As a supporter of the Act, let me try and address the concerns people have.
1) My opinion on this is that it would do little to nothing to address people's concerns. If we are worried about another region invading, I doubt a week would deter them. If we are worried about creepy pricks like my former colleague then that to would be useless to. So any kind of waiting period would be unworkable.
2) Tyranny of the majority, also know as democracy.
3) Considering that Moot would still have to pass bills and acts, I see no problem. If we want someone else to have veto power, the OA can appoint someone.
4) I always thought abstaining was simple, not a vote for or against, just stating that you don't want to vote.
5) The role of officers can be decided by the OA. My personal idea would be a speaker to organize votes and other things, a vice speaker in case the speaker is unavailable and a whip to bring as many people as possible to vote.
6) Again, we are putting the cart before the horse, a COC can be decided by the OA.
I think an Open Assembly is the best way forward for all of us. If the people want more discussion or another way, however, I will oblige. I just wanted to get my two cents in.
1) Ok, so what would you suggest instead?
Wintermoot made a good point (quoted below) about the activity requirement perhaps working better, so maybe a... 15 post requirement before you can vote? You're still able to take part in discussions in the OA, but until that 15 post threshold you're not allowed to vote. This might be a better compromise than a week waiting period, as post requirements = actually getting a feel for new members through their own messages etc.
2) Others have made the point that for all we do have democracy, we've also had some people feel like they couldn't put their opinion forward against the majority position. I'm in no way criticising the work people have done, and I completely understand the frustrations arising from the way this ratification has gone down, but we've noticed one way or another a problem that needs to be fixed before we go ahead with the OA.
The extended debating period isn't a perfect measure by any means, so please suggest ways to improve it. Eventually we'll have a Code of Conduct et cetera to ensure decent behaviour from all involved in debates, but this is more a different matter IMO - ensuring ideas get critiqued properly before going forward is quite important. I suggested an extended debate time to ensure nothing gets rushed through under the auspices of overwhelming support, although perhaps a week is a little too long and might stifle debate rather than encourage critique...
The idea about Devil's Advocate is simply to ensure that critique happens. Ideally, I'd like to see the person who suggests a proposal list one or two things they think people should look at improving in the Act, but everyone strives to write the best proposal they can. It'd work better if people politely went through and checked a Bill with a fine comb even if they agreed with it, just to make sure there's no improvements to be made or loopholes to be closed.
3) Yeah, that's one way of handling it. Do we think it would be best for the OA to appoint Officers or a group of Officers once it gets off the ground?
5) I really like the idea of a Whip, and that also provides a way to increase activity once someone posts up a proposal. I definitely support functional Officers rather than for-show positions, so anything that might provide useful work for members to do (and gain experience etc) is always a plus.
6) Again, if we feel this is the best way of doing it I have no concerns. It was merely something that came up in debate so I made a suggestion. The idea to have it codified with the OA into the FL is to prevent pointless manipulation of the CoC at some indeterminate point in the future, but that's probably an empty concern.
We actually had a lot of these debates during the original Constitutional Convention, and these were some of the points raised...along with my own thoughts, especially where we didn't have these debates.
1) This is something I even encouraged discussion about, so it was not 'cast aside' as not important. It's just that most people who participated felt that it did more harm than good. I'm not really opposed to some measure, but I don't see the purpose of a one-week waiting period. It's not going to deter any serious region or organization from infiltrating the region if all they have to do is to wait a week before can start voting. If we must have some sort of requirement here, I would support an activity requirement over a 'waiting' requirement.
2) I'm not sure you can legislate away this problem...to some extent is's a problem with all democratic governments, but it may be a larger issue here in Wintreath since our culture places emphasis on consensus decisions. You can have a longer debate period, but this Convention had months of debate and discussion and that didn't avoid the problems that arose today. At times the Underhusen has also been apt to expedite debates and vote on legislation, even when it wasn't necessary to do so. I'm not sure the solution for this problem yet, but I don't think it's something that any legislation can fix on its own.
3) The current version is actually the result of a compromise...if I remember correctly it was 2/3 to begin with, but after some people suggested an absolute veto this was the compromise. I don't personally really care, although of course I like 3/4 just fine, lol, but there are some people who want a strengthened Monarchy in the region, and this compromise was a nod to them.
4) How about we vote aye if we support it, nay if we don't support it, and abstain if they are neutral toward it like it pretty much is already? If people absolutely don't want to vote, they could just...not vote. It's not as if voting is required or there's some punishment for not voting, even for those in the Storting as it is.
5) I don't know what they would do, but it seemed like a good idea to have a system in place to allow the option for other officers if they were needed. When the Underhusen started it was just the Speaker, and then the Speaker Pro Tempore was written into the Procedural Rules, and much later the Secretary position was written into them. Arguably, even without the system written into the Fundamental Laws, the Storting could still create officer positions by modifying the Procedural Rules...so it may be unnecessary, but not due to lack of potential use.
6) If there's a concern about things being changed on a whim, perhaps the solution is to make it more difficult to change the Procedural Rules instead of putting them directly into the Fundamental Laws. Don't forget that besides being ratified, amendments require approval from the Monarchy...just seems kinda odd to have veto power over Procedural Rules as an extension of that. 
1) See my answer to North - the week waiting period doesn't seem like the best way to do it, but either way if this was an issue that was settled it no longer is, as I've seen people complain about security concerns since the Act went up for ratification.
2) Yeah, it's a tough one to work through but I think we can come up with a few ideas as to how to make it work. I'm not saying legislate a requirement for people to oppose proposals for the sake of it, merely saying it might work best if there's some kind of memo to everyone that it's a good idea to double-check proposals for potential improvement
3) Gov was the one who kept suggesting a 2/3rds supermajority, but if it's been collectively decided that 3/4ths works better then I'm more than happy to go along with that.
4) Eh, I've simply heard a lot of concerns about abstentions in the last few days and thought it might be best to define them a little more clearly. That said, it seems the UH has already moved to do so, so that change would likely be carried over to the OH and this point is mooted.
5) One thing I bandied around, although again this is by no means a finished proposal, was an Officer or Officers who had the duty of polishing up legalise and submitting it to the Presiding Officer to go up for vote. Not sure how well that would work, as it might be a lot of work for those Officers, but this way we could have a team of more experienced legal authors put things together to avoid any errors new or newer members might make, and also allows for a rotation of candidates so as to allow newer members to gain experience in writing law from more experienced elders.
6) Good point - could we write the Procedural Rules/CoC into law with a requirement for a 2/3rds or 3/4ths majority vote in the Open Assembly before any amendments could be made? If so that definitely works better than codifying it into the FL.
@North and
@Wintermoot, just to tag you
