[Cantzelerïă/Chancery] Proposed Rules for Seneschal Election

[Sir Txec dal Nordselvă, UrB]

- Under the provisions of Organic Law Article VI Section 2, should a Seneschal not be appointed prior to the first day of the first Clark, a Ranked Choice Vote to select the Seneschal shall appear on the First Clark.
- As the database is not currently equipped for this purpose, voting for Seneschal shall occur in a thread on Wittenberg concurrently with the First Clark.
- Only MC's may vote for a Seneschal. Senators have no vote.
- As Organic Law is relatively thin on the provisions of ranked choice voting for a Seneschal, the Chancery hereby proposes the following rules for voting:
- Votes shall be weighted by the number of seats assigned to each MC.
- Each party represented in the Cosa shall nominate one candidate for Seneschal prior to the posting of voting on Wittenberg. This should be done even if a Seneschal is elected prior to voting to ensure enough time for the actual vote.
- On the voting thread, there should be NO discussion or comments other than ranked choices.
- MC's will rank the candidates for Seneschal by preference (i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) MC's should rank all candidates to avoid their ballots becoming exhausted.
- Should an MC rank the same candidate more than once, only the first appearance of that candidate on their ballot shall be counted.
- Failing to vote in the Seneschal election by an MC shall not count as a missed Clark unless that MC also fails to vote on the Clark itself.
- If a Seneschal candidate wins an outright majority of first-preference votes (more than 50%) he or she will be declared the winner.
- If no Seneschal candidate wins an outright majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated.
- All first-preference votes for the failed candidate are eliminated. Second preference choices on these ballots are then elevated to first-preference.
- A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won an outright majority of the adjusted votes.
- The process is repeated until either a candidate wins a majority of votes cast or a tie exists.
- If there's a tie after preferences, then we revert to the result of the previous round (which, in the case of only 3 candidates, would be the plurality result, i.e. just whoever gets the most first preferences). Only if it's still a tie then should we go for a revote on the second Clark.

I have adjusted the phrase "50% plus 1" to "more than 50%". Unless any objections are raised before today at midnight TST, I will consider these rules final.

The alternative, of course, is if a Seneschal is elected within the next 40 hours or so!