Okay, in that case, I found it profoundingly disturbing that instead of actually campaign for his seat, Oakvale stood idly by waiting until votes had been cast and then encouraged voters to edit the ballot at the last minute. This led to the invalidation of NVGonzalez's ballot.
Utter nonsense. Marokai explained this fairly well - I wondered why someone would have not voted for Sbane, a respected and accomplished Senator, but would vote for LiberalJunkie, whose resume was, er, less impressive, and PM'd Gonzalez to ask him about. He told me his reasons - he wanted LiberalJunkie out of the Council because he was holding up legislative progress, but then admitted it was not a good reason for voting for someone and changed his vote. The fact that it was
literally a minute late was an oversight that could happen to anyone.
I also resent the accusation that I "stood idly by" "instead of campaign". I, and my informal campaign team, worked very hard in the last election - that's the only way I could overcome the sizable Liberal registration advantage. I think I quite literally PMd every voter in the Pacific other than LiberalJunkie and the handful I knew would vote against me regardless. Multiple times. I'm sure I got on some peoples' nerves for it and they'd be able to confirm.
As for the bill, I'm not convinced. I understand the rationale but I think expecting voters - most of whom in Atlasian elections are "zombies", let's be honest- to know that it'd be illegal to edit their ballot assumes more knowledge on the part of the average, disconnected voter than is realistic.
Instead, why don't we increase the sentence for campaigning for the invalidation of votes to make it much more of a deterrent? I think that'd be far more likely to get widespread support than banning the editing of votes outright. I could draw up an amendment...
All that said, I do applaud the appointment of Bacon Kingman as special prosecutor to look into the latest travesty.
