"Can you say under the truth effect that at the time you were thinking of it as an arrest for public safety reasons? Or that you intended to arrange their safe release even if they didn't answer questions? Or that any implication they might come to harm if they didn't cooperate was definitely unintended -"

"The last thing, probably. I'm not sure about the first."

" - then probably no, but if you're convicted you can testify to the last thing at sentencing and they won't be allowed to ask about the first because it wouldn't be sentencing-relevant."

She sighs and follows her lawyer's advice. This justice system is weird.

This justice system thinks she kidnapped three of their citizens and should spend five (local) years in prison for it, reevaluation after two for good behavior and making restitution and progress at understanding why it's wrong to kidnap people.

Ugh.

The justice system doesn't especially care how she feels about this. 

The Vanda Nossëo representatives in Rivik are having a really hard time communicating the 'if they can fill out a ballot they get to do that' thing.

"But they can't, because they can't have any ballots, because they're red," explains their liaison patiently.

"No, see, they get a ballot, and then if being red impedes filling it out somehow then it doesn't get filled out."

"I think there's something you're not understanding. These are reds, they're untouchable, and they don't vote."

"...look, if you don't want membership then you don't have to have any votes at all, but if you are having any votes, the procedure for votes is that ballots are made accessible online and in person everywhere and then every ballot that gets filled out counts except for duplicates filled out by the same person."

"Reds aren't people, they're garbage."

"I carefully phrased that explanation of our rules in a way that obviates that debate entirely."

"Do you want us to carefully place ballots in crematoriums, too?"

"Sure! And in zoos and accessible to any computers you have which might be intelligent. Anything capable of filling out a ballot will be counted, and the other ones can be made out of something biodegradeable so they don't cause clutter."

"...I'm not sure if you understand the point of voting or if you just heard of the idea somewhere and thought it sounded fun."

"The point of this approach to voting is that it bypasses questions of who deserves a voice and says that every voice we can hear will be considered and that we'll try really hard to be listening everywhere."

"Why do you throw out duplicates, then?"

"It's, like, 'we'll hear every voice we can' doesn't imply 'and if you shout you get more weight'."

"Suppose we were hive minds or something, that makes more sense than letting reds vote."

"There is a procedure for hive minds."

"- well, now I'm curious."

"It was negotiated with an Edda species, it kicks in only if individual subentities don't parse as a person to a subtle artist but the entity as a whole displays communicative intelligence."

"...right. Anyway, we can't have reds voting. The zoos thing we can maybe do."

" - it's easier to argue for distributing ballots in zoos in case your monkeys are intelligent than distributing them to reds, who are intelligent?"