Zenkoku Nippō

[Zabuza825]

Holes in the EFF's Biased and Poorly Researched Report
by Haruto Kirishima

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As the latest elections become a thing of the past, many observers are releasing reports regarding the elections. While many of those based in Akitsu are reporting no indications of fraud, one foreign group has accused the elections of being fraudulent. However, their report is so full of holes that it is unbelievable. The amount of errors present in their report can only be attributed to one of two things - extreme carelessness or willful ignorance. Either they didn't bother to research the simple facts on the ground that is available, or they knew but they intentionally left out some of the details. Their flawed report is a disgrace to the very idea of voting - and is further evidence of a conspiracy by hostile foreign forces to influence and change Akitsu.

So, let us address some of the points they claim is evidence of fraud.

VOTING METHOD

The very first thing that was criticized was the adoption of electronic voting. They dispute the governments explanation that it was adopted for it's ease of use and speed, arguing that there is nothing harder for the average voter. And perhaps this would be true - if you only look at what happens inside the voting booths.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of things can happen outside of the voting booths that make voting difficult for some people. Before the adoption of electronic voting, polling stations in Akitsu regularly had issues with long lines on election day. It was never as bad as it was in some other countries, but the fact of the matter is that having to wait an extended period of time would cause inconvenience to the voter. This problem is something that has clearly been remedied in the last few elections, with there being no reports of long lines at polling stations.

When there is evidence that what was adopted as a solution to a problem that existed, a solution that is clearly working, they clearly ignore that evidence.

Furthermore, they argue that they were unable to confirm the software on the voting machines - however, all possible methods of confirmation was provided. Cryptographic hashes and checksums were provided, proving that the software used on it was indeed the software that was supposed to be on there. Furthermore, the software used was developed at least a decade ago by Akitian corporations, and in fact field tested several times before these elections. The only way to provide more evidence would be to allow election observers to directly examine the software on the computer with some form of external medium - but there would be no nation on the face of this planet that would allow it because that is one of the most direct vectors that a computer virus can use to infect a computer. They can't complain that we didn't let them do it when literally every country on the planet wouldn't allow it.

""LACK"" OF POLITICAL DIVERSITY

One of the other main points they argue is that the parties elected into the National Legislature (which they called the "parliament" even though that is the incorrect title for our legislature) all have the same political stances - this is a patently false claim. All one needs to do is look at the economic policies of the parties in power to find a great deal of political diversity.

The Justice Party, owing to their roots that come from the Liberal Democratic Party, is strongly in favor of economic regulation and a strong proponent of workers rights. In fact, the Justice Party's economic stance takes things a step further than the Liberal Democratic Party, arguing that the state should have a direct role in the economy by establishing some state-owned corporations in certain sectors. The Seiyū Party, owing to their roots that come from the Nationalist Party, is strongly in favor of less economic regulation and generally take a more hands-off approach when it comes to the economy. While they still argue in favor of a state role in the economy, they seem to favor it more in the realm of trying to read where the metaphorical "invisible hand" of the free market is directing things, and attempt to accelerate growth using strategic investments into different economic sectors. The Seiyū Party is strongly against the nationalization of any private corporation.

The Restoration Party seems to look at the economy in a much more mixed manner. They strongly favor state involvement in the economy, but seem to be much more in favor of contracting private corporations to achieve their goals, rather than direct nationalization or investment. They only favor nationalization in, to quote their manifesto "the most extreme of cases, where it would be impossible to achieve our economic goals through other methods". They call their economic policy "state-guided capitalism", and it is a policy that the Patriotic Party seems to also be in favor of. The Patriotic Party, however, seems to have a much more loose view on the nationalization of certain industries, arguing that nationalization may be necessary in more a broader criteria.

It is true that all the parties support an expansion of the military, but there is disagreement as to just how far that expansion should go. The Patriotic Party favors the most expansion, arguing that Akitsu should have "one of the top ten militaries in the world" when things are finished, while the Justice Party favors the least amount of expansion, arguing that the military should be expanded "until it can adequetly protect Akitian interests".

