Constitutional Amendment to Allow a Secret Ballot

[Ebowed]

Although the bill that went with this amendment allows one to vote either with a secret ballot or by public post, there are many who are urging this amendment's passage so that a mandatory secret voting system is eventually implemented.  As I trust no one but the public with my ballots, I cannot support this amendment when considering the implications.  This is, after all, first and foremost a game.  Voting needs to be easy and fun, not a complicated secret process where you have to send your ballot to various people and expect them to count it correctly.  We have enough problems counting the votes correctly with a public ballot system; let's not make it worse.

In other words, expect a Nay from me.

[Ebowed]

I know several people who are upset with even moderators being able to see IP addresses.  Having IP addresses posted along with votes won't make them happy, and if you know someone's IP address or know where they live you can track who voted for who and shame them for it if they didn't vote the way you wanted them to, which is one of the things that having a secret ballot would supposedly eliminate.

[Ebowed]

Although the bill that went with this amendment allows one to vote either with a secret ballot or by public post, there are many who are urging this amendment's passage so that a mandatory secret voting system is eventually implemented.

So?  Those people have all but dropped their ideas after realizing that the public doesn't want a mandatory secret ballot.  It seems to me that voting against this amendment purely because it might lead to a mandatory secret ballot (which is not at all likely) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Short-sighted decisions like this will inevitably lead to disaster.

For lack of a better analogy, when you supported the Balanced Budget Requirement in the constitution, you saw no harm in it.  Now, you're the Senator attempting to repeal it.  Similarly, there is no chance "now" of a mandatory secret ballot system being put into place.  However, as I am able to look ahead and consider possible scenarios, the make-up of the Senate could drastically change within the next months or year, at which point a mandatory secret ballot would perhaps be a feasible idea to many.  I'd rather not give them a headstart on having that oppurtunity, so I oppose the amendment simply because it would legalize a mandatory secret ballot, even if it weren't implemented immediately.

[Ebowed]

No.  The amendment merely allows the Senate to decide between three choices of voting that it can implement:

• Public ballot;
• Mandatory secret ballot;
• A combination of both, or allowing the voters to choose which.

All three systems would be legal under the amendment's wording.  It would need to be reworded to ensure that a mandatory secret ballot would not be legal, though I have been unable to write a suitable amendment to the amendment that takes care of this.

[Ebowed]

Support for mandatory secret balloting has rapidly decreased, but there are still some proponents and I have no doubt that the support can grow at any time.  Six months ago the idea of a secret ballot at all would have been laughed out of the Senate; now, it looks set to pass.  Thus, I think it is in our best interest that the amendment is reworded so as not to allow mandatory secret voting.

[Ebowed]

Changing the amendment wording from "or" to "and" would render our current system entirely unconstitutional immediately upon the ratification of the amendment.  We would need to hurriedly pass whatever the first optional Secret Ballot bill proposed is (which conveniently happens to be yours'), with little debate or changing in order to get a constitutional system as soon as possible.

[Ebowed]

I don't appreciate the implication that I had some deep, scheming motive behind my oversight of this point, as there was none.

Sorry, I was poking some fun, I forgot to put a smiley in there somewhere.  I don't seriously think you had some evil plan to push your bill on the Senate without debate... need to start using those silly smileys more often.

The new amendment looks pretty decent (although I still oppose secret voting either way).

[Ebowed]

Nay

[Ebowed]

Oh, it's on the amendment to the amendment?

In that case, Yea.

If this is on the final passage, Nay.

(That should cover everything. )

[Ebowed]

On Gabu's page 4 amendment to this Constitutional Amendment:

Yea

[Ebowed]

Nay.

[Ebowed]

I would advise MAS and Daniel to vote nay.

In the mideast initiatives elections, we've been waiting over a week to get certification due to one secret ballot that needs to be confirmed. If there's one thing that that the fantasy boards do not need, it is more stuff that bogs the process down. Secret ballots are on eof those things.

^^^^^