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Generalities...although it seems I have violated my personal rule of no politics while tired. He he oopsies. Making no sense is what I get!

At times, however there are instances where it is not warranted. I believe this is one of those instances. When you have some members that have deliberately made it their goal to attempt to subvert the system then the blame should not fall onto the system.

Please clarify. "He he oopsies" is irresponsible when placed next to the severity of such an accusation.

The Upper Chamber (The Elected House)
-snip-

I'm hesitant on having an elected chamber as that seems to be the problem with the current model, especially if the Assembly has elected officers as well. If the upper chamber were mostly Monarch-appointed (without elections open to any candidates), I think that'd be simpler.

The "Monarch gives a list of candidates" idea is intriguing as I think it'd give only potential Monarch-appointees as candidates, but it also gives the regular citizens a feeling like they get a bit of a say in the matter as well it puts a bit of a rotation to the upper chamber which I think would increase the chance of their giving more input on legislation as your model asks (and I agree with). This idea would of course need Wintermoot's blessing, though.

I'd think the upper house could perhaps be fewer "Monarch selected candidates that are voted in by the Assembly" and more Monarch-appointed (whether this is half vs half+1, lower fraction vs higher fraction, or a specific set number of "elected" seats vs however many appointed the Monarch wants). I'd also think that these elected members would have longer terms, maybe 4 or even 6 months, since they're obviously trusted veteran members (4 months would prevent elections at the same time as Assembly elections except for once a year, which we could make a "thing" if we wanted).

Yeah, of the two suggestions I think the Monarchical list of candidates has the most merit in terms of it being an elected chamber. There wouldn't be any officers for this chamber beyond the current Speaker set up we have now, so there wouldn't be too many elections to worry about. As you say, we'd need @Wintermoot to agree with this, but I think there's a lot of potential.

As for the ratio of appointed vs proposed-then-elected candidates, yeah; it'll work better with a 6:4 former to latter, I think. I like you ideas on the term time as well, especially considering your point about this Upper Chamber being made up of trusted, long term members

The Lower Chamber (The Open Assembly)
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I think your bill-sponsorship idea could work, and I think 3 officers to begin with would be good.

As for admission into the Assembly: I think that since there is already a 5 post requirement to become a citizen, there should be a higher post requirement to join the Assembly (in my opinion, at least 15), and I think sponsorship or using Laurentus' growth model could work, too.

15 post minimum? I'd be happy with that for sure, considering sponsorship would allow us to bring in anyone who was demonstrating a desire to be politically involved prior to getting those post requirements that we thought worthy of early entrance. Any thoughts on the staggered induction idea?


As for the other replies, please keep it civil you lot! Chanku, if you're going to make accusations like that at least have the guts to provide names and evidence so that we might judge whether or not they hold water, and if they do, ways of avoiding it in any new system we create Sapph, valid points but eh, less of the pass aggro :p

Awww but makings things Uncivil is what I'm known for!

Bumping this with a modified version of my first proposal, taking into account @Gerrick's response;

The Lower Chamber (The Open Assembly)

• Requires fifteen posts to join. If two current members sponsor an individual, or the Monarch sponsors an individual, they may be raised into the OA without meeting these requirements.
• Laws are proposed by either one member, in which case a to be determined number of sponsors (2 to 4 seems sensible given current activity) are required to move it on to debate, or by two or more members, in which case it goes to debate automatically. A bill must receive the required number of sponsors within 48 hours.
• Once a bill has moved to debate, it has a week to be discussed IN FULL before it can be moved on to the upper chamber. There should, of course, be provisions for tabling and extending debate if so required.
• Officers are elected every 3 months to preside over discussion, move proposed bills to debate and alert the upper chamber that a bill is ready to be checked over. We can decide how many of these we need or want through further discussion [CURRENT SUGGESTION: 3].
• Abstentions should be allowed in either Not Voting or No Opinion format, the former indicating a desire to abstain out of personal feelings and the latter a desire to abstain out of a lack of any strong feelings either way. I think this is how it's been set up in the UH currently.
• The Monarch would obviously retain a veto power over any legislation he thinks should be thrown out, but a 2/3rds majority can overturn this veto if so desired. He can veto at any point in the legislative process - once a bill is passed into law, he must go through the usual amendment or striking process to remove an act.
• As our member base increases, so too should the size of the OA. We could either do this by the standard "once you pass the criteria you're in" method OR use Lau's idea of holding back new members for a small period of time and inducting a group of them all at once. Sponsorship would of course circumvent this requirement. If someone doesn't want to be part of the OA, this staggered induction would give them time to make that desire known and allow them to avoid being involved in regional politics if they so wished.

