May 2023 General Election Count Correction

Chipoli:

Change it to "absolute majority" instead of majority. That way the vote can end quicker and therefore be more efficient if a few ECers are absent.

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Or some wording about "a majority of ECs not absent ([due to abstaining, running for office, on leave or whatever] - draft the wording carefully)". If you have 4 or 5 of the ECs running for something (delegate/VD/speaker) etc, it could get tricky.

I want to ask about the definition of a "challenged ballot". When we're reviewing ballots, we make comments on the spreadsheet noting how we think it should have been counted, and much of the time it's just a oopsie where the supervisors misread a ballot and fix it when they're told about it. I've only very rarely seen more complicated debates, and the last one I can think of is when Darcania argued that abstentions marked despite also marking a clear preference needed to be discarded. So, how do we define a challenged ballot when the vast majority is those "Hey, you marked it wrong" issues? Would it be where the supervisors don't make the correction, we consider it under a challenge?

The reason I ask is that clauses 9 and 10 as they are today kinda go together under the assumption that there are unresolved challenges, and making such a massive change to clause 9 makes me think about how clause 10, specifically the part about voting on challenged ballots, would actually work.

My reading of the definition of a challenged ballot is that when the supervisor's reading of a ballot is not the same as what someone else reads it as. Which makes the clause rarely applied.

Simone:

I am in favour of at least extending the challenge period to 24 hours, possibly 48 hours if there is consensus for it. Waiting for 24 hours when there's like four months of toil and sweat ahead doesn't seem too much. This would cover weekends plus those of us on the other side of the planet and not US based.

The rest of the proposals I feel are for the views of the more senior ECs.

Sil Dorsett:

We can start by reviewing the ideas we have in mind...

Pallaith's idea:
Have each commissioner keep a separate spreadsheet and compare them against each other to put together the “main” spreadsheet and then that’s the one that is evaluated by the full EC. Or…we pick a separate EC member who isn’t a supervisor to keep a second spreadsheet, and compare that one against the commissioner spreadsheet. Don’t allow results to be released until the competing spreadsheets are in agreement and the full EC signs off.

My idea, amended:
Any time during the voting period and for up to 24 hours after the voting period has ended, any Election Commissioner may privately challenge a particular ballot and submit an alternate interpretation of how it should be counted. The Election Supervisors may accept or deny any challenge. The period in which challenges can be made may be terminated early if all present Election Commissioners notify the Election Supervisors that they do not have any challenges to make.

Lore's idea:
Five election commissioners, including the two election supervisors, must approve the final results for the election to be certified.

Gorundu's idea:
See the Amendments of Certified Results rule proposal above.

I want to be clear; given the whole controversy over the idea of just going into an archived thread and editing it to put the correct results in, even as a footnote, I am not willing to do that without establishing a rule as to how it is to be done, and that we follow that rule if we're to go back and edit the 5/23 general results.

I think one of the three ideas regarding original certification needs to happen, and we need to address what needs to happen if we discover that the amended results under Gorundu's proposal means a different candidate should have been seated. I am not going to accept the idea that the wrongly seated candidate can't be unseated if the corrections happen in a reasonable amount of time.

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As Sil has mentioned bringing this subject up again. I reiterate my position. I also support Lore's idea and Sil's idea. I am hesitant on amending the certified results rule proposal as I don't think a majority is in favor of that idea. I think Ghost's idea works for one extra spreadsheet, but not more than one (it's quite a lot of work, after all, and we may need to expand the number of ECs in case several of them run at the same time).

