Moderator: SC Moderators
With polls scheduled to open today only 10 - yes TEN - citizens have sent me their e-mail address to register on the OPA voting site.
As I said in previous notices, it has been a LONG time since we had an actual OPA vote and it is important that e-mail addresses we use be correct.
IF YOU QUALIFY and INTEND TO VOTE in this byelection, you must submit a current e-mail address, sent to me in-world on a notecard, or sent to me by e-mail at [email protected]
Callipygian
These are two notecards I just passed via CDS Group Notices. You might find them helpful if you have questions about voting.
How Do I Vote?
Some of you have had questions about how voting is done in the CDS. Alas, elections have been rather rare in recent years so we are a bit out of practice. I composed this information in an attempt to clarify the process. I hope I did.
The electoral process is not administered by the Chancellor or RA for obvious reasons. I can try to field some questions, but generally they should be directed to the members of the Scientific Council.
But here goes.
Why is there an election?
After the most recent election cycle, the 40th Term Representative Assembly of the CDS is short one person. There are five RA seats. During the last election cycle, four people stood for election and were acclaimed the winners of four of the seats. One seat is vacant.
The Dean of the Scientific Council, Callipygian Christensen, consequently announced a by-election for the remaining seat. That is why we are having this election.
What is the electoral process at CDS? How do I vote?
The Scientific Council runs elections in the CDS. The SC consists of three Professors; Callipygian Christensen, the Dean; Delia Lake; and Lilith Ivory.
Who can vote?
In order to stand for RA in this by-election, one must be a citizen in good standing for a month prior to the opening of voting. A census was taken on November 10th. If your name is on that census then you can vote in this by-election. (Note there was a period whereby the list could be challenged.)
The Census is announced by the Chancellor via Group Notice, a Forum post, and a copy placed in the column located in the apse of the Pretorium. If you were not a citizen in good standing based on the November 10th Census, you will have a chance in future elections for voting or standing for election. A census is taken regularly.
Who can be a candidate?
Citizens on the November 10th Census can stand for election. The Dean requested self nominations. That period having elapsed, two candidates were announced: Cathy Sabre and Kyoko Jarvinen-Barzane (Samara Barzane).
What is the voting process?
The CDS uses OpaVote for elections. This system requires an email from each voter. The email is used for verification and delivery of an online ballot.
Voting is not done inworld. Instead, voting is done via an online OpaVote ballot.
Citizens should create an email for their AV. It is useful to have for other SL activities besides CDS elections. Google gmail or Yahoo are commonly used.
The Dean requested that citizens submit emails to her via email or notecard. IM is not allowed for security and administrative reasons. The Dean had asked that the email be given to her by December 8th. The Dean extended this period to this Friday in order to encourage participation.
Once Emails have been collected, the Dean will cause OpaVote to send out a ballot to each citizen who provided an email. This is done in batches. It may be several days before the Dean causes ballots to be sent. She informed me, that this week, she will send out two batches of emails. I note again, that this an extended period past the original December 8th deadline for submission of emails.
Ok, this is fine for the why, but how do I vote?
Citizens who submitted an email will get a link via email. It will come from this address: OpaVote Voting Link <[email protected]>. The title will be, “CDS By-election 40th RA” This email might go to your Junk or Spam folder depending on YOUR email settings. Check those folders if you do not see this email in your Inbox.
This email will lead you to an online ballot, where you make your selection and submit your vote.
Just to be clear. Voting is done via Online OpaVote. There are no voting booths inworld.
I hope this clarifies the voting process.
Tor Karlsvalt
Chancellor of the CDS
The earlier notecard follows.
ATTENTION CITIZENS!
As soon as possible by SLT this FRIDAY morning,
IF YOU QUALIFY and INTEND TO VOTE in this byelection for RA, send Callipygian Christensen, Dean of the SC, a current e-mail address.
Send it via inworld notecard, or via e-mail at lavalkyre@gmail.
