1701 Hurmu general elections/IRL

The membership of the Order of the Holy Lakes will elect the Senate of the Lakes in October, 2021. The new Senate will sit for another 6 IRL months (6 Norton months). Every real-life person with adult characters in the Order of the Holy Lakes will have as many votes as characters in the election.

New in this election is the possibility of binding referendums and a larger Senate. If one of your characters are elected to the Senate, I will invite you to the Senate discord channel where decisions are made.

Terminology

• Elector: An adult character (who will turn 18, or is older, during the 1701 Norton year).
• List: Also known as faction, is the name used for political party competing in the Senate election.
• Voter: The real-life person controlling an elector (or several electors)
• Order of the Holy Lakes: A hereditary chivalric order. Its members elect the Senate.
• Senate of the Lakes: The collective head of state, upper legislative assembly and Supreme Court of Hurmu.

Timeline

• 30 September 2021: Faction/Lists/Referendums to be set.
  • If you wish to have a list competing in the elections, the list should be registered by the end of the month. Registration occurs by editing the election article and adding the name of the faction (including creating a wiki article outlining a simple programme for the list). You do not need candidates on the list yet.
  • If you wish for a question to be posed to the membership of the Order of the Holy Lakes, you should DM Ric (on discord or hub.mn/forum) the question. Any question posed, unless too silly, will be asked to the membership in the referendum.
• 1 October 2021: The list of electors is finalised. After this date, no new names can be inscribed.
  • Electors must be admitted members to the Order of the Holy Lakes, or currently married or widowed (unless remarried outside the order) to a member, or descended from a member by blood or legal adoption.
  • Moreover, each elector must have their name and age listed in the List of living members of the Order of the Holy Lakes. Without age, electors cannot vote.
• 9 October 2021: Final day to add names to the lists. Failure to have names on the list will mean a failure for your list to compete in the election. If you, for example, have two names, but you win three seats in the Senate, you can only take up 2 seats, and the vacant seat will be redistributed to another faction.
• 11–18 October 2021: Real-life members of the Order will vote through a link that Ric will provide them.
• 17–18 October 2021: The in-game election.
• 19 October 2021: Senate and Assembly results are announced (hopefully).
• 19–24 October 2021: Results can be challenged by appealing to the outgoing Senate (sitting until the end of the month).
• 1 November 2021: New Senate takes place.

Voting

1. Real-life members of the Order ("you") will have a given number of votes.
   1. For the sake of examples, we will have a fictional real-life member of the order, called Andreas. Andreas has 13 votes, each vote corresponding an adult in-world character. Andreas's 13 characters are:
      1. Betty
      2. Cecilie
      3. David
      4. Emily
      5. Frederick
      6. Gregory
      7. Hermann
      8. Israel
      9. Jacob
      10. Karmen
      11. Linda
      12. Miranda
      13. Nelly
2. Ric will provide you with a link to a Google Form where voting will occur. Ric will also provide a unique and secret voter ID that will be used when voting. You may not share your voter ID with anybody else.
   1. For example, Andreas's voter ID is "andyboy". Andreas will need to enter his unique voter ID when voting. If he doesn't do that, his vote will be spoilt.
3. Aside from entering your voter ID, you will also enter how many votes you have.
   1. As Andreas has 13 votes, he needs to write 13 where appropriate.
4. There are three questions on the Google Form ballot.
   1. The first question is election to the Senate. Here, you will have a choice by giving ALL your votes to one list, or to split it. Read the instructions carefully so that none of your votes go spoilt.
      1. If you want to split your votes, you will use the free-text box. There you will write how many votes each list gets. Make sure that the numbers add up.
      2. For example, if Andreas wants to give all his votes to the Germanic List (a fictional list), he will indicate so. If he wants to split his votes, he will indicate so, and then write, for example, the Germanic List 2 votes, Romance List, 5 votes, and the Slavic List, 6 votes. There may be IC reasons for splitting your vote. For example, in Andreas's head cannon, Hermann and Frederick are über-Germanicists, Cecilie, Emily, David, Miranda, and Nelly are grand Romance-lovers, while the others are Slavic. Therefore, it makes more sense to split the vote.
   2. The second question is the referendum question on the currency. Similar as in the previosu question, you will have a choice between using all your votes for one list or splitting them as before.
   3. The third question is the referendum question on the original membership of Scott Woodrow.
5. After you have submitted your votes, Ric will confirm that he has received them. He will also tell you if there is something wrong with your vote (i.e. too many votes, too few votes, or other matters) You may change your votes before the end of the voting period, by telling Ric that you wish to change your vote. After that, you may use the same link and voter ID to resubmit your votes.
6. After the voting period has ended, you may, if you have grounds to believe the voting has been manipulated or not occurred within the specified rules or the traditions of Hurmu, you may appeal, using a character of yours that is an elector, the result to the incumbent Senate which will review your appeal. You should be prepared to discuss your appeal with the members of the Senate and an advocate that the Senate appoints to argue for the other side. The Senate will vote on the judgment.
7. If you have any questions during the voting phase about voting, please contact Ric through your preferred medium :P

Apportionment

Eighteen seats are up for grabs. Lists will be apportioned seats by way of a simple formula: Q = 18v / T; in other words the number of seats available (18) multiplied by the number of votes (v) for the list, and then divided by the total number of the seats. From this equation, we will receive a quotient (Q). For example, if the quotient is 3.67, it means that the list will be guaranteed 3 seats. After all lists have been counted and given guaranteed seats this way, the number of guaranteed seats are added, and then subtracted from the whole number (18). The resulting difference is the number of seats left to be allocated. For example, say that there are 4 more seats to allocate, then the 4 lists with the highest decimals (when ordered) will be given an extra seat.

This apportionment system favours small parties. It is, for example, possible (but not guaranteed) to get representation in the Senate by as few votes as 10.

Electors

For a list of electors (IC), see 1701 Hurmu general elections/Electors.

Real-life electors are as follows:

IRL ELECTOR	VOTES
Alperen	4
Arkadius	119
Continuator	129
Craitman	2
Edgard	3
George	29
Hālian	5
Ivo	6
Jack	10
Jonas	4
Octy	124
Orion	1
Primo	7
Raz	1
Ric	104