Okay enough is enough. Two elections now we have discovered the official results were incorrect, and still we do not have a mechanism for correcting the obviously wrong results everyone knows are wrong. I understand a lot of fretting has happened because of the prospect of discovering errors leading to problems with handling officials who may have been improperly given the offices they "won" but this has never happened and so, while it is important to have a solution for that potential problem, we need a solution for the actual problem that has now happened twice. Yes, mechanisms to make mistakes less likely to happen are useful, but they do not solve the problem. Given our previous discussion and the obvious need for solving wrong results being allowed to stand on the record, here is what I propose:

Section Four: Election Procedures
1. In advance of any regularly scheduled election, Election Supervisors will obtain lists from the Speaker's office of all citizens who are eligible to run for office. In the case of a special election, such a list must be obtained before the close of candidacy declarations.
2. After voting begins, Election Supervisors will promptly obtain a list from the Speaker's office of all citizens who are eligible to vote.
3. During candidacy declarations, Election Supervisors are obligated to include a list of declared candidates in the opening post of the thread for candidacy declarations. They are encouraged, but not required, to include lists of those who have been nominated, those who have declined nominations, and those who were nominated, but not eligible to run. In some circumstances, such as when all citizens have been nominated for office, it would be appropriate to omit such lists, or put them inside spoiler tags.
4. During voting, private ballots will be announced in separate posts. If a private ballot is changed, the corresponding post will be edited accordingly.
5. Public ballots may be changed by the voter either by editing the original ballot directly or by making a new post in the voting thread. Any time a voter casts more than one ballot, only the latest one will be counted.
6. Election Supervisors will endeavor to keep an up to date tally of votes available to the Election Commission at-large. The Election Supervisors may modify how each ballot is counted until they certify the final results, or present the results to the commission at large to be certified.
7. Any time during the voting period, or six twelve hours thereafter, any Election Commissioner may privately challenge a particular ballot and submit an alternate interpretation of how it should be counted. The Election Supervisors may accept or deny any challenge.
8. If a ballot is modified by the voter, any prior challenge of that ballot will be null and void.
9. If the results of challenged ballots could change the outcome of the election, tThe results must be promptly certified by the Election Commission at large. Otherwise, the Election Supervisors will promptly certify the results after the voting period endsonce the challenge period is over.
10. To certify the results at large, the Election Supervisors will promptly present the results of the election to the Election Commission for certification by majority vote. Simultaneously, the Election Commission will also vote on the outcome of each any outstanding challenged ballots. If the vote to certify the results fails, then each challenged ballot will be counted according to the outcome of their respective votes. The results will then be considered certified. All certification votes will end as soon as an absolute majority of non-absent commissioners have voted or twenty-four (24) hours have elapsed from the start of the vote, whichever is sooner.

Section Six: Citizen Petitions
1. While an election is in progress, Ccitizens 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
3. When an election is not in progress, citizens may petition the Election Commission at large to amend certified election results they believe to have been counted or recorded incorrectly in a thread in the Elections forum.
4. When such a petition is submitted, the citizen must present an alternative count and identify the perceived error(s) in the count, and the Election Commission at large will promptly vote between the following options:
a. Affirm the certified results
b. Overturn the certified results and revise the election results with the petitioner's alternative count
c. Overturn the certified results and revise the election results with a new count determined by the Election Commission during the review of the petition
5. A majority vote by the Election Commission to overturn certified results and revise them with new results will be considered a new certification vote, and a note will be added to the official original results thread stating that the original results were overturned and revised with a new set of certified results. These revised results will be recorded along with a note of which vote(s) were reconsidered in the decision and the date of the new certification.
26. During this process, if an election is in progress and three or more Election Commissioners move that the election should be halted, the Election Supervisors will immediately halt the election.
37. Election Commissioners can only vote for one option, and if an option gains a majority, it will be put into effect.
48. If no option gains a majority and an election is in progress, the election will be halted (if it has not been already) while the commission deliberates.
59. 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.

