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Two proposals were made today to reform the Storting, one by Dawsinian which changes the elected Underhusen into an open assembly of all Citizens, and one by Crushita which replaces the bicameral legislature with a unicameral open assembly. It's been discussed a little bit on Discord, but it's not clear to me whether an open assembly is desired or not, so I guess that's why I'm posting this...besides the fact that apparently there is no secretary to do this.

Personally, as I've said before, I don't think changing the structure of the Underhusen is going to make it more active, but I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea if that's what is wanted. I think there needs to be more thought about whether the Storting can be given a greater purpose and what restrictions should be placed on eligibility for voting in an open assembly before anything is voted on or passed, though. I think it would be great if eligibility were based on a person's activity, contributions, and accomplishments in some way so that the odds of people coming to try to influence some vote are lowered while also promoting meritocracy in the region.

As for the Overhusen, its role is to represent the Monarchy, and I would not support its dissolution unless the Monarchy was represented in some alternative way. I acknowledge that it's not very active and that its membership rarely changes, but in the past it has thwarted bills that were not fully thought out but somehow passed the Underhusen, most recently the Reon Commendation Act that in my opinion didn't do him or the community justice.

On the other hand, if the Overhusen is to remain I would be interested in changing the appointments and reappointment to December, March, June, and October to match thane and delegate elections.

I'm still on the fence about this one.  On the one hand, I think an Open Assembly approach is a good idea, since I like the idea of opening it up to everyone.  Likewise, I like the idea of everyone getting a definitive say in all of our laws, as well as being a part of the deciding factor as to which ones come into fruition.

On the flip side, I have to agree with you on this Moot.  If it's shown that the UH is showing little purpose already, opening it up to everyone isn't going to change that.  Likewise, for those not interested in our politics anyways, it's not going to really sway them.

So really, it's a two way street.

I had issues with the idea the first time it was considered, but compromised to get the constitutional convention to end, and what happened during the voting process just put me off the idea completely.

As I said in the Discord (I was actually in the Discord server for once! ), my stance is just that I saw the massive headaches that constitutional reform created last time, and despite not participating much that time, am still quite weary from it, and just don't want the region to touch that issue again (unless absolutely necessary, which right now, it really isn't).

As I've stated many times before in my defense of the Storting, I am rather opposed to both bills as they stand. This is because I oppose an Open Assembly, as I have no belief that they actually work that well in NationStates. To quote from my defense:

Spoiler

   Now, the idea of an Open Assembly is not new within Wintreath, it was suggested before and almost became reality, only failing due to the Citizenry voting it down. There are also many issues that come with an Open Assembly, such as the speed at which they move, that they are open to abuse, and that it doesn't really work all that great in several of the regions that have tried this system. On the matter of slowness, I wish to use the situation with Govindia as an example. From suggestion in the Citizen's Platform to it becoming law, the entire ordeal took exactly four days, seventeen hours, one minute, and thirty seven seconds. If you start from the time it was introduced into the Underhusen this time is reduced to four days, fourteen hours, fifty-nine minutes, and eighteen seconds -- assuming I did the math right. In the situation of an Open Assembly, it would have taken longer. Assuming that there is a seven day voting period (in accordance with most other public votes and current Underhusen Procedure), in addition to a forty-two hour comment period (as with current Underhusen Procedure), it would take, at minimum, one week and two days for any bill to pass, and this includes the ordeal with Govindia. Of course, you could have something saying that if all members vote it is closed, but with it being open to all citizens, good luck getting all sixty-seven citizens to vote. I must also ask, should any bill, regardless of its nature, take at least one week and two days to pass? No, it should not. Moving forward, onto the issues of abuse in the system of an Open Assembly, you do not need to look much further than the events of Lazarus. This situation showed that a group that wants too can simply import voters to get an agenda passed. While our current system is, admittedly, not entirely defended from this it requires at least three to four people that run in the election and get elected, which wouldn't be too easy. They would then have to fight away recalls and be re-elected to protect the policies that they passed. Finally, on the issues of the failure of this system, just take a look at the regions of Osiris, Ainur, Lazarus, Cynosure, or even the GRA, among others. These regions all use, or used, an open assembly, but all have had activity issues with some undergoing moderately frequent government changes in an attempt to fix things. So with these issues, I am unsure how one can look at this and think that this wouldn't be similar in Wintreath.

