Two questions have recently been posed to me, on which I have made a decision and posted the results of those decisions to the "Election Rules" section of the OEC web page. To ensure everyone knows them, I will repeat them here with explanations.

1) The election rules state in Section D that "During the voting period, eligible members may post a message in the Election Area endorsing another candidate." Section B defines members this way:

"To be eligible to participate in the election process, a person must meet Star-Fleet's definition of 'Member' 30 days prior to the start of the Election Season, and must continue to meet the definition up to and including the time of the election activity being participated in."

I therefore have interpreted that to mean election participation is "all or nothing"; that is, a member is eligible to endorse if and only if that member is otherwise eligible to vote.

2) It has been brought to my attention that the Election Edict (LEGOE) does not, in fact, state that members may ask questions of candidates; it just describes how one must behave when posting. Oops. :-) In accordance with established precedent, therefore, I have ruled that anyone with an account, whether eligible to vote or not, may pose questions to candidates generally or specifically to a candidate or engage candidates in on-topic discussion and debate, unless they have been restricted from doing so as a penalty for some misbehavior.

Because all candidates must be both "people with an account" and "members" as defined by LEGOE, candidates are permitted to pose questions to each other in the same fashion as anyone else.

--EC Larry Garfield