Voting System Reform Commission

[True Democrat]

I am currently undecided on secret voting, but leaning towards supporting it.

[Peter]

Presently we are not discussing whether we want secret voting or not; My initial talking points here were to discuss what we need to do with the Constitution if we are to have it.

Campaigning may not occur in the place where voting occurs. (Article V, Section i, Clause 3)

This clause clearly implies that the Constitution foresees a single "place where voting occurs." I find it difficult to fathom that this clause refers to private message boxes: clearly, the most reasonable interpretation is that it refers to a public voting booth.

LOL, if we moved to a PM system, this could result in any PM's sent out for campaigning purposes being illegal. Actually, that would an amusing case....

Only to the extent of those PMs sent out for campaigning purposes during the actual time frame of the election itself and then only to those persons actually on the Committee, and even then, I think the point is pretty much unarguable as the clause was designed to stop persons unduly influencing other voters in the voting booth.

I will favour a secret ballot if it can be shown to be practicable, something which this Commission will examine in detail. I do urge all Committee members to maintain an open mind on this matter.

[Peter]

Given that we seem to have agreement on the Constitution's meaning as to whether it allows secret voting and how to remedy this situation, we shall now move on to our next section:

Practical and Procedural Concerns

The Committee that will receive and verify votes

How many persons should be on it?

Given the high number of persons who do run for office in each electoral cycle, how many persons should be eligible to be on the Committee in the legislative mandate?

Who should these people be?

If we decide to use non federal office holders, what requirements should we place on them being on the Committee?

What happens if an election occurs where a Committee is not able to be formed?

Should Supreme Court Justices be allowed to serve on the Committee?

Once again, the questions are just starters. I will partly address a couple of issues now:

In the debate on this issue, I presented the scenario of the last election conducted under a secret vote and showed that there would only have been one possible Committee formable. If one of those persons had been unwilling, it would have made secret voting impossible. For this reason, I must come out right now and state that I believe it is not only advisable, but absolutely imperative that we be able to use non-federal office holders, such as Governors or citizens on the Committee.

I envision persons volunteering themselves for duty a couple of weeks in advance, and then being tacked onto the bottom of the legislative list of allowed committee members after a confirmation vote by the Senate.

[True Democrat]

For who should be on the commission, I have a new idea.  With the AFCJ, PPT, SoFA, etc. . ., I think we should have the leader of each party.  We know that the leaders of the parties would not work in unison to try to change the results.

[Emsworth]

How many persons should be on it?

There should be no fewer than three. If there is one, the potential for fraud is obviously very great; if there are two, collusion is rather simple.

If there are too many, on the other hand, the probability that all would be online at the time of certification is too low, and logistical problems will ensue.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

If necessary, any citizen, even one who holds no position, should be able to sit on this Committee (but see the exception for Justices below). There need be no specific numerical limit.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Appointment by some federal officer, or by consensus of some group of federal officers, should suffice. Confirmation is not, I think a wise idea: for, if a Senator votes not to confirm, he is stating that he does not trust the nominee, which may lead the nominee to be prejudiced in the vote counting.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It is the Court which will resolve all electoral disputes. But if one of the Justices was in the first instance involved in the matter, he would be precluded from deciding the same case later. Therefore, Justices should not sit on this Committee.

[Peter]

For who should be on the commission, I have a new idea.  With the AFCJ, PPT, SoFA, etc. . ., I think we should have the leader of each party.  We know that the leaders of the parties would not work in unison to try to change the results.

Party leaders are so often also holding other offices:

ILP - Emsworth - VP
CUP - Sam Spade - Senator
FLP - Al - AG
ACA - MasterJedi - Senator

The only other major party chair left is John Ford, who under the all citizens proposal could simply volunteer anyway.

[Emsworth]

I read the following statement into evidence:

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.

And these problems grow even further, if we add more members to the Committee.

[True Democrat]

For who should be on the commission, I have a new idea.  With the AFCJ, PPT, SoFA, etc. . ., I think we should have the leader of each party.  We know that the leaders of the parties would not work in unison to try to change the results.

Party leaders are so often also holding other offices:

ILP - Emsworth - VP
CUP - Sam Spade - Senator
FLP - Al - AG
ACA - MasterJedi - Senator

The only other major party chair left is John Ford, who under the all citizens proposal could simply volunteer anyway.

Could we possibly have one non-officing member of each major party in Atlasia?  Or each Presidential candidate could appoint one representative to count votes.

