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Title
1. This act shall be cited as the Procedural Rules Simplification Act.

Amendments to the Procedural Rules of the Underhusen
2. The Procedural Rules of the Underhusen shall be amended to read as follows:

Title
1. This Act shall be cited as the Procedural Rules of the Underhusen Act.

Underhusen Procedure
2. Any Skrifa may introduce proposals to the Underhusen at any time after the selection of the Speaker.

3. Any proposal introduced into the Underhusen must be considered by the Underhusen for a minimum of 48 hours before any motion can be made.  If no motion has been made and seconded after 120 hours, the bill will be tabled.
      (a) In matters of urgency, this 48 hour period may be waived and the bill voted upon if the Speaker makes a motion to expedite and the motion is seconded by a Skrifa. If the bill is a Revocation of Citizenship, the ability to expedite shall be relinquished.
      (b) A motion to Extend Debate may include a time period shorter or longer than 48 hours, but is not shorter than 4 hours and is not longer than 1 week. Should no time period be given or should the time period be shorter or longer than what is allowed, the extension shall be 48 hours.

4. Proposals on which, by the end of a session no valid motion has been made and seconded, shall be considered tabled.

5. Any Skrifa other than the Speaker may motion to vote or second a motion to vote on any proposal once the 48 hour debate period has expired. The Speaker shall open the vote no later than 120 hours after the motion to vote has passed.

6. Skrifa may cast one of the following votes on proposals before the Underhusen:
      (a) Aye, indicating that the Skrifa is voting in favor of the proposal;
      (b) Nay, indicating that the Skrifa is voting against the proposal;
      (c) Abstain, indicating that the Skrifa is voting neither in favor of nor against the proposal but wishes his or her vote to be recorded.

7. Once brought to a vote, a proposal shall remain at vote for 168 hours or until the requisite number of Skrifa have voted in favor of or against the proposal.
      (a) In the event that a vote is tied, the bill is to be directed to the Overhusen to determine the outcome. For matters concerning matters that are the sole discretion of the Underhusen, a vote that is tied is considered as having failed unless otherwise required within this, or any other relevant law.

8. In accordance with Section 9 of the Fundamental Laws, the Underhusen may override a veto by the Overhusen.
      (a) In order to override the veto, the bill must be reintroduced to the floor in accordance with Section 3.
      (b) If the bill receives a two-thirds supermajority vote, the Overhusen veto shall be overruled, and the bill passed as law.

The Speaker of the Underhusen
9. At the conclusion of each Underhusen election, the Monarch shall announce a 48 hour nomination period in which elected Skrifa may stand as a prospective candidate for Speaker of the Underhusen. Following the nomination period, each Skrifa shall have one (1) vote for Speaker of the Underhusen in a poll lasting 48 additional hours or until all elected Skrifa have voted and no tie for first place has occurred.
      (a) Should there be only one (1) candidate for Speaker, the candidate shall be Speaker immediately following the nomination period. There shall be no voting period in this instance.
      (b) The nomination and/or voting period may be shortened at the discretion of the Monarch if the relevant Underhusen session is shortened.

10. The Speaker of the Underhusen shall have the power to bring matters before the Underhusen to a vote within the parameters established by Section 4 of this Act.

11. The Speaker of the Underhusen will close votes after 168 hours of voting, or if enough votes have been cast to decide the outcome of the proposal.
      (a) The Speaker may close a vote but leave the record open to allow other Skrifa to record their votes.  Votes cast after the vote has been closed will not affect the result of the vote.

12. The Speaker of the Underhusen shall have the power to invite any citizen to speak before the Underhusen for any duration that he or she deems necessary during the term.
      (a) The Monarch shall have a standing invitation to speak before the Underhusen.

