January 2024 Prime Minister Election | Voting

Voting

January 2024 Prime Minister Election

This is a regular election for the Prime Minister of the South Pacific held via instant-runoff vote where voters may list some or all candidates in descending order of preference.

Please note the following relevant information on how to cast a vote:

IMPORTANT

You may only cast a vote if you became a citizen before this date:

2024-01-19T19:00:00Z

Cast a vote via the following method:

  1. Open a private message to the Election Commissioner through the button below.

  2. Ballot

  3. Insert the Prime Minister Ballot template via Gear > Insert Template.

  4. Example

  5. Input the numeric rank that you wish to assign to each candidate where 1 is most preferred and noting that you do not need to rank all candidates.

  6. Example
Voting will remain open during the following period:

2024-01-23T19:00:00Z→2024-01-27T19:00:00Z

Refer to the Elections Act for further information about the rules governing this process.

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Proclamation of Results

January 2024 Prime Minister Election

The whole number of citizens eligible to vote for the Prime Minister of the South Pacific is 78; within that whole number, the number of citizens who cast a vote is 35 and the number of citizens who cast a valid vote is 26.

The state of the vote for the Prime Minister of the South Pacific is as follows:

PRIME MINISTER OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC
  • Drew Durrnil | 18 first preferences | 69.23% in the first round Elected

  • Re-Open Nominations | 8 first preferences | 30.77% in the first round

This proclamation shall serve as sufficient declaration that the individual signaled above has been duly elected for the term starting 2024-02-01T14:00:00Z.

The full repository of election results may be found in the Elections Portal.

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Three cheers for @Banexet!

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Can we have an explanation on why nine votes were not counted?

That seems like a rather high number.

There were nine votes that were deemed invalid for the following reason:

  • Voting Approval in an IRV election

There was one vote, out of the nine, that was deemed invalid for the following additional reason:

  • Voting for an unrecognised candidate (and for no other recognised candidates)

I was one of the 9 that voted approval in IRV election. I will do better next time!!

I made the opposite mistake a week ago.

Thanks, Kris.

Honestly, this seems problematic that nearly a third of the votes cast were thrown out. It couldn’t have swayed this election, but only by one vote.

It seems like we should revisit/rethink voting and tallying in some way so we don’t have so many tossed votes.

I don’t mean to be that guy, but the instructions at the top of this thread quite clearly explain how to cast a vote. We can do all we want but at the end of the day people had very simple tools to know how to vote correctly.

Kris is correct that under the current system there’s nothing else do be done.

The solution is to get rid of approval voting and use IRV for everything.

It’s also not a shift to private ballots that caused the issue. We’ve had some elections as approval voting and some as IRV for years - that’s why ballots got discarded, not the newer changes.

We had the same issue last election, just not as severe. Definitely worth moving to a single ballot to avoid the confusion.

I’m happy to re-propose this portion of the Election Act reform. It was dropped from the omnibus package after generating not insubstantial opposition. But it deserves to be considered independently.

Kris — that’s really tangential to my point. Any system that allows a third of a ballots to be disqualified is problematic. I don’t care how clearly your instructions are a properly functioning election system wouldn’t reject 1 out of every 3 ballots. That’s all there is to it.

As I’m not a legislator anymore, I’m not going to be proposing any changes, but I think it’s worth pointing out that if the region wants an inclusive governmental structure, something should be changed. Whether it’s Bel’s idea to go to all IRV voting or give people the chance to rectify votes the election commissioner deems ineligible, we shouldn’t tolerate this high of a rejection number.

I think that ignores the fact that the system itself isn't disenfranchising anyone nor does it have any artificial barriers to suffrage, if anything it goes out of its way to ensure that voters have an easy way to vote:
  • The voting booth provides a step-by-step guide on how to cast a vote, which includes images that show examples of each step, including an example of how a finalised vote should look.

  • There is a clickable button that lets voters open a message already addressed to the Election Commissioner, where they can input their vote.

  • There is a ballot template that already lists qualified candidates, so voters don’t run the risk of mistyping candidate names.

There is certainly always space for improvement, which I aim to do with future voting booth templates, but there also has to be a level of personal responsibility here. Voters are here because they applied for citizenship and that includes the responsibility to know what they are doing. It isn’t too much to ask that they understand how to cast a vote.

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It also isn’t too much to ask that we change a system that has disenfranchised a 3rd of the active voting population, whether it be adopting a single voting system or allowing folks to edit their ballots after casting.

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It’s interesting wording to suggest that the system disenfranchised voters… as if the system was casting ballots, not the voters?

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For starters only 1/4 of those who voted did so in validly, not a third.

More to the point though, like Pronoun has said nobody has been disenfranchised by the system. Voters were afforded the opportunity to vote and had easy tools to exercise their right. It’s on them that they did not take the time to understand how to properly cast a vote. Nobody here is illiterate, so they should be perfectly able to read the instructions, look at the sample images, and vote accordingly.

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Kris — this wasn’t/isn’t meant to be a personal attack.

Regardless of the best intentions and efforts nearly a third of the population was disenfranchised because they didn’t fill out the ballot properly and the vote was tossed. If I was the only dumbass who filled the ballot out incorrectly, I wouldn’t raise this issue, but that clearly was not the case. You can frame it as “personal responsibility,” but that doesn’t change the effect of what happened and that it almost could have swayed the election.

I realize I’m just an old-timer who doesn’t get here as much as he used to, but honestly I’m disappointed to hear that the voters just need to do better. It’s not the spirit of the TSP I’ve been part of for the past 20 years, and I hope it’s not the sentiment the region embodies moving forward. We’re better than that — or at least we were.

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