Might as well go a bit further into the Student Court ruling, for the sake of the archives. (The next time Student Court makes a questionable ruling, hopefully people will come here to find out why the last one was questionable too.) But not too in depth, so don’t be scared off. Unlike Naylor’s “Rising Scourge of Kritarchy”, reading the ruling is hopefully not a pre-requisite to understanding this post.
In going through the ruling, Student Court’s decision-making narrative appeared to go something like this:
[1] Mr. Trasolini, the Appellant, would like us to rule on the validity of Ricardo Bortolon’s decision to count a disputed ballot in favour of Mr. Platt.
[2] AMS Code gives constituencies the ability to make their own rules governing elections, provided that a set of 20 conditions are met.
[3] In AUS electoral code some of those conditions are met explicitly but some are only met implicitly, by giving the AUS Elections Committee (AUSEC) the discretion to set specific rules.
[4] There seem to be two main issues with which the Court is presented in this case:
1) Was the electoral framework sound? And, if so
2) Was the application of the framework correct in this case?
[5] For the parts of AUS Code where the AUSEC is given discretion, they did not set specific rules before the election. Instead, they used their discretion to deal with issues as they arose.
[6] AUS Code, by not having explicit rules and simply giving the AUSEC discretion to make decisions, does not satisfy the conditions set out in AMS Code governing constituency elections.
[7] We find the AUS Constitution to be in violation of AMS Code.
[8] In the event of a violation of AMS Code, the AMS Bylaws give us the power to render an action “void and of no effect”
[9] We consider the AUS Presidential Election to be an action, and declare it to be void and of no effect.
[10] Since the election has been invalidated, it is unnecessary to rule on the validity of the disputed ballot.