13. The Speaker of the Underhusen shall appoint a Speaker pro tempore from among the Skrifa of the Underhusen who shall, during a temporary absence of the Speaker of the Underhusen, preside over the Underhusen.
       (a) The Speaker pro tempore, whenever he or she is presiding over the Underhusen, shall be subject to all constitutional and statutory constraints placed upon the Speaker of the Underhusen.
       (b) Any Skrifa may make a motion to empower the Speaker pro tempore in the event that the Speaker of the Underhusen is absent without notice for longer than 120 hours. Such a motion shall be brought to a vote by the Speaker pro tempore immediately upon being seconded by another Skrifa.
       (c) The Speaker pro tempore shall cease to preside over the Underhusen upon the return of the Speaker of the Underhusen.
       (d) In the absence of both the Speaker of the Underhusen and the Speaker pro tempore, the Underhusen may decide on a temporary Speaker pro tempore from its number by process of a majority vote.

Beyond taking a minimalist and efficient approach in not having more words than necessary, changes include
- Conversion of days to hours, for standardisation purposes
- Set the default for a bill with no motion or second to being tabled 
- Removal of the active debate requirement for motion to extend debate, does not really serve any purpose besides further unnecessary bureaucracy
- Removal of the tabled bill revival procedure, additional unnecessary bureaucracy
- Removal of explanation for “abstain”, because Definition of Abstention Act is already a statutory law and need not be re-explained in the Underhusen Procedures
- Removal of mid-vote bill amendment procedure, additional unnecessary bureaucracy
- Removal of establishment of committees, additional unnecessary bureaucracy
- Stylistic changes from Speaker of the Assembly to of the Underhusen, for standardisation purposes
- Removal of creation of offices, additional unnecessary bureaucracy
- Removal of “Amendments of the Procedural Rules” section, additional unnecessary bureaucracy

Overall, I think this work of simplification is a pretty great idea. I do have certain thoughts on some of the changes, though, including what may be some key oversights.

-This revised version of the rules does not say what the threshold is for a statutory bill to pass. (probably the most important thing here)
-In Section 10, "Section 4" should be "Section 3."
-Why is only the Speaker allowed to motion to expedite? This seems like an unnecessary limitation and a strange change to make.
-It seems a bit excessive to automatically table bills after 120 hours, especially since they will be tabled by the end of the session anyway. This seems to introduce needless bureaucracy by forcing Skrifa to reintroduce a bill if they simply forget to motion on it after 5 days.
-If we are going for a minimalist approach, I don't see the need for 9b: "The nomination and/or voting period may be shortened at the discretion of the Monarch if the relevant Underhusen session is shortened." I do not remember any time that this provision was ever used, nor do I see a realistic situation where the 96-hour Speaker selection period would be too long.
-It will be disappointing if we go back to having to suddenly vote Nay because of an overlooked grammar error. That said, Doc's mid-vote amendment idea was a bit of a mess and has never been used, so it does make sense.
-I am glad that "pro tempore" is getting standardized to lowercase; that said, I am not a fan of the italicizing. It's common style to not italicize pro tempore in both Wintreath and in the real world, and italicizing it here will almost certainly lead to inconsistencies if future amendments are introduced.
-Given past history, I am very pessimistic about the Speaker alone taking care of the laws archive without anyone else in a position of responsibility to help with that. I think it is quite likely that the laws page will once again go out of date if that is what the Underhusen decides to do.
-If we are going to do a complete overhaul, I might suggest also getting on with the times and using gender neutral pronouns; that is, replacing "he or she" with "they." This was already done in some later amendments to the Procedural Rules, and if we're going to standardize in one direction, NB-inclusiveness just makes sense, especially as an LGBTQ/LGBTQ-allied region.

I hope the Underhusen takes these thoughts into consideration and implements fixes (and hopefully also other changes) before going to a vote.

@Dawsinian @Sapphiron

I actually agree with Tau for once

I don't think we'll have to vote nay on grammatical grounds, per se, as we could also pass the bill and then pass an amendment to the bill. But shouldn't these concerns be raised in discussion rather than the voting process?

It makes sense to have the option to appoint someone to tend to the Laws page, should the Speaker choose to / not be willing to take the responsibility themselves. But it shouldn't be mandatory. We can include some language along the lines of "At their discretion, the Speaker may appoint a Citizen to update the Laws page as deemed necessary."

The other amendments Tau proposes looks good.

-If we are going for a minimalist approach, I don't see the need for 9b: "The nomination and/or voting period may be shortened at the discretion of the Monarch if the relevant Underhusen session is shortened." I do not remember any time that this provision was ever used, nor do I see a realistic situation where the 96-hour Speaker selection period would be too long.

