Amendment to EC Rule 5

[Peeps]

Commissioners, I propose that section five be amended to the following:

Section Five: Irregular Ballots
1. If a voter does not vote Yes or No to a question to re-open nominations for a given office, their vote for that office will not be counted.
2. In all other cases, any portion of a ballot that is properly completed will be counted, even if other portions of the ballot are not.
3. If a voter selects more candidates for a given office than are allowed, their vote for that office will not be counted.
4. If a voter selects fewer candidates for a given office than are allowed, their unused selections will be treated as abstentions, and their votes for that office will be counted.
5. If a voter misspells the name of a candidate on their ballot, their vote will be counted unless it is unclear which candidate they intended to vote for.
6. If a voter does not supply a ballot ID for a private ballot, their vote will not be counted.
7. Any time a voter is at risk of having a portion of their ballot go uncounted, they must be promptly contacted by the Election Supervisors by private message and telegram.

Currently, this is up to the supervisors to decide whether or not a private ballot missing ID is counted on a case by case basis. I am in favor of creating a rule instead. As the precedent is that private ballots without an ID are not counted, I propose that we codify that into a rule of the EC.

 

[Sil Dorsett]

I think this is a pretty straightforward addition, but I'm trying to think of all the irregularities we ran into this election to draft a more comprehensive set of changes to the rules.

What all did we run into? Well, for one, I was on a voice chat where people didn't understand why we discard entire sections of a ballot for not answering RON. I was even asked why Abstain on RON is not an option. Secondly, Bobberino's VD ballot brought up an interesting case between me and Westinor. West thought that 5.3 applied because Bobberino ranked the two VD candidates, when my interpretation was that 5.3 mostly applied to "Choose Multiple" ballots like we originally used for Judicial elections. I even wrote a whole thing about the different types of ballots, examples of what's kosher and what's treifah, and even what to do when someone posts their ballot in the wrong format.

Spoiler: Have a look if you want.

Ballot Types

1. Choose One
Voters are presented a list of candidates and choose a single winner.

Example Template

[b]Delegate[/b]: < Alicia | Brandon | Charlie | Abstain >
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < Yes | No >

Example Valid Ballot

[b]Delegate[/b]: < Alicia >
Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < Yes >

Example Invalid Ballot

[b]Delegate[/b]: < Alicia | Brandon >
Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < Yes >

2. Choose Multiple
Voters are presented a list of candidates and choose candidates to fill each open seat. Voters may choose the full number of candidates asked for or less. Ballots that list more candidates than allowed are discarded.

Example Template

[b]Court Justice[/b] (Choose 3): < Alicia | Brandon | Charlie | David | Eileen | Abstain >
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < Yes | No >

Example Valid Ballot

[b]Court Justice[/b] (Choose 3): < Brandon | Charlie | Eileen>
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < No >

Example Valid Ballot

[b]Court Justice[/b] (Choose 3): < Brandon | Charlie >
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < No >

Example Invalid Ballot

[b]Court Justice[/b] (Choose 3): < Alicia | Brandon | Charlie | Eileen >
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < No >

3. Ranked Choice
Voters are presented a list of candidates and rank them based on who they would rather see seated over the others. Only the first line numbered line and "Would you like to reopen Nominations" are required to be answered. Subsequent numbered lines are optional.

Example Template

[b]Attorney General[/b]:
1. < Alicia | Brandon | Charlie | David | Eileen | Abstain >
2. < Alicia | Brandon | Charlie | David | Eileen >
3. < Alicia | Brandon | Charlie | David | Eileen >
4. < Alicia | Brandon | Charlie | David | Eileen >
5. < Alicia | Brandon | Charlie | David | Eileen >
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < Yes | No >

Example Valid Ballot (if Voting)

[b]Attorney General:[/b]
1. David
2. Charlie
3. Eileen
4. Brandon
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < No >

Example Valid Ballot (if Abstaining)

[b]Attorney General:[/b]
1. Abstain
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < Yes >

Example Irregular Ballot
This ballot would be counted as 1. David, 2. Alicia

[b]Attorney General:[/b]
1. Abstain
2. David
3. Alicia
[b]Would you like to reopen nominations?[/b] < Yes >

Resolving Incorrect Ballot Formats
If a race asks for a "Choose One" ballot and the voter submits a "Choose Multiple" ballot, the ballot is to be discarded.
If a race asks for a "Choose One" ballot and the voter submits a "Ranked Choice" ballot, the first preference is to be counted.
If a race asks for a "Choose Multiple" ballot and the voter submits a "Choose One" ballot, the ballot is to be counted as is, with Abstain filling in the unused selections.
If a race asks for a "Choose Multiple" ballot and the voter submits a "Ranked Choice" ballot, the first X preferences are to be counted, where X is the number of open seats. Subsequent preferences are ignored.
If a race asks for a "Ranked Choice" ballot and the voter submits a "Choose One" ballot, the ballot is to be counted as is.
If a race asks for a "Ranked Choice" ballot and the voter submits a "Choose Multiple" ballot, the ballot is to be discarded.

And then the one issue at the start of the election, where the wrong template was provided and we had to stop for three minutes to fix the problem. We gave those three minutes back, though they went unused by the voters. The question is, did we do the right thing by stopping and resuming? Looking back, I think I made a mistake with that one. Probably the better thing to do was to restart the voting period, notifying those who voted that they need to vote again. Even made a draft rule for that, though I'm not sure where to plug it into the EC rules.

Incorrect Ballot Format Provided by Election Supervisors
In the event the original post of a voting thread has the wrong ballot template, such as including a "Choose One" ballot where there should be a "Ranked Choice" ballot, the voting thread is to be locked with a message that the wrong ballot format was provided and that the voting period will be restarted. The restart must be done in a new voting thread, and anyone who submitted a ballot in the original thread must be notified by Forum PM and In-Game Telegram.

So, I think there's a lot of work we have to do to clean up the rules a bit. Take the lessons learned from past elections and fix the issues. And fix the templates. I may have to bug @Eluvatar about it. I think he owns the repository with the EC templates.