February 2022 Minister of Engagement special election
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| Registered | 68 legislators of the South Pacific | |||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 30.89% | |||||||||||||||
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The February 2022 Minister of Engagement special election was an election held in the South Pacific from 23 February ‒ 13 March 2022 to elect a new Minister of Engagement after incumbent Purple Hyacinth had resigned. In a first run of the election, only Jeeve stood as candidate, but was rejected by voters likely due to too heavy ties to raider(-leaning) regions. Again, only a single candidate stood in the due re-run, but former Minister USoVietnam easily beat the Re-Open Nominations option and became the new 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.
Purple Hyacinth, the incumbent, was only shortly before elected in the February 2022 Cabinet election. Only five days after the certification of the election, she announced that she felt burnt out in the office and did not believe to be able to return to her duties faithfully within the term; and as such, she resigned the office on the 22nd of February, 2022.[1]
As the half-term line was still far away, a special election had to be called.
Electoral System
The office of the Minister of Engagement 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.
Original Run
Candidacy declarations initially opened on February 23rd, 2022, with voting set to conclude on March 4th.[2]
Candidates
Only a single candidate accepted their nomination, namely Jeeve, while Altrurismo, Jebediah, and BlockBuster2K43 declined theirs; Pronoun, Amerion, USoVietnam, Doge Land, and Nicholas and Great Britain never responded to theirs.[2]
| Declared Candidates | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bolded candidates are incumbents. Italicized candidates withdrew from the election. | ||||
| Candidate | Political office(s) | Campaign | ||
|
Jeeve | Legislator of the South Pacific (since January 2022) |
Better Then Ron[3] | |
Campaigns
Citing their poor campaigning skills, Jeeve's campaign was relatively short, featuring only a few bullet points of their plans for each project within the Ministry. They planned to continue their predecessor's approach of delegating duties to and thus empowering individual project leaders and trying to recruit new staff members. The cards project would have concrete guides for card farming written, a formal system for requesting new graphics would be established, and the gameside introductory dispatches would be reworked to make them more concise in favor of moving in-depth information to the wiki. Jeeve came under intense questioning by their fellow legislators due to their ties to several raider(-leaning) regions, questioning their true allegiances and trustworthiness with Cabinet-level intelligence.[3]
Results
The results were announced by Election Commissioner Kris Kringle on the 4th of March, 2022.[4]
| 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 | |
| Jeeve | 4 | 20% |
| Re-Open Nominations | 16 | 80% |
| Invalid ballots | 0 | 0% |
Thus, the Re-Open Nominations option attained the most votes, and subsequently, the election had to be re-run from the nominations phase.
Re-Run
Nominations re-opened on March 4th, 2022 for the due re-run of the election; only USoVietnam declared their candidacy, with no nominations being made.[5]
Candidate
| Declared Candidates | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bolded candidates are incumbents. Italicized candidates withdrew from the election. | ||||
| Candidate | Political office(s) | Campaign | ||
|
USoVietnam | Legislator of the South Pacific (since July 2016) Other offices |
USoVietnam for yet another full-term of Minister of Engagement![6] | |
Campaign
USoVietnam promised to approach the issues of the Ministry simply by recognizing all the tech-intensive projects of it ‒ managing which was problematic for Ministers at times since not everyone always had the specialized knowledge required for them ‒ as "pet projects" under the complete control of the respective project coordinator; the Minister would only be responsible for coordinating recruitment policy such as determining when to send which mass telegrams. To this end, the outreach team started by their predecessor Purple Hyacinth would be continued and made official, with detailed guides for team members. Generally, USoVietnam planned that Ministry staff would be educated more on their possibilities within the Ministry to encourage activity. Further encouragement would be provided by the step-by-step finalization of the cards team, which could award valuable on-site trading cards for dutiful staff. Lastly, USoVietnam pledged to frequently update the public about Ministry progress again.[6]
Results
The final election results were proclaimed by Election Commissioner Kris Kringle on March 13th, 2022.[7]
| 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 | |
| USoVietnam | 19 | 90.48% |
| Re-Open Nominations | 2 | 9.52% |
| Invalid ballots | 0 | 0% |
Therefore, USoVietnam was elected to serve the three-month remainder of the current Cabinet's term.
References
- ↑ Purple Hyacinth (22 Feb '22): Resignation from MoE and the CG. Retrieved 22 Feb '22.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 EC Kris Kringle (22 Feb '22): Declarations of Candidacy. Retrieved 1 Mar '22.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Jeeve (27 Feb '22): Jeeve For Minister of Engagement | Better Then Ron. Retrieved 1 Mar '22.
- ↑ EC Kris Kringle (4 Mar '22): Proclamation of results. Retrieved 4 Mar '22.
- ↑ EC Kris Kringle (4 Mar '22): Declarations of Candidacy (Re-Opened). Retrieved 4 Mar '22.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 USoVietnam (7 Mar '22): USoVietnam for another *full* term of MoE. Retrieved 16 Mar '22.
- ↑ EC Kris Kringle (13 Mar '22): Proclamation of Results (Re-Opened). Retrieved 16 Mar '22.