What I have done is require the full commission to be involved in certifying elections, and having to decide on handling challenged ballots. The longer review period gives more time for challenges, but isn't the final end-all thing since a full certification vote still has to happen. Inspired by Comfed's proposal, I have included the time frame on the vote which will provide even more opportunity for review, though I reduced it to a 24 hour period. Finally, I included the provision for correcting results after the fact if they happen to be wrong. This one requires a petition to the effect, has to be when there's no election, and puts a standard on how that review may happen. I tweaked the existing language to reflect the fact there are now two types of petitions, and explicitly made the petition process happen during the election only if it's challenging decisions, to spare us the whole thing about awkward reviews (including the one we're currently doing for the private ballot dispute). The law is clear on when elected officials assume office. No EC provision is going to be able to undo the election of someone who should not have won. In the unlikely event that the EC successfully hears a petition to change incorrect results and actually recertifies an election and someone should not have won but was initially declared the winner, and that person did not yet take their oath of office, then this recertification process would be enough to avoid that outcome. The problem there, of course, is that the person who appeared to be the winner simply has to post the oath and it's done. I submit that if the person hadn't taken the oath yet, and sees a petition for changing the results and sees that they did not actually win, we would hope that person would not take the oath, but there is no way to prevent that. I would expect recall would be appropriate in that scenario, but that's not up to the EC.

I have one last suggestion, but it does not necessarily require a change to EC procedures, only the rules when we open voting threads, and it's better handled in our other ongoing petition so I will suggest it there.

I would love some feedback on this now that everything has settled down somewhat.

I have thoughts, but I do not have time to fully explain them today. I hope to make a more significant post tomorrow on this matter, as well as the suggestion that you have raised here.

I disagree that no decision of the EC can change the winner of an election. Suppose, for example, during an two-way race for Speaker, the certified results state that Candidate A won the election by a one-vote margin, but then a citizen petition is filed stating that Ballot A was counted for Candidate A when it should have been counted for Candidate B. The EC then votes to overturn their decision to count it for Candidate A, and the certified results are thus amended to count Ballot A for Candidate B, thus making them the true winner of the Speaker election. That means that the original certified results, which declared Candidate A the winner, are invalid. If the certified results of the election are invalid, it inherently follows that the oath taken by the winner - Candidate A - is also invalid, because the law assigns the obligation to take the oath of office to the winner according to the certified results.

Additionally, if we follow the logic that the winner of an election's oath of office cannot be found to be invalid if it was taken in accordance with the certified results, even if those certified results were incorrect and overturned, then it leads to consequences that can only be described as absurd. Suppose, for example, that in the previous hypothetical, instead of it being a margin of one vote, Candidate B receives 100% of the vote, but the crooked election supervisors give all the votes to Candidate A. When these results are challenged, the Election Commission, themselves being in on the corruption, all vote to reject every single citizen petition. The voters would then naturally be able to file for judicial review to overturn the obviously fraudulent results, and the election commissioners would likely be charged with Gross Misconduct.

With the exception of intent - in the former scenario, the EC is presumably acting in good faith, whereas they clearly are not in the latter - the two hypotheticals are legally indistinguishable. In both, the Election Commission failed to properly count the vote, which caused the election to be won by the wrong candidate. In both, the winner of the election is not the rightful holder of their office. The second scenario is obviously a more egregious one than the first, but from the standpoint of the law that does not matter.

As such, if we wish to create a system in which the Election Commission can change the official results of the election without ever affecting who is in office, then either the RA must change the law, or we must create a way to do this which does not alter the certified results. I must say, though, that I would find such a process to be rather useless. If a ballot is mis-counted, what is the point of having its count corrected if the result of the election cannot change? Deciding who will hold an office is the whole point of voting.

All of your other changes seem good to me, but I believe that if we pass this as written we are merely clarifying the process for amending electoral results after the fact, which does indeed allow for the illegitimate winner's oath of office to be declared void.

Pallaith:

though I reduced it to a 24 hour period

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It seems to me that you have reduced it to a twelve-hour period:

Pallaith:

7. Any time during the voting period, or six twelve hours thereafter, any Election Commissioner may privately challenge a particular ballot and submit an alternate interpretation of how it should be counted. The Election Supervisors may accept or deny any challenge.

