust a group of people to count the votes fairly, then we might as well pack this whole thing in.

The case for a secret ballot is simple; every election certain people intimidate voters. Individual votes are picked over in a blatently partisan manner, and there's usually a couple of disgusting cases of certain members starting witch hunts against people who voted for candidate x or who made a tiny mistake on the ballot. And so on. This time round this vile circus has started earlier with the sickening actions of a certain Presidential candidate about a vote in an election in which he is not actually involved in and has nowt to do with.
It is disgraceful, it is undemocratic and is much, much more worrying than a slightly increased chance of ballot stuffing.

And do you thinnk situations like that would be solved by a secret ballot? If we put in place some sort of system like what Senator Spade mentioned before people will see the votes anyway and will then get on the cases of certain citizens. If we do not show the votes then any candidate who feels that they were wronged in anyway by the process could call out the electoral commission and we could have such large and long running court cases that it would be very hard to conduct elections. When King tried to use his power as SoFA unwisely during the NixonNow vs. Blerpiez special election people were able to call him out on it because they were able to see the ballots and they were able to see when and how votes were edited or deleted. The whole election procedure was transparent. If we institute a secret vote in Atlasia the voting system thus is no longer transparent. Al your arguement is that it would produce less electoral chaos than their is now but, in my mind, while it will reduce the amount of cases like we have now it will open up a new can of worms of challengeable aspects of the electoral system.

[Colin]

Aye, Aye

[Colin]

I would like to say that this bill, as it stands, is unconstitutional and if it passes I will probably bring a complaint before the Supreme Court in which its constitutionality is questioned.

The parts of the constitution that would cause this bill to be unconstitutional are Article I, Section 4, Clause 6 which states "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." (Important area bolded) The other clause that makes this unconstitutional is Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 which states, "The Senate shall have necessary power to determine regulations for the procedure of and the form of Presidential elections and shall have necessary power to determine a procedure for declaration of candidacy for such elections. All elections to the Presidency shall be by public post. " (Important Area in Bold) Therefore we can see that this bill would be unconstitutional unless it is made into an amendment of the Second Constitution of the Republic of Atlasia.

I am not sure if this bill's constitutionality was brought up before but I would like to bring this to the attention of the fellow Senators before we begin a vote.

[Colin]

I would also like to put forward an amendment to this bill:

Section 9

Corruption, electoral fraud, the changing of votes, and tampering with votes in any way, is hereby criminalized in Atlasia. All members of the said committee who are found guilty of any of these charges will have their voting rights striped for a maximum of one year. Trials will be conducted according to the provisions set in place by the Omnibus Criminal Law Act.

[Colin]

Well just to clear things up with this amendment. This only gives set punishments for committee memebers not ordinary Atlasians. I am guessing that any punishment for an ordinary citizen would be up to the Supreme Court to decide although if this is not the case I will have the maximum sentencing apply to all Atlasians.

[Colin]

I have an idea about how to implement this Secret Ballot but yet keep a running total and keep preliminary results available. What we have is once a secret ballot is sent to the SoFA that ballot is placed in a special stickied thread on the Fantasy Elections board. Their is no name on the ballot and the entire vote is kept anonymous. This would allow people to see secret ballots and be able to come up with up to date results that would help discussions while keeping the ballots of people who voted by secret ballot anonymous and secret. I think that this is a good compromise between the people who want to keep public ballots due to fun and those that want to see a secret ballot due to voter intimidation.

[Colin]

I have an idea about how to implement this Secret Ballot but yet keep a running total and keep preliminary results available. What we have is once a secret ballot is sent to the SoFA that ballot is placed in a special stickied thread on the Fantasy Elections board. Their is no name on the ballot and the entire vote is kept anonymous. This would allow people to see secret ballots and be able to come up with up to date results that would help discussions while keeping the ballots of people who voted by secret ballot anonymous and secret. I think that this is a good compromise between the people who want to keep public ballots due to fun and those that want to see a secret ballot due to voter intimidation.

This would also keep the write-ins down as you can tell what people's votes by their ballot.

I also think this is a good idea.

Well I'm having trouble putting this into amendment form. If someone could write something along these lines up for me that would be great. If not I'll try writing it.

[Colin]

Aye

[Colin]

I have one more amendment:

Section 10

Once a secret ballot is submitted to the three electoral comission members the Secretary of Forum Affairs shall, as soon as possible, post this ballot in the official voting booth for that election. This ballot must not include the name of the voter or any definitive markings that could compromise the anonymity of the said secret voter.  

[Colin]

Aye

[Colin]

I have one more amendment:

Section 10

Once a secret ballot is submitted to the three electoral comission members the Secretary of Forum Affairs shall, as soon as possible, post this ballot in the official voting booth for that election. This ballot must not include the name of the voter or any definitive markings that could compromise the anonymity of the said secret voter.  

So, instead of a registered voter casting a public ballot in the voting booth thread, they send it into 3 guys to look at who then send it to the Secretary of Forum Affairs to post it in the voting booth thread.  How practical!

Hey if we have a secret vote I want to at least keep election weekend rather interesting. Otherwise I should just vote and leave on election weekend since their wont be any running totals nor any interesting election topics, debates, or discussion.

[Colin]

Let's not forget that this secret ballot measure is optional.  So for the people who still want to vote publicly, they're more than welcome to do so.  People can still keep running totals of those.

