The Call Me Maybe Not Act

[Glüc da Dhi]

Whereas hey I just met you, and this law is crazy, and

Whereas the law requires the chancery to provide phone details in order to vote on the election, and

Whereas this law has not been put into practice in the last election^[1], and

Whereas in preceding elections a phone number was only provided for North America, and

Whereas voting by phone currently requires a voter to know their PSC, and

Whereas knowing your PSC implies that you have access to an email address which is known by the chancery, and

Whereas this means you are able to vote by email, and

Whereas removing the vote by phone option therefore does not remove an option for voters who would otherwise not be able to vote, and

Whereas no complaints were received about the lacking vote by phone option, and

Whereas the SoS cannot be forced to sacrifice his own privacy by posting a personal phone number on the internet, and

Whereas neither the current budget nor any other budget in recent years provided funds for the chancery to buy a separate phone for the elections, and

Whereas if we really want the vote by phone option the government should provide the funds, and

Whereas Talossa has much better things to spend its money on, and

Whereas I cannot find the option of voting through the database anywhere in the law, now

Therefore Lex.B.3. which currently reads:

"Any citizen of Talossa may download, make copies of, and distribute said ballot. Any citizen of Talossa may vote on the ballot and send it in, by mail, to the Office of the Secretary of State. In addition, the Office of the Secretary of State shall make available telephone and e-mail contact information so voters can cast their votes through those media. Votes posted on Wittenberg shall also be counted."

shall be amended to read:

"Any citizen of Talossa may download, make copies of, and distribute said ballot. Any citizen of Talossa may vote on the ballot and send it in, by mail, to the Office of the Secretary of State. In addition, the Office of the Secretary of State shall make available telephone and e-mail contact information so voters can cast their votes through those media that medium. The Office of the Secretary of State may additionally opt to provide other secure means to vote such as an electronic form on a website or a phone number. Votes posted on Wittenberg shall also be counted."

Uréu q'estadra så:
Glüc da Dhi - Secretary of State


[1] link

[Trotxâ]

I would second this in the Senats if a second was required.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

I have no problem with the specific change proposed here, but this proposal highlights for me how B.3 and B.4 are broadly inconsistent with B.6. The PSC rules introduced by B.6 were glommed on top of existing election law without much thought as to how they would interact. The provision in B.3 for people to copy and distribute ballots for others to send in by mail (which was intended to allow Ben to help his offline friends/family in the GTA vote even when he wasn't SoS) does no good if the ballots won't have the voter's PSC and therefore won't be counted. And the statement in B.4 about votes being presumed valid conflicts with the requirement in B.6 that votes cast off Witt be presumed invalid if they don't have the voter's PSC.

One way to resolve the inconsistency would be to delete B.3, delete the first sentence of B.4 and move the rest to a new B.6.4 (which would become B.4.4), and change the first sentence of B.6.3 (which would become B.4.3) to read as follows: "Every ballot or vote cast on Wittenberg, and every ballot or vote that contains the voter's correct PSC and is cast by mail, email, or other method provided for by the Secretary of State in accordance with B.11.3 shall be counted." B.11.3 refers, of course, to what is now B.13.3.

I would also be open to more broadly changing the requirements for PSCs. If someone votes using the email address on file with the Chancery or by logging into the database, they shouldn't need a PSC. If they have access to the email account on file with the Chancery they have access to the PSC anyways. And if they no longer have access to that email account, the PSC process is only as strong as whatever process the SoS uses to accept a new email address for that citizen.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Agreed with all the above, but considering how the bill is structured now, focusing on a more substantive change (no longer requiring a phone option), I think it would be best to clark this first and then write another bill to solve the already existing inconsistencies later.