Funkadelia's request for review

Hi, probably won't be around much today. Will be travelling today. It's an interesting question though.

The EC left Roman off the ballot because he did not accept a nomination within the specified EC thread.

Per the Legal Code, the EC is tasked with supervising elections. I take that to mean they are to oversee the execution of the election. As part ofthat execution, they created a nomination thread for candidates to declare themselves or be nominated by others. This is a procedural requirement the EC made as part of their supervision of the elections.

Should we side with Roman, then EC's of future elections will be unable to limit themselves to the use of such threads to supervise elections. They will instead need to scour the forum for any candidate nomination or declaration, whether it is in an RA, moderation, or other Agora subforum. That seems to be against the spirir of the authority placed given to the EC in the Legal Code. The Legal Code has authority to create procedures to fill vacancies per the Constitution. And the EC is also a governmental body by virtue of the authority given to it by the LC to 'supervise' every election.

So, in my opinion, I believe that the EC has authority to create procedures to fill the vacancies that are created when government officials' terms end. I believe that those procedures cannot contradict the Constitution. The Constitution does not have a requirement for nominated people to post within a specific thread. No. However, the requirement to post within a specified thread does not contradict the Constitution in that all potentially electable candidates are able to post within that thread and all potential canddiates are given notice to post within that thread. The thread is not posted in a dark, non-public place and everyone able to vote or be a candidate can post there.

Thus, the EC's requirement to make candidates post in that thread in order to be eligible on the ballot is Constitutional and legal.

Well, there are 2 bits in the Legal Code which consider Election Commissioners.

Legal Code:

9. In General and Judicial elections, Election Commissioners will be appointed by the Delegate to oversee the nomination and election processes at least one week before the month in which the election begins. If an appointment of Election Commissioners has not been made by that time, the Chief Justice shall promptly make the appointment within 48 hours.

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and

Legal Code:

6. "Election Commissioner" is an individual designated to supervise a given election. No one who may be a candidate in an election may serve as an Election Commissioner during it.

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We also need to consider the definition of a Candidate:

Legal Code:

5. "Candidates" are those citizens who declare themselves, or have accepted a nomination by another Assembly member preceding the close of nominations, as a candidate for an office to be chosen at that election. Candidates may only stand for one office during a given Election Cycle.

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The question here, ultimately, is how far reaching is the Election Commissioners ablity to supervise and oversee the election? We've got two possible ways we can go here: that which you've outlined, punk, or that which COE has. I'm inclined to go towards the reading that the ability to oversee and supervise an election means that EC's -do- have the authority to "corral" nominations/self-nominations into one thread. I'm inclined to believe this on the basis that a ruling to say that Roman's omission from the ballot wasn't legal leads us in a circle which is contradictory: You allow the posting of candidacies anywhere on the forum, leaving the EC's with little to no ability to actually officiate and oversee the elections (for instance, there would be no requirement to make such a statement in a public forum), which leaves such a ruling at odds with the EC's ability to oversee the election.

If we were to consider the definition of a candidacy in isolation then I would agree that Roman's candidacy would be a valid one. However, the pieces of law make most sense, all considered together, when you do allow the EC's the power to force nominations to be "formal", so to speak.

Agreed.

Go for it.

The Court took into consideration the Inquiry filed here by Funkadelia.

The Court took into consideration the Relevant parts of the Legal Code of the North Pacific:

Legal Code:

5. "Candidates" are those citizens who declare themselves, or have accepted a nomination by another Assembly member preceding the close of nominations, as a candidate for an office to be chosen at that election. Candidates may only stand for one office during a given Election Cycle
6. "Election Commissioner" is an individual designated to supervise a given election. No one who may be a candidate in an election may serve as an Election Commissioner during it.

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Legal Code:

9. In General and Judicial elections, Election Commissioners will be appointed by the Delegate to oversee the nomination and election processes at least one week before the month in which the election begins. If an appointment of Election Commissioners has not been made by that time, the Chief Justice shall promptly make the appointment within 48 hours.

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The Court opines the following:

The Legal question before the Court is whether the Election Commissioners have the power to set regulations for elections which require candidates declarations of candidacies to be placed in one place. 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.

In order to make a decision, the Court considered the first of these possible rulings, and found that it would lead to absurdity when all of the relevant Law is considered together. If the Election Commissioners do not have the power to require candidacy declarations to be in their designated threads, then there would be no requirement for Candidates to post their declarations anywhere obvious, or even publicly. This would impact on the Election Commissioners ability to supervise and oversee elections, as set out by the Legal Code. Thus, the Court rejected this interpretation.

To this end, the Court finds that requiring Candidates to post their declaration in a thread designated for such a purpose is a reasonable manifestation of the Election Commissioners' ability to oversee an election. This means that the Election Commissioners' decision not to include Romanoffia on the ballot for the Vice Delegate election was legal, and those elections should continue as planned.

Looks good, Abbey. We're going to get a lot of questions on this one.

One thing I'd change

found that it lead to absurdity

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to

"found that it would lead to absurdity"

Oh, I know we will.

And, fixed.

EDIT: As a more general thought, do you feel that I've been explicit enough in our reasoning?

Abbey, I tend to be more wordy in general.

I think even if you are more explicit questions will come. Might save us the bandwidth just to respond to questions. We're going to be called out of touch because we didn't make the 'common sense' ruling, but I'm perfectly fine defending our position and I believe it is the correct one.

Hah, I'd heard this ruling bandied about as the common sense ruling, but I don't much care. This is what we think, based on the law, so that's what we're ruling.

But yeah, we're probably better just responding to questions. I'll post once we've heard from Sanc.

Lets go with it Abbey if you go to bed and Sanc has not replied.

Yeah. Will post just before I go to bed if we have to. Would be nice to get this out.

I'd prefer not to have my name added as I haven't had time to fully consider the issue. I'm happy for the majority, i.e. you two, to decide.

That's fine, I would have removed it anyway. I'll go remove your name and post this then.

Based on the EC's statement to allow Roman on the ballot and why, I think we need to reconsider this.

I interpreted the comments made in the nomination thread a particular way that doesn't seem congruent with how the EC interprets it...now. Seems like they could have save us a lot if they had taken this action earlier.

But, I'd like to get this one right.

Okay, so I've thought about this. I think our -legal- reasoning was entirely sound - the EC's -do- have the power to set rules to govern the election. However, I think if the EC's feel that their wording wasn't clear enough then that's reasonable - the point about their wording is definitely fair and reasonable.

What does concern me a little is that they just turned round and restarted the VD elections - Mall's request for an injuction has several valid, pertinent points. I'm not entirely sure -that- was legal, but I've not had the chance yet this morning to look at the law properly and look at past rulings, as I'm sure there was one somewhere about elections being restarted.

You issued the ruling, you have to live with it. You can't go back and revise it just because circumstances change.

I too believe the logic was sound.

However, the EC is essentially saying that the logic both they and the court used was flawed and that their original comment was indeed open to interpretation. This information was not privy to the court when we made our decision and the EC did not make any comments regarding the possibility of this interpretation.

Mall's request for an injunction is interesting. I'm not sure if we have the power to impose an 'injunction' per se, but I think the real request is testing the legality of the unsynchronized Del and VD elections.

Yeah, that and testing the legality of restarting elections half-way through with no warning.

posted in the wrong thread.