The main issues are the issues of slowness. Primarily in instances where the Storting needs to react quickly, or as quick as they can. Good examples of these are both situations involving Govindia. The Revocation of Govindia took a bit over a week to pass, however in an Open Assembly, it would have taken at least two (keeping a seven-day voting period and everything else equal), while as shown above the Declaring him Persona Non Grata would have taken at LEAST a week. This would have merely prolonged these issues unnecessarily, putting the community through even more trouble. Further, an Open Assembly can be a bit hard to manage and actually get people using, as I've experienced in Lazarus personally. At least with the Underhusen you can just ping everyone that was elected and get their attention.

I have seen the UH take ages to do certain things. But at this point I'm so apathetic that I'll support the current system simply because it's the one we have, and if it ain't completely fucked up beyond all recognition, I'm not willing to deal with attempts to replace it yet.

I have seen the UH take ages to do certain things. But at this point I'm so apathetic that I'll support the current system simply because it's the one we have, and if it ain't completely fucked up beyond all recognition, I'm not willing to deal with attempts to replace it yet.

Yeah, it can take forever to do things, but that's not procedural or anything like that most of the time. Usually it's just the individual members of the Storting not acting

Now that I'm in a position in Wintreath where I need people to do stuff (and looking back at the previous Orendi XIV attempt), I'm beginning to appreciate the convenience of already having people in the Underhusen who've already committed (at least in some way) to the duty of contributing. So yeah, this does make a good point; when everyone is able to contribute, what often ends up happening is that nobody contributes (a la the bystander effect).

But is it really a commitment to anything? I've seen some people get in the Underhusen without even voting in the election they were running in...that's pretty sad.

I'd love to see the Underhusen become a more meritocratic institution, but I worry that trying to go in that direction would make people even less interested in running for it. As it is I can't remember the last time there was a truly competitive election, where everyone was running because they wanted to be in it instead of running to prevent everyone from winning by default.

Again, I have to side with Wintermoot on this one.

It's great when we have people in the UH that are actually committed to what they're doing, and who actually made an effort to show why they deserved the spot they ran for in the first place.  That's usually when we have pretty great sessions with a lot of activity.

But the problem is, that doesn't always happen.  Hell, at some points it feels like a rarity (and no, I only count joke proposals as "activity for the sake of activity" as opposed to actual progress).

As you've even been a part of and seen Tau, we've had sessions of people that didn't even campaign in the first place, let alone didn't even do anything during their term.  Nevermind the "they didn't even vote" part that Moot mentioned, because that first thing alone is always baffling to me when someone gets elected.  To me that shows a very little amount of caring which can (and usually does) translate to their actual UH term.

Or in the same boat, we've gotten "campaign" threads will the most barebones effort done to them, and again that's translated into the actual term to where we've had the bare minimum to no activity whatsoever from those same people.

While I am still partially in favor of an OA if done correctly, I'd hesitate to see that barebones/silent activity increase to where only a specific few will always vote.  Because if that's the case...then what was the point in opening it in the first place? At that point, why not just have those specific people who always vote be the ones running the UH?

I think where we're at, we need to focus on bringing activity up in our legislature before discussing opening it up to everyone.  And unfortunately, I don't foresee that one happening as quickly as I'd hope.

Right, what I meant was that even though the UH can fall incredibly inactive, there's still a specific list of people you can call on for help, even if some don't show up. Whereas when everyone's allowed to participate, unless you have something productive already ongoing, you often end up with zero volunteers, at which point you're screwed.

The current system is definitely flawed, I just don't see the alternatives being better.

Ah, I see what you're saying.  Then basically you and I are pretty much at agreement, then.