I come before you to propose what I believe is a much needed amendment to the Elections Act.
In addition to cleaning up some textual ambiguity around the distinction between the first and second rounds of the Delegate election, this amendment would limit voting in the gameside round of the Delegate election to members whose WA nation is located in TSP when nominations open (or deployed members of the SPSF). We already impose a similar limitation upon forum-side voting, namely that only members who were citizens when nominations open can vote in forum-side elections. This rule is designed to prevent vote importation and manipulation, but is woefully inadequate with respect to to the Delegate election without a concomitant limitation on gameside voting. It is far easier to import votes gameside, where there is no requirement of CitComm review before one is eligible to vote. Thus, under our current system, the potential for manipulation of our Delegate election is a substantial security vulnerability. I urge the Assembly to address it swiftly.
Edit: As a technical matter, I understand that it is possible to generate a list of WA nations in the region at a given moment. To effectuate this amendment, the EC would generate and post that list at the beginning of nominations, which would constitute the set of “eligible voters” in the gameside round. Then it would simply be a matter of excluding votes cast by nations that don’t appear on that list.
How will you monitor (4) 4? It seems to me to be tedious work with a danger of being proposed back to the way it was before due to how tedious it is to manage.
I imagine it might be best to change this to “at the moment the nominations period…”? Otherwise “before” is a very long and unclear period of time.
See this point above. It should be relatively easy to automate with some spreadsheet lookups. And I understand that our current EC is an Excel guru.
A good point. Interestingly enough, this language was copied from the provision limiting voting in forum-side elections to those who were citizens before the election begins. So we should make the change to both for consistency. I’ll implement these edits momentarily.
I don’t think it’s any more tedious than the bookkeeping that we already do with limiting voting to citizens accepted by the time each election starts. It’s probably less tedious, actually, since there’s less to think about; we have to maintain multiple lists of citizens but there’s only one authoritative list of WA member nations currently in our region.
Now that I’m back from LOA and can make a full response. I am not sure how this changes much? I don’t really see the necessity of adding this in when it seems we are just adding more work and bloat to our electoral system. It also seems the work for this is too complex and too much work to deal with.
Rather than continue the somewhat idle speculation, I would appreciate the input of our current and former EC, @lordnwahs and @KrisKringle as to whether this change would require such an onerous process as to substantially outweigh the security benefits.
I understand that it’s technically feasible to get the list of WA nations in the region on a given date. If so, it’d be fairly simple to incorporate that to the EMP.
I have spent the past few days considering this amendment, as I was genuinely unsure where I stood. On the one hand, I agree that it would strengthen election security, and the integrity of our elections is something I value highly. On balance, however, I believe the amendment would unduly burden gameside participation.
In particular, it would require gameside voters to be admitted to the WA a full eight days before voting begins, and it assumes they are keeping up with developments on the forum, which they often are not. As a result, even if well intentioned, this risks disqualifying a significant portion of the Coalition from voting in the second round.
I also believe the first round, where only citizens may vote, already provides sufficient protection against the security risks associated with the second round. The amendment would not eliminate the possibility of voter importation either, it would simply require it to be more carefully planned.
For those reasons, I would have to vote against should it come to a vote.
We used to only have polls open to WA Members. Maybe it’s a way to encourage more residents to join the WA and participate in WA voting. I mean, if someone is voting for the WA Delegate gameside, who is not a WA Member, the purpose is well and truly defeated.
Support for this amendment. The security concerns of foreign intervention with no other protection outweigh the argument that a “significant portion of the Coalition“ [citation needed] could be disenfranchised.
It does not strike me as unduly burdensome to expect that individuals voting for our head of state be aware of the existence of the election eight days before it takes place. Any burden seems even more de minimis in light of the extensive, regionwide messaging announcing that elections are coming up and explaining the requirements to vote.
To be sure, this would limit the ability of nations founded in TSP during the election process to vote in the gameside Delegate election. But we already impose precisely the same limitation on voting in the PM election. A nation founded during the eight day election process will not be able to vote for PM. True, that imposes a burden on those individuals’ rights of franchise. But that burden is outweighed by the significant electoral security concerns with vote importation. And those concerns are far, far greater gameside. While the PM is de jure the most powerful government official, the Delegate has de facto control over gameside powers; risks of foreign interference with those powers are more significant than with primarily forumside governance. More importantly, vote importation is far easier gameside, where one need only apply to the WA; at least the PM election requires review by CitComm before one can vote. Nevertheless, we impose a temporal limitation on PM voting. It is very hard to see why we would not do the same for the Delegacy given its greater de facto powers and the ease of vote manipulation.
That is, of course, true. But I don’t see how it really matters. The fact that proposed legislation partially addresses a problem rather than completely solves it does not seem a particularly compelling reason to oppose the legislation.
The only way of completely solving this problem would be to eliminate entirely the gameside round of voting. Indeed, that is precisely what every other GCR and major UCR have done. We are the only ones who have chosen to expose ourselves to the security risk inherent in permitting gameside participation in choosing our Delegate. Nevertheless, I have not proposed bringing TSP in line with our peers, as I understand the value in permitting gameside input on a key gameside position like Delegate. Instead, I have attempted to find a middle ground that mitigates the risks associated with gameside voting while preserving the gameside round.