[Emsworth]

Could we possibly have one non-officing member of each major party in Atlasia?  Or each Presidential candidate could appoint one representative to count votes.

But then, what if the candidate appoints a non-serious or non-cooperative poster? For instance, what if Jesus decides to run and appoint opebo?

Also, this would give us a committee of perhaps ten members; to expect all of whom to meet at midnight on the relevant day would not be reasonable.

[True Democrat]

Could we possibly have one non-officing member of each major party in Atlasia?  Or each Presidential candidate could appoint one representative to count votes.

But then, what if the candidate appoints a non-serious or non-cooperative poster? For instance, what if Jesus decides to run and appoint opebo?

Also, this would give us a committee of perhaps ten members; to expect all of whom to meet at midnight on the relevant day would not be reasonable.

Well, what about party representatives?

[KEmperor]

Could we possibly have one non-officing member of each major party in Atlasia?  Or each Presidential candidate could appoint one representative to count votes.

But then, what if the candidate appoints a non-serious or non-cooperative poster? For instance, what if Jesus decides to run and appoint opebo?

Also, this would give us a committee of perhaps ten members; to expect all of whom to meet at midnight on the relevant day would not be reasonable.

I highly recommend keeping this committee as small as possible.  From experience on the court, it is surprisingly hard to get three people to be online at the same time to work on something.  Ten people would be highly unwieldy, unless we intend to do this on the forums, which would negate the reason for a secret ballot in the first place.

[Sam Spade]

Could we possibly have one non-officing member of each major party in Atlasia?  Or each Presidential candidate could appoint one representative to count votes.

But then, what if the candidate appoints a non-serious or non-cooperative poster? For instance, what if Jesus decides to run and appoint opebo?

Also, this would give us a committee of perhaps ten members; to expect all of whom to meet at midnight on the relevant day would not be reasonable.

I highly recommend keeping this committee as small as possible.  From experience on the court, it is surprisingly hard to get three people to be online at the same time to work on something.  Ten people would be highly unwieldy, unless we intend to do this on the forums, which would negate the reason for a secret ballot in the first place.

Agreed.  I think trying to put together any more would be next to impossible.

The problem is, that much like everyone else, I'm struggling with the idea of how we could make this committee be as fair, not open to fraud and logical as possible.

I am still against SC justices being on the committee because of the conflict of interest problem.

I also think it should be a fairly standard body of non-partisan people, mainly government, but also potentially not those in government and most importantly should come from people not in the federal election being watched over.

For my own two cents, I'll throw out my suggestion of who I think it should be:

The GM
The SoFA
A public representative approved of by all party leaders (and by the Senate and President, if necessary) who is not running for election at that time.

If the GM and/or the SoFA are running for election at that time, then they should be also replaced by a public representative meeting the requirements stated above.

[Peter]

Could we possibly have one non-officing member of each major party in Atlasia?  Or each Presidential candidate could appoint one representative to count votes.

Given that I believe there is a major desire to keep the Committee limited to 3 persons, then each major party will not be feasible because there are 5 firmly established parties right now. Presidential candidates will also suffer from the same problem given that there is a strong possibility of more than 3. The question then also arises: What do we do in Senate only elections?

Regarding my previous statement that Emsworth has read into evidence, I believe I have found ways to negate at least some of these problems in the counting phase that I will go over later.

[Peter]

The Committee that will receive and verify votes

How many persons should be on it?

There seems to be a consensus of three, as was in the original bill on this point.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

There seems to be agreement that we should allow the list of qualified Committee members extend beyond a list of office holders, possibly to a list of volunteered ordinary citizens or citizens nominated by parties. Whether a confirmation is necessary is unclear as to whether we have consensus.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Nobody has yet addressed this point. I will attempt to do so: If there are enough persons added to the end of the list of qualified Committee members, then I believe that the likelihood of a committee not being formed is somewhat low. Really we have no idea how many people would or would not volunteer: I would like one of the pollsters (Colin perhaps?) to liase with me so that we can perhaps poll the general population to see how many would be willing to serve in this capacity. Only then can we have a realistic possibility of knowing the likelihood of non-formation.

If it turns out that non-formation is a reasonable possibility, where should we go from here?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The feelings of Sam and Emsworth pretty much some up my own here - there is too much possibility of conflict of interest in a court case to have Justices serve the Committee. Gabu previously concurred in this opinion IIRC in Senate debate, so I think consensus has been reached here also.