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Comfed:

I disagree that no decision of the EC can change the winner of an election. Suppose, for example, during an two-way race for Speaker, the certified results state that Candidate A won the election by a one-vote margin, but then a citizen petition is filed stating that Ballot A was counted for Candidate A when it should have been counted for Candidate B. The EC then votes to overturn their decision to count it for Candidate A, and the certified results are thus amended to count Ballot A for Candidate B, thus making them the true winner of the Speaker election. That means that the original certified results, which declared Candidate A the winner, are invalid. If the certified results of the election are invalid, it inherently follows that the oath taken by the winner - Candidate A - is also invalid, because the law assigns the obligation to take the oath of office to the winner according to the certified results.

Additionally, if we follow the logic that the winner of an election's oath of office cannot be found to be invalid if it was taken in accordance with the certified results, even if those certified results were incorrect and overturned, then it leads to consequences that can only be described as absurd. Suppose, for example, that in the previous hypothetical, instead of it being a margin of one vote, Candidate B receives 100% of the vote, but the crooked election supervisors give all the votes to Candidate A. When these results are challenged, the Election Commission, themselves being in on the corruption, all vote to reject every single citizen petition. The voters would then naturally be able to file for judicial review to overturn the obviously fraudulent results, and the election commissioners would likely be charged with Gross Misconduct.

With the exception of intent - in the former scenario, the EC is presumably acting in good faith, whereas they clearly are not in the latter - the two hypotheticals are legally indistinguishable. In both, the Election Commission failed to properly count the vote, which caused the election to be won by the wrong candidate. In both, the winner of the election is not the rightful holder of their office. The second scenario is obviously a more egregious one than the first, but from the standpoint of the law that does not matter.

As such, if we wish to create a system in which the Election Commission can change the official results of the election without ever affecting who is in office, then either the RA must change the law, or we must create a way to do this which does not alter the certified results. I must say, though, that I would find such a process to be rather useless. If a ballot is mis-counted, what is the point of having its count corrected if the result of the election cannot change? Deciding who will hold an office is the whole point of voting.

All of your other changes seem good to me, but I believe that if we pass this as written we are merely clarifying the process for amending electoral results after the fact, which does indeed allow for the illegitimate winner's oath of office to be declared void.

It seems to me that you have reduced it to a twelve-hour period:

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Simply put, whether you agree or not, you’re wrong. The law says when someone assumes office. They’re in office whether they actually should have been declared the winner or not. No correction or re-certification on our end can get around that fact, but at least the record would be correct. You are right that the RA has to step in if they actually want to take away someone’s office if it turns out they are later found to have been improperly given an office. I find this outcome to be extremely unlikely though so I’m not convinced we need to do anything other than the process I outlined here.

Again, this process requires showing your work. The votes are public knowledge. We can see them. If someone points out a vote that was miscounted, and the EV blatantly ignores it, everyone can see them violating their oath. That can be properly handled by the Court or the recall process. I’m trying to create a mechanism to solve a problem we have already experienced multiple times, not crazy never going to happen hypotheticals that have not.

By the way regarding the 24 hour/12 hour thing, I was referring to reducing the time table in your draft proposal for the rule change, that was separate from my increasing the six hour wait for challenges to twelve hours.

Pallaith:

Simply put, whether you agree or not, you’re wrong. The law says when someone assumes office. They’re in office whether they actually should have been declared the winner or not. No correction or re-certification on our end can get around that fact, but at least the record would be correct.

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The law does say when someone is in office. However, if someone assumes office illegally - in this case because of unlawfully counted election results - then they are not the legitimate holder of the office. In that case, anyone whose ballot was improperly counted would likely have standing to challenge the counting of their ballot in Court if the EC failed to accept a petition from them.

