Fixing the Electoral Commission

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

WHEREAS the electoral commission was a very, very noble idea added with the introduction of the secret ballot AND

WHEREAS in the 2 elections it was in place, it's consequence was mainly to delay the formation of the government AND

WHEREAS in the 46th Cosa, the electoral commission found no errors in the ballot AND

WHEREAS now, in the 47th Cosa, the vast majority (almost 90%) of the voters either voted publicly (allowing anyone to review their vote) or using an automated form which eliminates any human error but all ballots currently need to be validated anyway AND

WHEREAS without the electoral commission, votes made with the online voting form could in practice be 100% secret without even the Secretary of State knowing their content AND

WHEREAS all incoming emails of the chancery are now open for review by the electoral commission anyway AND


THEREFORE the Ziu resolves that section 6 of Article VII of the Organic Law which currently reads:

Votes for the Cosa may be submitted either publicly or privately. Votes submitted privately shall be submitted to and available only to an Electoral Commission, consisting of the Secretary of State and the three Justices of the Uppermost Court. Should any Justice be unavailable to serve on the Commission, the King shall name a Magistrate judge of a subordinate court to replace that Justice, but should no Magistrate such judge likewise be available, the Commission shall serve as otherwise constituted. It shall be a criminal act, punishable as determined by law, for the contents of any such vote to be revealed by any member of the Commission to any other person. The members of the said Electoral Commission shall independently confirm the final tally and together shall certify the election.

Is replaced with:

Votes for the Cosa may be submitted either publicly or privately. Votes submitted privately in a non-fully automated process involving only the voter shall be submitted to and available only to an Electoral Commission as ballots are received, consisting of the Secretary of State and the three Justices of the Uppermost Court. Should any Justice be unavailable to serve on the Commission, the King shall name a Magistrate judge of a subordinate court to replace that Justice, but should no Magistrate such judge likewise be available, the Commission shall serve as otherwise constituted. It shall be a criminal act, punishable as determined by law, for the contents of any such vote to be revealed by any member of the Commission to any other person. The members of the said Electoral Commission shall independently confirm the final tally and together shall review the election.
Failure of the electoral commission shall not delay the normal operations of the Kingdom, but any errors identified shall be corrected accordingly, notwithstanding any articles or law preventing the correction of the error (including any articles preventing the removal of an elected official from office).

Proposed by Marti-Pair Furxheir (Secretary of State)

(this has now been Clarked)

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

A few things to note here:

This would make having MPF as the SoS essentially an Organic requirement, or someone of similar technical ability. The wording is hard to parse, but it appears to require a partially-automated voting process privy only to the voter. That is not a negligible feat, since it must also be open to verification by the Commission (even if after the fact). If MPF quit or became ill, I daresay we'd actually have to pay to hire someone to try to meet this bar, since we could no longer just count them manually. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but it's worth noting.

As far as I can tell, this language also would inadvertently permit a corrupt Secretary of State to nullify the Election Commission entirely. I know this obviously was not intended, but if the provisional election results rule the roost while the election is being certified (or in the absence of that certification entirely), and since the SoS will have control of all the data, then he can simply always find some reason not to make it possible for the Commission to do their job. That is to say, if some future and different SoS was more corrupt than MPF, he could give his own preferred party a dozen extra votes, and then never get around to getting the Commission in gear or letting them do their job. He could at least buy a month or two of substantially increased political power.

Again, these are just things I'm noting about the law, as a private citizen (since the Cosa is dissolved).

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

Sept 7, 2014 15:53:04 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

A few things to note here:

This would make having MPF as the SoS essentially an Organic requirement, or someone of similar technical ability. The wording is hard to parse, but it appears to require a partially-automated voting process privy only to the voter. That is not a negligible feat, since it must also be open to verification by the Commission (even if after the fact). If MPF quit or became ill, I daresay we'd actually have to pay to hire someone to try to meet this bar, since we could no longer just count them manually. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but it's worth noting.

No it doesn't, it only means that ballots that ARE fully automated are not audited. If another SoS doesn't automate ANY ballots, all private ones would be audited.

It's just a way to protect the privacy of the ballots from the SoS himself first, and the UC second, while accelerating the validation,.

As far as I can tell, this language also would inadvertently permit a corrupt Secretary of State to nullify the Election Commission entirely. I know this obviously was not intended, but if the provisional election results rule the roost while the election is being certified (or in the absence of that certification entirely), and since the SoS will have control of all the data, then he can simply always find some reason not to make it possible for the Commission to do their job. That is to say, if some future and different SoS was more corrupt than MPF, he could give his own preferred party a dozen extra votes, and then never get around to getting the Commission in gear or letting them do their job. He could at least buy a month or two of substantially increased political power.

Again, these are just things I'm noting about the law, as a private citizen (since the Cosa is dissolved).

Oh, that, I didn't think about it. It makes a LOT of sense. I tried to think about all of the ways someone could corrupt the system and I didn't think about that one.

Good catch!

Perhaps make it mandatory that ALL ballots be available to the EC within 24 hours of request? Within 48 hours of the closing of the election?

