That's a bizarre conclusion. Aside from interpreting the intent of some voters who leave ambiguous ballots, the electoral officials in a typical democracy don't have the authority to judge the winner. They count real votes on real ballots (or read off the computerized result).
Here is s 284 of Australia's
Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918:
(1) As soon as practicable after it has been ascertained that a candidate in a House of Representatives election has been elected, the Divisional Returning Officer shall, at the place of nomination or another place determined by the Australian Electoral Officer for the State or Territory concerned, publicly declare the name of the candidate. . .
(4) If, in the case of a House of Representatives election, the DRO for the Division in which an election was held has made a declaration under subsection (1), the Electoral Commissioner must:
(a) certify in writing the name of the candidate elected for the Division and attach the certificate to the writ for the election; and
(b) return the writ and the certificate to the Speaker or Governor‑General, as the case requires.
It's not a jurisdiction that I'm particularly familiar with, but here are extracts from what seem to be the corresponding provisions in the electoral laws of NY state (
http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/download/law/2013NYElectionLaw.pdf):
9 - 122: Upon the completion of the canvass and of the returns of the canvass, the chairman of the board of inspectors shall make public oral proclamation of the whole number of votes cast at the election at the polling place for all candidates for each office . . .
9 - 128(1): Returns of the canvass shall be printed in a form approved by the state board of elections. . .
9 - 210: Upon the completion of the canvass the canvassing board shall make statements thereof, showing separately the result for each office and ballot proposal. . . Such statements shall be certified as correct over the signatures of the members of the board, or a majority of them . . .
9 - 216(2): The state board of canvassers shall canvass the certified copies of the statements of the county board of canvassers of each county. . .
(3) Upon the completion of the canvass the board shall make separate tabulated statements, signed by the members of the board or a majority thereof, of the number of votes cast for all the candidates for each office voted for . . .
(4) Such tabulated statements shall be filed and recorded in the office of the state board of elections. . . The state board of elections shall prepare a general certificate under the seal of the state and attested by the members of the state board of elections, addressed to the house of representatives of the United States, of the due election of all persons chosen at that election as representatives of this state in congress, and shall transmit the same to the house of representatives.
In other words, in both Australia and NY state the electoral officials absolutely have the authority to declare the winner. This is a general feature of all modern legal systems - the holding of an office, or the winning of an election, isn't just (or even primarily) a purely factual state of affairs. It is a
legal state of affairs, which arises because a person acting with the requisite legal authority brings it into being. In the case of an election, it is the electoral authorites who have that legal authority - as the relevant legislation spells out (though more clearly in the Australian than the NY case, I concede - voting in the US is very convoluted, whereas in Australia is overseen by a single electoral commission, either state or federal depending on the election at hand.)
GMs don't count real votes
No. Like everyone else at the table they read real dice, and real to-hit tables, and real monster descriptions, etc.
and are judging things all the time based on an imaginary scenario that cannot actually be seen, measured, and tested.
But is shared between the participants - the so-called "shared imaginary space". Perhaps at your table the GM has unilateral authority over the contents of the shared imaginary space. That is not so at my table, and nothing in the D&D rulebooks indicates that this is so - for instance, nothing in the rulebooks suggests that the GM has authority over the colour of a PC's eyes, or his/her shoe size, or the name of his/her mother.
They weigh whether the player's plans are feasible in the location, they judge how effective they are compared to the challenge they put in front of them. If you're going to go with any of these three models you put forward, you're going to have to put it closer to the Supreme Court process
What you describe here - which is analogous to the Supreme Court process - is important in some resolution systems. It is not important in all resolution systems. It is an important part, for instance, of dealing with "actions that the rules don't cover" in Moldvay Basic. But it is not an important part of deciding, in Moldvay Basic, whether or not an attack hits (reading the dice, and cross-referencing with AC on the attack tables will do that).
In 4e, the GM's role in these situations is limited to adjudicating on the applicability of a skill - though the GM is expected to "say yes" provided the player puts forward any sort of case consistent with the general tenor of the game - and setting a difficulty from the DC chart. This is one particular manifestation of a more general difference between classic D&D and 4e. 13th Age is very similar to 4e in this respect except that the DC chart adjudicates difficulty by reference to "tier of environs" rather than "level of PC" - though there are also instructions to GMs to correlate "tier of environs" with PC level, so the practical difference from 4e is less than it might seem at first blush.
To suggest that the GM in 4e or 13th Age is doing the same thing as the GM in Moldvay Basic strikes me as quite wrong. They are different rulessets with different roles for the GM aimed at providing different sorts of play experiences.
How 3E expects the GM to handle actions the rules don't cover isn't 100% clear to me - it's quite a while since I read my 3E DMG, but I don't remember it having anything like 4e p 42, and nor do I remember it having advice comparable to Moldvay Basic. But one feature of 3E is that there are many actions the rules do cover, and in those situations I would think the GM is often more like an electoral official.
I don't believe I've ever actually encounter a situation in which the GM acted, really acted, like electoral officials. There's always arbitration and adjudication going on below the surface even if they're reading off a DC or other target number set in the rules against which a character rolls. Saying that it's like the procedure role of electoral officials seems to be to be a very superficial survey of what's actually going on.
