Bill: Draft No More Gambling in Elections Act

[zLost]

A
BILL
To

Amend the Electoral Act​

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:

1 - Short Title and Enactment

(1) This Act may be cited as the 'No More Gambling in Elections Act.'

(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.

(3) This Act has been authored by Representative zLost.

(4) This Act has been co-sponsored by Representative RealImza.

2 - Reasons
(1) Random eliminations are a problem in our general elections, as they can majorly change the final result and our electoral system should not rely on a dice to decide ties.
(2) This bill aims to eliminate (or reduce heavily) random eliminations in general elections by implementing a mini borda count in the Electoral Act to settle ties when counting STV votes.

3 - Amendment
Part 5, Section 4 of the Electoral Act will be amended as follows:
(4) Elimination of Low-Scoring Candidates

(a) If seats remain and all candidates have fewer votes than the threshold, the candidate(s) with the fewest votes is eliminated.

(b) Where the number of candidates to be eliminated exceeds the amount required to fill the remaining seats, or there is a tie that otherwise needs to be resolved; the tied candidates will be eliminated sequentially based on the results of the previous round of voting. This process is repeated sequentially through preceding rounds as required.

(c) Where it is not possible to resolve the tie using the previous method, a Borda Count will be held, in which each candidate involved in the tie will have their points calculated, and the candidate with the lowest number of points will be eliminated. Points are assigned based on the position of a candidate in the preferential list of a voter: they receive 7 points for a first preference, 6 points for a second preference, 5 points for a third preference, and so on, until the eighth preference and beyond, for which they will receive no points.

(d) Where it is not possible to resolve the tie using the previous two methods, a Head-to-Head comparison shall be conducted, in which each candidate involved in the tie will be assessed to determine how many times they were ranked higher than the other candidate(s) involved in the tie on voters preferential lists. The candidate who was ranked lower the most times shall be eliminated. Should any candidate(s) involved in the tie not be in a preferential list that the other tied candidate(s) is in, they will be considered below the lowest preferential for this matter of resolving a tie and thus the candidate(s) that are actually on the preferential list will be considered higher than them.


(e) Where it is not possible to eliminate in an unresolvable tie, then the tied candidates will be eliminated at random through:

(i) a random selection within the eye of the public; and

(ii) through a computer generated choice in a way which a specific response cannot be elicited.

(f) The votes of the eliminated candidate(s) are then transferred to the next preference on the voters' ballots.