Bashir: The trouble with Cardassian enigma tales is that they all end the same way: all the suspects are always guilty.
Garak: Yes! But the challenge is determining exactly who is guilty of what.
Edict #12
September 30, 2021
For the upcoming Election Season, I hereby appoint Geoff Joosten as the Election Coordinator and Sarah Hemenway as the Emergency Election Coordinator.
Thank you, Geoff and Sarah.
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I actually want to explain my rationale for my appointments in this edict. While I do not want to bind future presidents, and there are often circumstances where it may make sense to go with a different rationale, I hope that future presidents will be able to apply similar reasoning in the future for EC appointments.
Under the current policies that govern STF administration, there are seven positions that are generally filled with senior, experienced, willing volunteers who often have the very qualities we look for in a President or Vice President. Those positions are EGO (three members) and TECH (four members). Those same members - who often have the qualities we need for the executive - are automatically disqualified from serving as President and Vice President due to the very nature of the roles they hold. While there have been the occasional overlap between EGO and TECH members, it is not common, such that going into every election we already reduce our pool of qualified candidates by six or seven members.
The Election Coordinator and Emergency Election Coordinator also often have the necessary qualities for being President or Vice President (which is why they are good in the EC or EEC role) and also have to be automatically disqualified from being President or Vice President by virtue of holding the EC and EEC office. This means that if the EC or EEC are members from outside of EGO or TECH, we would increase the number of disqualified members to nine. Nine members is not an insignificant number of members generally in our club. That number becomes even more noticeable if we are just considering the pool of qualified candidates for President or Vice President.
Therefore, I believe that whenever possible, we should be recruiting the Election Coordinator and Emergency Election Coordinator from the ranks of EGO and TECH, to keep the number of disqualified members at a minimum.
Further, where possible, I believe recruiting from EGO makes sense. EGO’s very job is to serve as a check on the President during the President’s term. Having a member of EGO also serve as a check on the Presidential candidates during an election makes sense to me. In addition, the appointment of Election Coordinator is the only appointment by a President that can be vetoed by EGO. So in some ways it may make sense filling that position by a member of EGO.
I hope that helps explain the appointments in this edict and help provide some guidance for future presidents.
Daniel Lerner
President