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# System prepended metadata

title: Outpost Electoral Rules

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title: Outpost Electoral Rules
description: The rules for candidates of Outpost Electoral Commision elections 
image: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/632765361108025345/632767596424462366/8b5820da3455cff30ac9738f716bed82.png?width=135&height=135
---

# Outpost Electoral Rules

These rules are to be followed by all candidates in an election organised by the Outpost Electoral Commission.

Candidates taking part in simultaneous elections shall follow the below rules for each election independently of one another. Disqualifications, however, will apply to all currently-entered elections regardless of where the disqualification originated from.

Candidates whom run on a joint-ticket (e.g., gubernatorial elections) shall follow the below rules for the election independently of one another. Disqualifications, however, will apply to all candidates present on the ticket.

## 1. Campaigning

These are general rules that apply to all candidates regardless of the areas they are campaigning unless explicitly stated as otherwise in this sub-section of rules. Breaking any of these rules shall result in disqualification from the current election.

#### 1. Campaigning outside of the prescribed times is prohibited

What some may see as campaigning is subjective and it is important that candidates take that into account with all actions they undertake prior to and after a campaign window is open. 

Candidate campaigning Discords are an exception to this rule. Policy and other matters may be discussed in these servers outside of the campaign window and on polling day. Voters should not be directed to your server outside of the prescribed times, however.

##### Prescribed Times

This rule is only considered as soon as candidates are confirmed to be enrolled in an election as posted in the `#elections` Discord channel. Incumbents of an office/seat involved in a recall election are thus precluded from campaigning as soon as a recall election is confirmed by the MEC in the same Discord channel, this is held until the campaign window opens for other candidates.

#### 2. Threatening, undermining, blackmailing, bribing or canvassing voters in any malicious manner

Performing any of these actions regardless of the campaigning window being open or not will result in immediate disqualification.

#### 3. Spamming any group wall, Discord server or the direct messages of voters

This is in line with the rules already present on the Discord server. Candidates should never be messaging random members of the server in order to get such member to vote for them or vote at all.

#### 4. Organising unlawful demonstrations which disrupts pedestrians or public highways in order to promote a political candidate or message

Political campaigning should be peaceful and free of disruption to the masses. Clear endorsement of the contrary shall result in disqualification.

#### 5. Employees of the Emergency Services, the National Guard or any other public agency are prohibited from campaigning on duty or in uniform

Campaign material may contain media of candidates in uniform, however, such candidates should not be using their role as a medium for campaigning.


## 2. Discord Campaigning Channels

This section details the usage of official campaigning channels organised and maintained by the MEC. These are the channels accessible in the main State of Outpost Discord for exclusive use by election candidates. These rules only apply for these types of channels and are measured against on an individual basis.

### Rules

#### 1. Candidates are limited to messages containing at most 800 characters of text. This includes all letters, numbers, symbols, spaces, formatting styles, and links

Using [this](https://charactercounttool.com/) website to measure character count will result in the same metrics that the MEC use. You should paste your raw message into this tool before posting and take the characters in bold at the top of the page as your final result.

![](https://i.imgur.com/gvn7h3N.png)


#### 2. Candidates are limited to at most 8 posts in any 24 hour period

To measure this, the MEC recommends utilising Discord's search feature with the format `from:<USERNAME#XXXX> in:<ELECTION>-campaigning`, and simply counting the number of messages they have posted in the past 24 hours. If it is 8 or over, candidates are restricted from posting.

:::danger
Some candidates mistake this rule for "8 posts in a day" rather than "any 24 hour period". It is important this distinction is made. Post count does not reset suddenly at midnight in some arbitrary timezone!
:::

#### 3. Candidate’s messages must be at least 30 minutes apart from one another

Check to ensure there is no post in the previous 30 minutes when sending a new post 30 minutes. Do not try to post exactly as those 30 minutes elapse or candidates may risk being mere seconds under the 30 minutes in reality and risk being disqualified.

### Technicalities

The following section details areas the MEC consider when enforcing campaign channel rules.

#### Deleted messages are considered as if they still exist

Candidates should aim to never delete messages unless absolutely necessary as it may lead to them breaking other rules by mistake if a deleted message is forgotten.

*Messages that are automatically deleted as a result of some Discord bot, like Dyno, are exempt from this. If this happens, candidates are free to post again and may ignore the previously deleted message. The MEC is able to tell the difference.*

#### Campaign Discords

Candidates may opt to open their own Discord server to allow for further and direct discussion with the electorate about their campaign policies. Invites to these servers must be linked in campaign documents or websites. Posting the invite directly in a campaign post in a campaign channel is against the `#discord-rules`.

#### User Mentions

In campaign posts, candidates may opt to list endorsements by fellow Citizens of Outpost. This is fine, however, these lists and any other mention of a fellow Citizen should not be formatted as a mention such as `@KarlXYZ`. Formatting in this manner may result in an unnecessary disqualification as the actual raw text used by Discord may not have the same number of characters as originally intended.
