Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

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Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Gwyneth Llewelyn »

Dear citizens,

This is the final draft for the recommendations of the Election Commission. I'd appreciate if the participants would be so nice as to review it to make sure I didn't do anything wrong! Also, I'm sure that additional comments will be welcome, even from citizens that didn't participate on the in-world meetings.

Some notes:

1. There are two alternatives presented for the date for the first RA meeting. No consensus was found between the alternatives. The RA will have to pick the one they prefer.

2. There were just filler spaces listed for the dates for the Chancellor election, and I promised to the commission that I would look the dates up and just fill it. It happens that there is a rather precise language on the Constitution to define the formula for the dates. So instead of using the suggestion in the previous draft document, I just copied & pasted the terms already in the Constitution. However, there is a catch: RA members announce their candidacy to the Dean of the SC, while the candidates to Chancellor announce their candidacy to the LRA!! This means that although it was the wish of this commission to have the Chancellor & RA campaign and elections to coincide precisely on the February term, this will only happen if RA and SC are in sync with the dates. None of this was reviewed by the commission, so I appreciate any comments!

3. Unfortunately, when looking at the dates suggested for the first RA meeting (because we all assumed this would get fixed on the final revision), I have found out that this changes more things than I thought and might even require a constitutional change. Previously, elections would finish two weeks before the new term, as set by the Constitution — but the SC overrode that for the 12th term. Now we're suggesting that the term begins either on the day after elections or a week later. This requires changing the wording on the Constitution, and not merely passing a new law. Sorry about that. The RA will have to do the extra work :)

Cheers,

- Gwyn

---

1. Explaining the voting system better

It was found out that STV is not really well-understood by most, and although an open-source tool exists for validating the results (OpenSTV, used by the Dean to validate the last elections), explaining how the system works is beyond the abilities of most.

This commission suggests that volunteers, knowledgeable about the STV, write a short voters' guide explaining how the ranking influences the result, to be published on the CDS Portal and the Official CDS Forums

Due to the inherent complexity of STV, this commission will research alternative voting methods this term and report to the RA.

2. Campaigning and Role of the SC in the election process

It was felt that the role of the SC in the election process should just be limited to overseeing the campaigning. This leads itself to the following bill:

Campaigning Act

1. Campaigning starts officially two weeks before the last election day.
2. Campaigning ought to be supervised by the SC as they see fit, trying to keep a balance between limiting spam and allowing free access of candidates to do their campaigning. The RA might pass further legislation regarding campaigning, to be enforced by the SC.
3. Candidates would be allowed ONE group notice, with an attached notecard, announcing their candidacy and stating their platform; no further campaigning/political group notices are allowed. However, if candidates wish to "sponsor" a general event and use it to raise awareness as candidates, that's fine — as an event, it will be announced as usually on any official CDS channels for communication.
4. Each candidate should be allowed to post their own notice.
5. The Executive should collect notecards/pictures from candidates and set up a board (possibly at several locations) where citizens can learn about what the candidates stand for and organize events where citizens can fairly meet all candidates.

3. Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA), Citizen Eligibility and Election Dates

The issue to be discussed is that the appointment/election of a new LRA is not codified in law now that we're using a STV system. Traditionally, the LRA was "the candidate with the most votes" (who, under St. League, was also a member of the winning faction). Since we have no more factions and STV doesn't translate the results directly into a "candidate with most votes", a difficulty was created — the LRA is the person in charge for managing all meetings for the RA since Day One, but if the first meeting is the one that actually appoints a LRA, this method is flawed.

Recent discussions at the Scientific Council also rejected the SC's interference with the RA's meeting schedule as being unconstitutional.

