A few thoughts from your PO; AMENDMENTS AT VOTE

[Vepres]

Which again brings the question: What positions can we get rid of in order to stimulate more competitive and exciting elections?

Can we reduce the number of Cabinet positions? Maybe reduce the number of nationally elected seats? And maybe give the VP something like a vote, rather than a tie-breaking vote?

We have... counting... counting... 33 offices if you include judges and the GM.

Now, if you eliminate Lt. Governors, you have 29 offices
Eliminate regional judiciary and you have 26 offices
Let's assume a COG is implemented, and the Senate is reduced to 5. There are now 21 offices
But, if every region implements a legislature, you now have 33 offices again

So we have the same number of offices, but more of that activity is regional, which is one of the goals of this convention, no?

Just a thought.

[Vepres]

I would support something like that. My only worry is that we still don't build up competitive elections, especially if legislatures start popping up. While the game has enough registered people to fill these positions, we don't have enough active members. That is the problem we face and the last thing I was are inactive governors as part of a CoG.

How can we work within your outline to make elections more competitive?

PR-STV could be used, much like the nation elections, so it's competitive if even 4 people run for 3 offices.

You can't force the parties to do anything, but I think they should all have a primary system, regardless if there is more than one candidate or not. This will encourage people to primary a candidate of their party.

I think a GM will help a lot too. (Once we start to differ from the US more)

[Vepres]

Come on... Do something.

[Vepres]

At this point, and maybe Purple State will disagree, I think we should take all of the ideas thrown around in this thread and have the delegates vote on each one. Then amend our current constitution to include them.

[Vepres]

No worries, I have actually considered taking Sundays off from the forum, but alas its Sunday and I am here.

I will just mention that bullet points 1,3 and 4 can be achieved without removing the Regional Senate seats. You could have a proposal where you keep Regional Senate seats and have them be appointed by the Governors who are also members of the CoG. Each candidate for Governor can state who they will choose for the position before the election. So the election for Governor has three important factors

1. Who will Govern the Region?
2. Who will represent the Region in the CoG?
3. Who will they appoint as Regional Senator?

It elimnates eliminates the Regional Senate elections, without eliminating the Regional Senate seats. You can have it so the Assembly has to confirm the choice for Regional Senate seat(to get the assemblies involved) and every two months have the people of the region have an approval vote, If a majority disaproves disapproves of the choice the Governor has to appoint someone new and the Assembly has to approve them. It keeps the Governor, the Assembly and the Regional Senators on there toes. It still makes the Governor elections more competative competitive, w/o removing Regional Senate seats. It encourages but doesn't force the creation of Assemblies(Those without Assemblies just have the approval vote every two months).

In terms of the Regions I would support the removal of the Judicial officers(Like the ME have them instead be appointed as needed, since they aren't needed they will effectively not exist), and the Lt. Governors if they find it necessary to sustain an assembly. Regions who want to keep the intiative initiative whether it be praticial practical reasons or for reason of tradition thats that's fine as long as they can find ways to make them more exciting, and active. Maybe throw an abortion ban up each time to motivate people to vote, or removal of the income tax.

If any offices are created, it will be very few like at most 3 or 5. At I see three assemblies being created thats that's 9 people. Eliminating Lt Govs and Judcial judicial officers eliminates 6 positions. Thats That's adding three offices but if only two Regions create Assemblies we break even. Not entirely undoable. And the CoG and the process by which Regional Senators are appointed will give us the needed Regional activity, even more then Purple States proposal in my opinion.

Would this be an exceptable acceptable compromise?

It would be, but you're spelling and grammar makes it totally unacceptable.

Actually, I sort of like it, but what do I know? I'm not a delegate.

[Vepres]

While your compromise plan does eliminate elections for regional Senators, it retains the offices.  By your own admission, your total plan results in a net gain of 3-5 positions.  We have too many positions and not enough active players to fill them all, whether elected or appointed.  Granted, making it an appointed position eliminates the need for having an opponent in elections.  But it does nothing to add to the game.

