Elections in Ventora

Elections in Ventora include elections to public office at the national, duchy, county, and levels. The country has had universal suffrage for citizens at age 20 since an 1893 amendment to the Canon of Obligations, part of the Fundamental Law of Ventora, the country's body of. The Canon also requires all citizens to vote in all elections they are eligible to participate in. For the 2019 national elections, the country had 53,502,712 people of voting age. Since incarcerated persons are excluded from voting, there were 53,394,246 eligible voters.

Franchises and for voting vary by election and by office at the national and duchy levels while tending to be  by electoral districts at the county and municipality levels. Most terms of office are for a set period of time so elections typically occur according to a regular schedule. Special elections may be called to fill vacancies for most elected offices. Public offices in Ventora typically do not have a limit on the number of terms that may be served.

Regent
Since the Protocols of State instituted the elected regency as in lieu of a monarch in 1964, the Regent of Ventora (: Regente de Ventora) serves a five-year term. The Grand Council of State elects the regent by secret ballot under a. Candidates for the regency must be titled nobles (duke/duchess, count/countess, or baron/baroness) who are at least 25 years old. Although not stipulated, in practice this means any elected regent will have fulfilled his or her military service obligation.

Parliament
The Grand Council of State (Gran Consejo de Estado) is the of the Ventoran parliament, the Congress of State (Congreso Estatal). Commonly referred to as the Grand Council, the chamber dates from original Canon of Obligations which established the Grand Council of the Realm in 1282. Today the Grand Council consists of 52 fellows. Of these, 26 are the ruling dukes and duchesses of the duchies who hold their seats for life. The other 26 fellows are elected by the all nobles to four-year terms under a two-round system. Candidates must be titled nobility at least 25 years of age.

Ventora's of parliament is the People's Assembly (Asamblea Popular). It consists of 780 delegates elected through s to serve districts apportioned geo-populationally across the entire country. As of the 2020 census, each delegate represents approximately 103,440 people. Citizens vote using under a three-tier franchise to elect representatives to the Conclave of Electors. Election day is the first Sunday in November in even years. The Conclave casts ballots by district on the first Sunday in December to elect the Assembly delegate. Elector candidates must be at least 20 years of age and they serve only until the Conclave has cast its ballots, at which point it is dissolved. The term of office for the Assembly is two years. Any citizen who is 25 or older may stand for election as a delegate to the Assembly to represent the county in which their domicile is located. If a delegate seat becomes vacant during the term of office, the Conclave of Electors is reconvened to elect a new delegate to finish the term.

Duchy elections
Since the 1978 amendment to the Precepts Concerning the Nation, charters for the duchies have made the dukes/duchesses largely ceremonial positions and required elected in the duchies. An organic law in the duchy determines the electoral system. As of 2020, 17 duchies use the three-tier franchise for the head of government while nine use a direct elective process. Fourteen legislatures within the duchies use the three-tier franchise system to elect their members. Candidates for elected office must reside in the district they seek to represent. In Sabaray, the minimum age to stand for both governor and the legislature is 20 while it is 25 for bht in Arava. All the other duchies have minimum age of 25 to stand for governor and 20 for the legislature.

Local elections
In most cases, local elections, including counties and municipalities, use first-past-the-post elections to elect representatives to their representative bodies. Typically, a candidate for office must be eligible to vote and reside in the district they seek to represent. Ventora has universal suffrage at 20 years of age. A notable exception is Plenas where elections use the three-tier franchise system and candidates for mayor and the city council must be 25 years of age.

Three-tier franchise system
The three tier franchise was introduced in 1746 when the nobility became subject to taxation and the right to vote was extended to all taxpayers. The system divides all eligible voters into tiers of equal thirds based on taxation within a voting district. The first tier consists of people who pay the top third of taxes. Persons who pay the next highest tertile of taxes make up the second tier. The third tier includes the payers of the remaining third of taxes. The number of voters in each tier varies from one locality to another on the basis of population and taxes paid.

Principles
When introduced in 1746, the three-tier franchise was viewed as progressive because it extended voting rights on the basis of taxes paid, including hundreds of thousands previously excluded because they were not landowners. It was also considered a universal suffrage because all taxpayers were eligible to vote. It did, however, exclude persons receiving public relief and anyone else who did not pay taxes to the state.

The basis for the three tiers lies in the concept of the "power of citizens." The theory contends different citizens have greater or lesser civic powers and the distinction should be recognized in the weight of their voice in matters affecting the commonweal. At the time of its inception, the nobility was believed to be intellectually situated to best determine the direction of society while the lower classes were better able to provide the physical capacity to advance society. In modern times, the three-tier franchise still rests on the intellectual and financial considerations that have their impacts on society at large.

Implementation
For elections to the People's Assembly, each voter is placed in one of three tiers based on the taxes they pay within their voting district. The amount of taxes required to be in the first tier versus the second or third varies by voting district. In urban districts, tax payments to qualify for the first tier are much higher than is the case for districts in urban areas. Each tier elects three representatives to the Conclave of Electors who then vote to elect the district's delegate to the People's Assembly.

Controversies
The system overrepresents landowners and the wealthy who pay higher taxes than the working and agrarian classes due to property values and income disparities. The tiers are localized, however, so it is feasible for the first tier to include only a single voter and the numbers of voters in each tier varies widely across the country. On average, the top tier has 20 times the influence of the third tier based on the average number of voters per tier. Since property values and taxation tends to be higher in urban areas compared to rural areas, the three-tier franchise also tends to favor those urban areas. Conversely, it is easier for less affluent people to vote in a higher tier in rural areas than in urban areas. While this may seem to appear to equalize the system, landholders, the nobility, and the upper class still tend to hold the advantage in the electoral process where the three-tier franchise is used.

Voting machines
In 2000, Ventora transitioned to electronic voting using machines with a screen and numeric keyboard manufactured by SecureVote SA. The screen displays the ballot by office or referendum and the voter indicates their choice using the keyboard. Initially voters had to key in their national identification number but since 2010 they need only swipe their national identification card through the magnetic stripe reader peripheral.

Although there has been some concern about the secrecy of ballots, the voter's identification number only grants access to the voting system and prevents a duplicate vote. The national identification number is not attached in any way to the ballots cast by the voter. The system, therefore, accomplishes three tasks: it tracks whether citizens have fulfilled their obligation to vote; it allows only one ballot to be cast by each voter; and, it prevents votes by persons who do not have suffrage.

For national elections, a random serial number lot draw selects specific voting machines for validation. The selected machines have "votes" entered by representatives of the major political parties. The tabulated results are then compared with the parties' pre-determined votes to verify the system is accurately recording votes. Because test machines were selected at random by lot, if the "vote" tally is consistent with the previously known result, the system is deemed by the election authorities as reliable. While duchies direct the process for local elections, they have typically used a similar process to the national elections.