Thus, a proposal was made for codifying more precisely the dates after the election (other dates, like the citizen roll call, the dates for announcing candidacy, and the actual election dates, were already codified in law):

New Term Act

1 (Alternative A) The last day the voting booths are open is always a Saturday (until noon). The newly elected Representative Assembly will automatically meet on the Saturday on the next week at noon, unless the newly elected RA members decide, by majority, in the 24 hours following the closing of the voting booths, to meet at a different date, which cannot be set beyond 10 days after the voting booths were closed. [no consensus on this recommendation, thus the alternative below]
1 (Alternative B) The last day the voting booths are open is always a Saturday (until noon). The newly elected Representative Assembly will automatically meet on Sunday at noon [24 hours after the voting booths closed], unless the newly elected RA members decide, by majority, in the 24 hours following the closing of the voting booths, to meet at a different date, which cannot be set beyond 10 days after the voting booths were closed. [no consensus on this recommendation, thus the alternative]
ADD. Candidates for the Leadership of the Representative Assembly should publicly announce their intentions on the offical CDS forums before the election booths open [no consensus on this recommendation — proposed by Solomon Mosely].
2. The agenda for the first term meeting mandatorily includes:
a) Inauguration Ceremony with Administration of the Oath to the newly elected Representative Assembly members by the Dean of the Scientific Council;
b) Election of the new Leader of the Representative Assembly, who will immediately chair the meeting;
c) State of the Nation address.
3. The Inauguration Ball will be held on the weekend of the first RA meeting for the new term.

4. Chancellor election

This point was the one that received many fundamental changes. The following proposal will probably require a lot more discussion, but an approach was made to turn the CDS into a presidentialist system, where the Chancellor becomes elected by universal suffrage, and not by a college of electors.

One of the reasons for the proposed change is to deal better with a factionless Representative Assembly. The previous model relied on the assumption that the winning faction would in effect nominate the Chancellor, as is the case in most parliamentary systems, thus having a RA-friendly Chancellor for a term. With the abolishment of factions, that model does not make sense.

Chancellor Election Act

Constitutional changes:

Art II, Section 5 - Deleted and replaced with:

1. The Chancellor of the CDS shall be elected by universal suffrage of all citizens from among any CDS citizen who shall make application to the RA.
2. The Chancellor will serve a term ending with the election of the next Chancellor.
3. The Chancellor may not be elected to or serve on the Representative Assembly, nor serve on the Scientific Council. The Chancellor may hold a position in the Artisanal Collective but may not vote therein.

New Law:

1. Chancellors are elected for a 12-month term and cannot hold two terms in succession. Term starts simultaneously with the Representative Assembly February term.
2. Any citizen may become a candidate by declaring themselves by a message to the Leader of the Representative Assembly, two weeks before the voting booths open. On the next day, all applicants will be listed by the LRA, and campaigning begins one week before the voting booths open. Elections shall be held over a 168 hour period beginning at noon SLT on the Saturday before the 16th of the month prior to the new Chancellor taking office. In the event of a server outage which prevents citizens from casting ballots and which lasts more than 12 hours, the Dean of the SC has the authority to adjust or extend the election schedule. The new term will start on February 1. [not reviewed by the commission and rewritten to comply with the existing language on the constitution for the RA members]
3. In case the Chancellor leaves its office or is removed from it mid-term, a special Chancellor by-election will be immediately called for by the RA, which will open new applications on the day notice was given and close applications after a week. [present in the last draft but not discussed by the commission]

---

Note that the suggestion of a 12-month term for the Chancellor follows the recommendations on the next item. This will mean that candidates for the Chancellorship will present the budget as part of their campaigning, and thus also attract votes depending more on the kind of things they want to implement during their office (and less on their ideology).

4. Suggesting a limit of successive mandates

The reason why no term limits were set in the CDS was due to the historically very low number of volunteers interested in participating in Government; on the other hand, this gave citizens the perception that always the same people are in power with little rotativity, thus discouraging their participation. As the CDS increased its population, the objection against limiting terms seems to have weakened. This commission thus proposed the following bill:

Term Limits Act

No directly elected office in the CDS Government can be held by the same citizen more than two terms in succession, except for the Chancellor, who cannot hold more than one.

On the other hand, the major issue found by this commission is not really about "people in power who remain in power", but in a perceived abuse of power — expressed through incivilities in public, for example — to officials who have repeatedly been elected. Thus, this commission also recommends that the Scientific Council creates a new forum for discussion on ethics.

