Purple State and Marokai's BIG IDEA

[Associate Justice PiT]

     While I agree that elected regional legislatures is a good thing, I am not sure how I feel about forcing elected legislatures on the Midwest & the Pacific. Part of the beauty I see in the regions is that different regions run themselves in different ways, depending on the attitudes of their residents. Requiring the regions to all elect a legislature removes one degree of latitude they have for differentiation, requiring homogeneity for the most part in how they vest their legislative power.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     While I agree that elected regional legislatures is a good thing, I am not sure how I feel about forcing elected legislatures on the Midwest & the Pacific. Part of the beauty I see in the regions is that different regions run themselves in different ways, depending on the attitudes of their residents. Requiring the regions to all elect a legislature removes one degree of latitude they have for differentiation, requiring homogeneity for the most part in how they vest their legislative power.

Personally I see nothing wrong with universal regional legislatures. Electing them certainly adds an interesting element to the game, but if we're encouraging activity I think it could be done either way. It's a good thing to include in the discussion at the very least, but I myself personally would feel no loss if we merely mandated a regional legislature elected or unelected.

     I was merely thinking that regions should have latitude to institute legislative processes that are not terribly conducive to activity if they so wish. The end result of that would be making their region less attractive to newer citizens, but if they are fine with that then the notion does not really bother me.

     FWIW, I think requiring either an elected or unelected legislature would be completely uncontroversial. Only the Midwest still uses neither, & as someone (Lewis?) pointed out, the loose, informal nature of the initiative process there is already very close in practice to constituting a universal legislature.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     While I agree that elected regional legislatures is a good thing, I am not sure how I feel about forcing elected legislatures on the Midwest & the Pacific. Part of the beauty I see in the regions is that different regions run themselves in different ways, depending on the attitudes of their residents. Requiring the regions to all elect a legislature removes one degree of latitude they have for differentiation, requiring homogeneity for the most part in how they vest their legislative power.

I want to be as clear and upfront about this as possible: Nothing in the proposal would force any region to fundamentally change the structures of their regional government.

Looking at the language, there is no minimum and no maximum size for the mandatory elected regional legislatures. If a region like the Pacific wanted a legislature large enough to accommodate its entire populace, they are within their right to do so. However, I strongly believe that they should still hold elections, even if the number of seats makes the race essentially uncontested.

Why? Because this game is both a government and an elections sim. Currently, regions without elected legislatures only fulfill the governing aspect. That is what I want to change.

     Fair enough, though wouldn't a region making its legislature equivalent to the size of its population run into the issue of having to hold a special election for every new resident or else have new registrees be disenfranchised until the next election rolls around? Maybe regions could still have universal legislatures with no elections to be a part of it, but then they would have to hold elections for senior officers in the legislature, who would have additional powers & privileges in the activities of the legislature.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Provided the Senate and Region sections remain like they are, this has my full support.

Personally I'd actually like to double regional seats and expand the Senate to 15 (my personal view of course), but I'm very happy we have agreement room here.

     Would it be done by two-seat STV or United States-style? I would prefer the latter, though I will admit that I have a soft spot for the one-on-one race.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Maybe consolidate all the regions into a single state, with one legislature?

That's a terrible idea. If they want to polarize themselves, they'll do it, but I don't expect anyone to be in favor of that.

Barely anybody is running for the Northeast Assembly anymore, and I'm not sure if the same is true for other regions.  Having a single legislature would not only make it larger, in relation to the total pool of voters, but it would also increase the number of people running for the legislature, thus increasing competition.

     That's sort of what people used to say in advocacy of eliminating regional Senate seats, IIRC. Not to say that that automatically disqualifies the notion or anything, but I never thought I'd hear you advocating radical centralism.