The SC will not hold a second 34th term RA by-election

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Delia Lake
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The SC will not hold a second 34th term RA by-election

Post by Delia Lake »

The majority of the SC Professors conclude that a second by-election should not be held for the unfilled seat in the 34th RA.

The first Article of the CDS Constitution sets out a Representative Assembly (RA). It is a democratically elected legislative and long-term planning body. "The number of representative seats in the RA is equal to five." There are 2 terms of office a year. Each term of office runs six months – December 1 through May 31 of the following year, and June 1 through November 30.

Election voting is to be held starting the Saturday immediately previous to the 16th of the month before the start of each term. Voting will take place over 168 hours. Voting for candidates is via a system of Single Transferable Votes (STV), a ranked voting method.
The Constitution clearly lays out two elections a year to fill the offices of those terms of government. From previous experiences, the RA recognized that there can be times during a term when a seat of office would become vacant. So they included, “Vacancies in RA positions will be filled by by-election administered on a schedule set by the Scientific Council consistent with other applicable CDS law.”

The RA wrote and later amended a CDS Law that addresses procedures for by-elections is CDSL 20-02. This act “is intended to provide a clear procedure to use in scheduling by-elections.” This law makes a distinction between vacancies that occur on or before April 1 or October 1 and after these dates. This act “is intended to provide a clear procedure to use in scheduling by-elections.” While it does that for vacancies that occur in either the Chancellorship or the RA during the term, it makes no mention of vacancies that occur because there were fewer candidates standing for office than there are seats to fill. This is where we find ourselves today (December, 2020 and January, 2021). We held the regular election for the 34th term of CDS government during October and November of 2020, as prescribed by the Constitution. We had 3 candidates for the 5 RA seats. Because ranked choice voting methods cannot not tally votes when there are fewer candidates than positions, all three candidates were put in office by acclamation.
While that gave us officers for our 34th term, it also left us with a dilemma. The Constitution Article I, Section 6 says, “A vote in the RA is a simple majority vote of representative seats.” It does not say a vote is a simple majority of the seats filled but a simple majority of representative seats, which Section 2 specifies is equal to 5. With only 3 seats filled, to be in compliance with the Constitution, any vote of this RA would have to be unanimous to pass.

With this debilitating condition in mind, the SC decided to hold a by-election previous to seating the 34th RA, a situation that is not covered in any law. To hold this by-election, the SC used the process and parameters described in CDSL 20-02 as a guide as much as possible. In this by-election, only a single candidate declared for the 2 RA seats remaining. That candidate was also put in office by acclamation because there were fewer candidates than seats available.

The majority of the SC Professors conclude that a second by-election should not be held in this case. Two rounds of elections – one regular election and one by-election – have already been held to fill the seats of the RA for this 34th term and in combination they failed to garner enough candidates to fill all 5 seats.

The Constitution states, “Where there were no unsuccessful candidates in the regular election, or where no qualified candidate accepts the seat or Chancellorship, a by-election will be held as per Section 2.” Continuing to run by-elections to try to resolve the exact same insufficiency of candidates as already run elections were addressing we believe goes against the intent of the Constitution -- which is to engage citizens to fill 1 Chancellorship and 5 RA seats for each 6-month term by hold two campaigns for elections a year. If that is no longer the desired mode then the RA should amend the Constitution to specify a different operating process. If running multiples of by-elections until the desired results are achieved is desired, our laws should be changed to reflect that as well.

Whether or not the RA chooses to amend the Constitution, we the government need to amend CDSL 20-02 to lay out the process to use when there were insufficient candidates to fill the specified seats for a term so it is clear to everyone how we have to proceed when we have too few officers for the next term and can lawfully address that state before a new term begins.

CDS Constitution. https://cdsdemocracy.org/cds-constitution/
CDSL 20-02 By-election Procedures Act. https://cdsdemocracy.org/code-of-laws-2/

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