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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Patroklus Murakami »

I want to pick up on items 4 (Chancellor Election) and 5 (Term Limits) before these are discussed at the next RA meeting.

These are quite big changes and it would not be good if these went through just because they came out of the Commission process without due consideration.

The first involves a fundamental change to a presidential system in the CDS. This is a huge change. It's bigger than the merger with AA but so far has had no discussion except in the Commission meetings which, with all due respect to Gwyn and the other participants, did not attract a large number of CDS citizens.

The Chancellor is currently elected by the RA acting as a kind of 'electoral college'. The Executive was devised at a time when we did not have an Executive Branch of government but where executive powers were dispersed between the RA, the Scientific Council and the Guild (since abolished).

The Executive we have is a compromise between those of us who favoured Cabinet Government and those who favoured a Presidential system. I've skimmed the transcripts of the Election Commission but I can't find the reasons why people want to change this. Is it just because we had deadlock over the Chancellor election in the RA this term? It would be good to know why people think this would be an improvement.

The term limits proposal is just a very, very bad idea. We already have a ridiculously top-heavy bureaucracy with way too many people involved in government. The rule that the RA must be about 10% of the population inhibits choice. It means that 15-20% of our citizens need to be willing to stand for the RA in order to get a decent choice at election time. Look at the last election - choose 13 out of 15. Look at the election before that, we had one person stand! We had to run rings round the Constitution to prevent deadlock. This rule would mean that even if you had good RA reps who had done a good job for two terms, and who the voters wanted to return to office and few other takers for the posts they would have to step down. It's up to the citizens to decide if they want people in or out, not legislators. If voters choose to elect people three, four or even fifteen times in succession, why should there be a rule to prevent that?

A better solution would be to make the RA smaller. With our current size, a five person RA would do the job perfectly. Now, if only someone could draft a constitutional amendment to enact this....

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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Gwyneth Llewelyn »

The notion that the Chancellor would be selected by an electoral college made a lot of sense in the days that factions were elected to the RA. The idea was that the winning faction would also select the Executive and that there would be mutual support — the Chancellor, after all, would most likely be either a member of the winning faction or someone closely aligned to that faction, earning its trust. It would make sense that the factions would draw up not only a legislative, but also executive, manifesto, and, if winning the elections, they would ensure that proper legislation would pass to have "their" Chancellor execute what needed to be implemented. Citizens, under a faction system, select ideas — an agenda — and the rest is pretty much implementation details. Some people are necessary to implement legislation to pursue that agenda, and they become RA members. Other people are necessary to actually execute the implementation in practice, and they would go to serve in the Executive branch. The will of the people would thus be polled in a single election which would decide the overall strategy of the CDS's government for a term, just requiring two branches to apply that strategy. This is a typical model for a Parliamentary system, and although one could tweak it here and there, it made sense to be done that way.

I personally still like this approach :) and I'm by far not convinced that a faction-less system is a "better" one. The last term, the first without factions, was one of the most violent and aggressive ones ever. We might shrug it off using whatever excuses we wish, but it's an undeniable fact. This term seems to be a bit more peaceful, but... we'll see what happens.

Nevertheless, under a faction-less system, having an electoral college seems awkward. The Chancellor to be thus elected will not really have an agenda aligned to any of the RA members (or group of RA members), but be completely independent from it. The Chancellor will, instead, have their own agenda, their own idea on how to implement things, and have absolutely no relationship to the overall strategy and policies set by the RA, except marginally so (by mutual agreement only, but not through any imposition). One might see this as an advantage, as each branch is more independent of the other, and a consensus is required to allow both to align their goals. I personally see it as a disadvantage because we have replaced, not only at the RA level but also at the Executive level, the notion that citizens vote for a project, by replacing it with a bikini contest — whoever is more popular to attract friends to vote for them, wins, no matter what their plans actually are. I won't repeat my arguments from last year :) But, alas, we're a democracy, and the majority voted for bikini contests, so that's what we have now.

