Poposal to ammend the Constitution voting process

[Ra'Dian Fl'Gith]

That brings up a problem though, neither the Constitution nor the Court Charter outlines how someone becomes the Chief Justicar. The Constitution mentions seniority in Article VI-C,2-a, but not in regards to who IS Chief Justicar.

So... looking back at the amendment that returned us to a triumvirate, the initial intent was that the Chief Justicar would be an elected office (ie: candidates would specifically indicate they were running for that office).

In hindsight, and looking at what we're looking to accomplish here, there are a couple of different ways we could handle it:

1) Ballots indicate: Select three candidates from the list, indicating your choice for Chief Justicar first. Highest votes wins, tie results in a majority vote from the Council to appoint from the pool of winning candidates.

2) Chancellor of Virtue appoints the Chief Justicar from the pool of winning candidates; if both the Chancellor and Justicars are elected, the newly elected/re-elected Chancellor appoints after confirmation.

I'm definitely open to other ideas as well. I can't say as I'm terribly fond of a "longest serving Justicar," as that feels more like an honorable affectation rather than assuming leadership, but that's just my thought. I wouldn't fight vociferously against it either, but let's definitely consider options.

[MalagAste]

I'm leery of proscribing how the non-Virtue cities choose their Councilors in too much detail. How often will anything under B-2,C realistically be used is my question. Right now, the only cities it would effect are Newcastle and Pax Dragotha. Where are they going to get the Electoral Administrators? If they do not yet have representation on the High Council, are they to come and request an administrator or do we let them handle whatever process they want to use on their own? However, with their ability to appoint leadership, they may be a moot point.

Honestly, we're not prescribing anything other than the process involved if there are multiple candidates looking for that particular seat. The Electoral Administrator would still be from the High Council. It's probably not going to be used often at all. Remember, the "c" option is only the failsafe option. Most typically it'll be "a" or "b." In a case where "a" or "b" fails, then it moves to "c," which is the only time we're prescribing a procedure. In other words, if there is a community without some sort of leadership, they could still be represented on the Council, and here's the procedure.

In the case of Newcastle and Pax Dragotha, both have official leaders who may choose to sit on or appoint to the Council (and if they appoint, that process is entirely up to them, not at all prescribed by the Council). It's just communities where no leadership exists -- which at present is none, but there have been in the past, so at least there's a guide to it.

I'm mildly concerned that the absentee ballot issue could be abused. Though with an official ballot not being published until a week after one can request an absentee ballot, perhaps less so. I'm all for including people in the election process, but I do think some sort of line should be drawn to emphasize that we want people actively involved (within reasonable limits).

I mean, there's always potential for abuse in a virtual system. There aren't any good ways to handle it that don't rely on trust of our fellow players. My personal feeling is that we should always err on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion... I understand that there's a danger that in particularly contested elections, someone might go call a dozen people and ask them to show up long enough to turn the tide of the election, but truthfully, whether they do it by absentee ballot or in character at the voting booth, we can't really do much about it unless we have real reason to believe it's just one person representing five or ten. Then it becomes up to us as a community to handle that diplomatically out of character. Believe me, I understand the concerns... but at some level we have to give in to trust.

I bolded and underlined this because that is something I very much agree on.