The term I really struggle to define is "intimidation." Say there's a nation - let's call it Samuel L. Jackson - who is running for office. Now Samuel L. Jackson has a way of just looking at you that some people might find really intimidating. It could be his domineering personality and aggressiveness that might be perceived as intimidation. Under this proposal, Sam could be hauled up on charges just for - I don't know, just for being there.
Then there is the problem with proving guilt beyond the very subjective claim of "Samuel L Jackson is scary to me." "I felt intimidated." And when you call upon the courts to be the arbiter in a personality clash, decisions will be made based upon who is popular and who is not.
Maybe it's just an issue with the space this would operate in. This isn't real life, after all, and that makes questions of intent and coercion that much more difficult to answer. It might just be that the idea of charging someone for bribery, coercion, or whatever simply isn't going to work well here.
I will try to come up with some positive suggestions to improve the language of this bill. It would help if I knew some concrete things that have happened that this legislation seeks to prevent. (I don't mean names, just some examples.)
Candidate A promises certain voters positions, trading cards, WA support, or other personal favors in exchange for voting and campaigning for them. If the candidate wins and follows through, that isn't fraud, even though it might be shady. Leaking this information could cost the candidate the election, but it's still an agreement between two people in a private channel such as a discord DM, and a candidate won't try bribing someone they suspect is going to squeal. The person on the receiving end has little incentive to come forward about the dirty dealing, especially if the bribe is successful. Under TNP's current laws, culpability would squarely fall on the person doing the bribing even if it somehow falls under fraud. Under a bribery clause such as the one in this draft, the person on the receiving end would also be culpable for soliciting or accepting a bribe. The same thing applies to say a foreign official offering a TNP WA minister positions or favors in their region in exchange for supporting their WA proposal. Having a bribery charge separate from fraud or GM would create an incentive structure better suited to preventing this kind of behavior in the first place in addition to making it easier for prosecutors and the court to go after this kind of behavior directly. That is, if I figure out a way to define bribery without creating a big abusable hole in it.
You're right about intimidation. I think that I can remove the intimidation part entirely without losing much, since the only thing that would practically cover that isn't already covered is a candidate threatening voters or other candidates. However, in those situations the person being threatened can come forward about the problem and get a stronger response than any court decision. If the person doesn't come forward, they're probably not going to pursue a court case either. If they don't come forward, no one else is going to be pursuing that case either.
"by proxy" What do you mean here? How would this work?
By proxy means having someone else do something for you. Elections tend to have multiple people campaigning for or supporting a candidate. This would prevent a candidate from dodging culpability by having someone else bribing or threatening voters. Governments also tend to have multiple people working toward specific goals. This would prevent say a delegate from dodging culpability by having a minister bribe foreign officials. While this is different from conspiracy (a candidate could avoid formally endorsing the bribery and probably get off without a conspiracy conviction), maybe it's insufficiently so? I could take the proxy stuff out and just let conspiracy cover it.
Whats to stop me from saying Madjack promises to give GBM a position if they vote for him and GBM bringing Madjack to court?
That doesn't have anything to do with proxy. What's stopping you is the same thing stopping you from saying Madjack committed treason and someone bringing Madjack to court over it. You'd probably get a fraud charge at the very least.
Why wouldnt Fraud work instead of Bribery?
I tried to answer that in my response to GBM's post.
Why do we need to take their speach rights away?
I saw the "severity" of bribery as lying somewhere between fraud and espionage, and wrote the sentencing restrictions to reflect that. It's easy to change, though.
In what way would we limit their free speech?
In the same way we can limit their speech in espionage sentences.
I'm putting this draft on hold until I figure out a way to better define bribery (whenever that happens). It's not like it's crucial that this passes quickly.
