SAM News Corp. Comment and Debate thread

[Peter]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I would have to agree with many of the sentiments that you express in these two paragraphs:

There remain at least 3 unanswered questions from the last election:

1. Vice President-less ballots
2. The problem surrounding Tweed's activity requirement disqualification(or not)
3. Ben Meyers' vote in the Senate elections.,

True: there is need to address the problems of tactical voting within the present system and that can only be done by statute, but the problems surrounding these three issues could easily be decided in the Courts.

Unfortunately the Court can only react to what is brought to it, it cannot be proactive unlike the Senate and the Executive, and this was taken to ridiculous extremes in the last election. The Senate (amazingly on the advice of one of the forum's most prominent strict constructionists) actively assumed the power to declare the result of a controversial Presidential election as its own, one that by all indication of the text of the Constituition belongs to the Supreme Court.

I have to ask what sort of precedent this has set - is every controversial election result now going to be decided by a show of hands in the Senate?

[Peter]

The Senate never decided this election.

There was merely a resolution to lend the Senate's unofficial support to the results as declared by the SoFA, in the name of unity.

I certainly would never have voted to install a president in such a manner.  That is simply not what happened.  Read the resolution again.

It is troubling that anyone would so grossly misunderstand what occurred.

Certainly, in the interests of unity the Resolution was a good thing, however, all that is good is not necessarily legal, and that is where the Resolution fell down.

The resolution states:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Given that we had two potential certifications floating around, each certifying different winners, it seems that the Senate has decided for us that one certification was definitely valid, and the other was not.

Of course, the Senate lending support to one candidate over the other potential winner also places the Court into an impossible position had it actually had to review the election result - If we had found Emsworth to be the actual winner under the Law, we would have visited upon ourselves the public wrath for going against a Senate resolution embodying the "will of the people".

Don't for a second pretend that you didn't effectively decide the election, because thats exactly what you did. You decided which certification counted and robbed the Court of any legitimacy it had to make the decision had it fallen to it.

[Peter]

There was no other certification. The first declaration of the result, as was obviousl and apparent, was not a certification at all.

Thats not what you were saying at the time.

[Peter]

I just wish people had voiced their concerns at the time.  It might have averted this conflict.  Why did the justices, or anyone else, not say something back when action could have been taken?

Things moved very quickly, and by the time I saw it the morning after, it was already too late. The decisions were taken with consultation of whoever was available, which was mostly candidates, I certainly wasn't around at 4 a.m. British local.

Even when I did see it, I felt an amount of relief - it was certainly good for one thing - finding a resolution to the whole mess and attempting to move on. Its only as I've thought about it more that the full consequences of the move have become more apparent to my mind - the awful precedent of allowing the Senate to declare winners in controversial cases.

Ultimately the problem here is: Does the short term benefit of quickly and decisively ending the electoral dispute outweigh any long term problems with the sidelining of the Court in similar disputes, and also does it just delay the problem of the Court making a decision on the controversial issues?

[Peter]

Ironically, I believe I would be the first Jewish Atlasian Secretary of State.

I think M was a jew, though I'm not sure.

[Peter]

In amongst all the hate, there are actually some valid points in the article.

The Senate is undoubtedly incredibly inactive - very little is getting done for various reasons.

Al wants to style himself as the "Speaker" of the Senate rather than its procedural dogsbody. Unfortunately for you Al, thats not what the job is about, and the sooner you come to that realisation, the better. At times, Al seemingly opens votes without actually knowing what they are (see the recent amendment to the Secret Ballot Amendment). There have also been a number of instances where the SPRs have been ignored: I strongly doubt that this is malicioius in anyway. The body, however does itself no favours by allowing these to pass by.

Certainly the absence of Defarge to assist in procedural matters has hurt the Senate, and that certainly isn't Al's fault, however. Ultimately the Senate has no go-to-guy at the moment, and this is the first time in a long while that we have been in that position. For a full four months, we had Emsworth to keep the Senate's procedures rolling around, and before that we had Sam Spade, who for all the hate he spews, knows the SPRs inside out and did not like to let the Senate wait long between bills.

To find an equivilant period of stagnation in the Senate, you have to go back to the resignation of Kennedy as PPT back in Jan/Feb, where because Keystone Phil didn't care jack about his Senate duties, the Senate fell into total disarray and spent about 10 days with no clear leader and little debate on substantive matters. The only difference is, this isn't a transition period.

Third, you've criticized my bill that allows me to introduce legislation, and then criticized me for not introducing enough legislation too!  As it happens, I already have more bills ready to be introduced, provided the Senate grants me that power.  But as the Senate is more concerned with protecting endangered lichens, cutting their own salaries, and imposing textile tariffs, you could say it's hard to stay patient.  I have already asked the PPT and Vice President to bump that particular bill to the top of the agenda.

I'm going to be blunt. The idea of Presidential introduction has been attacked heavily for various reasons, and will probably fail in a vote of the Senate. Its time to move on. Seek Senate sponsors of your legislation now, otherwise your legislation will never see the light of day.

The lack of a clear noticeboard has slowed things down immensely, and the lengthy consideration of the budget (and its associated fun) hasn't helped either. I am also quite worried that a lot of forum affairs legislation that is awaiting consideration (i.e. Gabu's misguided attempt to rewrite the UEC all by himself) has received very little consultation and may make the problems of our electoral system worse, not better, that hoewver, is an argument for another day.

[Peter]

Our elections are already largely conducted in a non-partisan way. Most races are decided on the basis of the candidate rather than his or her party; The only noticable exception in the last cycle was your race actually, and whether your party names were on the ballot or not, this would not have changed.