Election Reform, Ammendment drafting thread

wervdon · July 16, 2002, 22:08

Yes, I know Trip had proposed an ammendment III to deal with this, and here is the wording from his last post on it, but given what we've just been through we have more things to consider that aren't covered by this:

Quote:

Each election takes place from the 12th of the month until the 16th. A Pre-Election thread must be created by the current President or Vice-President at least a week before the elections are set to take place. All elections must last 5 days, until the 16th. All candidates must announce their candidacy before the elections begin in that thread, or else he will be excluded from the ballot. Once the 5 days has passed, then the new or reelected officials will be admitted to their offices.

The elections must be conducted by either the current President, or the current Vice-President. If they are unavailable at the time of the election, then someone may be selected by a majority vote among the officials to conduct the elections.

The winner of the election is determined by the number of votes they recieve: whoever gets the most votes wins. In the case of a tie in an election with more than two candidates, there will be an additional vote on the two tied candidates. In a two man election, if there is a tie between the two candidates, then a vote will be conducted amongst the newly elected officials to decide who will recieve the office.

A person may run for only one office per election. Candidates may not be a judge in the court, nor may they be in the process of pursuing a position in the court while a candidate for another office. One may only hold a particular office twice in a row. Candidates for an official office may not run in teams. There are no limits beyond this regarding reelection for either that office, or any other.

The position of 'Historian' is hereby made an unofficial office. The only official rule it must abide by is a fair and legal election, in accordance to all rules in place for this process.

While I agree with everything in that it needs to address the following in addition:

1) Who can vote?
Just registered members, I would assume. How is that going to be enforced. Possibility of some form of election commission.

2) If only registered members whats the latest they can sign up as a member and still vote?
I'd say right up until the start of the electionl, but some might want to allow signing up as a member and voting during the election, or to require being a member a day or even a week before the election starts.

3) Can a canidate concede defeat if he wins and make his leading opponent the victor?
I vote no, if the victor concedes it invalidates the election and results in new nominations and votes.

Anything else Im leaving out that needs to be addressed?

Btw if this is redundant with another ammendment thread, Im sorry. The only ones I could find already trying to form the language for an election ammendment were trip's two on ammendment III which I quoted above.

Sheik · July 17, 2002, 00:20

Quote:

Originally posted by wervdon

1) Who can vote?
Just registered members, I would assume. How is that going to be enforced. Possibility of some form of election commission.

I like the election comission idea. Maybe we could make it so that only two people can see the votes. MarkG could give them the list and they can go through it and get rid of any non-citizen voters. Or it would it be possible to have the administrators only allow people on the citizen list to vote?

notyoueither · July 17, 2002, 00:30

I suggest we take this very slowly. Mark has stated he is looking at the possibility of linking the citizen list to the ability to vote in this (the Civ3 Demo) forum.

If he can do that, then most of the gordian knot is broken. If he cannot do that, then we face a major task in replacing the current polling method.

Ninot · July 17, 2002, 00:30

Quote:

2) If only registered members whats the latest they can sign up as a member and still vote?

I say they should only be able to vote if they registered at any time before the start of the election

Quote:

3) Can a canidate concede defeat if he wins and make his leading opponent the victor?

I say yes. If the leader of the vote suddenly finds out he cant play out his term in office, it would be much too complicated to have a second election process. Instead, allowing the runner up to take the office seems much more convenient. And, because he already volounteered to run, and was 1: either the only one to volounteer other than the conceeder or 2: beat out other candidates enough

the only circumstance i would put on that though is if the election had more than 2 candidates, and no one had a 50%+1 majority. Then i would revote, like a consolidation vote.

Jon Shafer · July 17, 2002, 00:30

I think Markos is working out something for us (I think? Can anyone confirm this for me?) regarding unfair voting.

I would also agree that you would have to be a member for at least one week before you can vote, to avoid "recruiting" voters. Maybe Markos can do something about this as well.

As far as dropping out of a race, I feel that if elected, that candidate could simply resign as soon as he got into office if he was elected anyways. And had he not run, then whoever was in second place would become President in the end anyways.

wervdon · July 17, 2002, 01:18

Maybe only allow a person to win by the opponent conceding if he had 30% of the vote or more. I just dont want to see a situation where someone ends up elected with almost no support because of a mis-leading election.

wervdon · July 17, 2002, 01:19

Oh and yeah I agree we should wait and see what Markos can do for us before we debate the 1st point too much, this was more to get ideas on the table and in one spot than to make any decision now.

notyoueither · July 17, 2002, 01:34

Quote:

Originally posted by wervdon
Maybe only allow a person to win by the opponent conceding if he had 30% of the vote or more. I just dont want to see a situation where someone ends up elected with almost no support because of a mis-leading election.