And perhaps I could make it so that automated ballots CAN be audited but don't HAVE to be. That way, the EC could catch a corrupt SoS in the act, but wouldn't have to systematically verify ALL automated votes.

In my case, there is even a self-validation system for the voters to validate their vote, but others might skip it...

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Sept 7, 2014 17:10:30 GMT -6 Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H. said:

Sept 7, 2014 15:53:04 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

A few things to note here:

This would make having MPF as the SoS essentially an Organic requirement, or someone of similar technical ability. The wording is hard to parse, but it appears to require a partially-automated voting process privy only to the voter. That is not a negligible feat, since it must also be open to verification by the Commission (even if after the fact). If MPF quit or became ill, I daresay we'd actually have to pay to hire someone to try to meet this bar, since we could no longer just count them manually. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but it's worth noting.

No it doesn't, it only means that ballots that ARE fully automated are not audited. If another SoS doesn't automate ANY ballots, all private ones would be audited.

It's just a way to protect the privacy of the ballots from the SoS himself first, and the UC second, while accelerating the validation,.

I understand the intent, but I'm just going by what is actually in the text here of the proposed change. That may be different from what you want to have happen, but as far as I can tell, your suggested changes require that all secret ballots that are to be validated - that is to say, all secret ballots! - go through a "non-fully automated process involving only the voter."

You could also read it to say that any secret ballot that doesn't go through that process doesn't have to be validated, incidentally. Not sure about your wording. Hmm.

Sept 7, 2014 17:10:30 GMT -6 Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H. said:

As far as I can tell, this language also would inadvertently permit a corrupt Secretary of State to nullify the Election Commission entirely. I know this obviously was not intended, but if the provisional election results rule the roost while the election is being certified (or in the absence of that certification entirely), and since the SoS will have control of all the data, then he can simply always find some reason not to make it possible for the Commission to do their job. That is to say, if some future and different SoS was more corrupt than MPF, he could give his own preferred party a dozen extra votes, and then never get around to getting the Commission in gear or letting them do their job. He could at least buy a month or two of substantially increased political power.

Again, these are just things I'm noting about the law, as a private citizen (since the Cosa is dissolved).

Oh, that, I didn't think about it. It makes a LOT of sense. I tried to think about all of the ways someone could corrupt the system and I didn't think about that one.

Good catch!

Perhaps make it mandatory that ALL ballots be available to the EC within 24 hours of request? Within 48 hours of the closing of the election?

And perhaps I could make it so that automated ballots CAN be audited but don't HAVE to be. That way, the EC could catch a corrupt SoS in the act, but wouldn't have to systematically verify ALL automated votes.

In my case, there is even a self-validation system for the voters to validate their vote, but others might skip it...

Just trying to help. Personally, I think that it's absolutely the best thing for the whole system to grind to a halt if the Electoral Commission doesn't do their job. They should be doing their job. I know it's boring and kind of sucks, but that spurs us to improve it... not edge around it.

The problem here is the same as in other places: it's not very interesting or fun to be in the Uppermost Cort. People have been spitballing ideas about how to fix that, including opening politics back up to them (as uncomfortable an idea as that is, yipes), but I'm not sure of any solid answers yet.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Ok, I am sure I just posted a message, but proboards apparently has forgotten about it, so here it goes again:

What bothers me about this proposal is that it seems to be going for a less than ideal solution, while a much simpler alternative is available:
We could just give the EC access as soon as the voting starts and send them an extra reminder about their duties and an extra reminder to inform them when they have access. This time some members of the EC only knew about their obligation or having access a week after the elections. After that, things so far actually went pretty quickly. Before we compromise on the validation of the election or the nonpartisanship of the UC, lets first try finding the more optimal procedure within the bounds of the current law. If we try this and then it still doesnt work that's when I'll consider supporting this. Not now.

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

Why not? Because I've been crowing about using a solution like yours, Gluc, for a good while now and it's been ignored.

[Ián B. Anglatzarâ]

It does sound like the obvious solution, apart from one thing: It allows more people to see how the election is going, doesn't it?

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Sept 12, 2014 3:22:36 GMT -6 Ián B. Anglatzarâ said:

It does sound like the obvious solution, apart from one thing: It allows more people to see how the election is going, doesn't it?

At a minimum, I'd say earlier access to voting results would be incompatible with proposals to allow UC justices to be more involved in politics, and also should require limiting the electoral commission to the SoS and UC justices (not allowing magistrates to fill vacancies). The magistrate serving on the electoral commission this time is also a party leader, which I personally don't have a problem with for after-the-fact validation but would be more concerning if we had real-time validation.

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

Sept 12, 2014 4:22:50 GMT -6 Sir C. M. Siervicül said:

Sept 12, 2014 3:22:36 GMT -6 Ián B. Anglatzarâ said:

It does sound like the obvious solution, apart from one thing: It allows more people to see how the election is going, doesn't it?

At a minimum, I'd say earlier access to voting results would be incompatible with proposals to allow UC justices to be more involved in politics, and also should require limiting the electoral commission to the SoS and UC justices (not allowing magistrates to fill vacancies). The magistrate serving on the electoral commission this time is also a party leader, which I personally don't have a problem with for after-the-fact validation but would be more concerning if we had real-time validation.

Very much in agreement.