Forum Disruption During Judicial Election 11/8 - 11/9

[Gorundu]

9. The existence of widespread obstacles that impede access to the official forum of The North Pacific, including, but not limited to, Denial of Service attacks and prolonged server downtime, shall be considered an actual emergency, and does not require a declaration by the RA.
...
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.

For the second time this year we have been faced with a situation where forum access was interrupted for a not insignificant amount of time. To my best count, the forum was down for between 6 hours 45 minutes and 7 hours 30 minutes, based on the last post on the forum before it went down and messages on Discord indicating the forum was down, though I would appreciate if someone could provide more accurate numbers. This was somewhat shorter than the last time this occurred, which lasted for 16 hours, 10 minutes. The question on the table is whether this constituted a Forum Access Emergency under Section 8.3, Clause 9 of the Legal Code, and whether the voting period of the November 2022 Judicial Election needs to be extended, with LC 8.3.12 being our justification, as voting is supposed to last for five days.

Absent any more accurate numbers for exactly how long the forum was down, I propose an extension of the voting period by 7 hours.

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Note that @Dreadton may not take part in this decision as he is absent due to being a candidate in the ongoing election. Absent Election Commissioners may not supervise an election or participate in any decisions made by the Election Commission as a whole.

 

[Fregerson]

Supportive of the decision to extend the vote by 7 hours.

 

[Sil Dorsett]

...whether the voting period of the May 2022 Special Justice Election needs to be extended...

You mean the voting period of the November 2022 Judicial Election.

I'm okay with extending the vote by 7 hours this time. For the future, though, we may want to consider drafting legislation that more clearly defines when voting periods need to be extended and for how long the forum needs to be down for that to happen.

 

[Fili]

For now, 7 hour extension seems okay, as a temporary decision.

 

[Gorundu]

You mean the voting period of the November 2022 Judicial Election.

Oops...gotta take more care when I copy-paste...

Good point about drafting legislation for extending voting periods too.

 

[Kronos]

I support an extension.

 

[Gorundu]

Seeing as there is a consensus (other than @Just a Lore who hasn't commented), I will extend the voting period to end at (time=1668196800).

 

[Just a Lore]

Sorry I also support this (even though Im a little late)