"Commissioning a Fix," by C. Carlüs Xheraltescù

Put succinctly, the Electoral Commission is just not working. That much is evident to anyone who’s up to date on Talossan affairs. It’s evident to anyone who’s sat there thinking, ‘Hey, didn’t we have an election?’ with the follow up thought of, ‘Wait, shouldn’t that mean we have some lawmakers?’
They’d be right of course. By now, we should have a working Cosa with shiny new politicians (and some crusty old ones) lawsmithing away, and knocking rhetorical bits off each other. Most importantly, we should have a Cosa that’s able to hold the government accountable by now. Whilst I’m sure every government can breathe a sigh of relief when their actions aren’t subject to a vote of confidence every month, it’s pretty darn important that we have such scrutiny (he said, waryvof future parliamentary questions).

“What’s the hold up?” I hear our less observant readers cry. Well, the problem is that as it stands, every election needs to be certified by a commission of legal representatives (and the Secretary of State). The problem is that it turns out getting the ball rolling takes a really bloody long time. Consider this, most of the members of the commission are semi-retired Justices in the Uppermost Court, then add on to that the fact that they were only able to start working on validation a few days after the election finished. To go through each vote individually takes pretty long as it stands, so it’s no wonder we’re still waiting. Or are we? That seems to be a matter of debate. Regardless, if you speak to most of the folks who potter around Wittenberg these days, I’ll bet they’ll agree if you ask if they think this system is in need of change. So what do we do? Well, there are a few option open to us:
(a) Get the ball rolling sooner, which is to say that we should look in to giving the electoral commission access to the validation process sooner. This would have to come hand in hand with some safeguards because access to people’s votes during an election is even more serious than after.
(b) Share the workload; change the system so that each vote requires only half of the commission to validate it, thereby halving the workload.
(c) Change the system so that we assume the results are correct, and have the commission busy in the background to deal with any errors that come up as and when they happen. The problem with this is that it could end up with mid-term changes to the composition of the Cosa, which is an issue in the current climate of coalition-building in Talossan politics.
(d) Get rid of the secret ballot.

Doing nothing is not an option. Well, I mean it is – it’s not a particularly viable one though. An undesirable consequence of opting for option (e) is that we will continue having the problems we have now, which is... problematic. Option (d) whilst is definitely an option, it is also complete lunacy. Whilst I respect the right of individuals to shout loudly and proclaim their loyalty to a party in a rather vulgar fashion, even if (as I’m sure you can tell) I don’t think it’s a particularly good thing for them to do so, you can’t make me do the same. Obviously, if you were to change the law then you could, but you really shouldn’t be able to. I and everyone else in Talossa should be able to cast their vote without being judged.

If, for example, someone wanted to vote for the TWP in the last election because of its policies but didn’t want to be publicly associated with Admiral Tim Asmourescu, its leader, then they wouldn’t have to worry. Neither should they have to. It’s a matter of private consideration not public discourse, though it’s certainly influenced by the latter. As such, (d) is off the table too.
Personally, I think it would be better for us to consider doing both (a) and (b). Get ‘em started earlier, and give ‘em less to do. It’s a simple solution, and can be solved simply. Once we work out if we can start legislating yet.