The Other Half of the Ballot

Under §7.1, winning the office outright requires two things at the same time: a national ranked-choice majority, and a State plurality qualification. Not one or the other. Both.

Almost every account of this race — including several in this paper — has focused on the first. National polling, national appearances, national arguments about the Korda corridor. That is the half that generates numbers worth reporting. It is also the half that, on its own, elects nobody.

What the Second Requirement Does

The State plurality qualification exists to prevent a candidate from assembling a national majority out of a handful of dense population centers while carrying no support across the rest of the Republic. A candidate can lead nationally and still fail it.

There is one escape. §7.1(2) waives the State plurality requirement entirely where a candidate's national RCV majority reaches 60% of votes cast. Clear that bar and the geography stops mattering. No candidate in this race is polling anywhere near it.

Which means the realistic paths run through both requirements, or through a runoff — and under §7.1(3), a runoff drops the State plurality requirement altogether, deciding the office on national RCV alone between the top two first-preference finishers.

Where the Four Actually Stand

The Elections Panel's ballot access certification from Month 9 is a public record, and it is more revealing than it looked at the time. It lists how many of the twelve States each campaign qualified in:

Ballot access is not the same thing as the plurality qualification — qualifying to appear on a ballot and winning a plurality in that State are different achievements, and the certification measures only the first. But it is the only public, State-by-State measure of organizational reach any of these campaigns has produced, and the spread is not trivial.

Mak is the only candidate who cleared all twelve. Sandris cleared the fewest, and the three he missed are the three where his campaign has had the least visible presence all cycle.

The Awkward Arithmetic

This produces a genuinely strange situation, and it is worth stating plainly.

Sandris has driven the substance of this race for two months. His transition-plan proposal for the Korda court seats is the only concrete policy document any candidate has put on the record, and the Joint Monitor Council's silence in response has become a story in itself. He has been, by some distance, the most specific candidate in the field.

He also has the narrowest geographic base of the four, and the constitutional structure of this election is built precisely to make that matter.

Mak has the inverse problem. The broadest reach, the weakest command of the material — this paper's own reporting in Month 9 found her mischaracterizing the Executive Monitor's certification in a way that traveled further than the correction did.

What This Means for the Vote

If no candidate clears both requirements — which, on current form, is the likeliest outcome — the race goes to a runoff between the top two on national first preferences alone. At that point the geographic requirement disappears entirely, and a candidate who could not have won outright can win the runoff on national numbers.

So the structure produces a two-stage test with different rules at each stage: breadth matters in the first round and stops mattering in the second. Whether that is a flaw or the design working as intended depends on what you think the first round is for.

The Elections Panel administers and certifies the whole process under §7.1(4). No date has been set for the consular election, which under the amended §7.2 now runs on a four-year cycle.