Ballot Validity Bill

[Sil Dorsett]

After seeing a couple ballots in the general election contain errors, I asked in discord whether certain ballots would be held invalid, partially invalid, or counted. What I heard was that the resolution of some of those errors was left to the Election Commissioner. For the sake of consistency, I came up with the following fixes. Now I'm looking to the RA to help clean up the language and hopefully bring it to a vote. I hope the RA gets the gist of what I'm trying to do.

Section 4.3 of the Legal Code shall be amended to add the following clauses:

18. If a ballot contains votes for multiple races and a vote for a specific race is considered invalid by the Election Commissioners, the remainder of the ballot containing valid votes shall be counted.

19. In the event two or more ballots are submitted by the same person in the same election, only the most recent ballot submitted by that person shall be counted.

 

[Corporal Clegg]

Would they not be able to just edit the post?

 

[Darcania]

Would they not be able to just edit the post?

They can, but the issue is what to do if they don't take that option.

 

[Flemingovia]

And also, they will only know their vote is invalid once the ballot is over and the EC announces the result. Bit late then to edit their vote.

 

[Guy]

And also, they will only know their vote is invalid once the ballot is over and the EC announces the result. Bit late then to edit their vote.

Point was whether they could edit rather than double-post, which apparently places the admissibility of their vote in question.

Assuming that no EC has ever invalidated edited votes

 

[Pallaith]

If a ballot contains, I think you meant to say in the first clause.

I like that we're normalizing what most people consider to be reasonable resolutions to invalid votes rather than leave it up to the whims of ECs. Not to suggest that they would abuse that responsibility, I just like consistency. I support this.

 

[Barbarossistan]

perhaps throw in that a vote may be edited and is then still valid in it's altered form if that's standing practice but could be disputed

 

[Tomb]

A vote could always be edited -- I can't recall a time when a vote was invalidated due to it being edited before voting closed. So I don't think that's an issue.

I support the proposed amendment, though.

 

[Sil Dorsett]

If a ballot contains, I think you meant to say in the first clause.

I was already on my way to bed when I wrote this whole thing. Yes, that's correct. Fixed.

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I like that we're normalizing what most people consider to be reasonable resolutions to invalid votes rather than leave it up to the whims of ECs. Not to suggest that they would abuse that responsibility, I just like consistency. I support this.

The one thing my bill lacks is a clear definition on what constitutes an invalid vote. That's still left up to the EC.

Ballots not submitted according to these guidelines are invalid. Ambiguous votes are invalid.

Does capitalization matter? Do those < > symbols need to surround the candidate's name? Does a spelling mistake for a candidate mean it's invalid (Plembobria vs Plemboria, and yes, one ballot was cast for the latter). But what it does is prevents other votes made on the same ballot that are correct and valid from being discarded.

Why'd I propose this in the first place? This ballot:

Delegate: < Plembobria| Yalkan | Hesskin Empire | Lord Emmanuel | Abstain>
Would you like to reopen nominations? < No >

Vice Delegate: < Tomb >
Would you like to reopen nominations? < No >

Speaker: < Pallaith >
Would you like to reopen nominations? < No >

Obviously the Delegate vote is ambiguous and shouldn't count for anything. The question though is "Does the rest of the ballot get thrown out?" Personally, I'd count the rest of the ballot. But it's not codified anywhere as being the correct procedure, and one suggestion I heard was that the whole ballot would be thrown out.

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A vote could always be edited -- I can't recall a time when a vote was invalidated due to it being edited before voting closed. So I don't think that's an issue.

Does the Voting Booth account have the ability to lock the voting thread? That would be one way to enforce that no edits be done once time expires.

The reason for the 2nd part of the bill was when one person ended up with two ballots in the thread. The candidates didn't change, but the RONs did. The question was "Which ballot is counted? The first, the second, or neither?" I do agree that editing is the way to change a vote, but mistakes happen.

 

[Tomb]

Yes, The Voting Booth has the ability to lock the thread once voting time ends -- which effectively stops voters from editing their votes. As far as multi-ballots go, the EC have generally counted the second ballot (if it contains any changes) as the preferred vote of the voter. With that in mind, I think putting this into law doesn't hurt.

 

[SillyString]

The major issue with locking the thread - the speaker's office sees this too - is that some people will vote after voting ends, but before the voting booth/speaker gets to close it. Someone could do the same with editing their own post, and generally I think there's been no choice but to invalidate late-edited ballots (as the voting booth/speaker cannot see how the person originally voted.)

I think these are sensible changes - I have a couple alterations to propose.

The following clauses will be added to the end of Section 4.3 of the Legal Code shall be amended to add the following clauses:

18. During an election where candidates for more than one race appear on the same ballot, Election Commissioners must determine a ballot's validity on a race-by-race basis. Parts of the ballot which were correctly and completely filled out must be counted in the race for which they were cast, even if other parts are invalidated and discarded.
19. If one person casts more than one ballot in an election, only the most recent ballot will be counted. All prior ballots must be discarded.

