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Alright, so I know a lot of you are probably doing, or have done, a double take. You may be thinking you are dreaming you are not. If you are thinking you might be going crazy, you probably are, but this is real.

Anywho I have the following Proposals that I recently came up with. They generally still keep together a lot of our current systems or keep them similar, requiring less changes.

PROPOSAL 1: Extremely Conservative Plan
This is Proposal 1. This is the simplest of the proposals, all is kept the same except regular elections are done away with. Instead of electing a new Underhusen every two months, they serve until challenged, resigning, becoming ineligible, or being expelled by either recall or judicial ruling.

PROPOSAL 2: Conservative Inflation Plan
This is Proposal 2. It implements the Changes by Proposal 1 with one difference. The Underhusen's size is recalculated every couple months by an equation. The size itself would be dependent upon the amount of citizens.

PROPOSAL 3: The Other Conservative Plan
This is Proposal 3. While it implements Proposal 1, unlike Proposal 2 the Underhusen's maximum size is increased to 10 or so. The UH may choose to change it's size based upon activity. (It should be noted that in this plan I would not mind the Citizenry being able to hold a referendum to force a size change, albeit there would be limits. It would be annoying to have to change the size nearly every week...)

PROPOSAL 4: The Destruction of the Underhusen Plan
Please note that while I am calling this my 'Destruction of the Underhusen Plan', it's more of a reformed Underhusen and can still retain the name. However my plan is simple, involve Families.

This is how it would work, each Familial House recognized by the Government that is of a certain size may select a representative to the UH. This would be done according to the Family Procedure. Members of Families that are not of the right size or non-members would be able to select General Members.

Recalls would be handled by the Family for the most part, unless it's a General Member. Voting of General Members would be closed for Families that have a representative in the UH. Members of Represented Families would also be barred from participating in General Member things (Mainly a recall).

Also the main idea is to implement Proposal 1 into this. However we could do a 'hybrid' of sorts. Either Familial Members are reselected every x months, or General Members are reselected every x months.

PROPOSAL 5: Destroy the Storting! (Or as I like to say make it the Sorting!
This Implements Proposal 4, HOWEVER it also overhauls the Overhusen a bit. The Overhusen gains a maxmimum of two more seats, and their members are elected by the Underhusen. The seats must be less than the amount of appointed members in the Overhusen and Underhusen members would be barred from having this seat. The Seats would be split among General Members and Families with one for the General Members and one for the Families (If one group (Family or General Member) has all of the Underhusen then they also gain the other seat if it is in that Overhusen session)

How these seats would work is that the General Members would vote on one candidate and the Family Representatives would vote on another. If it happens to be the same person then the other seat is not filled. If there is only one seat then all the members vote.

Please note I am not married to certain implementations and I know there are rough spots, however if we are to overhaul the Storting then these generally address a few of my main issues with just going ahead and dissolving the UH/Storting entirely. Further this allows us to keep some of our system (Like judicial) with only a few minor changes, should we change the name or something similar.

I have serious concerns with the proposals to involve families. It seems to put any member of a family, if given his family seat, complete power in the sense that they could not be recalled by the community. And it is also suspicious that, since I'm fairly certain the rule will stay in place for the monarch not to be eligible for the UH, you would always maintain your family seat, and none of us would be able to do anything about it.

@Laurentus I understand your concerns. I would be up to change that, either allowing other represented families to recall or allowing the General Populace to recall, albeit it would be somewhat harder than recalling a General Member.

However I would dare say that the Royal Family is a small family and shouldn't be apart of the UH that way. Personally I would place the family size at a minimum of 3 people. This way someone just doesn't create their own one-person family and take up a in the UH, while it keeps somewhat small families out.

I would also support a decision to have an activity requirement for the Family UH members as well.

I would like to hear feedback on this proposal.... @Laurentus...you have any?

Several things, which I'm forming in my head. I'll put it into words later.

Alright, I look forward to hearing them!