That's a good point. What would we do if Sir Ralph (to pick an example of a land slide in a 3 person race) announced he must not serve before the poll closes?

kring · July 17, 2002, 01:56

It could cause problems since the voters would have voted differently if Person A wasn't in the race since they could not have voted for Person A. It skews the results of the votes.

Also, if someone does drop out of a race, then what happens next time they want to run for office? I realize sometimes unexpected things occur: death in the family, etc.

wervdon · July 17, 2002, 02:02

Perhaps give the courts the authority to declare an election invalid at their discretion if a candidate drops out rather than just taking the runner up automatically. In some cases it would obviously make sense to just take the runner up (like in a 2 person race where both got a fairly decent # of votes), but in others it just doesnt.

notyoueither · July 17, 2002, 02:04

Hmmm. Would be better to have a rule to guide them with.

wervdon · July 17, 2002, 02:06

Either way, the purpose of this thread is to put ideas on the table and debate. Id rather just have a rule too, but its not going to keep me from pointing out alternatives for debate

MrWhereItsAt · July 17, 2002, 03:02

According to the Constitution, the Vice President would take over in the event of the President being "unable to play his turn". As it is written in the Constitution, this may mean a temporary assumption of office - but in one instance in the Civ2 game the VP was required to take over for nearly a full term.

If our provision IS for a temporary term, then the judiciary (when enacted) must clarify this, and we must make a longer-term provision. If we have the runner-up in the Prez election take over - how good is that? Assuming we have a clear-cut runner-up (if we have a runner-up at ALL), we could have someone run just to provide competition, and they would hardly be likely to end up a suitable President.

My thoughts at the moment are that the VP should take over for the whole term, and not to give the Presidency to the loser of the election (if one); either way we must clarify this before we run into further problems.

wervdon · July 17, 2002, 03:21

Quote:

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
My thoughts at the moment are that the VP should take over for the whole term, and not to give the Presidency to the loser of the election (if one); either way we must clarify this before we run into further problems.

That works if it was the presidential winner who conceded, but what if its another of our officials? We don't have a vice-foreign minister for example

But your idea is probally how it would happen in the US if that occurred. For example if on November 12th, 1996 Bill Clinton had said "You know what I dont want to be president again after all." I dont think we'd of sworn in Bob Dole, it'd of probally of been Al Gore

MrWhereItsAt · July 17, 2002, 03:28

We can hope that officials disappearing is a rare occurrence, and we must consider the likelihood of this when choosing who to give our votes to in all positions very carefully.

In the Civ2 game the VP is a backup for ANYone who goes away, and we only had to deal with the Prez going once. We could give the VP the job that is vacated, and if anyone else disappears as well in the same term (exceptionally rare occurrence), then we may need to think of an alternative.

But then again, how much of this is necessary? Shall we plan for the so-improabable-that-it-wil-be-nigh-on-unheard-of? The judiciary is needed for such emergencies, and NOT incredibly detailed, weighty legislation.

wervdon · July 17, 2002, 03:35

How about this to handle the issue of concessions or resignations:

Order of Succession
-------------------
In the event an elected official cannot complete his duties for the term or in the event
the winner of an election concedes defeat, then the President elect shall nominate a
replacement who is otherwise qualified to run for the office to the post subject to
approval of the the people by a majority vote which shall count as being duely elected
to the office in question for that term. In the event it is the office of president
in question, then the vice president shall be promoted to president, and appoint his
replacement in the manner outlined above. In the further event that the vice
president is also unable to assume the role of president, then the order of succession
to president is as follows: Military advisor, Science Advisor, Foreign Advisor, and
Trade Advisor.

Quote:

But then again, how much of this is necessary? Shall we plan for the so-improabable-that-it-wil-be-nigh-on-unheard-of? The judiciary is needed for such emergencies, and NOT incredibly detailed, weighty legislation."

Probally not

But its still fun and doesn't hurt to have it in there.

Decimus · July 17, 2002, 03:36

I agree we should wait and see what Markos can do. We need to take our time and not jump into this and end up making a bad decision.