 

[Sil Dorsett]

SillyString, is the proposed change intended to cut down on the instances of the word 'shall'? I remember the Will Bill, but I don't remember that going through. What's the difference between what you have and what I have? The Evidence Redaction Bill used the same opening line.

 

[Flemingovia]

Does this really need legislation? We cannot legislate for every eventuality, and so long as we have sensible election commissioners and legal review if someone feels disenfranchised, do we need this law?

 

[Crushing Our Enemies]

I'm with flem on this one. We don't want the election laws section of the legal code to attempt to comprehensively cover the entire procedure. This is probably something that the election commission should codify in their own procedures.

 

[Iepraria]

This proposal seems reasonable to me. Even if the electoral section of the legal code isn’t meant as a full electoral procedure statute, I do believe that it makes sense for certain aspects of electoral procedure to be established by law, instead of resolutions and regulations passed by the Electoral Commission.

Rule of law dictates that a nation, or, in our case, region, should be governed by law, and not by arbitrary decisions of individual officials. Of course, I’m not accusing the Commission of being arbitrary or acting against the legal order, and I do believe that they should be allowed to delineate the specifics of electoral proceedings, but establishing how to count partially invalid ballots can, in my opinion, be set by legislation. This bill would prevent a possible issue with our electoral system, without having to resort to the Court.

I realize I’m new here, and that I have no legislative experience in the region, but I wanted to leave my opinion on what I think is a good proposal.

 

[Guy]

I think "are to be added" is a more accurate alternative than "will be added", but given it's unambiguous either way, it's only cosmetic.

 

[SillyString]

SillyString, is the proposed change intended to cut down on the instances of the word 'shall'? I remember the Will Bill, but I don't remember that going through. What's the difference between what you have and what I have? The Evidence Redaction Bill used the same opening line.

Oh, you mean that bill I oppose on grammatical grounds?

Yes, I am against the use of "shall". But also, I think this fits better with existing language in the legal code - the version you wrote isn't terrible, and I don't think it would have unintended consequences, but it just reads kind of awkwardly to me.

Btw, I edited the intro to be slightly more compliant - just in case the number of clauses in the legal code changes between when the bill is drafted and when it becomes law, it's clearer to indicate that this is to be inserted at the end of the section rather than wherever clauses 18 and 19 happen to fall.

I would also be fine with this change being made to the EC's procedures instead of to the Legal Code - that should be just as sufficient.

 

[Sil Dorsett]

I'm with flem on this one. We don't want the election laws section of the legal code to attempt to comprehensively cover the entire procedure. This is probably something that the election commission should codify in their own procedures.

Is there a posted procedure somewhere already that I missed? If there is, then I'd agree that I'm wasting my efforts on something that wouldn't need to be done. If not, then maybe that's what we need to work on first.

 

[Crushing Our Enemies]

I agree that the Election Commission probably needs a more formal and comprehensive set of procedures. It would mostly be a matter of setting down precedent established through years of elections, court reviews, and statute.

 

[Lord Emmanuel]

I support what Sil Dorsett is talking about, I would really like if you can add a clause that would prohibit voters from editing their votes. Once a voters did not vote properly the votes should be invalid, and any edited votes should not be counted.

 

[Cerian Quilor]

I think legal codification of these things is a good policy. As for edited votes - the votes should be editable and valid until the close of voting, in my view. There's really no reason to not allow someone to change their vote over the voting period.

 

[Flemingovia]

I support what Sil Dorsett is talking about, I would really like if you can add a clause that would prohibit voters from editing their votes. Once a voters did not vote properly the votes should be invalid, and any edited votes should not be counted.

Ballots are open for a long time and, as happened recently, sometimes people bring things up during the voting period which they did not bring up during exhaustive debates ( ) which cause some people to rethink their votes.

If you do not allow editing of votes then you deny people the opportunity to correct a mistake.

 

[Sil Dorsett]

I support what Sil Dorsett is talking about, I would really like if you can add a clause that would prohibit voters from editing their votes. Once a voters did not vote properly the votes should be invalid, and any edited votes should not be counted.

Absolutely not. Prohibiting edits is not at all what I was going for. I was simply asking that there be a written procedure for determining whether a vote is counted or not. The case of whether it is written in our laws or as a written standing procedure by the Election Commission is what is up for debate.

 

[Sil Dorsett]

I guess I should withdraw this bill, shouldn't I? If the EC can codify its procedures, that's good enough for me. Tired of it showing up on the speaker's digest if nothing's being done on it.

I motion to withdraw this bill from the floor.

 

[Pallaith]

The motion is recognized. The bill is withdrawn.