It's actually been used several times, including the latest Speaker election. It's generally used when the term is shortened due to run-off elections.

-This revised version of the rules does not say what the threshold is for a statutory bill to pass. (probably the most important thing here)

True, we can include a "In order for a statutory bill to pass, the number of "Aye" votes cast during the voting period must exceed the number of "Nay" votes."

-In Section 10, "Section 4" should be "Section 3."

Aye

-Why is only the Speaker allowed to motion to expedite? This seems like an unnecessary limitation and a strange change to make.

I am not sure if the intent is to restrict the ability to motion to expedite to solely that of the Speaker's but hmm, @Dawsinian

-It seems a bit excessive to automatically table bills after 120 hours, especially since they will be tabled by the end of the session anyway. This seems to introduce needless bureaucracy by forcing Skrifa to reintroduce a bill if they simply forget to motion on it after 5 days.

It's more of a disincentive to let a bill be left there to rot, but I get your point

-If we are going for a minimalist approach, I don't see the need for 9b: "The nomination and/or voting period may be shortened at the discretion of the Monarch if the relevant Underhusen session is shortened." I do not remember any time that this provision was ever used, nor do I see a realistic situation where the 96-hour Speaker selection period would be too long.

We have cut short Speaker election period due to the main election having run-offs

-It will be disappointing if we go back to having to suddenly vote Nay because of an overlooked grammar error. That said, Doc's mid-vote amendment idea was a bit of a mess and has never been used, so it does make sense.

Yeah, and I don't think it's too much of a hassle to pull the whole bill back to be re-introduced if there are so many grammatical / spelling / formatting errors to be obstructive

-Given past history, I am very pessimistic about the Speaker alone taking care of the laws archive without anyone else in a position of responsibility to help with that. I think it is quite likely that the laws page will once again go out of date if that is what the Underhusen decides to do.

I think we can keep the Librarian position? @Dawsinian

-If we are going to do a complete overhaul, I might suggest also getting on with the times and using gender neutral pronouns; that is, replacing "he or she" with "they." This was already done in some later amendments to the Procedural Rules, and if we're going to standardize in one direction, NB-inclusiveness just makes sense, especially as an LGBTQ/LGBTQ-allied region.

True

I don't think we'll have to vote nay on grammatical grounds, per se, as we could also pass the bill and then pass an amendment to the bill. But shouldn't these concerns be raised in discussion rather than the voting process?

They should be. In practice, they often do not.

I think the reasoning behind simply voting down the bill is that it requires lower effort to pass it right the first time. (The UH has to do basically the same, if not less work, and the OH only needs to vote once.)

(There was a period time when we kept finding small grammar errors and having to fix them, which is what I think led to this being introduced. After that the UH was more inactive though so less of that happened.)

It makes sense to have the option to appoint someone to tend to the Laws page, should the Speaker choose to / not be willing to take the responsibility themselves. But it shouldn't be mandatory. We can include some language along the lines of "At their discretion, the Speaker may appoint a Citizen to update the Laws page as deemed necessary."

Agreed, it should be optional, much as it currently is.

-If we are going for a minimalist approach, I don't see the need for 9b: "The nomination and/or voting period may be shortened at the discretion of the Monarch if the relevant Underhusen session is shortened." I do not remember any time that this provision was ever used, nor do I see a realistic situation where the 96-hour Speaker selection period would be too long.

It's actually been used several times, including the latest Speaker election. It's generally used when the term is shortened due to run-off elections.

Oh interesting, I guess it happens so seamlessly that I don't notice. In that case, I'd definitely support keeping that.

This does make me think though, are there any things that this proposed amendment gets rid of that actually is used, just the author(s) are unfamiliar with?

I am not sure if the intent is to restrict the ability to motion to expedite to solely that of the Speaker's but hmm, @Dawsinian

The wording seems pretty clear to only allow the Speaker to motion to expedite, lol.

-It seems a bit excessive to automatically table bills after 120 hours, especially since they will be tabled by the end of the session anyway. This seems to introduce needless bureaucracy by forcing Skrifa to reintroduce a bill if they simply forget to motion on it after 5 days.