But the logical conclusion is that, although citizens will select RA members for their own individual agendas, under the current system they have no direct saying over what agenda the Chancellor is going to bring to a term. This was felt to be rather unfair. It becomes more and more clear that, over time, the role of Chancellor will be the determinant one in the CDS — the Executive is the branch that "does things" while the RA remains, as ever, the branch that "talks about things". It is only fair to give citizens a chance to select the person that "does things" on their behalf; anything short of a direct, universal election for the Chancellor is robbing citizens of that ability to at least select the Chancellor that they want. Since citizens vote for individual RA members, there is no guarantee that citizen's votes for the RA will actually have any influence over which Chancellor is selected. Although "informal groups" exist at the RA, they're not required to exist, and the majority of RA members will also engage in a bikini contest when selecting the Chancellor they like most — not necessarily because that Chancellor might be closely aligned with their own views or not.

The commission thus proposes to give back to the citizens the choice to select whoever is in charge of maintaining the sims on their behalf. It's just that. I'm sorry if it's not been obvious to you before, Pat, but please don't come up with the excuse that it was not given "due consideration". You know I won't tolerate that kind of insinuation :) The agenda for the Election Commission, as well as the reasoning behind why those points ought to be publicly discussed, was posted eons ago. In-world meetings were held, at different hours and days of the week, to give citizens the chance to come and participate. If they didn't participate or didn't comment, one can only assume that they are generally in agreement — not that it wasn't been given "due consideration". I notice that from all CDS citizens you have been the only one so far to come up with an opinion after declining to participate either in-world or on the forum discussions :)

Granted, you can argue now that if the issue is so little relevant that nobody wants to discuss it, then we shouldn't even be talking about it :) It's a good point, and one that I'm not prepared to contradict. In my opinion, of course, I believe that there are some areas where people simple will not participate, no matter for how long the discussion is held open, while on others — for instance, discussing the next sim expansion! — there will be a lively engagement. It's a question of priorities and personal choices, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about this at all...

---

The issue about term limits is a tough one. Whenever the question is raised, everybody who had to serve for more than one term because there never are enough volunteer will raise your argument. On the other hand, everybody who never even considered to run as a candidate, because they view Government offices to be "always in the hands of the privileged few", always claims that we should introduce term limits to give others the choice to run, too, and to remove the impression that the CDS is a stuffy old group of friends who are permanently in power.

Currently, we have plenty of volunteers (as the last meeting showed!), but not always "enough fresh blood". Where is the trade-off? The proposed bit of legislation allows that the "small number of volunteers" switch from Executive to RA every other term, for example, and at least give the impression of a larger amount of rotativity; while if the number of volunteers grows, and it's known that a certain individual will not be able to run again and again, it might encourage others to run as candidates. Note that this will become specially true as the RA shrinks dramatically in size next term. "Popular" candidates as you suggest might thus always get selected for positions in power, but be "forced" to move out from one branch into another...

In any case, it's hard to bring arguments pro or against this idea, since on both sides, we're talking about an emotional issue related to "popular" persons... although, in all fairness, I much rather preferred the time when we voted for ideas, not people. Perhaps this suggestion of limiting terms might weed out "power-mongers". On the other hand, it might also prevent people with good long-term strategic planning to be in office long enough to actually implement them, and, without factions, it will be much harder to get an adequate "successor" (and get people to vote on them!) to continue that work in the same line. So I agree that this is not a clear-cut decision, neither alternative is "best", and that's why iRL the issue is also mostly unsettled. In my country, for instance, only recently local government was restricted to three terms i succession — mostly a political issue, because certain counties have had the same leader for well over 30 years. Surprisingly, all of those exhibit the highest quality of living in my country and the best urban planning — at the cost of losing some democracy in those areas (corruption tends to increase around a leader that won't go away so soon as they are always going to be re-elected by the citizens who really, really love them and their work). Limiting terms is a tough choice and does not always produce the desired result.