Comfed:

The law does say when someone is in office. However, if someone assumes office illegally - in this case because of unlawfully counted election results - then they are not the legitimate holder of the office. In that case, anyone whose ballot was improperly counted would likely have standing to challenge the counting of their ballot in Court if the EC failed to accept a petition from them.

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I agree. But legally speaking, they are the actual sworn official, and that doesn’t change just because they should have lost and we found out after the fact. The illegitimacy, in other words, isn’t the same as illegal - it was a legal oath and supported by the certified election results at the time. Absent Court intervention, there is no legal remedy for the illegitimate official, and no magical undo button we could write into our procedures to dispatch with legally installed officials.

I’m more interested in what you want to do about this. You gave me the impression you didn’t fully agree with my proposed set of rule changes because of this issue, but our rule changes won’t be able to address this. What aspect of this should be thrown out because of the problem you have identified?

Pallaith:

I agree. But legally speaking, they are the actual sworn official, and that doesn’t change just because they should have lost and we found out after the fact. The illegitimacy, in other words, isn’t the same as illegal - it was a legal oath and supported by the certified election results at the time. Absent Court intervention, there is no legal remedy for the illegitimate official, and no magical undo button we could write into our procedures to dispatch with legally installed officials.

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They are not the actual sworn official, because their oath itself, which is based on certified election results which were themselves invalid, is illegal. Although they "should have lost and we found out after the fact," in fact they did lose and the Election Commission failed in their duty to certify that they did. The citizen petition process is merely an administrative remedy to correct illegalities from the election supervisors, who have a legal duty to correctly count the ballots and are not allowed to report whatever they want. If they fail in that duty, it means that their results are not legitimate and never were. (I realize that this contradicts a previous statement I made on the matter. I have since reconsidered my position.) If the Court can intervene to declare an illegitimate office-holder not to hold an office - as you imply that they can - that is because the office-holder is not lawfully in office, and there was a failure at some point in the process that resulted in them being declared to have held the office in the first place. In this (hypothetical) case, it is because the election results were illegal.

Pallaith:

I’m more interested in what you want to do about this. You gave me the impression you didn’t fully agree with my proposed set of rule changes because of this issue, but our rule changes won’t be able to address this. What aspect of this should be thrown out because of the problem you have identified?

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You seem to want to have a means for us to correct election results without the possibility of changing the officeholder. I was making the point that the current way you have done this, in which the certified election results are simply amended, does not avert the possibility of changing the winner of the election. Personally, I think that is fine, but I think it isn't what you want to accomplish.

Comfed:

They are not the actual sworn official, because their oath itself, which is based on certified election results which were themselves invalid, is illegal. Although they "should have lost and we found out after the fact," in fact they did lose and the Election Commission failed in their duty to certify that they did. The citizen petition process is merely an administrative remedy to correct illegalities from the election supervisors, who have a legal duty to correctly count the ballots and are not allowed to report whatever they want. If they fail in that duty, it means that their results are not legitimate and never were. (I realize that this contradicts a previous statement I made on the matter. I have since reconsidered my position.) If the Court can intervene to declare an illegitimate office-holder not to hold an office - as you imply that they can - that is because the office-holder is not lawfully in office, and there was a failure at some point in the process that resulted in them being declared to have held the office in the first place. In this (hypothetical) case, it is because the election results were illegal.

You seem to want to have a means for us to correct election results without the possibility of changing the officeholder. I was making the point that the current way you have done this, in which the certified election results are simply amended, does not avert the possibility of changing the winner of the election. Personally, I think that is fine, but I think it isn't what you want to accomplish.

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Again, we’re largely in agreement. The problem is that there is no clear next step in the event the EC amends a certification and that amendment changes the results of an election such that someone who is in office is found to be the wrong officeholder. You’re suggesting the officer is instantly illegally holding office, but I don’t believe it’s as obvious or as simple as that with the law as currently written. That’s also not how it works in the real world. Elections end and winners are announced and in good faith they take office and serve. It’s also not clear cut the Court would do anything about this - see the numerous times they have clarified that someone was somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, but let it stand because of the destruction it would wreak if everything they did was suddenly nullified.