[Emsworth]

If it turns out that non-formation is a reasonable possibility, where should we go from here?

I confess that I have no answer here.

[Sam Spade]

If it turns out that non-formation is a reasonable possibility, where should we go from here?

I confess that I have no answer here.

Yep, it's a big problem to put it mildly.

This is also one of the reasons I suggested two official members and one non-official, in the hope that non-formation wouldn't happen.

[Peter]

This is also one of the reasons I suggested two official members and one non-official, in the hope that non-formation wouldn't happen.

I'm more than open to non-office holders being on the committee and in fact I will have to pretty much demand it in report I expect. The question presented is, even after all those possible contigencies have been gone through, if we think there is a possibility of non-formation, what do we do?

[Colin]

The Committee that will receive and verify votes

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Nobody has yet addressed this point. I will attempt to do so: If there are enough persons added to the end of the list of qualified Committee members, then I believe that the likelihood of a committee not being formed is somewhat low. Really we have no idea how many people would or would not volunteer: I would like one of the pollsters (Colin perhaps?) to liase with me so that we can perhaps poll the general population to see how many would be willing to serve in this capacity. Only then can we have a realistic possibility of knowing the likelihood of non-formation.

If it turns out that non-formation is a reasonable possibility, where should we go from here?

I would be happy to do a poll on that. While many people may be willing to be a part of an Federal Election Committee and ahving non-governmental officials on the list of possible committee members will lead to less of a likelyhood that a committee would not be able to form it still leaves the possibility of such a problem occuring. I believe the only way we can do this is a committee must be formed before the election and if a committee cannot form because of conflicts or absences then secret voting cannot occur during that election. A citizen can only use secret voting if an official committee is able to oversee the secret ballots and if their is no said committee than we must inform all voters that secret ballots cannot be used in those elections.

[Peter]

I will liase with Colin later in the week regarding this issue. If it is determined non-formation is a reasonable possibility, then we will return to this issue at some later date.

Next topic:

Voting secretly

How should this be achieved, by email or PM?

Should secret voters have to sign a "register" after they have voted secretly?

If so, should their vote be disqualified if they fail to sign the register?

Should official advice be published to aid voters by the Forum Affairs dept?

[True Democrat]

How should this be achieved, by email or PM?

If we have them PM, it automatically e-mails the person, so I don't think that part really matters.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I think this would be a very good idea.  That way, the commission could not only check the people who voted with each other, but with tthis register.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

No, I think it should highly suggested they sign the register, but they should not be disqualified for not signing it. 

I have a different idea for the register however.  In addition to having the voters sign a register, each person on the commission should maintain a register of who voted.  This would make sure the commisssion members could easily check to make they have received the same votes.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This is a no-brainer.  Of course.  This may be a confusing process, especially the first time it's done.  The SoFA should write up all the laws and explain them for the voters.

[Peter]

If a register is going to possibly be incomplete, then it is not a very effective list to be checking against in the first place.

Even if we did require signatures on the register, it would still erode one of the principal reasons for a secret ballot: That of keeping votes anonymous.

If the tactical voters know who has voted, they can make at least an educated guess as to which way the results are trending, and vote accordingly. Obviously they would never have the advantage they do now, but they still might be able to eek something out.

[Emsworth]

How should this be achieved, by email or PM?

PM. I don't really see much advantage to e-mail over PM, and the latter seems simpler

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yes, I think so, to prevent frauds by the Committee.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yes.

[ilikeverin]

If the tactical voters know who has voted, they can make at least an educated guess as to which way the results are trending, and vote accordingly. Obviously they would never have the advantage they do now, but they still might be able to eek something out.

I don't think tactical voters would really pay that mcuh attention.  I think most tactical voters vote based on either media results (which would be incomplete) or on a vague sense of who's winning coming from the voting both... they won't expend the effort to track down who voted secretly, attempt to make a preference list for that voter, and tabulate the results from there.

[KEmperor]

So where are we going with this?  It appears that the majority of the nation does not want a secret ballot, and I don't even know if a majority of the commission does.

[Colin]

So where are we going with this?  It appears that the majority of the nation does not want a secret ballot, and I don't even know if a majority of the commission does.

Well according to preliminary poll results. With 45 people being polled only 15 would say that they would use the Secret Ballot compared with 28 who said they wouldn't.