Request for Review of Election Commissioners

punk d:

In this election, the EC stated that the thread in question was for nominations only and that nominations included self-nominations (aka declaring themselves candidates per LC ch. 4.2) or be nominated by another person (ibid. LC 4.2). The EC established this rule and under that rule, Romanoffia was not a candidate because he didn’t nominate (again read: declare himself a candidate) within the specified thread the EC established as the thread for “nominations only”. I reviewed the claims Romanoffia made that he did make a post and also saw that the admins responded that no such post was made.

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The problem is that this is not the rule that the EC established. They laid out the thread as a thread for nominations only, which limits the scope of the thread. It does not say that only the thread may be used for nominations - and failing to lay out such a rule, the argument that Roman did not comply with the posted rules falls flat.

punk d:

Roman - you didn't actually address what I wrote. Specifically, you talk about bureaucratic tradition and in my comments I specifically stated that I rejected the EC's claim of "historical precedence".

In order to have an effective dialogue on this subject, you'll need to quote more than one sentence in my 1,500+ word commentary on how I arrived at my decision.

You are certainly free to disagree with any points of law or opinions of law I concluded, but it would be most constructive to do so using the law itself.

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What you wrote is largely incorrect for more reasons that I have time to detail unless you want about 20,000 words that no one will take the time to read.

Common Sense is the basis of all law. You admit to abandoning it and hence, no argument you put forth can have any standing because it defies logic.

Given the recent statement to allow Roman on the ballot, I am going to confer with the Chief and Sanc about the ruling we have issued.

Due to the absence of a multi-quote function, and the fact that there's a lot going on in this thread, I apologise if the following is a little bit of a mess - I'm trying to focus more on the questions than how I organise this post.

Astarial:

Abbey Anumia:

The Court was presented with two potential interpretations of the relevant law in this case. One potential interpretation was that the Election Commissioners do not have this power, and that candidates simply have to declare themselves as such. The second interpretation was that they do have this power, and that Candidates must post their declarations in the relevant thread.

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I find myself wondering why, when the court was presented with two extremes both equally absurd - to wit, "Any declaration anywhere is valid" and "Only a single place is acceptable for nominations" - it did not simply take the path which courts frequently take and create a third ruling in the middle?

The court is not, and must not be, dependent upon filed briefs to present the entire spectrum of acceptable responses. The court must be able to apply its own reasoning and experience to craft good law - not merely pick someone else's answer out of a hat.

Can the court explain, please, why such a middle ground was not possible? Why they could not find a solution which maintained Roman's civil liberties and his ability to participate in the electoral process while also setting out a reasonable set of guidelines for any future incidents? Merely off the top of my head, I can think of any of these as providing a workable solution:

a) The ECs are free to regulate electoral procedure as they wish, but to do so they must create a set of standing rules independent of any given election. Roman should be placed on the ballot, and the Vice-Delegate voting should be restarted.
b) The ECs are free to regulate electoral procedure as they wish, but under the circumstances the court strongly urges them to place Roman on the ballot and restart the Vice-Delegate voting.
c) The EC, as they are responsible for the Elections subforum, are responsible for keeping track of the information in that subforum and cannot disqualify any candidate so long as they have declared themselves in a thread or post located within. Roman should be placed on the ballot, and the Vice-Delegate voting should be restarted.
d) As at least one of the ECs was aware of Roman's candidacy, his disqualification was not in the spirit of the constitution. Roman should be placed on the ballot, and the Vice-Delegate voting should be restarted.
e) Given his public campaign thread and the awareness of at least one of the ECs as to his intended candidacy, Roman should have been notified of his failure to meet the bureaucratic requirements of nomination prior to his disqualification on the day voting opened. Roman should be placed on the ballot, and the Vice-Delegate voting should be restarted.

Any of these would provide a middle ground, reasonable ruling, that would have upheld both the law and Roman's rights but would not have subjected these or future ECs to the vagaries of people wanting to push TNP boundaries. Can the court explain why none of these options was even considered?

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I'll do my best to explain why the Court rejected these options:
a) This was rejected on the basis that there was no legal reason to suggest that they had to do this. From my point of view, that is potentially a wise thing for the EC to do, but looking at the law there was no reason to suggest that they had to do that specifically.

b) It's not the Court's place to strongly urge the EC's to do anything. We ruled that what they did was legal - what they did from there is their choice (although there have been further requests made by citizens with regards to this which the Court will consider).

c) Again, there was nothing in the Law to suggest that we could stipulate such a thing. And you can still end up with a bit of a mess, as people could then declare anywhere in the Elections forum...and that's doesn't mean it has to be anywhere where an EC might expect it to be. So we rejected this on the basis that there was no reason to stipulate it, and it only slightly fixes the contradiction.

d) It's not the Court's job to make the EC's rules for election up for them.

e) -Should- have been notified - yes, probably. But the EC's had no legal obligation to do so, and thus their actions were legal.

I think, at this point, I want to make a general point. The Court isn't here to decide for the region what government officials should do, outside of interpreting if their actions fall within their -legal- requirements. Their "moral" requirements are another issue, and one for the region as a whole to sort out politically. We're here to review the law, not to wave a magic wand and resolve conflicts within the region, beyond those about "does the law require x" and such.

I think this drama has in fact shown wonderfully why the Court cannot just rule on "common sense" - the idea of what is common sense, and obvious, varies enormously from one person to the next. We rule on what we see, on what is written down, and we act on that. I also want to publicly note my protest at the noise people have made over the -timing- over the short briefing period. The timings of the briefing period are irrelevant as to it's appropriateness. At a different time of day, it would have been a ridiculous time for Brits, or for Aussies, or for any of the other various timezones that we have resident in this region. I lost count quite some time ago of the amount of things I missed because I have a reasonable sleeping pattern, and events are organised to be convenient to the greatest majority of people, which tends not to include me. Yes, it was short, but it was that short in order to enable the ruling to go out, with the knowledge of the timezones and a vague idea as to the likely activity times for all of the Justices.

The Court is looking at the recent statement by the EC, and how those new facts effect what has happened here. We still feel that our legal reasoning is sound - that the EC is free to set its own rules, but that the ECs themselves believe that they weren't explicit enough in saying that nominations must be in that thread certainly give the Court pause for thought - although the above ruling is highly unlikely to be amended.

Abbey, you had a legal basis to make any one of the rulings that Silly laid out, because it was up to you to define "oversee" and "supervise." You chose to define it in the broadest way possible, instead of placing reasonable constraints on the definition. The legal basis for placing such constraints? The fact that oversee and regulate are pretty weak ways to describe a position of power. The authors of the legal code chose not to use a verb like "regulate," for instance.

For the record, there is a multi quote function: check the check box next to the Quote button for all the posts you want to quote, then click one of those quote buttons

You mean, for all these years, I have been using quirky code tricks to do that when I could have just multi-checked the posts I wanted to quote?