March 2022 Prime Minister special election

March 2022 Prime Minister special election

7‒16 March 2022
Registered	72 legislators of the South Pacific
Turnout	33.33%
Candidate Moon Party Independent Assembly vote 21 Percentage 87.5%
Prime Minister before election HumanSanity Elected Prime Minister Moon

The March 2022 Prime Minister special election was an election held in the South Pacific from 7‒16 March 2022 to elect a new Prime Minister of the South Pacific after incumbent HumanSanity had resigned. The position was only contested by incumbent Minister of Defence Moon, who beat the Re-Open Nominations option in a landslide to become the next Prime Minister.

Background

Cabinet positions usually are elected concurrently every four months. However, should an incumbent resign and more than half of the term remain, a special election for the post must be held.

After being re-elected in the February 2022 Cabinet election with the intent of serving another full term to continue/finish started projects, HumanSanity announced their intent to resign to the Assembly on March 6th, 2022, becoming effective with the due election of a new Prime Minister. They cited shifting real-life priorities as well as general exhaustion after being incredibly involved in NS politics for a continuous 2 and a half years. However, Election Commissioner Kris Kringle stated that a special election would not start before an actual vacancy ‒ not just an intent to vacate the position ‒ exists, and asked a Legal Question to the High Court of the South Pacific to obtain clarity for future reference on whether an intent as that of HS would suffice to call a special election. In response, HS retracted their statement of intent and made their resignation effective immediately.

As the half-term line was still far away, a special election had to be called.

Electoral System

The office of the Prime Minister of the South Pacific is a Cabinet office, all of which are to be elected using Instant-Runoff voting. A voter ranks as many of the standing candidates as they wish in descending order of preference; the worst-performing candidates are eliminated from the tally one after the other and the votes for them re-distributed according to the voters' preferences until a candidate has attained an absolute majority of votes. Should the option to Re-Open Nominations win, the election reverts to the candidacy declarations phase.

Candidacy declarations would last for four days, running concurrently with the campaigning period, which however would last for another two days. Thereafter, the Assembly would vote for three days.

Candidates

Nominations were accepted by Moon and Ikania; the latter however did so a few hours past the deadline for declarations and was subsequently disqualified from the race. Nominations were declined by Amerion, Belschaft, Purple Hyacinth, and Witchcraft and Sorcery, while Roavin, Nakari, and Apatosaurus never responded to theirs.

Declared Candidates
Bolded candidates are incumbents. Italicized candidates withdrew from the election. Struck candidates were disqualified from the race.
Candidate			Political office(s)	Campaign
		Moon	Minister of Defence of the South Pacific (since February 2022) Other offices Senior Staff in the Ministry of Media Officer in the South Pacific Special Forces Ambassador to 10000 Islands and the West Pacific	Prime Moonister
		Ikania	Legislator of the South Pacific (since January 2022)	ABSOLUTE POWER

Campaigns

Moon's campaign promised the continuation of integration efforts in the executive branch, leaning on Phoenix' Assembly Mentorship Program from their Chair term. Furthermore, he criticized the negligence of previous administrations towards the Office of World Assembly Legislation, lauding incumbent OWL Director BlockBuster2K43 for their efforts to get OWL running again and pledging to better define and enact a consistent South Pacifican WA policy, particularly in the SC, and working with the Ministry of Engagement to further domestic WA participation and cross-endorsing. In Foreign Affairs matters, he would continue and complete a number of existing yet unfinished projects from the HumanSanity administration. Lastly, Moon promised to increase Cabinet transparency by regularly updating the Assembly about any internal progress and external developments.

Ikania ran a joke campaign themed around the Canadian Rhinoceros Party.

Results

The results were proclaimed by Election Commissioner Kris Kringle on March 16th, 2022, and certified a week later.

Results: First Round
Green background denotes winning candidates. Red background denotes eliminated candidates. ✓ and ✗ denote the status of any incumbent, win or lose respectively.
Candidate	First-Place Preferences
Moon	21	87.5%
Re-Open Nominations	3	12.5%
Invalid ballots	0	0%

As such, Moon had obtained a majority of the vote and was elected to serve the three-month remainder of the current Cabinet's term.