Referendum: Does JR12 directly affect donsig?

I am posting this as an official poll in my capacity as a member of the judiciary.

Does JR 12 directly affect donsig?

Yes (therefore donsig should recuse himself from the case)
No (therefore donsig should make a ruling on the case)
Abstain

This poll is private.
This poll will be open for four days.

Some relevent threads:

Citizen initiative posted by donsig.

Term two judicial thread.

Are Initiatives considered Official polls, and thus subject to verification by the Censor?

Click to expand...

Hmmm... since donsig isnt a poll, and he isnt a censor or a official poll, and donsig isnt a initiative. I will vote NO

Nope, not really. I trusted curufinwe to make a decision, and I'm not so tempered that I won't trust Donsig the same.

Donsig, although I've disagreed with him many times in the past, is trustworthy enough to make a lawful and fair ruling on the JR. That's all that matters.

If we are to assume that Donsig is affected by the ruling, this will set a dangerous precendent where it will become very difficult to find any justices to try any case. There is a small number players here, so every case will probably effect most people in some way. Unless you are the accused or have actively aided the accused, you should still be allowed to rule. This JR has to do with the legality of citizen iniatives and the role of the Censor. So unless you are the censor, you should be allowed to rule. We elected you judge because we trust you will use resoning to interpret the rule of law, and not to rule to give yourself an edge. Just because you stated your resonining and interpretation of the law before the JR came about doesn't make your decision wrong.

I'll abstain. The poll duration is too long for my liking.

This poll is Invalid, and is downgraded to an Informational poll.

donsig, official polls must be public.

-- Ravensfire, Censor

btw - voted No.

I abstained from this Informational poll

ravensfire said:

donsig, official polls must be public.

-- Ravensfire, Censor

btw - voted No.

Click to expand...

Umm, doesn't this poll concern a specific individual? In that case, the Constitution says it must be private, overruling any lower law or procedure.

I will abstain, since the answer I'd like to use doesn't show up on the poll options.

No, not directly affected, but should recuse himself to show it can be done.

DaveShack said:

Umm, doesn't this poll concern a specific individual? In that case, the Constitution says it must be private, overruling any lower law or procedure.

Click to expand...

I did a double-take on finding this poll was private, but then I found this in the Code of Laws:

CoL said:

Section 3A
II Polling standards
IID. Official polls should be marked Public unless directly concerning another Citizen.

Click to expand...

So, I agree with DaveShack. This poll definitely refers to a citizen so it should be private.

Thank you DaveShack and Oldbus. Would the Censor like to uninvalidate this poll?

I think the results would not change if this were an official poll or not. Why does it need to be official?

DaveShack said:

Umm, doesn't this poll concern a specific individual? In that case, the Constitution says it must be private, overruling any lower law or procedure.

Click to expand...

I disagree, as the poll concerns the action an official should take. Using your logic, any leader could post a poll saying "Should I do XYZ action?", and post it private.

Private polls are used when the poll directly concerns a citizen, as in a recall, confirmation or Judicial poll. This does not fall into that category.

-- Ravensfire, Censor

There is little to be gained by arguing about it. A definitive answer would require a JR, which would be yet another opportunity for a recusal request.

Though arguing about it is a bad idea, I will try to explain my view. There is a difference between a poll on the action vs. a poll on the individual. Imagine a scenario where someone has accidentially viewed the save. If you ask the question "Should <username> be allowed to continue as a citizen" it is a question specifically about that person. An alternative question "How should we deal with the situation where someone views the save" is not about the person, even though in reality we know it really does affect that individual.

Ultimately my advice on this matter is similar in tone to the advice on the recusal itself. If an error is made, err on the side of caution.

The true irony is that if my opinion prevailed and the poll was official, then Donsig would be able to say with a clear conscience that he wants to recuse himself but is not allowed to because the binding poll says not to. If it remains informational, then he's still stuck with the moral dilemma.

But if there was ever a JR against him for not reclusing himself, he can use this opinion poll to show that it was the opinion of the people that he did not have to recluse himself. If I remember the CoL and Constitution correctly, this kind of poll still trumps anything accept another "more official" poll. Barring that poll, this poll can be acted upon.

@ravensfire (the citizen, not the Censor): Laws aside, official duties aside, do you, Citizen ravensfire, think a poll like this should be public or private? Why? (Please don't give me your official Censor opinion, please don't give me a judicial opinion based on our laws, I want to your opinion as someone who plays demogames. I missed the whole debate about public versus private polls.)

donsig said:

@ravensfire (the citizen, not the Censor): Laws aside, official duties aside, do you, Citizen ravensfire, think a poll like this should be public or private? Why? (Please don't give me your official Censor opinion, please don't give me a judicial opinion based on our laws, I want to your opinion as someone who plays demogames. I missed the whole debate about public versus private polls.)

Click to expand...

Public.

This is a case of you asking how we (the people) want you to act.
Private polls (personal opinion) should be used when either a person (or the State) are posting a poll directly concerning another person.

To some extent, seeing how people vote in polls gives a clue about them, about their personality. Public polls share that information, private polls do not.

I think that, for the most part, the concepts of democracy are best helped though transparency and openess. The exceptions to that are elections (and related polls) and Judicial polls, where the potential for harm, abuse or bad feelings outweighs the benefits.

-- Ravensfire

ravensfire said:

I disagree, as the poll concerns the action an official should take. Using your logic, any leader could post a poll saying "Should I do XYZ action?", and post it private.

Private polls are used when the poll directly concerns a citizen, as in a recall, confirmation or Judicial poll. This does not fall into that category.

-- Ravensfire, Censor

Click to expand...

As you may have realized there has been some controversy over whether justices should recuse themselves from certain cases. There has been an attempt at a citizen initiative on the matter though it's validity is in question due to actions by a Censor. There is a JR before the judiciary so the matter can be resolved but it is stalled because the recusal issue hasn't been resolved. Kind of like, figuring our whether the egg or the chicken came first.

This also reminds me of an old gunfight. Whichever draws first is wrong (and subject to prosecution for assault, attempted murder or murder depending on the outcome of his aim) yet, the alternative to letting the other guy draw first is getting shot. So, which of us will draw first, ravensfire?

It would seem my next step could be to post another poll about this subject and make it public. Trouble is, I would then be violating the constitution, something I am loathe to do. I could ignore the situation and make my recusal decision without benefit of a referendum to back me up. Something else I'm not too keen to do seeing as I already have the threat of one CC hanging over my head.

I can understand your reluctance to set a precedent that would allow officials to insert their name into a poll question just so they can post a private poll. But you can still validate this poll without setting such a precedent. All you need do is recognize this type of poll as the special case it is. Once you put it in it's own category then you can look at it to see if it more closely resembles the kind of polls that we legally require to be private or those that you require to be public. You may well decide that this type of poll is a judicial poll. If you did make such a decision then you could not only validate this poll you could insert procedures for this type of poll into the Censor's procedures.

One of the problems we ran up against in the recusal debates was how (and who) decides if a justice is affected by given case. It seems the who should be the Assembly as a whole so we need a poll. In my sincere effort to get an answer from the Assembly on whether I am directly affected by a specific case I'm being stymied by the Censor. My only recourse is to go to the judiciary with a JR request but then that just adds one more layer to the current chicken versus egg dillemma we now face.

It is time we all realize we need a mechanism for determining when a case affects a justice. This is a new thing that does not fit easily into either of the two categories mentioned by the Censor. It is quite reasonable to view this recusal poll as being about an individual and therefore should be private. I formally ask the Censor to take this into consideration and revise his ruling on this poll and revise his procedures to include the handling of this specific type of poll.