Oh, btw, with our current size, the next RA to be elected will have at most 5 to 7 members, there is no need to change that constitutionally :) It will naturally happen.

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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Patroklus Murakami »

Gwyneth Llewelyn wrote:

The commission thus proposes to give back to the citizens the choice to select whoever is in charge of maintaining the sims on their behalf. It's just that. I'm sorry if it's not been obvious to you before, Pat, but please don't come up with the excuse that it was not given "due consideration". You know I won't tolerate that kind of insinuation :) The agenda for the Election Commission, as well as the reasoning behind why those points ought to be publicly discussed, was posted eons ago. In-world meetings were held, at different hours and days of the week, to give citizens the chance to come and participate. If they didn't participate or didn't comment, one can only assume that they are generally in agreement — not that it wasn't been given "due consideration". I notice that from all CDS citizens you have been the only one so far to come up with an opinion after declining to participate either in-world or on the forum discussions :)

Your arguments have merit Gwyn. It may even be the right way forward given the changes on the RA to allow any citizen to stand without needing to belong to a faction. But I've read the Election Commission transcripts. This was an idea mentioned in the first meeting by you and Kas and you both agreed the Chancellor should be directly elected with no discussion of the argument you are presenting here. I don't believe these arguments were picked up on at any of the subsequent meetings, you just happened to have a group of people who see this as desirable.

I understand the attachment to outputs from a Commission when you have taken the time to organise meetings, participate and propose changes but several of these meetings were called at short notice (the first had two attendees). If people did not attend a more reasonable conclusion is that they did not know about them or could not attend rather than that they are 'in agreement'.

I'm presenting my opinion now and I don't see why that should mean it is discounted. I may well be in a minority here (it's been that way before!) It could be that everyone agrees that the Chancellor should be directly elected but I think it might be worth considering the arguments before making that change.

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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Rose Springvale »

i wasn't at that meeting, and i do believe the chancellor should be directly elected. I hope others join this thread if for nothing more than to say that.

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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Gwyneth Llewelyn »

Of course all opinions are welcome, that's not the point; you all know how I'm the first to be happy to start breaking apart RA decisions immediately after they're approved :) Sometimes it's really just to make a point: if we come to a point where everything is written in stone and cannot be changed, we're doomed.

The notion that the Chancellor ought to be elected directly now that we have a factionless system was something that gets casually mentioned on informal contacts between citizens — often after a RA or SC meeting, among chit-chat. The Commission just formalised that wish and suggested a possible implementation. There was no market analysis nor a formal opinion poll — much less a referendum asking citizens if that's what they really wish, just informal chats. While I personally don't claim I have been part of *all* those chats, much less that I have talked (informally) with *all* citizens, nevertheless, up to the meeting, I never found anyone who was outraged at the idea. You're the first one, and I would welcome your arguments against it, so that we can put them side by side and make a better decision. In my experience, it's far better to make an decision when you have both sides of the argument — even if you end up picking one choice, you'll be aware of the pitfalls of disregarding the other side of the argument. So let's hear them.

(And note that for the term limits things are much less fuzzy; I don't even expect that the RA will unanimously vote for them, since there is not a clear consensus on them — everybody seems to prefer different solutions. The suggestion by the Election Commission is just one that barely managed to get a consensus — "the lowest common denominator" — but not even that solution might get a majority vote at the RA)

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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Patroklus Murakami »

I'm sure direct election of the Chancellor will be supported by many. It may even be a good idea at this point in our history. The problem I have is that I have not yet seen any good arguments for the change! It seems to be something that people support (like Rose in her post earlier) but without stating the reasons why.

The arguments I have seen so far are: "It works in the US" and "The RA elections are a beauty contest so we may as well have a beauty contest for Chancellor too". I don't think either of these arguments are valid.

First of all, to be really pedantic, the US does not have a directly-elected President :) The US has an electoral college and, as we have seen recently, that means that a majority of votes cast by electors does not automatically translate into winning the Presidency. The main point is that the US, and a number of other countries, have a Presidential system and it works for them. The UK, and a number of other countries, have a Cabinet system of government and it works for them. Neither of these is a winning argument for the system the CDS should adopt. What we have is a compromise between the two styles of government dating from when we established an executive branch. Why do people feel we need to change this? What are the benefits supposed to be? Why don't we go the other way and fuse the LRA and Chancellor roles in one office?

