Should officeholding rapists be immune from impeachment?

[Adam Griffin]

Yankee's proposed constitutional amendment - to raise the threshold for impeachment to 83% of Senators - is a dangerous game reform proposal that stands to jeopardize the Fourth Constitution in the same way as the Third. Functionally, this will make it practically impossible to remove any officeholder from his or her position given the realities of the game (partisanship and ideology, inactive Senators - just to name two), which was consistently a problem under the Third Constitution because somebody insisted on ridiculous thresholds that made the process impossible to execute.

And that was when we had ten Senators, which meant that an absent Senator or two had even less effect on the ability to derail an otherwise legitimate impeachment proceeding.

As if that weren't bad enough, there are other issues too. See below:

Yes, let's change all of the thresholds back to insanely large percentages like we did in the last rendition of the game so that we can never remove any derelict or irresponsible officeholders in the Fourth Constitution, too!

This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Poorly written, too: if the person in question is a Senator, then literally every Senator has to be in favor. Likewise, "sitting Senator" means all Senators, so you'll just need one MIA Senator to require a unanimous vote in every case. Ooh, here's a fun scenario: if a rapin' Senator is facing impeachment and another Senator is inactive, then congrats, the rapist gets to stay in office!

I highly encourage you to write your members of Congress and tell them to vote NO on this Deeply Disturbing and dangerous repeating of history that'll utterly violate the Glorious Constitution I worked so hard as President to give to all of you!

[Adam Griffin]

    NeverAgain is right on point here. 5/6 is awfully high, but the problem is that 4/6 is simply too low, constituting a simple majority of all Senators. Fractional thresholds of this sort are going to be janky in small chambers, so expressing this as an 83% threshold is misleading; we're doing this because the size of the chamber means that there is no middle ground between a majority and a normally unreasonably-sized supermajority.

It's not misleading, and certainly nowhere nearly as misleading as presenting the current situation as needing 51% of Senators to impeach, which is what you're doing.

The current situation is two-thirds, which actually reflects a specific, whole number of Senators without needing to delve into fractions (4 out of 6). What is being proposed is "four-fifths", which does not evenly divide by the number of Senators (4.8 out of 6), meaning 5 will actually be needed. Five out of six is 83%.

If the current threshold were, say, 48% (2.9 out of 6) or 60% (3.6 out of 6), then our respective arguments with regard to rounding up/down would be on even ground, but that is not the current situation. You're rounding down to make your argument; I'm merely stating what is actually the required threshold.

[Adam Griffin]

To take off my Labor hat, I actually agree with Adam.

We were actually very lucky back in summer '15 during the coup to have a Senate that wasn't dominated by radicals; if say TNF (who I recall was a Governor) was a Senator along with two other members (I recall several of the 'radicals' where in the Senate in '15, just had left by the time of the coup) then we would have been powerless to do absolutely anything. So if we'd had that rule back then we could have struggle

At the moment the Senate is made up of trustworthy, independent folks, who I would trust to carry out a hypothetical hearing fairly. As Adam says the big danger is trying to impeach a Senator, or say Cabinet officer all it requires is one inactive Senator (which we've had countless times for various factors) and one less esteemed member.

Reforms like this look sane at the time, they look good and they look sensible. We're most likely to see the effect of this in 1-2 years time, when the majority of us are no longer playing.

Yes, it would not surprise me one bit that the motivation behind this is some sort of worry over a TNF 2.0-like presence in the chamber, obviously forgetting that those same ridiculous thresholds either thwarted impeachment or would have in those situations - given slightly different circumstances as you outlined. This is a knife that cuts both ways but the side of the blade that makes the chamber's actions impossible is far more likely to cut than the side that permits reckless witchhunts and removals. Many of us have lived through this and all I can assume is that Yankee is either politically-motivated here or is merely doing it because he loves tradition and reminiscing about the good ol' days way too much.

[Adam Griffin]

So the lynch first, ask questions second model of political attack, combined with the cliche narrative of Yankee is stupid, Yankee is stuck in the past, or Yankee is political and oh wait, lets not forget the best one, YANKEE IS ING NUTS bullsh**t narratives all in one.


TODAY MUST BE MY ING BIRTHDAY!!!


I got hand to the stupid a-hole that created this thread, Because there few things that genuinely push me over the edge into ing batsh**t crazy pissed off

Unhinged and SAD!

[Adam Griffin]

I'm having discussions with various individuals about the notion of including both houses in the impeachment process and weighing votes so that each chamber has equal say roughly while keeping two-thirds; each House vote would be equivalent to 0.67 Senate votes (i.e. the Senate gets 6 votes and the House gets 6 votes). We'd have to clarify whether/what rounding procedures would be used in very close situations, but:

Examples:

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[Adam Griffin]

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[Adam Griffin]

All melodrama from others aside, the amendment as proposed is a very bad, dangerous idea in its current form and must be rectified (or abandoned) in order to ensure we don't fall back into the same pit of dysfunctional despair as existed before - if we're to pass this as-is or even as a variation with the same threshold, we might as well abolish the notion of impeachment entirely (same effective thing, albeit with fewer words).

If Yankee is so worried about partisan witch-hunts ruining the process - which he is, and admitted such earlier, so I'm amused over his faux outrage about me alluding to the notion that it was possibly his motivation - then let's find a way to balance such (historically highly unlikely) threats without destroying the entire function in the process. This is a gross over-reaction to a problem that hasn't really ever been one while turning a blind eye to the problem that was caused by this very thing for years prior.

Each of us is responsible for the legislation we introduce, Yankee. We're also responsible for not dragging real-life issues into the game with us and then using them as a crutch to call others meanies, act out of line and generate sympathy off of them.

[Adam Griffin]

Here: boilerplate legislation that deals with all of the legitimate concerns by increasing the number of people who have a say (thereby reducing both the need for higher thresholds and the worries about a handful of people playing nasty), dealing with the issues of potential congressional vacancies and making sure that rapers can't get away with their behavior.

Was that so hard?

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[Adam Griffin]

No, you implied I was doing it for the purposes of "gaining partisan advantage". My concern is the exact opposite, a concern that weakened standard will be abused by partisan majorities [against us].

No, I said:

politically-motivated

...so thank you for verifying my claim.

Each of us is responsible for the legislation we introduce, Yankee. We're also responsible for not dragging real-life issues into the game with us and then using them as a crutch to call others meanies, act out of line and generate sympathy off of them.

I disagree, we are responsible for the legislation we pass.

Adam, what you don't realize is that people don't want to play a game where they are made to feel like crap. Perhaps the fact that you are responding as such, is an indicator that a good number of others, agree with me.

https://youtu.be/pvhXzfNbyxA?t=1s

[Adam Griffin]

Anyway, I'm heartened by the progress we're making but I do worry that an unweighted option will take too much of the power away from the Senate, reducing it from 100% to 33% in the process.

As usual, I've gotten what I wanted for the most part, so I'm going to lock this thread as I don't really care to go back and forth with a partisan operative. Yankee can find another soapbox for his recently-developed fetish of trying to shame me as a meanie and a game-killer, all the while ignoring that I've brought in, cultivated and helped start rewarding political careers for more fresh faces than maybe a handful of other people in this game.