Improving the Vice Presidency Amendment [Debating]

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(Slot 3: General)


Sponsor: Marokai Blue

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This is an idea that has long deserved a mature and honest discussion, about it specifically, and the Vice Presidency in general more broadly.

An alternative title when I wrote this was the "End the Token Candidates Amendment." Why? It's pretty simple. The Vice Presidency as it stands is a role that attracts people that do nothing, and encourages tickets that exist purely for shameless electoral politicking than genuine decisions for a policy team.

As things stand there are, practically, no real governing consequences for who the top of the ticket picks. There are not even any political consequences to the pick. It's a decision that boils down to "who will get me the most votes, since it doesn't matter who it is in practice." Hell, just look at recent Vice Presidential picks. ZuWo chose another party's member as his running mate. Polnut chose another party's member as his running mate.

The Vice Presidency is a position that needs to matter. Last year, the February election winner was the Tmth/Dallasfan ticket. Another pure political ticket. Dallasfan, a Populares member to Tmth's RPP, did very little to nothing as Vice President, and the position had no governing consequences since he couldn't do anything except in the rare cases of a Senate tie.

If the Vice Presidency had the full and complete powers of a Senator (and why not, since it already has limited Senatorial powers?) people would react more to who the Vice President was. A lefty could no longer run with a righty, or a lefty couldn't run with a centrist, without seriously risking losing support because that VP would then be an active participant in the government, with serious responsibilities that could be constantly observed, instead of a cushy job with very little demands.

I would never argue that we should ban cross-party tickets. I ran on one to victory myself once upon a time. But as we stand in this era trying to preserve a multiparty system, the best way to preserve a multiparty system is by encouraging multiple tickets.

We had a beautiful thing happen this last election; we had three major tickets each that came within reach of winning. With no consequences attached to picking a running mate aside from their Prom King sensibilities, we encourage an environment where the two biggest parties pick up members from the smaller parties, and what we end up with is the slow and steady re-consolidation of our political system once more into a de-facto two party system, wherein we only have two serious tickets running in any given election, where the result is predictable.

The ultimate failing of the previous political era was the loss of ideological factions and parties. The most important thing in preserving our current multiparty system is maintaining some element of ideology. Encouraging tickets to be as ideologically consistent as possible is crucial to that effect, and it also makes the Vice Presidency matter as much as it possibly could.

It's two birds with one stone.

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This amendment, if passed, should be made sure not to take effect until after the next election.

I actually support this.

Bgwah should like this amendment, even though he's leaving the Senate soon, because I think it discourages unity tickets.

Indeed! Anyway, here's an amendment that people have 24 hours to object to:

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I've never been good with wording, but how about that as an amendment?

Consider it done!

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So this would basically get rid of the PPT position?

Why would it do that? As far as I know we would still elect a PPT as we normally do, we would just have an additional Senator.

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But basically, we'd have to elect President and Vice President separately, because if one voter wants person X to be President, but doesn't want person Y to be Vice President (Senator,) they'll be confused. Any way to fix that?

I'm confused in trying to understand what your concern is. What is the problem, exactly? The Vice President would still be elected in exactly the same way, he would just have the full powers of a Senator. His title would still be Vice President, he would just function in the Senate like the rest of us. I don't see how this confuses elections, or causes problems for the PPT position, as Bgwah mentioned.

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Please do not attach that amendment to this. I will object, but give you some amount of time to reconsider. They're separate and in absolutely no way need to be connected. The whole point of improving the Vice Presidency in this way is to make constructing a ticket more difficult and the decision to vote for one more ideological. We don't need to attach another controversial idea onto this which would almost assuredly cause it to go down in defeat.

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Whatever. Amendment withdrawn.

Wow, dude, stand your ground. Literally, the only way to accomplish anything positive with either idea is with those two amendments working in conjunction. Even then, I can't say if it will help overall.

His amendment was a completely separate issue from this. I also must confess that I'm baffled at what he's upset about. It seems like he's acting like he's seeing something everyone else is missing, somehow. "You guys do know that this amendment to make the vice president have the powers of a Senator is making the vice president have the powers of a Senator, right?!"

Well, yeah. Duh. The point is to make the Vice President be a worthwhile position to seek, to make tickets more ideologically consistent, to make voting for one a more difficult decision because candidates can't just throw on a pretty face or a cute partisan balance for more votes, because suddenly that decision has consequences. All of that is the point.

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What do we need more senators for?  If you want to make the VP a senator, fine, go ahead.  Give all the cabinet posts senatorial powers if you want, but give back!  We need more active people in regional governments!  Having more than ten senators is ridiculous.

I don't understand this objection either. We're just graduating the Vice President from "Senator in very specific circumstances" to "Giving him a Senate job full time." This has nothing to do with the Senate more broadly or reducing viable candidates for Senate elections. If people want to oppose this, that's their prerogative but I at least wish people would frame their objections within the topic.

We have uncompetitive regional elections because people don't step up to the plate. The people have no one to blame but themselves. At least with this proposal we would ideally have:

1. A more active and engaging Vice Presidency.
2. More ideologically consistent and meaningful tickets.
3. More Senate activity.
4. Elections that are more about competency and governing consequences than popularity contests circa the prom.

Your objections, based on some sort of weird daisy-chaining-back-to-the-regions logic, could be just as easily applied to the current situation in having a Vice President at all. Yet when given the opportunity, people don't want to abolish it either. And why not? Token VP candidates are the greatest tool of parties that want power. If we're going to have a Vice President at all, the job should at least be worth a damn. Since no one apparently wants to get rid of it altogether, then..