Election Reform Bill Reform Bill

[Crushing Our Enemies]

Some of you may recall this post that I made in the debate thread for the Election Reform Bill:

Zyvet pointed out that my runoff procedures for general elections would create problems in the case of ties, so I'm undoing this change from the third draft:

30. If no candidate for a given office gains a majority, a runoff vote for that office will begin within one day of the first vote ending and it will last for five days. Only the two candidates who received the most votes will appear on the ballot.
24. Candidates will be added to the runoff ballot in descending order of how many votes they received. Candidates who received equal numbers of votes will be added the ballot simultaneously. Once the cumulative number of votes received by the candidates on the runoff ballot reaches a majority of votes cast in the previous round of voting, excluding abstentions, no more candidates will be added to the ballot.

I'm going back to the language from the second draft:

30. If no candidate for a given office gains a majority, a runoff vote for that office will begin within one day of the first vote ending and it will last for five days.
31. Candidates will be added to the runoff ballot in descending order of how many votes they received. Candidates who received equal numbers of votes will be added the ballot simultaneously. Once the cumulative number of votes received by the candidates on the runoff ballot reaches a majority of votes cast in the previous round of voting, excluding abstentions, no more candidates will be added to the ballot.

For simplicity (and character limit) I won't be doing a new markup for just this change. I'll just modify the markup for the third draft.

Unfortunately, this change did not actually get made to the final text of the bill! This is an urgent matter that must be fixed immediately. In many cases, "the two candidates who received the most votes" is unclear, such as in the case of a three-way tie for first, or a two-way tie for second. Therefore I am proposing the following bill, to make the change that would have been made in the election reform bill, but for my carelessness:

1. Legal Code Section 4.5 will be amended as follows:

Section 4.5: General Elections
29. The election of the Delegate, the Vice Delegate, the Attorney General, and the Speaker will begin on the first day of the months of January, May, and September.
30. If no candidate for a given office gains a majority, a runoff vote for that office will begin within one day of the first vote ending and it will last for five days.
31. Candidates will be added to the runoff ballot in descending order of how many votes they received. Candidates who received equal numbers of votes will be added the ballot simultaneously. Once the cumulative number of votes received by the candidates on the runoff ballot reaches a majority of votes cast in the previous round of voting, excluding abstentions, no more candidates will be added to the ballot.
32. If no one gains a majority of votes in the runoff vote, the runoff process will be repeated until a candidate receives a majority.

My bad. I think we should probably pass this as soon as possible. Fortunately, this will not impact the upcoming Judicial election, but in the event that the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Speaker, or AG resigns, it would impact the special election, so I consider this very urgent. All the same, I'll give it a day or two before I move for a vote.

 

[Pallaith]

Let's do it, seems straightforward to me.

 

[Crushing Our Enemies]

I move for a vote on this, so we can get it done before the general election. Let's get this show on the road.

 

[Kaschovia]

I second.

 

[Owenstacey]

This Bill is now in formal debate. Formal debate will conclude in five days, after which a vote will be scheduled.

 

[Owenstacey]

The formal debate period has now ended. A vote has been scheduled to begin in two days time (18/08/2017).

 

[Dabum17]

So we vote 3 times a year for those positions?

 

[Eluvatar]

So we vote 3 times a year for those positions?

Usually more often because one or another of those terms will end prematurely, necessitating a special election.