Election: President

[notyoueither]

They might, and then it is Timeline's place to object.

[Papa Chubby]

Well I must also admit that I haven't diligently studied our constitution, but even without looking at it, I can tell that there is a difference between a deputy or and aide and a 2nd president. The 2nd president is the vice-president, are we now supposed to have three presidents because the candidates think the race is too close, it makes no sense at all.

[Malthis]

OK, I've just decided on who to vote for, but now I'm hearing it doesn't matter, cause in the "spirit of unity" we will have TWO presidents.....

I promise, that if you try to usurp the democratic process here, I will not vote for EITHER of you in the future.

[notyoueither]

The race appears to have been tampered with and there is no way to recount.

What do you suggest we do? Other than accept a tainted result not of our own making (most probably).

[notyoueither]

Malthis. Vote!

Nothing has been settled yet for sure, and I doubt it will be before some time tomorrow (at the earliest).

[Jon Shafer]

Returning at last, I can confirm (in my own words ) that what Ninot said is correct. People can whine and moan about it all they want, but point out a LAW that says we can't do this. Besides, after Ninney and I are through, you may change your mind anyways.

[Papa Chubby]

You can wink all you want Trip, but that does not make yours and Ninneys, as you call him, ad-hoc modification of the election sweet. I can simply state that I don't agree with it, but if you don't care, then thats just that. For now I'm going to sleep, this is just irritating me.

[Jon Shafer]

An election so close, do you not feel that out of 122 votes that they're all legitmate, and all votes from members? The most we've gotten in a consensus poll was 91.

The problems are:

1) Anyone within the game can tamper results easily with DLs.

and probably more importantly, at least in this case is

2) Anyone who sees the poll can vote. Do you think the people who came by and voted after they saw the news post on the news page are as well-informed as our citizens? Of course not.

So what do we do about these things? Since the election was so important, it got a lot of attention... good attention and unwanted attention. I'm willing to bet that 3/4 of all votes cast since the beginning of yesterday haven't been members.

[Malthis]

Originally posted by notyoueither
The race appears to have been tampered with and there is no way to recount.

What do you suggest we do? Other than accept a tainted result not of our own making (most probably).

Let the other members of this democratically elected administration make a decision. The flagrant improvisation of administration with two presidents will only hurt future elections.
My promise stands.....

[Malthis]

Originally posted by Trip
I'm willing to bet that 3/4 of all votes cast since the beginning of yesterday haven't been members.

I had to log in as a member to vote.....
Is this SPIN I hear?

My promise stands

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Malthis
I had to log in as a member to vote.....
Is this SPIN I hear?

My promise stands

Members of Apolytonia, not registered at the forums.

Keep to your promise. Honor lies above all else. I'll hold you to it.

[notyoueither]

BTW Malthis,

When did you join the game?

[Robber Baron]

I'm all over the map here -- -- but this caught me up:

Originally posted by Trip
An election so close, do you not feel that out of 122 votes that they're all legitmate
... 2) Anyone who sees the poll can vote. Do you think the people who came by and voted after they saw the news post on the news page are as well-informed as our citizens? Of course not.

We need to be very careful here, I believe, about trying to sort out "well-informed" or casual votes from ones that are supposedly better considered and hence more valid. If a real (real virtual, that is ) citizen of our game voted merely to tie up the race, just for the heck of it, that vote is every bit as legitimate as the one cast by his peer who agonized for days and pored over every post. We're not in the business of deciding how many votes were how well-informed.
We're just trying to sort out what seems to me and others like a case of electoral fraud.


(Sorry to get preachy.)

[notyoueither]

Yes RB, but the vote being tied (or nearly so) for 3 days is not explained by 1 or 2 impish citizens. I grant most of my fellow citizens as being more responsible than that.

No, what it looks like to me is that someone(s) other than one of our citizens has/have been mucking with our electoral process.

I can not think of any other more probable explanation.

[Aggie]

Trip and Ninot, you both have earned the presidency. The solution that was achived is not only moral, it is also legal. I do have a suggestion for the next election though, perhaps we should have a residency requiremnt so to speak. In short you must have been registered when the voting started to participate. Maybe also you would have had to log in at least once in the last week. Just an idea. Also we are lucky the amendment failed, because if it had not this would be patently illegal on 2 counts.
Aggie

[Robber Baron]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Yes RB, but the vote being tied (or nearly so) for 3 days is not explained by 1 or 2 impish citizens. I grant most of my fellow citizens as being more responsible than that.

No, what it looks like to me is that someone(s) other than one of our citizens has/have been mucking with our electoral process.

I can not think of any other more probable explanation.

Agreed. Maybe I wasn't clear: something fishy has messed up this election, I think so too. I think Trip and Ninot are justified in following the spirit if not the letter of the vote.
(Maybe it's worth putting their solution up for a vote in the form of a poll.)
I just feel wary about justifying the tabling of the "official results" by saying that an (undetermined) number of votes came from outsiders who were not "well informed."
I guess our problem lies in the fact that anyone passing by the forum (as Trip put it) is welcome to join, become a citizen, and vote on an equal basis with everyone else participating in the game .... And I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable limiting that access.

[Sirotnikov]

This is a bad thing. We must have only one president. Otherwise it's undemocratic.

Perhaps someone should create a poll, "Should we have two Presidents?"