I've got no reason to doubt your personal experience. It just goes to show that there's more in heaven and earth then is dreamed of!
I can give an example from my own most recent session - the demonskin sorcerer blasted Miska the Wolf-Spider with Demonsoul Bolts. These bolts deliver a slide, and the PC in question has a feat that boosts slide distances (Mark of Storms, I think) and another feat that turns slides into teleports (Walk Among the Fey, I think) and another feat that causes damage from involuntary teleportation (Unlucky Teleport, I think). The player rolled his attack dice. I looked up Miska's Fortitude defence and declared the hits. The player then rolled and announced the damage (including the +1d10 for Unlucky Teleport), which I removed from Miska's hit point total, and then indicated where on the battlemap Miska was being teleported to. I actually moved the Miska token, to the point that the player indicated. The relevant position was actually within the zone of control of an Angel of Despair statue - this was a deliberate strategy by the player - and so Miska then triggered an attack from that statue. I can't remember who rolled those dice - I think I got the player to roll the hit but I rolled the damage because it was 2d12 plus something and I had d12s ready-to-hand. I duly deducted the further damage from Miska's total and noted the other adverse effects (ongoing damage, dazed, debuffs, etc).
There was no arbitration or adjudication going on under the surface. The shared imaginary space was very easily accessible to everyone on this particular occasion, because we had a map and tokens to help represent it, and it was the player who - by application of the action resolution rules - was determining what was happening to Miska within that space, namely, that he got blasted by Demonsoul Bolts, and teleported through a treacherous part of the Feywild (taking 1d10 damage while "walking among the fey") only to find himself reappearing within sight of a statue of an Angel of Despair which then blasted him with debilitating necrotic energy.
Events like this are quite common in my games. So are non-combat analogues, such as - for instance - the players declaring that their PCs go to a certain place, or seek out and speak to a certain person, or perform a certain ritual, or have a servitor run an errand, etc. To say that I, as GM, am really the one who is making these changes in the shared fiction, or am engaging in some subtle beneath-the-surface adjudication of them, would be quite misleading.
To be fair, the player can't initiate an action in your D&D game without your approval, either. You've simply issued a blanket approval.
This is true in the same fashion in which it's true that the Queen of England still rules the US, but has simply given blanket approval to the federal and state authorities to do as they please - which is to say, is not true at all.
a benevolent dictator is still a dictator
That's a tautology. But it doesn't follow from this tautology that all forms of government are dictatorships. GMing in the fashion I just described is not analogous to dictatorship.
There are some domains of the fiction over which I, as GM, have primary authority. Backstory is the most important one, although my authority over that is not total. Situation is another one, although my authority over that is not total either, because the players do have access to teleport rituals which give them some authority over the geographic dimensions of situation. Outcomes are determined via the action resolution rules. Some of them call for adjudication by me along the line of the Supreme Court analogy. Some of them call for adjudication by me along the lines of the Stalin analogy - for instance, if the PCs perform Object Reading on an artefact which has, up to now, not had any history revealed in play, then I have authority to make up whatever backstory I like. Some of them call for adjudication only in the electoral official sense, as with my example of Miska being blasted set out above.
It would be simply wrong to think that my role, as GM, can be reduced to some more simplistic description which just glosses over these different aspects of what I do.
If you changed your mind, a player would not have any recourse within the context of the game itself
Yes they would. They could point to the action resolution rules as stated in the rulebook, or to the record of their resources found on their PC sheet, or to past table practice as relevant to one or the other of these matters.
(If by "within the context of the game itself" you mean "within the fiction", then what you say is trivially true but as far as I can see also irrelevant. The PCs exist within the fiction. The players do not. The GM's role is not something that exists or is framed within the fiction. It is, like the players, something that exists outside of the fiction. It is a metagame thing. The GM does his/her job outside the fiction. And the players can point out that the job is being done poorly, or wrong, outside the fiction.)
There's a whole school of thought referred to on these boards and others as "say yes" DMing that basically works that way. It's a perfectly good approach. I suspect a lot of us make every effort to do so. Again, it's still DMing.
That DMing is Dming is a tautology. Therefore I don't think anyone is disputing it. But the tautology provides no evidence in favour of the claims which I myself know to be false - because my own experience as a GM is a counterexample - that (i) the GM has final authority over all events that occur within the shared fiction of the game, and (ii) the players may not make any "moves" that would or might change the content of the shared fiction without the GM's permission.
Both (i) and (ii), as general claims, are so foreign to my own experience of roleplaying over 30-odd years that I'm actually a little surprised to see them being put forward as though they were necessary truths. As [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and I noted upthread, (i) and (ii) are true in certain games as typically played - Call of Cthulhu is the main one I am familiar with, but I am guessing that Pendragon and Stormbringer/Elric are often also played in this way, and perhaps also some versions of GUMSHOE - but I have always regarded that as a distinctive feature of those games.
For me, it is a systemic problem. And, if I excise the problematic systems, then most of hte problems go away.