I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll say it again. If we do discover after an official takes office that they should not have won, that’s a question of legitimacy they will have to grapple with. Either we as a community accept the error and carry on as is, or we decide the error was so significant and undermines the official to such an extent we have to urge them to leave, or pull them out of office ourselves if they refuse. We have remedies here. If the RA feels this highly unlikely scenario is so egregious we cannot ever let it happen, then that’s for a legal code change, not this venue.

Seeing as you seen to agree with my proposal then, I invite others to weigh in; otherwise I am inclined to ask for a vote.

Pallaith:

That’s also not how it works in the real world. Elections end and winners are announced and in good faith they take office and serve.

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However, in the real world, election winners don't usually take office immediately upon being announced as a winner like they do here. There's usually some time allocated for a transition, to allow the outgoing officeholder time to clean up, which also allows the results to be reviewed to make sure the declared result was correct. We didn't give ourselves that luxury. Maybe we should.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see nothing in the Constitution or Legal Code mandating when we had to release the final results. Could we not come up with a mechanism for provisional results to be issued, and we'd do all of the usual stuff like opening the spreadsheet for people to review, let any challenges by citizens come forward like what Fiji did, resolve them, and then maybe a couple of days later if nothing comes up, we declare the provisional results to be certified final?

Sure? I guess? Our own rules say the supervisors have to promptly report the results though, so without changing those rules one could fairly say we’re expected to get the word out relatively soon after voting ends.

I’m honestly not big on further delays and adding more bureaucratic steps to this. We know what’s happened before and the fix is simple, create a mechanism for errors that get discovered to be reported, studied, and fixed as needed. The rule changes I proposed force a full commission vote on any certification of results, double the time for challenges, and allows for the certification process to play out as late as a day after the end of challenges. I suppose a provision could be added making the preliminary results public - it’s not that big a deal since unofficial spreadsheets get shared regularly anyway, and all the votes are already public knowledge, so theoretically anyone could know what the results are during that post-voting period.

Pallaith:

and all the votes are already public knowledge

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...except for missing private ballots... No unofficial sheet from a private citizen would detect those.

If it would help, maybe we roll in EC challenges, certification at large, and citizen challenges into one big period between preliminary results and final certification. The supervisors could then do prelim results at any time after the close of voting.

Sil Dorsett:

...except for missing private ballots... No unofficial sheet from a private citizen would detect those.

If it would help, maybe we roll in EC challenges, certification at large, and citizen challenges into one big period between preliminary results and final certification. The supervisors could then do prelim results at any time after the close of voting.

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There isn’t really a defense against private ballots not being reported, unless the chief audits the voting booth during challenge period or something, because you only have two sets of eyes on the private ballots. This is again why I think my suggestion in the other thread to have supervisors assign private ballot IDs and confirm receipt to the voter is a good approach, because that will force them to get the vote out and make it more likely for the voter to notice if the vote doesn’t get out.

Let’s not forget how unusual these mishaps are. We’ve had two this year, that’s it. We can make tweaks to make these mistakes harder to happen or easier to correct but we don’t have to overcomplicate the system.

I would like to get commentary from the rest of the RA about the idea of supervisors assigning the private ballot ID. I don't see why we specifically need to do that to confirm receipt. We can confirm receipt without doing that. We can post the ballot, get the URL, and give the URL back to the voter.

Sil Dorsett:

I would like to get commentary from the rest of the RA about the idea of supervisors assigning the private ballot ID. I don't see why we specifically need to do that to confirm receipt. We can confirm receipt without doing that. We can post the ballot, get the URL, and give the URL back to the voter.