Social rights are something that there is also a great deal of disagreement in government over. The Justice Party is the most liberal in terms of social rights, being in favor of things such as same-sex marriage, rights for new half

Akitian slang term for transsexuals, usually not considered derogatory unless used in the wrong way
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's, and others. The Patriotic Party is the most right-wing in terms of social rights, not only arguing that same-sex marriage should be criminalized, but also arguing that women should go back to their traditional role as housewives, and that all same-sex marriages that have been approved so far should be declared void. The Seiyū Party seems to not make their positions on social issues known, but generally leans to the conservative side. The Restoration Party is also fairly conservative, many of their politicians have expressed opposition to same-sex marriage and have argued that women should go back to their traditional role as housewives, but they have also expressed opposition to changing the laws regarding these issues that are currently on the books, stating that changing some of these laws in such a manner would cause too much harm to the economy.

The report completely ignores these differences that exist in the parties positions. This would've been obvious had they done some actual research into the positions of each party, but apparently they neglected to do even the most basic of research.

""EXCLUSION"" OF VOTERS

The report further argues that the adoption of traditional characters caused the drop in Akitian voter turnout - a drop to 45%, the lowest level that Akitsu has seen in decades. However this accusation falls apart when you look at the characters.

When voting, the voting machine would prompt you asking who you wanted to vote for to represent your district in the National Legislature, and what list of candidates you wanted to vote for in the proportional representation bloc. First off - most names would not be affected by the transition back to traditional characters. Names are different from the standard writing, and it is not necessary for someone to switch their names to traditional characters if they don't want to. Furthermore, the names of parties in traditional characters would not be significantly different from simplified characters. For a visual representation, let's look at the party names as they are written in both traditional and simplified characters:

Traditional	Simplified
維新の黨	維新の党	Restoration Party
愛國黨	愛国党	Patriotic Party
政友黨	政友党	Seiyū Party
公正黨	公正党	Justice Party
國民黨	国民党	Nationalist Party
自由民主黨	自由民主党	Liberal Democratic Party
民主黨	民主党	Democratic Party

As you can tell, with the exception of the Patriotic Party and the Nationalist Party, the only major difference in characters is the character for Party (黨 in traditional form, 党 in simplified form). And even for the Patriotic Party and Nationalist Party, the only other major difference is the character for country (國 in traditional form, 国 in simplified form). It is not significantly different. A person who can only read simplified characters wouldn't have significant problems with these characters for much of the characters are identical in both simplified and traditional form. Perhaps there may be difficulty reading the question, but it should be fairly obvious what the question asked is when you are presented with a list of names and a list of parties. All you have to do is press the button that has your preferred party or candidate on it. How would this possibly cause any difficulty, and how could this possibly reduce voter turnout?

A much more likely explanation for the reduction in voter turnout is campaign burnout - that is to say that this election came too soon after the last one. In Akitsu, national elections are usually done 5 years apart. However, only about a year ago there was emergency elections. Is it not possible that voters were simply tired of the campaigning? This possibility isn't even brought up in the report.

""EXIT POLLS""

And in the final section, the writers of the report admit to violating electoral procedures. But before we get to that we must address what this section is about - exit polls. The report first argues that there is no reason to ban exit polls, as exit polls are released after voting has taken place. This is another patently false claim. Exit polls are not only unscientific, but can be manipulated by pollsters for the pollsters political agenda. This has the potential to influence the outcome of an election. The claim that exit polls are released after voting has taken place ignores the countries in the world where exit polls are released while voting is still taking place.

An exit poll is, by definition, a poll that takes place by polling people who have just voted. While this does mean that such polls cannot be done before voting has taken place. However, this does not mean the results can only be announced after voting has taken place. Results can be announced while voting is still taking place - and when results are announced while voting is still taking place it has the potential to influence the results of an election.

Then the writers of the report admit to violating Akitian electoral procedures and "conducting" an "exit poll". However, there are many problems with this polls. It just gives us a bunch of numbers and expects us to believe it is true. They expect us to believe in spite of the fact no information is provided as to how the people who wrote up the report got their information. How big was the sample size? What parts of Akitsu was this information obtained from? How many people from each part of Akitsu are part of the sample? None of these questions are even brought up in the report - it just expects us to look at the numbers and believe it happened.

Without this information, it is highly suspect that this exit poll is based upon reliable information and has not been manipulated by the pollsters for their political gain.

CONCLUSION

The flaws in the report are numerous - and demonstrate the lack of credibility of this report. The number of flaws and the types of errors made in the claims demonstrates a level of ignorance that should not be typical of election observers. Whether this ignorance is due to carelessness or is willful is something that we cannot say anything on. But one thing is clear - this is a report that cannot be trusted.