Rationale
1) The CDS has many enemies who work and conspire endlessly to undermine our democracy and we are obligated to anticipate and thwart any potential efforts which they can make.
2) The CDS has reached a point where our residents no longer maintain sufficient interest in participating in government to gather a sufficient number of candidates to hold a viable, competitive election
3) Our enemies within and without are eager to use this opportunity as a pretext to justify their spurious grievences, necessitating a swift and decisive action from the CDS government.
4) Dwindling citizen interest over the course of 2015 indicates that this state of apathy is a long-term condition, and not a transient phase.
Scope:
This act addresses two concerns.
Short term concern: the legality of the 2015 elections, specifically the legality of the 24th RA, considering the lack of candidates
Long term concerns: citizen interest in participation has evaporated. now is the time to set the legal groundwork for coping with the legal issues surrounding elections held without a sufficient number of candidates, or elections held with uncontested candidates.
Proposal:
The RA will convene an emergency vote to be held over the message board ratifying this act, I ...Han Held...will start that thread. This thread will be for the purposes of voting, not discussion
Rosie Gray will be declared RA, or the office shall be left vacant for 180 days until the spring 2016 elections.
The SC shall declare the 2015 elections suspended for a period of no less than 30 days, and no longer than 180 days. In that time the SC will make statements ...alone or together... which address the following issues:
The constitutional validity of office holders who are elected uncontested.
The legal authority of an RA which has less than 5 members.
The minimum number of members needed to declare the RA legally valid
The steps required to dissolve the RA in the event that 5 candidates are not able to be found
After these issues have been faced, either the SC or a panel of individuals sanctioned by the SC will declare elections resumed.
Postscript:
We are all volunteers and there is nothing which compels us to face hard decisions or to face facts which we are unwilling to face. But by failing to address the lack of participation (both the reasons for it and the legal ramifications of it) we run the risk of this experiment turning into what our critics have always accused of us being: a role-play and not a vital experiment in self-government. Our enemies will be questioning the validity of our elections, it would be so very good of us to consider how we will answer them or if we will simply allow others to believe our critics right.