Do NOT use IM.
Calli's calling card:
Two citizens are standing for the vacant seat of the Representative Assembly: Kyoko Jarvinen-Barzane (Samara Barzane) and Cathy Sabre.
Polls will close at Noon SLT, Saturday, December 16th.
Also see Calli's Forum post here: viewtopic.php?p=51731&hilit=byelection#p51731
Thank you @Tor Karlsvalt for providing such a comprehensive post on the voting process for our newer citizens.
I encourage everyone eligible who hasn't already to vote, and if you aren't familiar with our candidates, do reach out to them in-world to familiarize yourself with who they are. It would have been nice to see some campaigning, but at least we do have the two people named who were willing to put themselves forward. Thank you to them both for that!
Dear CDS Citizens,
I don't want to miss to thank Tor for his efforts for explaining the vote procedure, and to support Rosie's message as well: Use your right to vote and give your candidate of choice your checkmark!
As a meanwhile not so new citizen, the OpaVote procedure was not clear to me as well, because we had so few (if it all no) votes during my years in the CDS. So explaining voting without gaps and leaving question marks was utterly necessary. I'm still at the opinion that a numbered list with the steps to be conducted would have been helpful, too, because I was quite confused how to vote.
Next time, we should do it better, and ideally have (more than) enough candidates for the regular election to avoid a by-election at all. Actually, I don't see responsibility for information tasks so much with Tor as our top PR officer, but primarily with the Scientific Council. Since the elections are always carried out according to the same pattern, we should supplement the New Citizen Guide with a concise election regulation section.
Thank you,
Almut
Thanks to all who keep the tiny gears of our democracy well-oiled and operational 
And take the time to explain it to the rest of us
Almut Brunswick wrote:Next time, we should do it better, and ideally have (more than) enough candidates for the regular election to avoid a by-election at all.
Hear, hear! That would obviously be the best-case scenario. I understand that a few newer citizens were eagerly asking how they could vote (they were not eligible yet) — I certainly hope that, after a few months being around, they will do so much more than vote, but actually run as candidates!
Almut Brunswick wrote:Actually, I don't see responsibility for information tasks so much with Tor as our top PR officer, but primarily with the Scientific Council. Since the elections are always carried out according to the same pattern, we should supplement the New Citizen Guide with a concise election regulation section.
Ah... aye, you're right on that. Curious how you weren't the first person saying so, but possibly the first saying it publically.
Traditionally, the job of informing citizens about the elections was one of the many duties of the Scientific Council, mostly because it was thought that, as a non-elected body, they would remain reasonably neutral and fair when explaining how our democracy works to the citizens: since they couldn't benefit directly from any, uh, "evangelisation" of the citizens — i.e., telling them in who they should vote! — in theory, they would be "above politics" in a certain sense of the word, and not show any preferences towards any candidates in their explanations.
(In practice, of course, every person is different, and everybody has different style of saying things that could be a form of persuasion, but it's impossible to have "completely unbiased people" — the best you can aim to is to get together a sufficiently diverse and inclusive number of people, each with their own bias, and sort of averaging these biases out. But I digress.)
Historically, when the Chancellor role was created to deal with purely administrative tasks — delegated by the Representative Assembly to a staff of Public Servants, headed by a Chancellor appointed by the RA — such promotional chores were left to the Chancellor as well. It made sense, since, back then, the Chancellor was merely a public servant, in the dependence of the RA, and, as such, could be fired by a simple plurality of votes, if the RA members thought that the Executive was not being "neutral enough". So, the question didn't really arise; who acted upon any perceived bias by the Chancellor was the RA, and it was the RA themselves who set the boundaries and rules of such informative events, leaving all details for the Executive to implement.
According to my broken and very fragmented memory, this was the scenario for a very short period of time (just a couple of term or three, I believe), because the Executive, soon afterwards, became a separate branch by itself, modeled loosely on the presidential democratic systems of the Americas (but used elsewhere!), and its head of office, the Chancellor, became a political (not administrative!) role, elected by universal suffrage, just as the members of the RA.