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Correct, but if we assign the IDs they can be simpler and there would never be a repeat ID or even a similar one that could spark confusion. Personally I like the simplicity of having ten private ballots, for example, and having them be numbered 1-10. Us inventing the ID also forces us to provide the receipt since that’s the only way the voter knows what their ID is. When you want to reduce errors, taking the variable out of the voter’s hands helps with that.

The issue I could probably foresee is how if assignment isn't truly random, then there is potentially a way to "backtrace" private voters by studying the pattern of assignment. How do we mitigate such concerns?

Fregerson:

The issue I could probably foresee is how if assignment isn't truly random, then there is potentially a way to "backtrace" private voters by studying the pattern of assignment. How do we mitigate such concerns?

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What does this even mean? The public doesn’t know the order people cast private ballots in, and if the EC makes actual random number assignments, what pattern would even exist?

It's been a while since I posted in this thread for...reasons. Anyway I see a few issues at play here and I'm ready to lay out my extensive comments on them.

I will start with the substance of @Pallaith's proposed amendments to the EC rules. There are essentially two separate parts to these proposed changes - the first is modifying the certification procedure to add more safeguards and make the likelihood of votes being certified incorrectly lower; the second is creating a procedure for amending the certified results after the end of the election.

I'll start with the first part. In all honesty, I don't see the changes doing much to prevent what has happened before. In the May election, it wasn't just the Election Supervisors who miscounted the votes - it was also the Election Commissioners who reviewed the spreadsheet and didn't pick up on the errors. What we want is to ensure that all the Election Commissioners who have the capacity to should have reviewed the spreadsheet before the results are certified, hence the suggestion for longer challenge periods. Under the proposed changes, the election still could be certified even if there are multiple Commissioners who haven't yet checked the results. Say there are 7 non-absent Commissioners, then the results could be certified even if 3 of them haven't yet checked the spreadsheet. That doesn't feel like much of a safeguard to me. I would prefer a time requirement and a vote requirement for certification, not an either-or requirement as presented here. Perhaps an absolute majority and a 24 hour period would be fine, but I would prefer a larger majority.

The second part of the amendments is concerning amending the certified results after the end of the election. I have no problems with the amendments themselves - the issue here that Pallaith and Comfed have been going back and forth about is separate from the changes being proposed. On the issue of whether officeholders can be removed due to certification errors, I find myself largely in agreement with Comfed. But ultimately the EC doesn't have the power to remove people from office, it's a legal change that has to go through the RA, so I find it moot to discuss it here. One idea that has been raised in relation to close elections, and one which I find I am able to support, is to create a stricter certification requirement for close elections. Perhaps if the winning margin is less than 5, all Commissioners will need to vote to certify the results (with a time limit in case of inactive Commissioners).

And finally, I support Pallaith's proposal to assign IDs to private ballots instead of voters creating their own ballot IDs. I think it would do well to prevent the issue from the November election from recurring.

Pallaith:

What does this even mean? The public doesn’t know the order people cast private ballots in, and if the EC makes actual random number assignments, what pattern would even exist?

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I guess we are OK as long as we use a random number generator. 12 digits if necessary, or in base64. That doesn't require any change in any rules (as @Sil Dorsett pointed out) so it's easier.

Comfed:

The law does say when someone is in office. However, if someone assumes office illegally - in this case because of unlawfully counted election results - then they are not the legitimate holder of the office. In that case, anyone whose ballot was improperly counted would likely have standing to challenge the counting of their ballot in Court if the EC failed to accept a petition from them.

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I would assume someone elected like that would have the dignity to resign and re-run. Not that we can compel a resignation, but a recall seems workable as an absolute fallback. Of course, that's all after the supervisors have resigned to take responsibility.

Pallaith:

What does this even mean? The public doesn’t know the order people cast private ballots in, and if the EC makes actual random number assignments, what pattern would even exist?

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Ugh. I originally read the entire idea as us assigning a ballot to voters at the start of the voting period. If it was assigning a number when we receive the private ballot, then fine by me.