phpBB Weekly's "President Bertie" Election Contest
Part III: The Election!
The campaigns have been in full swing for the past two weeks, and have been very interesting and exciting. Hopefully you have had the opportunity to peruse the campaign topics of the candidates and learn about their stances on the issues important to you. But all good things must come to an end, and for campaigns, their end is with the election.
So, without further ado, it's time for the elections to begin! Click the link below to vote right away, or (recommended) read the overview of the voting instructions below.
Cast My Ballot!
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The Bertie Mons General Presidential Election
All four candidates were on this ballot, which opened at 9 PM EST on November 3rd and closed at 9 AM EST on November 5th. (UTC folks: That's 0200 UTC on November 4th to 1400 UTC on November 5th.) The results have been posted.
The Bertie Mons Presidential Runoff Election
In the general election, no single candidate received a majority (more than 50%) of the popular vote. Therefore, the top two scoring candidates will move on to the runoff election. The runoff will be conducted using exactly the same procedures as the general election, and will run from 9 PM EST on November 6th to 9 AM EST on November 8th. (UTC folks: That's 0200 UTC on November 7th to 1400 UTC on November 8th.) The results of the runoff election will be announced live on phpBB Weekly #084 that day, and will be posted in this topic shortly thereafter.
Rules for Voting
- You must be a registered member of StarTrekGuide/phpBB Academy in order to vote in this election. If you're not, well, how about you register right now?
- The ballot is a form that is hosted separately from StarTrekGuide.com, which means that we are not able to completely 100% verify the identity of the person completing the ballot. For this reason, the ballot asks you to enter your username and e-mail address exactly as they are listed in your STG profile. The sole purpose of this is to prevent voter fraud and ballot box stuffing, so we can make sure this is a fair election.
- Once you submit your ballot, the contents of your ballot is sent via e-mail to a special e-mail account we have created specifically for receiving Bertie Mons ballots. We will review each ballot by hand to verify that your username and e-mail address match what you have listed on this site. The reason that we request your e-mail address is because e-mail addresses are not public, and this helps us prevent forged ballots. If your username and e-mail address do not match, or a ballot is entered with a non-existent or inactive username, the ballot will be thrown out.
- You may not vote more than once. Multiple votes will be disqualified. If, for some reason, you believe that you accidentally submitted a ballot multiple times, send me a private message to let me know and we can handle that situation.
- We will do our best to investigate any issues with submitted ballots in a timely fashion; we will only throw out a ballot as a last resort.
- Also, the campaigns can continue to take place here in this forum during this week as the elections occur; everyone is reminded that the campaign season rules are still in effect.
Can I vote any other way?
No. Only ballots submitted through our form will be considered actual votes in this election. Some groups (like SCOFF Media) might post exit polls in this forum; those are entirely voluntary and have no bearing whatsoever on the actual results.
How do I know that your form will report the results accurately?
Unlike the manufacturers of touch screen voting machines who insist that their software has to remain proprietary "trade secrets," I am publicly releasing the source code of my form, in the same open-source spirit that phpBB is famous for. You can see the source code here.
That said, please note that I'm not the best PHP coder on the block, especially not compared to some of the brilliant MOD authors we have on StarTrekGuide/phpBB Academy. I know that there's probably some things in this code that could be better optimized, or written in a more organized way. This script was written pretty quickly, but I have thoroughly tested and debugged it, and it works. So please don't tell me how lame my coding is--I already know. The point is for full disclosure so you know what is happening when you cast your ballot. The only thing that has changed in this pastebinned source code from the actual script is that the e-mail address that is receiving all of these ballots has been hidden in order to prevent unsolicited e-mails being sent to it.
What happens after the election?
The winning candidate will get to be formally inaugurated live on phpBB Weekly #084 this Saturday. (If a runoff occurs, both candidates in the runoff will be invited to find out who wins live on the show.) They will also get to read an Inaugural Address on the episode, and once they conclude their address, that will conclude this contest. Oh, and they'll get a prize, which we'll decide on and announce by the episode. (Sorry, the prize thing has just kind of been very very low priority for me recently.)
Okay, it's time to exercise your democratic rights! It's time to vote! May the best candidate win.
--Douglas Bell, Bertie Mons Secretary of State
