Imperial Audit of the Principaity of the Rosetta Pact Althing and Prime Minister Election April 2007

Imperial Audit: Principality of the Rosetta Pact Althing/Prime Minister Election, 4/27/2007

Prepared by Queen Talisin Silverwolf in consultation with Imperial Prime Minister Korderellin Harlequin, Imperial Regent Casca Eruoy, and Takezu Akujin no Wakagashira.

At the time of the election in question, Takezu no Wakagashira was Emperor of the Iron Mountains, Korderellin Harlequin was Imperial Prime Minister, and Talisin Silverwolf was President of the Board of Directors of the Empire of the Iron Mountains.
Report written by Queen Talisin Silverwolf unless otherwise noted.

Situation:

Audit of the Principality of the Rosetta Pact’s (PRP) Prime Minister elections. The Prime Minister in office at the time was Micah Helstaven; as he was on the ballot he was ineligible to administer the election and those duties fell to Jalea, PRP Prince at the time of the election. An audit was requested by Takezu, Iron Mountains Emperor, and Imperial Prime Minister Korderellin on 05/02/2007. The packet of votes was received by Takezu from Prince Jalea on 06/01/2007.
It is my understanding that former Emperor Takezu requested the audit after having received many complaints and inquiries regarding the election. Among the most prominent concerns was whether or not members of parks that had not paid taxes were allowed to vote. Comment: At the time of the election, I also received several e-mails from persons in the PRP inquiring as to whether or not members of a province that had not paid taxes should be allowed to vote. Kord, Takezu, Jalea and myself all came to the conclusion that there is no basis to disallow votes in such a case. The Corpora does not specify such sanctions, and the general agreement was that individuals should not be punished for non-payment of taxes. Prince Jalea contacted Kord via phone the day of the vote to clarify this question. He advised Kord at that time that the vote was a tie and sought advice regarding how to handle the situation.

Audit Request:

Former Emperor Takezu and Imperial PM Kord contacted several people during their initial inquiries. At that time, PM candidate Micah Helstaven’s response to the initiation of the audit was to request that the PM election not be overturned regardless of the results of the audit. It is noted here for the record that the results outlined in this report do not constitute a recount for the purpose of overturning the PM election and that PM Khanar retains his position regardless of our findings here.
A request was made to Jalea on May 2nd, 2007, that the original ballots be submitted to the Kingdom for review immediately. Jalea indicated that he would comply with the request.
Copies of the ballots were received by Takezu on June 1st , 2007 via next day FedEx envelope.
Received from Jalea via FedEx on 06/01/2007:
1) 62 ballots
2) List of dues-paid voters sent from Micah to Jalea via e-mail at 8:58pm on 04/27/2007. The list includes information from Olympus, Querna Tema, and the Ivory Tower.

Review Process:

Takezu notified me as a potential successor monarch that he was requesting an audit for the PRP PM elections on May 2nd, 2007. His intention at that time was just to advise me of areas of concern so that should I step up I would not be unaware of them.
The ballots were received from Jalea less than two weeks before Rakis. As Kord was autocratting Rakis and Takezu was heavily involved in running the event, this left little time for a full-scale review. Takezu reviewed the ballots and communicated his impressions of them both to Kord and myself, then passed the votes on to Kord for further review. At that point it was obvious that the audit would not be completed before Takezu stepped down, so an agreement was made that after reviewing the votes himself, Kord would pass them along to me for review.
I received the votes at Clan on 7/22/07 and proceeded to begin reviewing them. While gathering information, several areas of interest and a list of questions resulted in more time taken to research the facts.
On 08/08/2007, I met with PM Kord and Regent Casca to do a final review and tally of the votes and come to an agreement as to what our conclusions were. Several more questions arose during the process, so the investigation continued and the drafting of this report began on 08/09/2007.

Ballot:

For the Office of Prime Minister of the Rosetta Pact. Choices were Micah Helstaven, Khanar, and Abstain.
The ballot includes checkboxes next to each choice and spaces for the voter’s signature, date, local PM’s signature, and date.
There were several ballots handwritten on ruled or blank paper.
Comment: Upon review, the ballot is easy to understand and does not present confusion regarding which choice a person is selecting.
Suggestion: Add a blank line for the person’s printed name and home park, thus making it easier to track voters and their records down when needed, as well as identify to whom the vote belongs. Though the lines at the bottom do not specify whether they are for printed names or signatures, the instructions specify that a ballot must be signed and the blank lines are in what most people would interpret to be the “signature position”. This leads to ballots with names that have to be deciphered before they can be validated.
Note: The ballot indicated that the election was to be held on Friday, April 27th, 2007; the actual tally took place on Saturday, April 28th, 2007.

Ballot Analysis:

Total number of ballots received: 62
Total number of votes for Micah: 31
Total number of votes for Khanar: 27
Total number of Abstains: 4
Of the 62 votes received, 3 have been determined by the Empire to be invalid on their face, as they did not include the voter’s name. All three were votes for Micah, bringing the total count to:
Total number of votes for Micah: 28
Total number of votes for Khanar: 27
Total number of Abstains: 4