August 2024 Osolian general election
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All citizens and residents can participate 50% of votes needed for a majority | ||
 | This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses, and initial reports may be unreliable. The latest updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. (August 2024) |
The August 2024 general elections are scheduled to be held in Osolia on August 15th, 2024. This election will be the second election to utilize the my.osolia system for registering and voting for candidates.
Candidacy registration opened August 1st, 2024 at 12:00 AM UTC and will last until voting opens on August 15th, 2024 at 12:00 AM UTC.
Electoral system
During a general election, Osolians vote for the Chief, who leads the executive, and the Speaker, who leads the legislature.
Elections in Osolia employ instant-runoff voting. Voters rank the candidates for each position in order of preference. During counting, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated in several rounds until someone achieves a majority of the electorate.
Candidacy
Chief
Weeks before candidacy opened, incumbent Chief TriforceComet stated multiple times that he would not seek another term. He would later say that he was not interested in running for any government position. This led to the incumbent Speaker, tz_scion, to plan on running for Chief, and announced over a week before candidacy opened that he intended to do so. However, about an hour before candidacy opened, tz_scion suddenly announced that he was going to drop out of the election and did not want to seek out any government positions.
This led initially two people to sign up for the Chief role instead - CalvinX, the Director of Infrastructure, who has been a well-respected figure in Osolia politics for his work on the nether highway system and the expansion of Sahosam, and cstro, a prominent citizen of Osolia who had only recently joined the politicial sphere by becoming the first Postmaster of the Osolian Post Office.
CalvinX released a "Diet Manifesto" on August 1, 2024, detailing his plans for Chief, including attempting to deflate and stabilize the Diamond Cent, a hotly debated topic in Osolia at this time, along with promising more "large scale projects for the community" and a plan to "beautify Sahosam" by adding "public parks, lamp shades, benches, ponds , small bridges and more personalized things" to the city.
cstro, on the other hand, made it clear that, "As for policies, I don’t have any strong feelings towards a specific policy or decision or really ideal. I am in favor though of just the progression of Osolia as a [Minecraft] server. I think downtown Sahosam still has some potential that is untapped and I would love to see that. But my ideals and stuff aren’t fully formed as my idea for filling out candidacy for Chief was a thought I has that I thought was interesting to pursue." When questioned briefly about this by FlynneSkye and Chief TriforceComet, cstro decided to drop out of the race immediately. Some expressed confusion about this decision, as even his opponent Calvin stated, "I always saw Cstro as the "maintain the status quo" candidate and that's perfectly acceptable to run on [to be honest]."
After all of these events, currently Calvin is the only candidate left standing for the Chief position, and assuming that no one announces a last second candidacy, will become Chief on August 16, 2024, following the release of the results of the election.
Speaker
About a week before candidacy opened, former Chief and current Director of Finance Michael Webb announced his intention to run for Speaker instead of Chief like he had previously done in all previous elections. He stated that his time serving as Acting Speaker while Speaker Scion had to tend to personal matters made him realize he would rather serve Osolia as Speaker, citing his work in passing the Post Office Act. He has vowed to bring more civility and decorum to Assembly meetings and discussions in the #assembly channel on Discord and to come to a "middle ground" on the hotly-debated issue of the economy.
Hydrogen, a former Director of Finance, once again threw his hat into the ring, this time running for Speaker. He has stated in a campaign poster that he will fight for citizens' rights, ensure the Assembly's voice, bring currency reform, increase transparency in politics, and give Osolians the ability to anonymously propose changes.