Bicameral Legislature?

[Peter]

There has been various talk from various people about reforming the way that representation is drawn.

Proposals include the above, expanding the Senate, radically changing the method in which the Senate is elected, and probably a few I've missed.

The only way that any of these proposals can honestly be considered is to form a second Constitutional Convention in order to rewrite vast swathes of the Constitution. If people honestly want that, then we can do it, but it could take nigh on a month to get it done.

[Peter]

I assume this is bumped to re-initiate debate on the matter.

I never liked the idea in the beginning: It presently takes about a month for a piece of legislation to go from being posted on the Introduction thread to actually seeing a final vote. If it then passes, it may have to go through that whole queue again in the other House. This sort of length of time in passing things will get very annoying for people. There is also a question over whether we could staff all these positions whilst continuing to have competitive elections, I suspect seats in the NE especially would turn into one man races.

We would also have to completely rewrite some of the opening sections in Article I to make the transition.

[Peter]

Based on the last election, what is our current population? Like 110 - 120 ?

We had 111 voters in the last election. There are an additional 5 or 6 voters on the roll I think.

[Peter]

You are partially correct: In a 5-5 split bicameral legislature, a piece of leglislation could receive 7 votes (5 in one House and 2 in the other), yet still not pass.

If we were to actually pursue bicameralism, I would advocate a 10-5 split, with the Lower House representing districts and Upper House, the Regions, but I continue to have a problem believing that we could find the members to have competitive elections in all these races.

[Peter]

How about, keep the senate as is, but introduce a HoR that includes ALL Atlasians, excluding those in the senate, executive, the GM, etc. Only the senate could propose legislation, but the HoR would also have to vote on it.

Basical;ly, you wouldn't need a majority of members of the HoR, just a majority of voters in a 48-hour period. So, after a bill is passed, the SoFA would create a HoR thread for that bill, and close it in 48 hours. A majority of members wouldn't be neccesary, just a majority of those who vote, so if 25 people vote you'd need 13.

This would effectively remove the last smidgen of power the President has: A President garners his legitimacy to veto from a sense that he has a public mandate from election. If the people vote for something in this fashion, the President can never claim the public mandate in vetoing.