Elections Gylias
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 1958 |
| Jurisdiction | Gylias |
| Parent department | Parliament and Cabinet of Gylias |
| Website | http://www.electionsgylias.gov.gls/ |
| Map | |
 Map of Elections Gylias' jurisdiction. | |
Elections Gylias is the administrative agency that governs Gylian elections.
As the federal election commission, its responsibilities include overseeing the conduct of elections and referendums, determining circonscription boundaries, administering party subsidies, and registering voters, political parties, and electoral associations.
History
Elections Gylias was established in 1958, through the federation of the local electoral bodies of the Free Territories.
Organisation
Elections Gylias is unaffiliated to any federal ministry, and thus reports directly to Parliament and the Cabinet as a whole.
It is a federation of 20 regional electoral commissions, which in turn encompass many municipal electoral commissions.
In addition to its core staff, the agency uses volunteers and sortition to recruit additional personnel during elections and referendums. Elections Gylias staff must not be members of political parties or any organisations with a political character.
Responsibilities
Registration
Elections Gylias automatically registers every resident of at least 15 years to vote. It maintains the electoral roll and enforces compulsory voting legislation for elections, referendums, and communal assemblies, in collaboration with law enforcement agencies.
It registers political parties and electoral associations at all administrative levels, and maintains the resulting registers. Its rules stipulate that each party must have a unique name, abbreviation, and party colour, which cannot be confused with another. Notably, it does not allow any party to use black as a colour, reserving that colour instead as a symbol of anarchism.
Finance
Elections Gylias administers party subsidies and public funding for political activities. It oversees parties' grassroots fundraising, enforces donation limits and prosecutes violations of political finance laws.
It can deny public financing to parties for anti-constitutional activities.
It requires parties to submit annual statements of accounts, and publishes them on its website. It also requires parties to submit reports of all donations, which it makes publicly available through an online, searchable register.
Education
Elections Gylias conducts education and information programmes to promote public awareness of electoral matters and produce a well-informed electorate.
It plays a central role in informing Gylians how STV and IRV function.
It also participates in activities and events that contribute to the colourful, carnivalesque atmosphere of Election Day.
Boundaries
Elections Gylias draws circonscription boundaries after each census, based on the Bureau of Statistics and Accounting's findings, to ensure circonscriptions have roughly the same number of voters.
It is not allowed to take any other factors into account apart from population, density, and regional boundaries.
Broadcasting
Elections Gylias coordinates with the National Broadcasting Office to determine allocation of party political broadcast slots.
Election supervision
Elections Gylias oversees the preparation and conduct of elections and referendums, ensuring that they follow established electoral laws and regulations. It is assisted in this by the Gylian Police.
It certifies candidates for elections based on either primary elections or independent nomination, collects election deposits and refunds them to losing candiates.
It supervises that campaign activities and spending are in compliance with the law.
It determines the order of candidates on ballots, and supervises absentee, postal, and electronic voting.
It enforces election silence in the 48 hours before Election Day and the embargo on results until all have been completed.
It hears challenges regarding validity of elections and any other legal issues associated with elections.
It carries out vote counting and redistribution, and publishes the entire electoral results once they have been completed.
Due to by-elections not existing in Gylian electoral law, the agency also preserves the ballots from an election, and in the event of a vacancy, re-examines the ballots with the formerly winning candidate eliminated, and re-does vote transfers to fill the vacancy.
It investigates and prosecutes violations of electoral law.
Referendums
Elections Gylias collects signatures for referendums and popular initiatives, determines the wording of the question, sends booklets with the relevant legislation and information to all voters, registers campaigners and monitors campaign activities, and certifies and announces the result.
Scheduling
Elections Gylias determines the scheduling of Election Day for the year, including both fixed-date elections and variable-date referendums. It decides how many referendum questions are voted on simultaneously.
Senate
Since 2000, Elections Gylias supervises membership of the Gylian Senate through the Senate Commission.