Decimus · July 17, 2002, 03:40

I got an idea a order of secession does not make since because on what grounds is a Military Advisor more able to take the position than the Science Advisor and that applies to and of the advisors. I think that in the event that the president that the cannot fufil his duties we have and election and all of the advisors are canidates.

wervdon · July 17, 2002, 03:43

Yeah I dont think anyone is going to rush to put this up for ratification yet

This just meant to be more of a "drafting convention" for us to try to figure out what sort of concensus we have for when the time does come.

And beyond what Markos can do to help us with the voter registration issues. We don't need to try to finalize this until the court ammendment passes since it could impact this.

Decimus · July 17, 2002, 03:45

Just trying to through in an idea

wervdon · July 17, 2002, 03:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Decimus
I got an idea a order of secession does not make since because on what grounds is a Military Advisor more able to take the position than the Science Advisor and that applies to and of the advisors. I think that in the event that the president that the cannot fufil his duties we have and election and all of the advisors are canidates.

Heh its a very unlikely event that both president and VP are out of the picture, but I agree, I was just trying to tailor the order of succession somewhat on our own (from a US perspective) constitution.

Decimus · July 17, 2002, 03:50

Yeah i see were you coming from i just dont think it would applie just the same to our world.

disorganizer · July 17, 2002, 04:01

we should force our citizens to request official certificates (well, real ones! rl-ones!) and check those.
Maybe we should also request the citizens to publish their real address. We can then send out the voting papers via postal service to them and count the results coming back.
But:
1) we will be as slow as rl-elections. propably even slower
2) we dont fight the bogus votes, as citizens will still be able to get themselves registered multiple times

Decimus · July 17, 2002, 04:05

Way to slow stick to online elections postal like you say would be way to slow.

Jon Shafer · July 17, 2002, 04:57

Again, I feel that we should wait and see if Markos has a solution for us. I'm sure we can find a script or program somewhere that will allow 100% accuracy, secrecy and fairness if we wish to. There's no need to do something as tedious as having each person post to vote.

Kuciwalker · July 17, 2002, 07:49

They have a way of doing it at CF, so I think we can probably do it here. My problem is that I STILL CAN'T VOTE GOD****IT!!!!!!

civman2000 · July 17, 2002, 09:12

Quote:

Each election takes place from the 12th of the month until the 16th. A Pre-Election thread must be created by the current President or Vice-President at least a week before the elections are set to take place. All elections must last 5 days, until the 16th. All candidates must announce their candidacy before the elections begin in that thread, or else he will be excluded from the ballot. Once the 5 days has passed, then the new or reelected officials will be admitted to their offices.

12th-16th is only 4 days.

Quote:

A person may run for only one office per election

I still don't like this.

1. registered members, but this is only enforced if the winner has under 55% of the vote AND a 2-day, majority vote of the people agrees to have nonmember votes discarded.
2. any time at all, including the last second of the election
3. sure, but only after the election ends

kring · July 19, 2002, 01:22

12-16 is 5 days: 12, 13,14, 15, 16.

MrWhereItsAt · July 19, 2002, 07:23

Perhaps we should just say a number of hours, say 120 from when the poll starts, just to help those who see 12-16 as 4 days. If a poll starts 00:00 on the 12th and ends 23:59 the 16th, this is 5 full days.

civman: Why don't you like the restriction of a candidate running for only one position per election? There is the very real possibility of someone winning two positions - we cannot let them have both, so would they choose one and invalidate the second election automatically?

This is surely non-ideal, unless you had another idea in mind...?

civman2000 · July 19, 2002, 08:46

i'm not going to argue any more about allowing people to run for multiple positions. BUt I have made many many polls and I know that the 12th to hthe 16th is 4 days.

If you start a 5-day poll at 12:00 on the 12th, it ends at 12:00 on the 17th. COunt the hours, it works. The last elections were one day too long as were the first ones.

If you start one at 0:00 on the 12th and set it for 5 days, it will end 0:00 on teh 17th. However, polls do not (in general except maybe for MrWIA with his wacky timezoe

) start at 0:00. GMT, North Americans make them between 4 am and 3 pm (usually). Europeans make them from around 9 am to 9 pm. But very few people in the demo game would make elections at a time that would be within a few minutes of midnight for most other people, which is the only situation in which your reasoning works.