WELCOME TO THE OFFICIAL GOVERMENT WEBSITE OF:

THE UNITED DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF

UTANIA

-- Utanian Electoral Commission --

Duties of the UEC

r Modifying electoral boundaries
r Maintain list of voters
r Provide EVERY citizen with an opportunity to vote
r Manage Elections, providing voting booths, voting papers, and people to count votes

The Utanian Electoral Commission is tasked with the job of running Utania's federal, Presidential and State elections, as addition to independently determining the boundaries of electorates. For this, the federal government funds the UEC with a permanent staff of 84, and an estimated temporary staff of over 40,000 people who will staff the polling booths during the three days of elections, and then to count the votes.

-- Fair Elections --

The most significant task of the UEC is to maintain "fair" elections. As voting is a democratic right, every citizen must be afforded the right to vote. There cannot be any forceful hindering or intimidation of voters. No voter can be denied their right to vote, and offenders can be jailed for up to five years for this crime. Furthermore, failure to provide voters with a means to vote is also illegal, and this falls into the lap of the UEC.

It is incumbent upon the UEC to provide EVERY citizen with a polling booth within "reasonable" distance, where "reasonable" is defined as five kilometres. Understandably, this provides significant challenges to the UEC in the states of Savana and Utani B'yan, where mountainous terrain and sparse occupation will make this task difficult.

Above - The current Electorates

UNV continues
to monitor

To further ensure that elections are fair in Utania, the UNV "Point South" Monitor will send monitors to several of the electoral polling booths, assisting the UEC with managing our responsibilities, and help to ensure that the elections are "fair".

Penalties exist for
electoral fraud

Failure for a citizen to register to vote

Û100

Failure for a citizen to vote

Û50

Voting multiple times in a single election

Û4,000

Coercing or forcing the "signing over" of an individual's vote

Û100,000

The Utanian
electoral system

Click here for information on the method of calculating winning parties.

To add to the task of making elections fair, the UEC is responsible for equitable distribution of citizens into electorates. Electorates are the grouping by which voters will be collected and placed against the candidates in that electorate. Defining the boundaries of these electorates can sometimes be made to advantage one party or another. Therefore, this shall be performed by an independent body in the UEC. Our determination can only be overridden by 75% of Parliament plus the President, to allow for mistakes by the UEC.

The rules for electorates are as follows:

There shall be no more than 1.5 million people living within an electorate
electorates that exceed this shall be redistributed, and surrounding electorates "given" some of those people
No electorate shall, therefore, have more than five elected members.
One Member shall represent, as best as is possible, 300,000 citizens.

The largest electorate in the current distribution, above, is Shecker, in the east of Utani B'yan, with 1.5 million citizens, and the smallest is Chiquiti, in the west, with only 489,000 citizens. The smallest physical-sized electorate is Utan Krysaror, in which 1.1 million citizens are registered.

The UEC is also responsible for maintaining a list of all citizens eligible to vote.

-- Exceptions --

There is one exception, allowed for by the constitution, where voters need not vote: In those electorates where the local Council of Chiefs will perform the voting on behalf of the people. Constitutionally, voters must sign-away their right to a proxy, in this case their chief. They are permitted to do reverse this at any time, and coercion cannot be permitted.

It is not the desire nor mission of the UEC to prevent such decisions being made. These are highly irregular in the eyes of the UNV, however, the people of Savana, in particular, have requested this so as to invest in their chiefs the right to select candidates. To prevent misuse of this system, the UEC will be provided with a 120 person investigations unit in the federal police. Penalties for "vote stealing" shall be ten years jail and up to Û100,000 fines.

-- Voting System --

The Utanian electoral system allows for more than one elected member per electorate. Utania runs with a unique system of determining the elected members, which has roots in the system employed while under Guwimith rule.

For more information on the system of determining which parties send MP's to Parliament, please click here to go to the appropriate page

Copyright © 2000 - Mike Ham
(except where copyright held by Edward Mooney, Jr., or their respective authors)
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