Elections in Tepertopia (Pacifica)

Elections in Tepertopia include elections to the Tepertopian Assembly, the Council of the Union, the five State's legislatures, and local elections. For some elected positions, by-elections may also be held when an incumbent leaves office before the end of their term; likewise, some offices may be forcefully vacated via a recall election. There is no uniform electoral system for all elections, with a variety of systems in use. Nonetheless, all elections in Tepertopia are presently held as direct rather than indirect elections.

While used relatively sparingly, the Tepertopian Articles of Union as well as most State constitutions also offer the possibility of referenda to hold a vote on specific issues rather than on a political office.

Franchise

Party system

Political parties are a central force within modern Tepertopia, with most candidates in elections standing on behalf of a specific party. Parties can be established by anybody via registration with the Federal Electoral Commission, provided that the prospective party has at least twenty-five members and a written basic political manifesto. While there is a large number of recognized parties, only a few have an established presence at the federal level of politics.

Recently, the Moderates and the Welfare Party have consistently been the two largest parties, representing the centre-right and centre-left of politics respectively. The historically strong Canon, standing for left-leaning economics and social conservatism, have declined over time to fourth place behind the liberal Merchants' Guild, the oldest continually existing party. The smaller of the federally relevant parties are The Future is Ours!, the Digital Democracy Party, and The Grays ‒ Justice for All. On the State level, there are also a number of regionalist parties that consistently win seats, most notably Arise Valetria! in Valetria.

Independent candidates are nonetheless a common occurrence, with most of the electoral systems used being at least partially party-agnostic. While still winning comparably seldom in Federal and State-level elections, local elections are often won by locally popular independents.

Levels of elections

Federal

On the Federal level, there are elections to the Tepertopian Assembly and the Council of the Union. Both are organized by the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC).

Federal Electoral Commission

The FEC is a body comprising the High Electoral Commissioner as its chairperson plus one Electoral Commissioner for each State.

These Commissioners for the States are each chosen according to the respective State's own procedures, although Federal law requires this process to provide adequate safeguards against the exertion of political influence over the position. By convention, the States' own Electoral Commissioners represent the State on the FEC.

The High Electoral Commissioner is one of the High Offices of Tepertopia. As such, the position is elected by the Council for a technically indefinite term. An incumbent can then only be replaced by electing someone else to the office in their stead. The Assembly can however force the Council to thusly elect a new officeholder by passing a motion of no confidence in the incumbent.

Assembly

Assembly elections occur only after the Assembly has been dissolved by the Protector of Tepertopia. Dissolution is ordered regularly once an Assembly's three-year term has elapsed, but can also happen extraordinarily at any time, if the Assembly petitions the Protector for a dissolution. Once the Assembly is dissolved, no parliamentary business can take place anymore; the most urgent matters may be addressed by the Council preliminarily, but the newly elected Assembly then has to make a decision on them itself as soon as possible.

The actual procedure of running the election is managed by the Federal Electoral Commission, which coordinates with a local Electoral Commissions for each of the 22 constituencies. Candidates for a constituency are nominated before the respective local Commission. Established parties are free to nominate any candidates they wish according to their own internal procedures, while minor parties and independents need to submit supporter signatures before being allowed to stand. The Commissions formally accept or reject nominated candidates, with an appeal against a rejection possible to the Administrative Courts.

The election itself happens on a Sunday. Voters also have the option to request a mail-in ballot. Using the single transferable vote, each constituency elects between three and nine Assemblypeople, proportional to the share of the electorate living in the constituency.

Ballots are collected overnight in a central counting location for each constituency. Counting may take from a single day up to a week, depending on the number of seats up for election and the closeness of results, which may require a recount. Constituency results are announced in a formal ceremony by the various Commissions, with all candidates present. Once all local results are finalized, the Federal Electoral Commission finalizes the official results of the election. Thereafter, at most a month after election day, the newly elected Assemblypeople are sworn in by the Assembly's Father of the House in the constituting session of the new Assembly.

There are no by-elections between dissolutions; instead, together with their nomination, each candidate may submit a list of people that shall take their seat in case of it being vacated before dissolution. Similarly, Assemblypeople cannot be recalled by constituents before the end of their term.

Council

Elections to the Council of the Union take place every four years on the second-to-last Sunday in November. Unlike Assembly elections, which are scheduled in relation to upcoming dissolutions, this point of time is fixed in law.

The Federal Electoral Commission also runs Council elections, in cooperation with the States' own Electoral Commissions. For the most part, the candidate nominations process is the same as for Assembly elections; however, requirements for supporter signatures are much higher for Council elections.

As with Assembly elections, voters have the option to request a mail-in ballot. The election itself happens under the Evaluative Satisfaction System, with one Councillor in each State on the lower tier, and three further Councillors elected Federation-wide on the upper tier.

Once the polls close, the ballots are counted in each precinct separately. Since Council elections use no electoral threshold for the upper tier, precincts are able to also sum satisfaction scores for each candidate independently, without having to wait for the central certification of lower-tier results first. Usually, provisional certification of the full results by the Federal Electoral Commission happens in the course of the day following the election, with final certification occurring roughly two to three weeks after. On the 14th of December, the anniversary of the Tepertopian Articles of Union entering into force, the new Council members are formally appointed and sworn in by the Protector.

Vacant Council seats are not subject to by-elections either. Unlike for Assembly seats, however, they aren't filled by directions of the previous officeholder, but rather by performing another upper-tier iteration on the last election results. Since this does not guarantee the new Councillor to be from the same party as their predecessor for Councillors elected on the lower tier, this system has repeatedly come under scrutiny whenever this situation becomes likely, but no actual legislative changes have been initiated to remedy the issue yet.

State

Local

Referenda

Electoral schedule

Year	State	Election	Term (years)
2024	Pluvy	Local	3
2025	Grimmen	Diet	4
	Grimmen	Local	5
	Vickel	Local	5
2026	Tepertopia	Council	4
	Lotze	Diet	4
	Lotze	Local	5
	Pluvy	House of Representatives	3
	Pluvy	Senate	6
	Valetria	House of Commons	5
	Vickel	Parliament	4
2027	Tepertopia	Assembly	3
2027	Pluvy	Local	3
2028	Valetria	Local	6