The Upper Chamber (The Elected House)

• Made up of minimum 4 maximum 10 (can be revised upwards as needed by an internal motion, similar to how the OH legislates its own procedural rules and the UH legislates its seating requirements for each new term) individuals, of which a third are elected by the OA from a list put forward by the Monarch and two thirds are appointed directly by the Monarch himself.
• The duty of this House is to double check bills and return them to the OA if any revisions need to be made WITH CLEAR REFERENCE TO WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED. They can also, should they wish, make a petition in which a majority of EH officials can call on the OA to draft a law on a topic they think needs legislating on. This gives the EH a little more legislative power than they have currently but keeps them mostly as a revisionary body to avoid tyranny of the majority etc.
• Elections for the elected seats should be held every 4 months or every 6 months. The EH members appointed by the Monarch come up for review at the same time, meaning that if the OA finds issue with one appointed individual, that individual's seat opens up for the Monarch to appoint a new member. If no issues are found with appointed members, they continue to hold their seat until removed by the Monarch.

Once a bill is passed into law, the Act is then considered ratified and moved to the Monarch for final approval. This is his last opportunity to veto, after which he'd have to petition for an Act to be amended or revoked through the usual petitions channels.

Only minor changes to the OA (post requirement) section but I've altered the EH section to reflect the desire for a mostly appointed only partly elected (from a list) set-up, and the 4 to 6 month election period.

I'm liking what I'm seeing. I have only one minor concern at this time. How will a full debate be defined? I'm referring to the part where a sponsored bill has to stay on the floor for a week, but be discussed "IN FULL."

I'm liking what I'm seeing. I have only one minor concern at this time. How will a full debate be defined? I'm referring to the part where a sponsored bill has to stay on the floor for a week, but be discussed "IN FULL."

That's a holdover from the arguments/discussions we were having about a Bill going through without people objecting/concriting it who otherwise might due to feeling like the majority might lash out at them etc. There's definitely a better wording available, but I don't think the initial idea I had (a kind of required Devil's Advocate) would really work out; maybe the 3 elected Officers of the OA have the duty of not only moving Bills to debate and on to the EH, but also the duty of playing an adversarial role in the debate to ensure all positions and opinions are actively considered before something goes on to become law?

I think some of this duty would be carried out by the EH but it'd be good to have some kind of redundancy.

Just a quick bump on this - some of the ideas I put forward got a reasonably positive reception; what would people think of me drafting up a new constitutional bill for perusal?

I'm up for that, but we never heard @Wintermoot 's thoughts.

The one thing I'm worried about is -- as Wintermoot pointed out in the OP -- that we might be trying to tackle too many things right off the bat and that we might have an easier job getting passed just a bare bones assembly to replace the UH, then from there we can add the rest and fix.

Past experience would disagree. We left a lot of things open when considering the Open Assembly, and... well, we all saw how that turned out.

Yeah, but that was a complete open assembly legislature, and this is a semi-open assembly replacement of just the UH. But, yeah, I see what you're saying. I feel like anything we do, we're gonna have a hell of a hard time getting a 2/3 supermajority.

Preach, brother.

* Wintermoot sees the Constitutional Convention is active

* Wintermoot runs, runs away

Well, as far as thoughts go on the proposal that's not precisely a ringing endorsement... :p

Well, as far as thoughts go on the proposal that's not precisely a ringing endorsement... :p

Haha, that's not what I meant. Wintermoot declined to comment on this, so I say we get a nice bill drafted up and create a topic where people can talk about it and vote on a poll to see if there's even a chance before we put it forward to the UH.

If anything, there are new citizens who would be voting on this, and many of the ones who voted on the last ratification have gone inactive, so the outcome may be different either way.

But I feel like if we just cast it in a light to where we're not completely tearing down the current system but rather just opening up the UH, people will be more receptive to it... or at least less against it. (Might I mention you were one of the people who voted "Nay", Weiss, so I think others may change their views of this as well. ) Really I don't know why people would be actively against it as it just allows for a more inclusive government for those who wish to join and so wouldn't affect those who don't.