Petition to the Election Commission

[Crushing Our Enemies]

Pursuant to the Rules of the Election Commission, Section 6, I would like to request that the Election Commission at-large review the decision of the Election Supervisors to exclude my name from the ballot.

Spoiler: For reference, the relevant section of the EC Rules

Section Six: Citizen Petitions
1. Citizens may petition the Election Commission at large to review a decision of the Election Supervisors in a thread in the Elections forum.
2. When such a petition is submitted, the Election Commission at large will promptly vote between the following options:
a. Uphold the decision of the Election Supervisors
b. Overrule the decision and continue the election
c. Overrule the decision and restart the voting period
d. Overrule the decision and restart the election
2. During this process, if three or more Election Commissioners move that the election should be halted, the Election Supervisors will immediately halt the election.
3. Election Commissioners can only vote for one option, and if an option gains a majority, it will be put into effect.
4. If no option gains a majority, the election will be halted (if it has not been already) while the commission deliberates.
5. The Chief Election Commissioner will endeavor to efficiently determine a course of action that has majority support of the election commission, and put it to vote.

We are currently in a forum access emergency, and as such, government officials are prohibited from penalizing a resident "for failing to take actions for which access to the forum is required." Given that I was on the original ballot, I have essentially been removed from the ballot because I did not declare during the new time frame, which is an action that requires access to the forum.

In my particular case, I did not have any obstacles to forum access, I was simply confused about the time frame for candidacy declarations. This election cycle is not taking place at the scheduled time, and as such, it can be expected that candidates and voters are not as well informed about the timeline as they ordinarily would be - nor could we plan ahead appropriate to be ready for the election when it began. We have also lost the functionality of the (time=) code that puts the relevant timestamps into local time for each user, which can create confusion about when the nomination period was to begin and end. The fact that some areas of the world are in Daylight Savings Time only adds to this.

For all the reasons stated above, I petition to be put back on the ballot. Additionally, I request that anyone else who was on the original ballot who declares candidacy before voting begins be added to the ballot. I believe that these actions, while outside the norm for an election, would be authorized under the legal code, section 9.3:

12. The governmental authorities of the region are authorized to take any reasonable actions which they deem appropriate and which are consistent with the spirit and intent of regional laws to preserve the continuity of both community and government for the duration of the emergency.

I have no wish to delay the voting period, so if this petition is denied, I have no intentions to go to the courts. Similarly, I would expect that no one wishes so adamantly that I be excluded from the ballot to bring a request for review if my petition is successful.

EDIT: As a corollary, if my petition is approved, I would like my original campaign thread to be moved back here from the archives.

 

[Crushing Our Enemies]

It appears my petition has been approved. Can I request that the election supervisors archive the old voting thread and pin the new one? Also, I think an announcement of some sort and a mass PM to eligible voters is called for, mass-PM contains the wrong ballot!

 

[The Voting Booth]

The Mass PM has been submitted to be sent out. The new voting thread has been pinned and the old one archived.

~Artemis