Ninja0428 vs. Region of Lincoln
Petitioner's Brief
Greetings, honorable justices. On February 16, 2021, only days before the recent election for President, Senate, and the House of Representatives, the governor of Lincoln signed into law the
Lincoln Election Law Act Amendment of 2021, (LC 10.4) which notably implemented a regional account age requirement of 3.5 weeks in order to vote in those elections which are administered by the region of Lincoln.
1. A registered voter shall only be eligible to vote in elections and referendums within Lincoln if their account was established at least five hundred and eighty-eight hours (3.5 weeks) prior to the opening of voting, along with the voter having met all other federal validity requirements.
I am challenging the constitutionality of this bill on the grounds that it denies the right to vote to Atlasian citizens who have been granted this right by Amendment V to the fourth constitution.
Precedent:The Supreme Court of Atlasia has made two previous relevant rulings to this case,
Evergreen v. Rpryor and
Cinyc v. Northern Region. In the first case, the Supreme Court interpreted the phrase "The right of citizens of the Republic of Atlasia to vote shall not be denied, except in regards to persons whose account is fewer than 168 hours old" as to
set a hard limit on account age requirements to 168 hours. The court decided that if a user had met this requirement, then their vote could not be invalidated for the reason of account age.
This language is identical in the amended version of the constitution. The ruling in the 2nd case upheld the previous ruling and held that
a measure by the Lincoln region to imposes a harsher account age requirement was not constitutional. This measure sought to do essentially the same thing as the newer law, except for imposing a requirement of 10 days rather than 3.5 weeks. Importantly, this case also shows that
the regulation of elections by regional governments is limited by the constitution. Therefore, no provision granting regions jurisdiction to regulate senate elections gives them a free pass to violate the constitution. Following this precedent, LC 10.4 would be blatantly unconstitutional.
The "Residency" Amendment:The defense has, of course, noted that the constitution has been amended to include "consequences of failing to meet such requirements for... term of residency as may be established by law" to the list of reasons why a citizen may be denied the right to vote.
This amendment still does not explicitly include account age meaning that this argument now rests on whether "residency" can be interpreted as to include account age. The defense asserts that this is the case, but I will argue otherwise. To start,
the constitution does not establish its own definition of "residency". If that were the case we could point to the definition established for the purposes of the constitution but that is not the case. Credible dictionaries define residency along the lines of the state of living in a place.
Cambridge, for example defines residency as "the fact of living in a place." I have been unable to find a definition to the contrary, and in normal speech the word residency as it applies to people is used to describe the state of living in a place. This can be considered the expected definition of "residency." It should be obvious that
people can not live in a website.The Relationship of Atlasia and the Forum:The defense has made claims that rather than being treated by a website for the purposes of Atlasia the Talk Elections Forum is treated as the location in which Atlasia exists, but there is little showing this to be the case. The defense has presented legislation which acknowledges the existence of a forum but
none of this legislation establishes the forum as a place. It is reasonable to describe the forum as
a medium of communication for Atlasian affairs. Elections are held on the forum, and governmental affairs take place on the forum. It is reasonable then that Atlasian law may regulate aspects of the forum's usage. But this still does not make the forum a place where one can live.
The defense has also not been able to answer questions of reality in a world where we exist in the forum. Such questions arise as how people enter the universe from wherever else they may be if we are to assume the the forum in in fact the universe, something which bends the known laws of physics in ways which have not been established by any previous Game Moderator, nor can the defense answer how there are millions of Atlasian residents who are not members of the forum.
The forum-universe model does not align with our reality.The Relationship of Age and Residency: It is dubious that issues of account age can truly be considered the same as issues of residency.
Whether we consider account age to be a measure of how long one has been a user of a website or of how long one has existed within our universe, these are generally separate issues. Under the forum-universe model the defense asserts, the moment one joins the forum can be considered the first moment one exists in this world. The time elapsed from this first moment one exists can be considered their age. One can have an age of many years yet only be a resident of a country such as Atlasia for less than one.
It is for this reason that age and residency are never legally considered to be the same, because they can differ. And if we accept that the forum is a website and a not a physical location then it should be obvious that the length one has been a user of a website is not the same as residency. These are separate issues in law.
The Language of the Amendment:This brings us back to the relevant language of Amendment V to the 4th Constitution:
The right of citizens of the Republic of Atlasia to vote shall not be denied, except in regards to persons whose account is fewer than 168 hours old, as punishment for crimes of which the accused has been duly convicted, or in consequence of failing to meet such requirements for frequent posting or term of residency as may be established by law
As has been established, the constitution does not explicitly grant the authority to establish requirements based on account age to the regional governments, and there a multitude of problems that come from construing "residency" to do this.
Therefore, one's account age being greater than 168 hours and less than 588 hours is not an acceptable reason to deny a citizen the right to vote according to the constitution. As it has been established in
Cinyc v. Northern Region that these protections extend to the right to vote in elections administered by the regional government, LC 10.4 is unconstitutional.