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Chanku, you're annoying the shit out of people now.

Apologies guys; I don't in any way mean to derail the conversation; but I need to comment, if someone spams, you only need to report it once, not send a report for each spam post, all saying spam, it's sorta counter productive... And kinda taking the piss...

I'll probably edit delete all this in the morning, but jeez.

Sorry again, but please note your reports are all noted and there is no need to further report the posts in question... Thanks.

Chanku has received an official warning for spam on the IRC, it applies to spam on the forums as well.

Anyways...back on topic.

Perhaps the first move of the new Open Assembly should be a revision to the judicial process allowing punishment for wasting the time of the courts?

That would be a dangerous road to go down. Anything can be labelled as such. I do believe what we could do is bring back the requirement for an Act to pass stating the court may convene.

But in all honesty, the court found that Pengu had inherent authority as the Speaker of the Underhusen to interpret vague laws. By that precedent alone, I don't see how a court can't determine it to be true in the case of the Chairman and the Overhusen.

I do agree that taking such a move could potentially crack open Pandora's box, since anything could be labeled as "wasting time" depending on who is presiding.  Unless there's specific clarification, which in itself could be open to loopholes, there needs to be an alternative.

Eh, it was more a joke than a serious proposal

I'm going to pass three pages of responses and just post my thoughts based on the first page:

The option to vote Abstain is problematic. At least it has to be defined to either stand as "I don't want to vote at all" or "I don't want to take a side". As far as I'm aware our current system can't handle someone being actually abstinent very well. There should be the clear possibility to remain neutral and not cast a vote at all. Why?

Probably like Chanku has tried to establish, voting Abstain doesn't count as supporting the vote. Thereby strictly speaking even if they don't oppose, they don't support it either. If an actual majority of voters is required, simply comparing the Aye's to Nay's doesn't cut it. Majority of four is three, there's no way around that. One or more voting "I don't care" doesn't mean anything.

There is no reason not to allow legislation to pass with majority based on aye/nay votes, but if that's how we operate that should be made perfectly clear in our legislature. Then we could either specify that voting Abstain is completely giving up the right to vote.

I'm Finnish, I'm speaking from experience. We have minorities and we have above average greater drive to be fair to our minorities despite of the inherent unfair nature of democracy. Values that the society holds should overcome the views the selected representatives hold. This sounds crazy? Yes. But I'm sure that we can all realize how different we are from the average region, we don't just ban the problematic individuals. Why then should we accept a legislative system that ignores the majority? Even if votes are not against, neither do they support it.

We need a honest way to abstain from voting, the simplest way would be time restriction. The current choice to refrain from voting is as good as opposing.

Imagine a voting population of 20. 5 vote for, 4 vote against. Obvious majority is dismissed. Maybe they don't care? Now, imagine the same population, 5 votes for, 2 votes abstain and 4 votes against. Are those two the same as the rest of the 20? No. That means they feel like they know what they are voting for and can't decide. Thereby they don't support the vote. Thereby out of the voting population 5 out of 11 support the act in question. This obviously isn't right if majority of voters is required.

What comes to Chanku and spam in the last page of this thread.... that doesn't belong here.

I'm going to pass three pages of responses and just post my thoughts based on the first page:

Yeah, what we've gained from this attempt at ratifying the OA proposal is that the current Abstain position in a vote... well, it works to a degree, but not quite to the degree we'd all like it to work. Something to look into as a potential target for reform, perhaps - maybe an Abstain: Not Voting & Abstain: Neutral position could work?

Safe to say I agree with tatte on a lot of this, I was typing up a similar response, but he has put forth thoughts very similar to mine pretty nicely.

Good on you tatte!

The fact remains that the law isn't clear, and as we've already established, that generally means exactly what Wuufu has said about it. If you don't like Wuufu's reasoning, and as you're implying that it's not representative of the actual majority, also consider this: that's how our system works. Wuufu is the chairman, and therefore inherently interprets the laws by the authority given to him upon his appointment by the monarch.

If enough people support qualifying an abstention in the way you want it to be qualified, then that can definitely happen, but as far as this matter is concerned, it's a little late now.

I'm not against Wuufu's interpretations, I'm saying that if there's room for legitimate question of interpretation, the laws should change to be more precise.

Chanku, regardless of anything that has recently happened in the social side of the region, is proven expert of the strict law of Wintreath. He might be wrong in the spirit of the law, but he is by far the reasonable authority in the actual word of the law.

In any case, the biggest issue here probably (and hopefully) is to unify the precise laws and the spirit of the laws.

How is Chanku a proven expert on the word of the law? He contradicts himself thoroughly from one day to the next when it suits him.

As for allowing abstentions to affect votes as you want them to, I am personally against it, since we have the nay vote for a reason, and allowing this will lead to a lot of filibustering when people can't get their way, which will break the system in such a small legislative body as this one. Practicality should take precedence.

That is just my opinion, of course.

Can you provide any example where Chanku has provided incorrect information about the precise word of our (then) current law? I have always found him very useful with his keen understanding of our laws.

Chanku's inappropriate motives for bringing this up aside, I don't understand all the fuss about the abstentions.

When someone wants to show that they were there but don't want to vote either way, they vote abstain. As far as I'm aware, except for once case where Chanku ignored the precedent as Speaker of the Underhusen, abstentions have always neither counted for or against the passage of legislation. With all due respect, I feel like the discussion on abstentions is starting to get outright pedantic and unnecessary. I agree with Laurentus about practicality.

Wintermoot just named the instance I was referring to where Chanku serves himself. If I'm not mistaken, there was another instance where he went completely against that logic when it served him to do so.

There were two instances that the bill was a tie, one was another's, and one was his own.

The first, he FAILED, using the abstain in that instance as a  NAY vote.

His bill, he PASSED, using the abstain in that instance as an AYE vote.