I think the problem I have with including families is that we haven't had many organized families in the region's history...we had House Kasten, which is no longer in the region; House Meindhert, which is mostly inactive; and House Valeria, which is of course around and kicking. It could very well be that House Valeria would be the only house that qualified for seats, especially if there were a size limit placed.

Also not sure about using a challenge system...if I remember, they tried that in the early OFO delegate elections, and it led to a lot of hurt feelings and bruised egos, so they did away with it.

Essentially the challenge thing is to allow new people a chance at getting positions and to allow new people to move in if necessary.

Essentially there would probably be a few restrictions like:

• Requires a second from a citizen that has been around for 2 months
• A candidate can only face a challenge once every 2 months.

(Note these are just examples that I can create off of the top of my head).


Edit: Also one of the goals is to help increase the prominence of families.

Edit 2: I misspoke...err mistyped in my edit...sorry I'm tired.

Wintermoot cut to the essence of my objection. Of course, this general house you mentioned would mitigate this somewhat, but I am not comfortable with the idea of one house dictating the law, even if it does happen to be my house. I don't think such division would be an improvement over the current system.

House Valeria has already amassed quite a lot of soft power. Converting that into actual power is a scary thought, and I think it could destroy the community. In a sense, we could well end up replacing the monarchy if such an idea were to gain traction. And that would definitely be a bad thing, since no one in House Valeria possesses all the skills to do so.

Well generally in the idea House Valeria would only have one seat, with the General Members holding the rest. In this instance House Valeria would only have one seat. I have compiled the following scenarios:

Scenario A

• Number of Seats: 5
• Number of General Members: 4
• Number of Family Representatives: 1
• - Number of House Valeria Representatives: 1

Scenario B

• Number of Seats: 4
• Number of General Members: 3
• Number of Family Representatives: 1
• - Number of House Valeria Representatives: 1

Scenario C

• Number of Seats: 7
• Number of General Members: 6
• Number of Family Representatives: 1
• - Number of House Valeria Representatives: 1

As you can see the only instances where House Valeria gets any 'strong' direct power would be in Scenario B.

Edit: Essentially Valeria's power would be restricted still, it would grant larger power however one house will not be able to dictate law, it will never be able to dictate law. In order to do so there would have to be several other houses, however I would imagine the formula would take into account the number of viable and non-viable houses to prevent an event where a large family splits as it would trigger a dilution thus diluting the power of all families. 

So what's even truly the difference between an open assembly and what you're proposing, except that your proposal quite significantly cuts down on Valerians' access to laws?

Essentially what it does is it allows for the fun of elections while also making them less often. It would also help combat a bit of an issue that has been mentioned in the Open Assembly proposals in that our entire judicial system would need to be changed, the veto issue, and any potential 'invasion' issues.

In addition to the fact that there haven't been many families to begin with, familial royalty is and always has been just a fun element to the region and hasn't been anything major. I'm worried that people would attempt to form family alliances or try to join a particular house for political gain rather than through friendship or roleplay. We weren't really set up to have political dynasties, as the region has been for the most part democratic from the very start.

Additionally, the guideline prevents the largest families, such as Valeria, from having more than one Underhusen seat, even though they may not even all agree on the same ideas. Remember, the families are just loosely-banded groups of individuals and don't have homogeneous agendas.

That being said, the concept is nevertheless interesting, even though it wouldn't translate well to Wintreath. If it were to succeed in any state, it would have to be in a region with already-established, sizable houses.

The open assembly idea by Wintermoot mostly does just that, without causing division, and while being much simpler. It's a bit light on security for my taste, but such is democracy. It also doesn't castrate Valerians, a lovely side benefit.

It would be according to internal procedure with the Valerians. So it's up to them to decide how the representative would be elected.

Further I'm not against the idea of allowing Valerians to be General Members, should they have significant disagreements with the current representative or similar....


Edit: Also Proposal 2 is probably the Closest to Proposal 3/4, except it doesn't neuter any familial houses and requires no changing of our Judicial system. In fact it would require very minimal changes to our existing laws.