Act of Congress No More Donkey Votes Act

[YeetBoy1872325]

CONGRESS OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT
​

---

A BILL TO

LEGALLY MANDATE RANDOMIZED CANDIDATE LISTS




​

---

The people of the Commonwealth of Redmont, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:


​

PART I — PRELIMINARIES

1. Short Title and Enactment

(1) This Act may be cited as the ‘No More Donkey Votes Act’

(2) This Act shall be enacted once the election plugin is capable of performing the necessary revisions in this Act.

(3) This Act has been authored by zLost.

(4) This Act has been co-authored by Rep. Yeet_Boy.

(5) This Act has been co-sponsored by Rep. Alexis_123003.

(6) This Act amends the following acts:

(a) Electoral Act

2. Reasons and Intent

(1) Currently, the candidates list in an election is in alphabetical order. This gives a slight advantage to candidates whose names start with a letter that is at the beginning of the alphabets.

(2) Donkey votes are those votes where the voter ranks the candidates based on the order they appear on the ballot itself.

(3) This bill aims to address both the above issues by mandating the candidate list starts on a random player and wraps around for each voter.

(4) The original intention of the bill has been maintained, however how this shall be achieved has been changed entirely. Credits go to Rorroh and unalign.

3. Definitions

(1) For the purposes of this Act, the following definitions shall apply:

(a) Randomized. "assigned, selected, or arranged using a random process, rather than by choice, preference, or any predetermined criteria."

PART II — AMENDMENT

4. AMENDMENT TO THE ELECTORAL ACT

(1) The following changes shall be implemented into the Electoral Act, under Part 4, "Electoral Terms and Limitations":

4- Electoral Terms and Limitations

...

(e) All candidates must hold a valid passport issued by the Department of State

(6) The first candidate on each ballot shall be randomized, with subsequent candidates listed alphabetically. This process shall be done independently for each voter's ballot.

(a) If the alphabetically final candidate is reached before all candidates have been listed, then the sequence shall continue with the alphabetically first candidate and stop once all candidates have been listed on the ballot.

 

[greymc]

- I have asked staff, they said it would be possible but that it would take awhile to edit. This is a good step, but we must understand we probably won't get this for awhile.

 

[greymc]

Votes prior to H-33/38

 

[ElegantAlly]

Votes prior to S-30/38

 

[xXTheoryXx]

Presidential Assent

PRESIDENTIAL ASSENT
​

---

The No More Donkey Votes Act amends Part 4 of the Electoral Act to provide that the first candidate on each ballot is randomised, with the remaining candidates following in alphabetical order and wrapping to the start of the list, and that this is done independently for every voter. Its purpose is to remove the advantage the present alphabetical ballot confers on candidates by the accident of their name. I assent to it.

---

First, the Bill corrects a real and measurable defect.
Ballot position affects outcomes, and under the present list that effect accrues to the same candidates in every election, on no principle at all. Constitution s35(13) guarantees every citizen the equal benefit of the law. A ballot that systematically rewards a candidate for the first letter of their username sits poorly with that guarantee, and a Congress correcting it on its own initiative is Congress working as intended.

Second, the Bill is constitutionally sound.
It creates no offence, delegates no rulemaking, limits no right, and reaches no jurisdiction reserved to the Towns. Constitution s33 expressly contemplates Town elections being facilitated by Federal departments as provided by law, and this is such a law. I have no reservation of the kind I have recorded elsewhere.

Third, the Bill has been improved in passage.
Section 2(4) records that the method was rewritten entirely while the intent was kept. That is what a House of Review is for, and I note it approvingly.

---

I record the following for Congress and for the Office of Congressional Affairs.

These are not conditions of my assent. They are matters I would ask Congress to address before the provision becomes operative, which by section 1(2) will not be for some time.

(1) Commencement and transition. Section 1(2) commences the Act "once the election plugin is capable of performing the necessary revisions". No officer is designated to determine capability and nothing requires the determination to be published. The Act therefore carries no transition rule, and if capability arrives during a voting period some voters would receive alphabetical ballots and others rotated ballots in the same election. I have directed the Department of State by Executive Order to give the provision effect only from the commencement of a declaration period and to publish the date, which closes the gap administratively. Congress should close it in the text.

(2) Rotation is not randomisation. Because the sequence after the first name remains alphabetical, the candidate listed immediately after any given candidate is the same person on all but one ballot in the cycle. Under Single Transferable Vote this means that when a candidate is eliminated or elected with a surplus, their donkey-sourced transfers flow almost entirely to one predetermined successor, and section 5(1)(a) carries that through five preferences. The advantage is not removed. It is relocated from "hold an early letter" to "sit immediately after a front-runner", and since the field is fixed at the close of declarations and usernames are chosen, it is targetable. Ordering the candidates on each ballot independently at random would remove the residual entirely and is shorter to state than the clause it would replace.

(3) The definition contradicts the provision. Section 3(1)(a) defines randomised as arrangement other than by "predetermined criteria", which is exactly how the operative clause orders every candidate after the first.

(4) No standard is set for the randomness. The clause requires neither a uniform distribution nor an auditable method. The same Act already requires, for tie-breaks, a computer generated choice "in a way which a specific response cannot be elicited". Ballot ordering should not be held to a lower standard than a tie-break.

(5) "Alphabetically" is undefined. Usernames in the Commonwealth carry underscores, digits and mixed case, and the ordering that results differs materially depending on the collation used. Since the adjacency identified at (2) turns entirely on that ordering, the Act should say which one governs.

(6) Ballot secrecy. The transparency obligations in section 14 require broad release of tabulation materials, and section 14(7) permits exemption only with Staff authorisation. Per-voter ballot orderings should therefore not be retained in a form linkable to a voter, so that nothing capable of compromising the secret ballot under Constitution s35(3) exists to be released. I have directed the Department accordingly.

(7) It is unclear whether a voter's ordering is fixed for the election or regenerated whenever the ballot is opened. The latter would permit a voter to reroll until satisfied.

(8) Two defects in the parent Act, offered while Congress has it open. Section 12(3)(d) subjects voters' constitutional rights to reasonable limitations "pursuant to Part IV, §32 of the Constitution", which is Local Governments; the reasonable limits provision is the Part V, s35 chapeau. Section 14(3) cross-references "§17.(2)", but section 17 is the struck Ballot Receipt provision and the reference appears to mean 14(2).

---

My thanks to zLost for authoring this Bill, to Representative Yeet_Boy for co-authoring it, and to Representative Alexis_123003 for co-sponsoring it. My thanks also to Rorroh and to unalign, whose rewrite of the method is credited at section 2(4) and is the reason this Bill reaches my desk in a form I can sign.

Accordingly, I assent to this Bill, and it is enacted as law.

Theory Fontaine
30th President of the Commonwealth of Redmont
​