Througout the recent non-scandal with the Prime Minister, mostly while speculating about what charges Erstavik might bring and how he might justify them, I noticed something, in my opinion, ambiguous about the Criminal Code. Specifically, the criminal element of “recruit[ing] people to vote a particular way.” This would have been much more straightforward under the old system where Legislator status was our citizenship equivalent. With the two separated, and Legislator status being simply signing up for the Assembly as an existing citizen, I think it is much more ambiguous.
Therefore, this is my proposed amendment:
I do not think it should be illegal to “recruit” someone to the Assembly (from the citizenry). Arguably, there could be issues with Assembly packing, but I’d raise a few rebuttals to that: first of all, joining the Assembly is a simple sign-up, the actual barrier to participation, with real screening, is at the citizenship level, making this more apt. Second, any egregious/obvious attempts to pack the Assembly would still fall under the second part of the law, in circumstances where a strong enough case exists.
As for my inclusion of “to the region or citizenry” – the latter is self-explanatory, importation to the citizenry is something the law is clearly intended to criminalize. I included “to the region” to include our gameside elections. I don’t think this is liable to abuse or over-criminalization as it still requires a showing of the recruitment being “to vote a particular way, for an underlying corrupt purpose.”
In short: this amendment is proposed to clarify the recruitment element of the electoral fraud crime applies to the region and citizenry, and is not met by existing citizens taking the simple step of signing up for the Assembly.
Supportive of this, especially given the context of how legislator applications work compared to citizenship applications.
I may suggest a slight change to the second clause to make obvious attempts at Assembly packing more clear - I’m concerned about “organize themselves,” as it could be interpreted to exclude a ringleader guiding unwitting individuals who are not necessarily organizing amongst themselves.
Firstly, I agree that encouraging people who already have citizenship and are in the community to sign up for the Assembly should not be penalized. If the Assembly would like to adopt a rule to not allow new members during a vote, it can choose to do that, but a crime is extreme.
Secondly, it clears up some ambiguity around the word “recruits” here. I think it’s fairly ambiguous whether “recruits” in “recruits people to vote in a particular way” refers to the specific act of getting people to take on some status (citizen/legislator/resident/etc) or whether “recruits” here refers to a general sense of “organizes people to do a thing”. Think “I recruited some friends to help me push my car.” I wouldn’t interpret that as “I found some people who were not my friends and convinced them to be my friends so that they could push my car.”
The other bit of ambiguity this goes some way to clearing up (but perhaps some small additions could make even clearer) is whether this crime applies to Assembly votes at all. The crime is called “Electoral Fraud,” not “Voter Fraud.” It’s not incredibly clear to me that this crime applies to things that… aren’t elections?
I think the broad intent would be meant to encompass other votes (referenda if they were to ever occur, Assembly votes) given the general use of “democratic processes” in the crime description. Nonetheless you raise a good point, so I’ve updated my amendment to rename the crime as well.
Also, I’ve put “or” at the end of the first sub-clause, which seems to be how it’s intended to operate. If it were left ambiguous, someone could argue it is meant to mean “and,” avoiding liability on pedandict grounds even if they qualify for one or the other.
Truthfully, I have always been a bit troubled by this part of the Criminal Code. It feels like a loaded gun that an overly activist Court could use to punish activity that is generally not malicious or even undesirable. The law doesn’t really define what would constitute an “underlying corrupt purpose” or “the natural outcome of the vote”. This change would mitigate a lot of my concerns and I see the value of leaving the provision in the law in some form.