The second argument is even weaker than the first! The recent RA elections, the first under STV, were the most content-free in recent memory. The shift from faction-based contests to candidate-based contests has led to the kind of personality-based politics we were all concerned about when we last considered this kind of change. Candidates said very little about what they would do and most did not present a programme for legislation. The danger here is that we end up with a contest between cliques of friends rather than a battle of ideas. Now you suggest that we should have more of this? By electing the Chancellor on the same basis? That seems like a step back to me rather than a step forward.

We were quite careful when we established the Chancellor's office. We were very aware that the founders of the project had been worried about the exercise of executive power (this was why executive powers had been shared among several branches). They had good reason to if we consider how Ulrika behaved *without* executive power! We thought quite carefully about the powers the Chancellor should have and the checks and balances necessary. My concern here is that we appear to be about to make a fundamental change but without reasons.

I agree we should hear both sides of the argument. I haven't seen the other side yet though!

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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Delia Lake »

I just read through all the posts of the Election Commission. I commend Gwyn and the other CDS citizens who have participated in these meetings. It looks like you did a lot and are putting forth some worthwhile recommendations.

I would ask, though, that people revisit the implementation portion though.

2. Campaigning ought to be supervised by the SC as they see fit, trying to keep a balance between limiting spam and allowing free access of candidates to do their campaigning. The RA might pass further legislation regarding campaigning, to be enforced by the SC.

and in particular the phrase that Campaigning ought to be supervised by the SC as they see fit. As they see fit is a rather loose term. What do you expect that would cover? The SC has responsibility for moderating and managing the posts on the Forum but no responsibility for the CDS inworld group or any other groups or communications. And the tone and content on a number of the threads have flirted with slander in recent months. Inworld placement of information generally falls under the Exec not the SC. So if this is to work I think it needs to be better clarified with responsibilities laid out in accordance with the powers and responsibilities assigned to the three branches of government in the Constitution.

Also, to Pat's comments about campaigning not working since Factions are no longer required, I disagree that that is the cause. I'd say rather it had to do with the fact that we changed in mid-election from a known though technically not legal campaigning process to a legal but unknown process right in the middle of the election.

This past full term election had a declaration of candidacy deadline of 30 April, with a major change in election campaigning law passed on 9 May! The polls opened on 15 May. So that after the campaigning was already underway, the rules changed. Not only did no one organize any meet the candidates events or citizen candidate discussions with sufficient advanced notice, the SC even though it disagreed with the constitutionality of the assignment of implementation of campaigning on this body, hurriedly gathered statements and photos from the candidates so that the CDS citizenry would not have been completely disenfranchised by not being able to have any information about candidate positions. If the election was voted on personality it was almost wholly due to last minute legislation that while needed and well thought out in what it covered, was poorly considered in so far as the how it would happen...in so far as the implementation went. And then to have this take effect when the campaign had already, what did you expect? Confusion! Of course the campaigning wasn't as effective or meaningful as it should be. How could it possibly have been under those stressed and uncertain circumstances?

Elections are very important. Campaigning, not only informing the citizenry but also hearing the views of the citizens as well is very important. How this happens needs to be much more defined than as the SC sees fit.

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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Patroklus Murakami »

I'm still not seeing any arguments in favour of changing to direct election of the Chancellor beyond the ones we have already seen in this thread and which I have responded to.

What are they? Or is this proposal just change for the sake of change?

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Re: Election Commission — term limits?

Post by Jamie Palisades »

As a clarification, I was not clear from Gwyn's original post whether the term limits recommendation, for RA members and Chancellors, places a proposed limit on total terms, or only on successive terms.

