Election Dispute

[Erstavik]

ELECTION DISPUTE
Pursuant to § 1(5) of the Elections Act, I, Erstavik, a citizen and eligible voter of the Coalition of the South Pacific (hereinafter “Contestant”), hereby submit this election dispute to the Election Commissioner. As part of this dispute raises questions on a matter of law, I respectfully request that the Election Commissioner refer it to the High Court. For the reasons set forth below, the Election Commissioner’s decision to include @Belschaft (hereinafter “Contestee”) on the ballot for Prime Minister violates the Elections Act, as Contestee is not eligible to be listed as a candidate. Additionally, the Election Commissioner mistakenly listed the Contestant’s name on the “Verify Your Ballot” page instead of Contestee’s, potentially misleading voters into believing they were casting votes for Contestant.

I. The Election Commissioner’s Inclusion of Belschaft on the Ballot Violates the Elections Act
§ 2(3) of the Election Act provides as follows:
To be eligible to be included on a ballot, a candidate must post a campaign in an area designated by the Election Commissioner. The campaign must prominently include a truthful declaration of all potential conflicts of interest the candidate may have within and outside of the South Pacific.

Contestee announced his candidacy on April 18 with the following statement: “I accept the nominations of my loyal supporters/sycophants/minions. The purge shall soon begin.” Contestee did not specify whether he was declaring candidacy for Prime Minister or for Craziest Person. The Election Commissioner rightly sought clarification. However, Contestee’s response: “all the offices”, was provided one hour and six minutes after the deadline to declare candidacy and post a campaign. Moreover, Contestee never explicitly stated in his campaign that he was running for Prime Minister. This omission, combined with the frivolous and obviously AI-generated campaign, created confusion among voters as to which office Contestee was actually seeking. Indeed, the campaign reads more as a comedic entry than a serious candidacy, and it raises the question of whether the true candidate is Contestee or ChatGPT. The latter is ineligible to appear on the ballot.

The statute is clear and unambiguous in requiring that the campaign must prominently include a truthful declaration of all potential conflicts of interest the candidate may have within and outside of the South Pacific. Contestee provided the following conflict of interest statement:

“I have no other nations or citizenships other than Belschaft in TSP, but paranoid and histrionic individuals will be unlikely to believe that. I may or may not be an agent of one or more of the Chinese MSS, Cuban G2, True Korean RGB, Sudanese GIS, or Venezuelan SEBIN but that all seems highly improbable.”

This declaration is clearly ambiguous and fails to meet the statutory requirement of truthfulness. By stating he “may or may not be” affiliated with multiple foreign intelligence agencies, Contestee is clearly refusing to provide a truthful declaration of all potential conflicts of interest he may have had outside of the South Pacific. The statement is also intentionally facetious and undermines the transparency the Elections Act seeks to ensure.

For the foregoing reasons, @Belschaft failed to meet the eligibility requirements set forth in the Elections Act and should not have been included on the ballot as a candidate for Prime Minister. The Election Commissioner’s decision to do so constitutes a grave error.

II. Erroneous Listing of Erstavik on the “Verify Your Ballot” Page
When casting my vote, the “Verify Your Ballot” page incorrectly listed Contestant’s name in place of Contestee’s, creating ambiguity as to whom the vote was actually cast for. Contestant disputes that any such ballot, displaying a vote for Contestant instead of Contestee, should be interpreted as a vote for Contestee. Rather, Contestant holds the view that any such vote must be either counted in his favor or not at all.

CONCLUSION
The Election Commissioner gravely erred in including Belschaft on the ballot as a candidate for Prime Minister. All votes cast for Belschaft should therefore be invalidated. Furthermore, any votes listed as cast for Erstavik on the “Verify Your Ballot” page should be counted for Erstavik, not Belschaft.

Respectfully submitted,
ERSTAVIK

[KrisKringle]

@Erstavik

I. The Election Commissioner’s Inclusion of Belschaft on the Ballot Violates the Elections Act

I disagree with this assertion. In the event that Belschaft failed to respond within the declarations period, which they did, the reasonable course of action was to assume that their acceptance referred to all offices for which they had been nominated. This way I would preserve the right of an eligible candidate to run for office and the freedom of citizens to vote for a diversity of eligible candidates.

That being said, I recognise this is a dispute on a matter of legal interpretation and will comply with referring this to the High Court.

@Erstavik

2. Erroneous Listing of Erstavik on the “Verify Your Ballot” Page

I disagree with the conclusions of this section and further will not refer it to the High Court due to the reasons explained as follows.

1. The Verify Your Ballot section is a visual display of the ballot but up to that point the ballot is not yet submitted. Its purpose is to give the voter a final chance to verify their vote’s accuracy and go back in case they wish to make any changes to their candidate choices or preferences. Once a voter does submit their ballot three things happen:

   1. The ballot is recorded by the forum.
   2. A copy of the ballot is deposited in the voter’s Sent Messages folder.
   3. The voter is given the option to request their ballot’s tracking code so that they can later verify that it was properly recorded in the Election Management Portal.

   To the extent that Verify Your Ballot does not constitute actual submission of a vote, it is erroneous to suggest that “any votes listed as cast for Erstavik (…) should be counted for Erstavik, not Belschaft” because submitter can verify through their own copy of their ballot that no vote has been actually submitted for Erstavik, notwithstanding the display error in Verify Your Ballot.

2. The display error in Verify Your Ballot was corrected immediately after the Election Commissioner was alerted of it, so no other voters should have faced a confusion on that account.

To the extent that this was a display error that has not affected the integrity of votes cast, and further that it is a matter of ballot design rather than a matter of law, I decline to refer this matter to the High Court. That being said, submitter is within their rights to submit a review request to challenge this determination if they so desire.