The Election Commission has counted the votes in this General Election and now publishes these results, attesting they are true and correct. A detailed breakdown of votes and results can be found in this spreadsheet.
CaptainJr's ballot was discounted because they lost citizenship during the voting period.
Jiodi's vote was discounted because they were not a citizen.
The Attorney General portion of Private Ballot 8008135-8008135 was originally discounted on the grounds that they did not select Yes or No for the Reopen Nominations question. This was challenged by an Election Commissioner, and the challenge was accepted.
Election Commissioners: Crushing Our Enemies and Scorch
Edit: Edited to replace image-based charts with BBCode, because BBCode charts are less likely to break over time.
I would like to ask why the election commission has decided count this as a valid ballot when has been vandalized and is can barely considered as a valid ballot?
I would like to ask why the election commission has decided count this as a valid ballot when has been vandalized and is can barely considered as a valid ballot?
Though I was not supervising this particular election, I did notice that ballot beforehand.
In my personal opinion, it seems alright- the voter clearly noted who they wanted for each office and whether they wanted to reopen nominations for that office. There may, in particular, be some skeptical notions around the "nl" for the RON for Attorney General, but due to the voter's pattern of consistently saying "no" on RON as well as the fact that there is an "n" in "nl", it is clear to me that the voter meant "no".
As for why the voter wrote it like this, there are, in my eyes, two possibilities:
1. They were joking around. If they did, it is clear they did not joke hard enough, because of the above stated reasons.
2. I forget who said this, but one person made a theory that the voter was, perhaps, drunk. A slim possibility, but you never know!
Following the discussion on the discord server, I'd like to formally request under the FOIA laws that the Election Commisoon release their full discussion on the challenged ballots mentioned in the OP.
You can expect that release to come sometime in the next 48 hours. Some of it is in the form of comments on a Google spreadsheet, which will need to be captured and then real life names redacted.
You can expect that release to come sometime in the next 48 hours. Some of it is in the form of comments on a Google spreadsheet, which will need to be captured and then real life names redacted.
It was Mall, I believe. Although given the fact that the person managed to type all the candidates' names correctly, as well as type out the ballot number... in the way that he/she meant it without misspelling it suggests otherwise.
It is happy day for the winners. I look forward to a productive term to come. And thank you to all candidates for helping us to continue this noble democratic experiment. This is something that I think TNP does better than any other region out there, especially in GCRs. For the moat part, I don’t think we could have gone wrong with most of these candidates. I hope the elections to come are just as robust with just as strong a slate of candidates.
Call me crazy but the hallowed institution of democracy in the largest and most stable republic in NS is something that maybe... Just maybe we shouldnt create a precident of making a joke out of and letting them get rewarded for it.
Call me crazy but the hallowed institution of democracy in the largest and most stable republic in NS is something that maybe... Just maybe we shouldnt create a precident of making a joke out of and letting them get rewarded for it.
What's wrong with making a joke out of democracy? It's neat and all, but it's not sacrosanct.
Besides, we don't know that it was a joke. The person could have been typing on an unfamiliar device and was not overly concerned about the typos. They could have been, as mentioned, not sober. They could be dyslexic, or have some other disability that contributed to the mistyped outcomes. They could have an overactive autocorrect or swipe-text-interpreter (juke, go) and be drunk/careless/whatnot (loket, liket).
It is very plausible to me that someone could have taken extra care with the spellings of the candidates' names, out of concern that their ballot not be discounted, and because they are not actual words to be able to swipe-type, and not been so worried about the spelling of everything else.
The ballot in question makes it pretty clear who the voter intended to vote for in each race, and how they felt about reopening nominations. I think it would be much worse in a democratic society to discount such a vote than to allow it to stand.
Oh, and congratulations to the winners! Looking forward to an exciting next term.
Following the discussion on the discord server, I'd like to formally request under the FOIA laws that the Election Commisoon release their full discussion on the challenged ballots mentioned in the OP.
In the course of gathering information to fulfill this request, I discovered that the Election Commission is not actually subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Good thing too, or else we'd be required to reveal the identities of private voters upon request. Nonetheless, in the interests of the public, and because all business of the EC is required to be conducted in public by our own rules, I am releasing all correspondence that is relevant to the ballot in question, as well as the process of challenging ballots in general. This includes the original PM conversation between The Voting Booth and the private voter, discord messages between myself and the other members of the Election Commission, and comments made by Election Commissioners on the spreadsheet used to count ballots. Where time-stamps appear, they are in GMT-5. I hope these records will demonstrate that members of the commission thoughtfully considered the ballot in question, and that the decision to count it in its entirety was free of any and all political influence, and was made with a eye to our own rules, as well as the rights afforded to all nations of The North Pacific.
I would also like to take this opportunity to note that when it was decided that all EC business should be conducted in full view of the public, this was not considered in the context of the process we now have for challenging ballots. This is the first election that the challenge process has been used (in that a ballot was actually challenged), and it had not occurred to be before today that this process would be considered official business of the EC. I believe it is important that the interpretation of individual ballots be kept private until the end of each election, to prevent politically motivated citizens from filing petitions to review them. Such petitions would be inappropriate (because the proper process would be an Election Commissioner challenging ballots) and detrimental to the election process (because it would require numerous votes of the full EC, and could possibly delay the certification of the results). Therefore, I will likely be seeking changes to the EC rules to clarify how and when correspondence regarding the interpretation of ballots is released to the public.
Some have called for greater restrictions on the discretion of the EC to count irregular ballots. Some have even suggested implementing a legal requirement to follow a certain template. I highly discourage anyone from following through on these measures, because it could lead to vicious voter suppression tactics. Mall found 28 ballots in the last election that he could make a legal argument for discounting on those grounds - and turnout in that election was much lower than this one. Are we prepared to disenfranchise that many voters every cycle, possibly violating the Bill of Rights in the process? I certainly hope not.
Others have threatened to intentionally submit irregular ballots in bad faith, to confound the commission and corrupt the democratic process. They would do this in response to my statements on discord that, in the case of this particular private voter, it is useless to speculate on whether he intentionally deviated from the template or not. They have taken this to mean that intention deviation from the template doesn't matter as long as the candidates are vaguely indicated. To you, I say: submit such ballots at your peril. You have gravely misinterpreted my remarks. Irregular ballots are considered on a case by case basis, and their interpretation does not create binding precedent on future election supervisors. The only way to ensure that a ballot is counted is for it to follow the template. Your fellow citizens who stand for office deserve better than your misguided, juvenile, political pranks. Find another way to protest.
Good show all around.