As a consequence of that "branch split", the new Chancellor role as Head of the Executive inherited all the tasks and chores and duties that the previous "administrative" role already had, but with added duties and privileges as it became a directly democratically elected branch on its own. Such tasks were not listed in minute detail, of course, but just vaguely referenced as "anything that the Old Guild had to do", plus whatever else the role acquired under the "administrative phase". And, of course, the Chancellor, being a duly elected official by universal suffrage, is not bound to the RA's rule anymore — with two important restrictions (I think there are just these two):
The Power of the Purse — The Chancellor makes the budget for the term, aye, but that budget requires majority approval in the RA; the Chancellor cannot spend anything if and until the RA approves it.
The Duty to Report — The RA has the right to demand that the Chancellor appears before the elected representatives and give an on-going report on the Executive's action.
Beyond that, there are just two ways of removing a Chancellor from office: vote them out at the end of the term (the normal way for any democracy worth its name!), or impeach them (an event which is deliberately used except in extreme cases).
That said... and I digress and digress like an old lady...
We have Government Hours!
Let me explain. The point is that... well, nobody was entirely sure which branch was responsible for, uh, "explaining how the government works". Naturally, we could go to the RA and ask. But the RA only convenes every other week or so, so... we might ask... the Chancellor perhaps, who is always around? But ultimately, the task of "explaining laws and the constitution" would be the province of the Scientific Council, also known as the Academic Branch, because originally it was meant to give explanations about our democracy?
Sooooo why don't we simply get them all to explain — in their own way, of course! — how the government works, since each of the three branches are, indeed, "The Government of the CDS".
That's at the root of the idea of having them "rotating duties" in holding the Government Hours, i.e., over a period of a term, each branch should hold one session each. Which, uh, some terms it even works out rather nicely.
But beyond that — I would claim that anyone can host whatever event they want, and if it's an "explaining event", sure, why not? So long as it's clear that such spontaneous events are not representative of the government — I don't see any problem whatsoever.
In fact, unless someone presents any reason against that, I'd certainly love to host a semi-regular event talking about the CDS Government from an historic perspective. In fact, the last time I checked, I was the sole remaining active member of the CDS Historical Society (but I have no "privileges" in that group) and was recently made aware of the similarly-named CDS Historic Society, of which I know next to nothing. But that's not important(IMHO)! What matters is that I'm considering to do a "History of the Oldest Democracy in a Virtual World" series of events (possibly alternating with the not-that-so-regular Tuesday Thinkers event). What do you think?
"I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country."
-- Philip "Linden" Rosedale, interview to Wired, 2004-05-08
PGP Fingerprint: CE8A 6006 B611 850F 1275 72BA D93E AA3D C4B3 E1CB
Oh my Gwyn, I wold love that! and to hear about all kinds of ole CDS stories
OMG... someone's going to need to show up and make sure we get the recollections straight!
Sudane...........................
Hehe, well thanks for voting to take that on, Gwyneth. A history lesson of the politics, and dare I say it, the shenanigans of the CDS would be fun for me too!
Hehe I'm glad to see so much interest in this
I'm afraid I'll be a bit busy for the upcoming couple of months (that's also why I haven't been able to be around more often — except for partying, of course ), but I'll give it a serious thought by March or so. Also, it's the ideal kind of thing to do for our CDS20B
Granted, I don't remember everything. I'm still surprised at the things I learn today about the CDS, of which I had never heard before. There's truly quite a lot of History from such a small community...
And now I'll stop stealing this thread, lest the moderators kick me out
"I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country."
-- Philip "Linden" Rosedale, interview to Wired, 2004-05-08
PGP Fingerprint: CE8A 6006 B611 850F 1275 72BA D93E AA3D C4B3 E1CB