Yeah but those totals are completely wrong though and wouldn't actually count towards any type of result. We would have no better idea of who won than if we just had an entirely secret ballot election. Atlasia is about fun, first and foremost, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have fun and laugh and did stuff that I liked to do. This bill will take away from the fun of watching the results come in and will stifle the debates, dicussions and commentary that makes elections so great. Without this then elections would be boring and without elections then the whole Atlasian experience, for me, would be alot worse and lot less fun and very uninteresting.

[Colin]

Let's not forget that this secret ballot measure is optional.  So for the people who still want to vote publicly, they're more than welcome to do so.  People can still keep running totals of those.

Yeah but those totals are completely wrong though and wouldn't actually count towards any type of result. We would have no better idea of who won than if we just had an entirely secret ballot election. Atlasia is about fun, first and foremost, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have fun and laugh and did stuff that I liked to do. This bill will take away from the fun of watching the results come in and will stifle the debates, dicussions and commentary that makes elections so great. Without this then elections would be boring and without elections then the whole Atlasian experience, for me, would be alot worse and lot less fun and very uninteresting.

Why would it make it uninteresting to not know until the last minute who won?  As the public votes come in, everyone could speculate in great detail about what the secret ballots are, try to guess how they will turn out, and everyone will wait with bated breath to see whether or not the trends in the public voting will continue in the secret voting or if someone has captured most of entire secret vote and has run away with the election.

Personally, I think that it would have the potential to make things more exciting, not uninteresting.

Well maybe for you but not for me. We saw how wrong every pre-election poll was. What's the use of even having running total when you don't know what the results of the secret ballots are. Hell their could be 35 first preference votes for a single candidate in the secret ballots that would make all predicitons absolutely rediculous. As we saw in the last election every vote matters and basically all elections in Atlasia a single vote can decide the outcome of the election.

This whole secret ballot debate comes down to two things. Would you rather vote wait three days and then see almost random election results or do you want to see ever vote as it comes in, be a part of the election process, count the ballots yourself and see the results as they come in. Do you want a three man comission counting votes or 12 indpendent people each counting the votes seperately and not officially and then comparing their results and sharing them with the average people.

I am probably in the minority here and I probably sound like either A) a complete jackass or B) a total buffoon but this is all I can do. I want to keep the electoral system, and especially the public vote, the way it is now. If I come off as harsh I'm sorry since I didn't mean to, all I am trying to do is try and convince people of my line of thought.

[Colin]

Abstain on the King amendments.

[Colin]

Last night, in a fit of boredom, I decided to play a little game on paper with the provisions of this Bill:

What would have happened if we actually had this in the last election?

First, to form the Electoral Committee:

Vice President - vacant
PPT - Gabu
SoFA - True Democrat - running, thus recused

Reserves:

SecState - Siege - running, thus recused
AG - MHS2002 - running, thus recused
SecDef - Emsworth - running, thus recused
SecTre - vacant

D1 - Supersoulty - running, thus recused
D2 - PBrunsel
D3 - King - running, thus recused
D4 - Preston
D5 - Gabu - PPT

ME - Jedi - running, thus recused
MW - DanX - running, thus recused
NE - Colin - running, thus recused
SE - Sam - running, thus recused
Pac - vacant (noting that MAS had resigned, we only had 9 Senators)

Thus you can quickly see that the only allowable Committee is Gabu, PBrunsel, Preston. If one of these persons had been unwilling or unable due to other absence to participate, we actually could not have formed a Committee.

In any regular Senate election it is not unreasonable to assume half the Senate is recused due to their conflict of interest. When this is then coupled with the Presidential election, we quickly run out of available office holders. Any of those who are allowed to sit on the Committee must be willing to confirm their availability a week in advance, and then must be willing to go through the painful process of:

1. Actually convening as a group. Anybody who thinks getting 3 people online at the same time is easy just needs to ask the Supreme Court about its recent deliberations, especially if we have to work across large time differences or persons who usually do not spend large amounts of time on AIM or other messenging softwares.
2. Then counting the votes in the precise and painstaking way that will be needed to ensure accurate results.

My guess is that if a committee is able to be formed, it may take several days before results are declared, and any post-election litigation that could occur might actually run past Inauguration Day. In effect, the two week buffer built into the Constitution to ensure that legal disputes are settled could be lost.

In effect, this legislation stacks the deck against the Forum Affairs Dept from the outset by leaving us with very few options to form a Committee in an election with a large field. The result could be a total train wreck with a victor not declared for some days, or even worse, no Committee at all and thus the entire set of secret votes thrown out from the start.

It is the opinion of this Interim Secretary of Forum Affairs that my Department cannot with any confidence report to you that an election conducted with this measure as it stands would necessarily be practicable. The Senate has much work to do on this legislation before it is allowed out of this chamber.

Very good analysis Peter. I think this is the best speech that we have thus had against using the secret ballot or having a committee formed in the way provisioned by this act.

[Colin]

I motion to suspend debate on this bill until such a time as a commission has been established and that this said commission has created a formal final report on the issue of the secret ballot.

[Colin]

Aye

[Colin]

Just a quick question, who is on the committee?

It hasn't been fully decided yet but if you look here you will be able to see a draft version of who will be one this commission. It will probably change since I have a few amendments to that resolution that I would like to propose.