It's more of a disincentive to let a bill be left there to rot, but I get your point

That might be the intent, but I think it would actually act as a disincentive to keep working on a bill if that arbitrary amount of time passes. People aren't keeping their eyes glued on the 120-hour countdown timer; seeing a bill automatically tabled just because they forgot (or didn't know about) this deadline might just encourage (especially newer) Skrifa to give up their efforts instead of trying to push new things through.

A lot of these are good points. I will make some edits to my proposed amendments later.

This revised version of the rules does not say what the threshold is for a statutory bill to pass. (probably the most important thing here)

Fixed.

-In Section 10, "Section 4" should be "Section 3."

Fixed.

-Why is only the Speaker allowed to motion to expedite? This seems like an unnecessary limitation and a strange change to make.

This is from the original procedural rules, which is where I drew a lot of my changes from. However as it seems most would prefer that power stay with the Skrifa, this is also changed.

-It seems a bit excessive to automatically table bills after 120 hours, especially since they will be tabled by the end of the session anyway. This seems to introduce needless bureaucracy by forcing Skrifa to reintroduce a bill if they simply forget to motion on it after 5 days.

As it currently stands, after 5 days of debate the PR require that Skrifa enter some sort of motion on the bill, whether that be a motion to vote, table, or extend debate. I will stand by this change and say that if a bill has been on the floor for 5 days and is still being debated, then a Skrifa can simply motion to extend debate. If, however, a bill has been on the floor for 5 days and it is evident no one is going to introduce a motion to vote or extend debate, it seems logical to automatically table it until there is interest in the bill. In the interest of compromise, though, I will extend this period to seven days.

-If we are going for a minimalist approach, I don't see the need for 9b: "The nomination and/or voting period may be shortened at the discretion of the Monarch if the relevant Underhusen session is shortened." I do not remember any time that this provision was ever used, nor do I see a realistic situation where the 96-hour Speaker selection period would be too long.

See @Wintermoot's answer.

-It will be disappointing if we go back to having to suddenly vote Nay because of an overlooked grammar error. That said, Doc's mid-vote amendment idea was a bit of a mess and has never been used, so it does make sense.

Unless someone can come up with a better amendment procedure, I'm going to stick with Skrifa voting nay if the bill isn't grammatically sound. This is something I would hope Skrifa are paying attention to when they introduce bills.

-I am glad that "pro tempore" is getting standardized to lowercase; that said, I am not a fan of the italicizing. It's common style to not italicize pro tempore in both Wintreath and in the real world, and italicizing it here will almost certainly lead to inconsistencies if future amendments are introduced.

I've always italicized it, and honestly I'm not sure where I got it from. Also fixed.

-Given past history, I am very pessimistic about the Speaker alone taking care of the laws archive without anyone else in a position of responsibility to help with that. I think it is quite likely that the laws page will once again go out of date if that is what the Underhusen decides to do.

So up until I was elected Speaker I was still pretty sure that @Wintermoot still appointed a Laws Administrator like he did a few years ago. Nonetheless it is my belief that that Speaker of the Underhusen is responsible for this, but I will add a provision to allow them to appoint someone to cover this responsibility. In general though, I think the current wording for the process of creating and appointing Officers is way too cumbersome.

-If we are going to do a complete overhaul, I might suggest also getting on with the times and using gender neutral pronouns; that is, replacing "he or she" with "they." This was already done in some later amendments to the Procedural Rules, and if we're going to standardize in one direction, NB-inclusiveness just makes sense, especially as an LGBTQ/LGBTQ-allied region.

Aye. Changed.

-If we are going to do a complete overhaul, I might suggest also getting on with the times and using gender neutral pronouns; that is, replacing "he or she" with "they." This was already done in some later amendments to the Procedural Rules, and if we're going to standardize in one direction, NB-inclusiveness just makes sense, especially as an LGBTQ/LGBTQ-allied region.

Aye. Changed.

FYI you missed instances of he/him and his/her at 6c and 12.

FYI you missed instances of he/him and his/her at 6c and 12.

Fixed.