Senator,
I believe you have misinterpreted the letter, spirit, and implementation of this bill. I highly encourage you to read over the senate gallery, but I will re-state the arguments made here for completeness.
I did think this was a good and innovative amendment, but Kron’s recent intervention has definitely put things in a different perspective. The present system is unequivocal in that NO citizen shall be denied the right to a secret ballot.
At no point did this act call for OR imply that a citizen's vote would be revealed or otherwise made non-secret. I envisioned the Census minister simply messaging the EC to inform them of ineligible citizens who joined during the election, and the EC would simply invalidate those votes only and mark it on the report.
Nowhere in EC procedure do we reveal who someone voted for, regardless of circumstances or pressures. The EC can be trusted to confidentially handle this. Technical controls have been suggested for the Census-side implementation (a date field + color indicator) that is easy to set up and maintain. I don't believe it is unreasonable to ask the Census to send a single message to another government body once or twice a month. If sufficient records are maintained, I don't foresee why EC couldn't set up their own automated tooling to remove the human-message element if that is of concern.
As mentioned by Dyl, several large GCRs with census and election teams roughly the same size as ours are able to handle this. TEP, TRR, and TNP all have adopted a similar system with success. There is no reason why the Union couldn't pull it off.
The reforms presented are unconstitutional, as Kron pointed out, but this can easily be rectified by making a provision that only extant citizens five days prior to the introduction of the ballot shall be eligible for the vote.
I acknowledge the suggestion, but I believe that five is too long. Three has been the standard of the Union for some time now and I believe there is merit to having as many eligible voters in the Union as we can while avoiding importation issues.
However, the reforms presented to the Senate would still somewhat undermine the protections afforded to our democracy. A loophole could arise that didn’t exist before. Citizenship was a guarantee for the right to vote. Under these reforms, it would be no longer. And can anyone deny this makes the Union of Democratic States more vulnerable to subversion?
I fail to see a situation of subversion due to the inability to vote one-time to prevent voter importation. A new citizen joins in the middle of the senate election, but cannot vote or run in that specific election. Following the election, they have full privileges and voting rights. If a by-election happened immediately after, they would be eligible to vote and run.
At no point does this act call for indefinite suspension of voting rights because they picked an election time to join the Union. It is a one-time blocker.
And for what reason are we doing this? So that newbies can get access to some forum and Discord channels a few days earlier than they would have done otherwise? I don’t see the point.
Our recruitment efforts are hurt by this provision, Senator. The Union spends roughly $360 a year on telegram stamps, an API computer system must be maintained, and manual recruiters spend significant effort in #recruitment-fun on our discord. In a different organization, we have a metric called the "Activation rate". In terms of the Union, activation can be seen as a newly recruited player getting involved in the region. The sooner one can get involved, the likelihood of them lasting past their first 30 days rises. Blocking citizenship for up to 6-12 days can be disappointing to new players who will instead look for new regions. Two applications dated in December were closed because the nations applied during an election period, did not get processed, and subsequently CTE'd. A rough glance at the citizenship application sub-forum does show that most of our applications come in towards the first few days of a month -
prime election time.
The above graph shows citizenship applications from Oct 2021 to today. As it stands, the majority of applications fell within an election period or it's 3 day look-back period, nearly 60%. An average senate election period can cover 40% of the month. It hurts our region to have such a long ineligibility period. Potential Unionists often go to other regions in this time to find a community instead of waiting on us.
It is a danger, and I will have to think hard before I make my decision to support or oppose this proposal.
I believe your fears are unfounded for the reasons I've laid out above. A technical control (Census talking to EC) preserves the prevention of voter importation, but still allows our region to grow.
What is certain is that this Bill has to be accompanied by a motion to amend the constitution, because Kron is right in saying this proposal is currently unconstitutional. This should’ve been introduced to the Senate with more preparation.
Senator, I will be honest that I take slight offense at the more preparation comment. I did not propose this with my eyes closed. I conferred with others in the region and reviewed that data that showed YES, the Union is losing out on citizens and members because of our long electoral blocking period.
I do except the constitutional amendment requirement, as I did not see the clause at the end of 1.2 in the constitution. I believe this is correctable however if the Senate is in agreement with the direction of this act.
I further argue that the constitutional question is moot. However as stated prior, at no time is a citizen's vote revealed, improperly disclosed, or otherwise handled in a way that calls the integrity of the election in to question. The bestowing of citizenship is guided by the Citizenship Act.
Deputy Speaker Glaciosia floated the interesting possibility of removing the no-vote period entirely and criminalizing voter importation instead. I do not have strong feelings towards it, but offer it to the Senate in case it is of interest.
Respectfully,
Kade W. Vasentius
