: Posted by Admiral Larry Garfield (Election Coordinator) in Office of the Election Coordinator
: : Posted by Tim Martin (Presidential Candidate) in Martin / Brough Campaign
: : Members Of Star-Fleet and Larry:
: :
: : After much thought, I withdraw myself as a candidate for president of STF. Ed and I want what is best for STF; therefore, we both believe this is the right thing to do.
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: : Tim Martin
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: The withdrawl of the Martin/Brough ticket is hereby acknowledged.
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: Of course, that leaves me in quite the pickle. Technically, LEGOE doesn't say what happens when someone withdraws nor does it even acknowledge the possibility. :-) However, there is ample precedent for candidates withdrawing themselves from the election. Therefore in accordance with established precedent the Martin/Brough ticket will be treated as though it had been eliminated in the first election round.
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: That then leaves us with the situation of having only one remaining candidate. That has only happened thrice in modern STF history (defined as since the opening of effWeBB).
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: In the first instance, sitting president Greg Hertzsch was nominated for re-election a mere two months after effWeBB went online, and no one from the WeBB was told that there was an election so no one else was nominated. (This is back when the government was still on Prodigy's BBS.) The election was therefore cancelled and Greg declared the winner by default with no election proceedings. (October 1997.)
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: In the second, Barry Vogtman withdrew from the election after the first round results were announced and he was shown to be well-behind front-runner Emma Rouse-Deane. If memory serves, the remainder of the election was suspended with no further voting and Emma declared the winner by default with no further election proceedings. (July 2002.)
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: In the third case, Barry Vogtman was disqualified from the election due to evidence that his VP had hacked the effWeBB voting booth to rig the election. That was revealed in place of actual election results, as it was discovered within the last few days of the election. As Emma Rouse-Deane was the only remaining candidate, she was declared the winner by default. The elections were over at that point anyway. (March 2003.)
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: (For the record, later events demonstrated that Barry's VP candidate, Simon, was not responsible but his roomate, Mackael Stockhausen, was the likely culprit. Sadly as they shared an Internet connection there was no way to tell them apart. Most historians at this point consider Simon to not been involved, and that to have been the worst election in STF history.)
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: Based on previous precedent, therefore, I hold that as the Robinson/Olinski ticket is the only active ticket that it wins by default. There will therefore, per the first instance, be no voting period. Any such voting would be misleading and inaccurate at best, as it would either have to have false entries on it or only one entry, neither of which would give a legally useful result.
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: Of course, that rather ruins the purpose of having me be EC this election so that we could work out the kinks in the voting booth. Bah! We'll have to find some other way to test it out, and/or I'm stuck with EC again in 8 months. *sigh*
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: In any event, Andrew Robinson and Brian Olinski are hereby declared the winners in the election. They will officially take office at noon US Eastern Time on Saturday 2 August. Yes, this is a few days earlier than the previous date, but I think I just copied it wrong and a weekend works better anyway. :-) Since Andy and Brian will already have the longest transition period, um, ever, I do not believe this will be a problem.
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: Gentlemen, my sincerest condolences.
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: The Election Ship will remain open for archival purposes until around 9 August or so.
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: This concludes the July 2008 STF Election Season. Please remember to tip your Election Coordinator generously.
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: --Election Coordinator Larry Garfield

Congratulations to all of the candidates for a good campaign time - though short, it was engaging! Congratulations to our new forthcoming President and Vice President!

- Phillip Stonness