[Kramerman]

Hmmmm. This is a dilly of a pickle. I don't have a problem with a duel presidency, but would much perfer a single president. In order to speed things along however (in other words, not have a re-poll), I just think we should cooperate with their decison for now, and by next election have a Supreme Court that could valify or nulify decisions like these based on their legitamacy- so this doesn't become a precedent like many fear.

I think this is a good comprimise to this problem, but I think this problem should definately stay open to debate until this poll officially closes.

Kman

P.S. UberKrux!, THEY let you have that avater. Thats awesome! That has gotta be the best one I've ever seen. It has definately given me some ideas for when I can customize mine .

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Edrix
Perhaps someone should create a poll, "Should we have two Presidents?"

If there was any foulplay on this poll, what would make you think there will not any foul play on that poll. For all we know Trip and Ninot could be conspiring against us!


Kman

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Kramerman
P.S. UberKrux!, THEY let you have that avater. Thats awesome! That has gotta be the best one I've ever seen. It has definately given me some ideas for when I can customize mine .

i havent gotten yelled at... yet. we'll see what happens

[Moral Hazard]

This may sound like nitpicking but the constitution is quite clear in that it only uses the singular when referring to an office.

[Aggie]

I suspect this has been mentioned before, but could we see how the vote was distributed for the 76 people who voted in last weeks census. If it was blatantly one way or the other(something I doubt), we could declare an official winner based on that, and the other "copresident ", could be an aide legally.
Aggie

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Kramerman
Hmmmm. This is a dilly of a pickle. I don't have a problem with a duel presidency, but would much perfer a single president. In order to speed things along however (in other words, not have a re-poll), I just think we should cooperate with their decison for now, and by next election have a Supreme Court that could valify or nulify decisions like these based on their legitamacy- so this doesn't become a precedent like many fear.

I think this is a good comprimise to this problem, but I think this problem should definately stay open to debate until this poll officially closes.

Kman

After several minutes of deep, ponderous thought, I have come to the conclusion that I agree with myself. I also wanted to get my idea off the bottom of the freakin page and out and visable so everybody can see it.

I would just like to add:
For all those who feel we are disrupting the democratic process, had the difference in the candidates votes had been a dozen, 8, or even as few as 5, that may well be the case. However, disregarding the fact that this election may very well have been tampered with, these very narrow margin between each of our TWO candidates shows that Apolytonia is almost evenly divided on these two possible leaders. Unless foul play can be disreputed, I think that the candidates should have there duel-presidency, it would probably be a good thing considering how capable both these candidates are for the job. Again, the compromise will be that this shall never happen again, under the protection of a judicial court system.

[notyoueither]

Yes, but the constitution is silent on scrutinizing elections. In fact, it is not possible as things stand.

What is clear is that we really need to reform our methods for elections and constitutional decisions. Very soon.

[Kramerman]

i havent gotten yelled at... yet. we'll see what happens

I am praying that they say nothing. Because if they do nothing against you, they can do nothing against me... when the time comes, hehehe.

EDIT: whos Zylka? The chick with her legs spread?

[Moral Hazard]

Zylka: an OT Poster.

NYE:
True, thankfully were going to have a court soon. I also dislike this decision as it calls into question all future polls. I don't think it was DLs who kept the vote close but non active members who thought it was funny. Which will happen in any poll, and thier votes can't be discounted.

[wervdon]

Suggestion on how to do future elections:

Voter registration. The week before the elections we have a thread for registering to vote, if one of our citizens wants to vote he signs up for it in the thread (much like a census, in fact this could be dual purpose for those) I would propose though that people keep their registration automatically until they fail to vote in an election just to avoid people not being able to vote cause they were out of town during registrations.

Then when the election threads are made they'd look something like this:

Election for President: Ninot vs Trip

Registered voters:
Voter Vote
---------------------------
Trip Trip
Ninot Ninot
Uberkrux Not voted yet
Timeline Ninot

.....
Wervdon Ninot (sorry trip )
----------------------------
Total Trip: 65
Total Ninot: 65

Then people who wanted to vote could just login and cast there vote in the first line of their post:

Vote: Ninot
Whatever reason you want, just so your vote is clear at the top.

Then our election worker just has to tally the votes and edit the original post with the list of registered voters. That way we don't have to worry too much about fraud Though I suspose you could make double logins and register to vote :P


The only disadvantage I see to that (other than a bit more work and a need for a Election commision post) is the loss of anonymous ballots, but most of us don't mind posting who we voted for anyways.

Id suggest that other non-election polls be kept to simple anonymous polls, but in the case of a rare close one we could add to option to call for a roll-call vote of this type (giving the election commision something to do between elections too occasionally)

In any case, I think we should consider it if we aren't going to trust the results of anonymous polls because of the chance of someone fudging them with double logins. Or worry about the odd apolyton surfer (but not active in the democracy game) coming along and voting.

And incidently, I probally missed that census thread that someone mentioned last week. It took me a while to even catch the sign ups There's so much spam on this forum that its a tad difficult to keep up with whats going on in the actual game much less the less important threads.

[wervdon]

Oh and as for "sharing" the presidency. I dont think we should do that. Whoever wins the poll (since thats the current election standards) should be _the_ president.

However, there is nothing to stop the winner from naming who he wants as his "adivisors" or such. Afterall George Washington made his own cabinet (which we still use) without it being expressely in the constitution.

[Ninot]

problem with that is it isnt confidential.. i know I value my privacy, dunno bout you.