For example: Assume that I was elected Chancellor in the first half of 2011, and Gwyneth was elected to the RA. In the second half of 2011, she runs again and wins again. Under the new rules, the Chancellor serves for a year (more on that below). So in the first half of 2012, under the proposed rule, both Gwyneth and I would meet the term limits -- I could not run again for Chancellor, and she could not run again for RA in that election. However:
a. Could i run for RA then? Could she run for Chancellor? Or would we be term-limited from ANY elected job in the first election of 2012?
b. Is the term limit a lifetime rule? In 2013, could we both again again for "our" old jobs?

By the way, I have no intent to run. Just asking to make sure the proposed law is clearly stated.
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Last edited by Jamie Palisades on Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Election Commission — Chancellor 12 month term

Post by Jamie Palisades »

One of the proposals in Gwyn's report is that Chancellors serve for 12 months, not 6.
I can see advantages to this, for continuity.
But I also wonder whether, in virtual SL social expectations, that's a very long term of duty commitment, and might discourage some candidates.
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Re: Election Commission — Chancellor direct election

Post by Jamie Palisades »

I might agree with the Forum Wizard on some things.
I understand the arguments for direct election, and find some attractive. But I am not yet sure I have heard how that's expected to be better than selection by the RA. Do we think different or more people would stand for election? Do we think that different sorts of people would win?
If direct election is used, I'd suggest you consider staggering the turn-over dates. In a volunteer and high-turnover virtual community, a completely-new RA and completely-new Chancellor both, at the same time, might be tough. One possibility: new RA is seated immediately, new Chancellor takes over a month after election. Or some such.

On other matters, as ever, Pat and I seem to disagree. more on that in the next post.

Regards JP

== My Second Life home is CDS. Retired after three terms
== as chancellor of the oldest self-governing sims in SL.
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Jamie Palisades
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Re: Election Commission — factions

Post by Jamie Palisades »

I found Patroklus' statement above interesting: "The recent RA elections, the first under STV, were the most content-free in recent memory."
Views regarding Al Andalus, last season's hot issue, were not visible in the 2011 election process?
Did faction platforms, which absolutely were more prominent, back when factions were mandatory, actually make any difference in RA behavior?
I'm not so sure. It seemed to me that they showed up once every 6 months, and then usually had no further effect. Factions also often stated, back then, that they would not use their power to unseat members who deviated from the platform.

Regards JP

== My Second Life home is CDS. Retired after three terms
== as chancellor of the oldest self-governing sims in SL.
Soro Dagostino
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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Soro Dagostino »

While I support the concept of direct elections of members of the RA, and would not greatly oppose the election of the Chancellor by the population, I do believe the "faction" concept has its place. Although, in my view, not as the "appointive body," more in the form of a political party, a persuasion point and a place to for folk to meet and focus on ideas that should be supported by the "independent thinking" members of the party/faction.

I have always disagreed with term limits. I think they make for an amateur and fumbling political body. Witness the California Legislature. Can't find its way with out the lobbyist writing the bills! Or their posterior with their hands. I also think that long terms are not honorariums. They are available only to competent and informed individuals who seek to do no evil and who should be put to that test every election.

FWIW -- my $0.02 in a world of experts and political scientist who seem to have taken over good old common sense and turned the world into a debating society.

Soro

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Patroklus Murakami
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Re: Election Commission — Recommendations (final draft)

Post by Patroklus Murakami »

It looks like the RA will vote on direct election of the Chancellor at its meeting today.

It will need a 2/3 vote for the Constitutional Amendment and a simple majority for the election law.

Should there be the votes necessary for this change to take place, I hope the RA will consider what voting method to use in future Chancellor elections. We have, in our past, used preference voting methods such as Borda count (1st choice gets 3 points, 2nd gets 2, 3rd gets 1) or Single Transferable Vote. Both methods tend to favour 'consensus' candidates who most people can accept (because 2nd choices etc are respected) in contrast with 'winner take all, first-past-the-post' which allows a candidate to win with a minority of the vote.

Of course, I hope there *won't* be the votes necessary to make this change :) But... you can't always get what you want!

Honi soit qui mal y pense
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