No I said that it will create "AT MOST" three and that more then likely it evens out. Appearently you refuse to compromise on removal of Regional Senate seats. You are dead set against them existing at all and you are determined to at least accomplish there elimination through this process. It does add to the game. It makes Governorships all the more important and it brings about the necessary Regional Activity, which I think is going to do more to helping the game then reducing offices, anyway. What if no Assemblies are created. Then my plan creates a net minus of 6 positions. I think it will either even out or reduce the number of offices overall.

While your compromise plan does eliminate elections for regional Senators, it retains the offices.  By your own admission, your total plan results in a net gain of 3-5 positions.  We have too many positions and not enough active players to fill them all, whether elected or appointed.  Granted, making it an appointed position eliminates the need for having an opponent in elections.  But it does nothing to add to the game.

Right.  If anything, it saps even more active players from national elections... exactly the opposite of what is desirable.

Absolutely clueless bullsh**t. The people that are not appointed, or lose the Governorship can run Nationally since they rarely if ever coincide. To say it saps players from the national scene is very pressumptious since your plans do the same to the regions and that is in my opinion where the most activity is needed.

Would this be an exceptable compromise?

Absolutely not.

It seems to me that you people will not except any thing that doesn't remove wide swaths of Atlasia, combine branches of Gov't that should be separate, and remove all regional influence. European Democracy by the back door. I knew they wouldn't give up so easily and now I know that they did not.

You're not going to win over any delegates this way.



Straw Man!!!!

Oh, and if have to use straw man, at least spell presumptuous correctly. Can't help it.

[Vepres]

This will probably be shot down, but what if there was a way use an electoral college-like system to elect half the at-large senators. This way, regions would have some influence of part of the legislature. Not sure how it would be done, but...

[Vepres]

This will probably be shot down, but what if there was a way use an electoral college-like system to elect half the at-large senators. This way, regions would have some influence of part of the legislature. Not sure how it would be done, but...

I wouldn't mind giving regions some sort of proportional representation system, where larger regions have greater influence, but how that would work is another story.

If we go back to my original amendment about reform, we could leave regional Senate seats be and create a lower house, one with certain limited powers, that is made up of X members of each region, based on population and reapportioned every few months as determined by the SoFA. We wouldn't change regional boundaries, but just update their proper representation.

We could also require that those members of the lower house be chosen (as determined by the region) from among their regional elected officials. So this could mean Governor, Assemblymen, etc. Whatever the each regional Constitution dictates.

Thoughts?

A bicameral legislature, save a CoG, would not work. Too many positions, which would hurt elections. Remember, elections are the heart of this game.

[Vepres]

Are we going to attempt to compromise or what?

[Vepres]

1. The House shall be composed of a maximum of ten (undecided) Representatives, each with a term of one month, distributed proportionally among the regions to the nearest whole number. The representatives shall be elected from among the members of the regional elected officials according to the laws of each region. For the purposes of the House, each Region shall be divided intogiven a number of Districts representatives. The number of Districts representatives that a Region gets shall be as equal as possible to that Region's share of the Atlasian population, but each Region shall have at least one Districtrepresentative. The population in each District shall be as equal as possible to the other Districts in the same Region. Each District region shall elect one it's Representatives in a region-wide election using the PR-STV voting method.

This is better.

[Vepres]

Does the Lief/MaxQue crowd have any thoughts regarding my compromise proposal?

Personally, I don't like imposing on regions the way to choose their representative.

I tried not to, hence the clause about regions choosing which officials to send based on their own laws. They could simply choose by popular vote among the officials, by gubernatorial appointment, by set positions. It actually allows for quite a bit of variety is my hopes. And elected officials would be people chosen by the citizens already.

I like the original text concerning the representatives best. Does anybody have any objections to that piece of the draft?

[Vepres]

The regions are important if only because both Canada and the US, the two countries where most of Atlasians are really from, are federalist. Thus, they like to see federalism in the game. Besides, it adds and extra dimension to the game.

But I agree with the PO, even if you wanted to remove regions, public opinion is largely against you.

[Vepres]

Haven't been on the Atlas much lately. I must say that I like your proposal Purple State. I would like to remind all the skeptical delegates that if it fails to achieve results you can open a new convention.