By-election Proposal

[Beathan]

Whereas, the 16th RA was elected through an irregular procedure; and

Whereas candidates and citizens who had been informed they could vote were excluded from voting or standing in the general election for the 16th RA; and

Whereas, the members of the 16th RA recognize that their election is subject to doubts as to its legitimacy or electoral mandate as a result;

The Executive shall convene a by-election, which shall be held over a 168 hour period beginning on January 1, 2012. All members of the 16th RA, as convened after the general election for the 16th RA, who wish to continue as members of the 16th RA shall run in this by-election. Additionally, any citizen who was a citizen on or before December 3rd, 2011 may declare and run in this by-election. Such declarations shall be in accordance with the terms of the Constitution and shall be submitted prior to December 24, 2011. Members of the RA as elected in the general election need not declared and are presumed to be candidates, but may undeclared by submitting their intent not to run to the SC.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Heh. The spirit of this proposal is definitely a good one to sort this mess out, but I'm afraid that it's highly irregular.

First, it assumes that the 16th RA was elected through an irregular procedure. There was no election yet, and no formal decision on irregularities by the SC.

The second assumption also doesn't have any "proof" attached to it. Sure, we all heard "rumours" that some candidates and citizens have been promised the vote (by whom? where did they get that promise?) and were later informed that they couldn't vote (who told them that? The booths are still not out there; how do they know they cannot vote?). None of that was presented as evidence at a formal audience in the SC, or, if it was, the SC meeting records don't show much. All we know is that some people read something on the forums which led them to believe they had some rights which they hadn't, but all that was not adequately proven either. At least that's not how I read the decisions made by the SC, but perhaps they're planning to submit a few more notices on their forum (the last one was from November 12th) of which I'm not aware.

I'm not exactly sure if the Executive can convene a by-election under those two assumptions. After all, the Constitutional provision for a by-election is that RA member seats are left vacant, and there is no other provision.

So... a proposal to do an un-Constitutional election... based on two unproven assumptions... is a rather weak proposal for a bill, IMHO.

Perhaps you could achieve the same result by proposing that all RA members currently in office resign, following Arria's lead, which would precipitate a by-election before the actual election but because of the time by-elections require to be arranged, that would mean a few more weeks... lol. But I guess I'm stretching the letter of the law too much. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the RA can approve a bill with a majority vote where every RA member agrees to resign!

[Beathan]

Gwyn,

I'd accept, as a friendly amendment, a proposal to drop any, or even all, of the "Whereas" statements.

That said, I think that the moment the polls did not go up in due course, the election became irregular (even if it were innocently irregular -- which it may have been). I also know that new citizens were told that they could participate in elections during the marketing of the CDS to them -- and that limitations were not explained (to be fair, limitations were not known or recognized). Also, Soro's post confirming candidates was not challenged until it was too late for alternative candidates to declare. I declared BECAUSE there were so many new people, and I would not have declared otherwise. I know of several people who would have declared but for the announcement that twelve candidates, including new people, were running. I don't think those points are really in dispute by anyone.

Beathan

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Then you'll have to change the Constitution stating that the RA is allowed to set dates for by-elections. Currently that is the prerrogative of the SC only, and only in one case: when RA seats are vacant.

I would seriously advice to refrain from doing so, however. The reason why the dates where fixed in the Constitution was exactly because before that, it was the RA who set the dates for election, and this got us into a terrible mess (what happens when the RA "forgets" to set the dates? You see why it was dropped...). It was also found that if it's the SC setting the dates, they could abuse that power to either discharge a RA they didn't like, or to extend their term if they liked them very much.

To prevent either from happening, we fixed the dates in the Constitution and do not allow any bills to override them in any case. The sole exception was when the server running the ballot system utterly failed, and, even so, it was with great reluctance that this exception was kept, because it could be abused easily — what exactly is a "server failure"?

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Oh, btw, I'm specifically ignoring the current issue. Focusing too much on the current issue by trying to "fix" things that will only get us in trouble in the future is never a good thing

Instead, we should just go along with things as they are and fix them afterwards. After all, there is nothing really to "fix" in this case... a very minor bill might be enacted in the future that two people, or two different branches, might have to review the citizen's list and the list of candidates to see if all are valid, but, in truth, that's the SC's power right now. Of course the SC can make mistakes. We have yet to prove they made a mistake this time. If the SC makes a mistake, we have mechanisms to deal with that as well. But of course all can be dealt with; we don't really need more legislation for that.

[Beathan]

Interesting point. I will have to think about that. I think that the SC has the power to set a date to address a prospective vacancy, however. If I can't get the whole RA to agree to have a 7 seat prospective vacancy, I still intend to announce my own prospective vacancy unilaterally to allow for the by-election to occur.

I would accept a change to this to allow the SC to set a by-election and the related dates within outer limits set by the RA. I think that would pass muster. So -- language could be changed to "a date set by the SC no later than ..." Would that work?

Beathan

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

I think that the SC has the power to set a date to address a prospective vacancy, however.

I think that it will be up to them... usually people say, "after date X, I will vacate my seat at the RA for reason Y" and that is enough for the SC to call a by-election. What I mean is that we never encountered a case (so far!) where RA members suddenly left without a trace, forcing us to question somehow if the seat was vacant or not.

In this sense, all vacancies so far were "prospective vacancies" — "if RA member Z fails to appear on date X for reason Y, then we will set the by-election date". But it's up to the SC to interpret what constitues an effective vacancy and what is a prospective vacancy, and if they feel they are entitled to set dates in either case...