status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#3751
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===============================  CFJ 3751  ===============================

      A player who quotes the number and title of a proposal followed by
      "FOR" thereby votes FOR that proposal, provided that e is
      otherwise able to do so.

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Caller:                        Murphy

Judge:                         Falsifian
Judgement:                     IRRELEVANT

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History:

Called by Murphy:                                 02 Jul 2019 03:35:43
Assigned to Falsifian:                            03 Jul 2019 00:53:46
Judged FALSE by Falsifian:                        06 Jul 2019 04:18:16
Motion to reconsider filed by Falsifian:          07 Jul 2019 22:10:21
Judged IRRELEVANT by Falsifian:                   07 Jul 2019 22:10:21

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Caller's Arguments:

This was apparently claimed to be false a week or two back, with a
comment along the lines of "these resemble votes but are not in fact
votes". I had long assumed that the implicit "I vote as follows" was
backed by strength of custom, similar to "TTttPF".

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Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

We definitely accepted these sorts of ballots traditionally, but we added
stricter language a few years back (but have not raised the issue in CFJ
since then, I think).

P7814 'FOR Require Intent on Ballots' (o), 28 Oct 2016 inserted this
text in R683:
       (d) The ballot clearly sets forth the voter's intent to place the
           identified vote.

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Gratuitous Evidence by G. (recent example):

https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2019-June/040584.html

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Judge Falsifian's Arguments:

For the record, here is a copy of the message G. submitted a link to as
gratuitous evidence:

> 8180  Trigon, D Margaux     1.0   Paying our Assessor
FOR
> 8181  D Margaux, [1]        1.7   Referee CAN Impose Fines (v1.1)
FOR
> 8182  Jason Cobb            3.0   Add value to zombies
FOR
> 8183  V.J. Rada, Tiger      3.0   Regulated Actions Reform
PRESENT
> 8184  G.                    3.0   power-limit precedence
FOR
> 8185  Trigon                3.0   OUGHT we?
PRESENT
> 8186  Jason Cobb            3.0   Minor currency fixes
PRESENT
> 8187  Jason Cobb            3.0   Not so indestructible now, eh?
PRESENT

Looking at the agora-business archives for October through December
2018, I found a few examples of players sending messages like this,
sometimes with text at the beginning of the message like "I vote as
follows", and sometimes not. The intention of the quoted message is
obviously to submit ballots, so condition 5 of Rule 683 ("The ballot
clearly sets forth the voter's intent to place the identified vote") is
satisfied.

Conditions 1, 2, 4 and 6 are implied by the statement of the CFJ ("is
otherwise able to do so") and condition 3 is satisfied since the message
specifies each proposal being voted on. If the CFJ were specifically
about this message, it would be TRUE.

However, the statement is not very specific about the hypothetical
message involved. For example, if there were a proposal number 9999
titled "Apotheosis", and a player sent the following message:

Just for fun, what do you all think would happen if I cast these
votes?

> 9998 Cancel Agora
FOR
> 9999 Apotheosis
FOR

that would clearly not satisfy requirement 5 that the ballot set forth
the voter's intent to place the vote.  If the above message were sent to
a discussion forum, then it also wouldn't count as "publishing a
notice" in the first place.

The truth of the statement depends on more details of the message. Maybe
I should assume an implicit "in any situation..." at the start, which
would make it clearly FALSE. But I don't think the statement as given is
actually what the caller or anyone else is interested in, so I judge CFJ
3751 IRRELEVANT.

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