The Proportional Representation Act is garbage

[Adam Griffin]

In the wake of the confusion and unexpected LOA requested by one of Labor's Senators, I wanted to ensure that the Senate would be able to operate in the short-term with minimal disruptions to activity. As a result, we had planned for said Senator to resign his seat for the remaining 10 days of this term and have the party appoint a replacement, pursuant to the Proportional Representation Act.

The Proportional Representation act states in Section 3, Clause 3:

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Unfortunately, the bolded part above is the point of contention. After conferring with several individuals throughout the game, we've all come to the conclusion that an appointment for this seat cannot be conducted, and rather, there'd have to be a special election held to fill the seat for a total of four days.

Due to the poor wording of this act, an appointment can only be made within a timeframe of less than three weeks before the election for a vacated seat, but not after the election itself. That means that in the two weeks or so in between an election and the beginning of a new term, an election would have to be called to deal with a vacancy. I'm pretty sure there have been vacancies in the past that have fallen into this time-frame and that the seats have usually been left unfilled. We also had an issue several months back with this act, when Napoleon resigned and wanted the Progressive Union to appoint Flo to his seat (the issue there was more one of technicalities than the act itself, but I digress).

The Proportional Representation Act has been amended several times, and its contents are scattered about several Wiki pages as a result.

Due to all of this, I implore any current Senator to introduce a revised version of the Proportional Representation Act immediately, and that it address the concerns mentioned above, as well as any other issues that may need to be revisited in the statute. It'd be nice to scrap the entirety of the original act formally - even if the majority of the act is kept - so that people don't have to bounce from one Wiki page to another in order to determine what's been altered and what has not. If the emergency slot is open (not sure with the pending job legislation on the floor), it'd be nice if this could be bumped into it.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

This does seem like an unreasonably short amount of time for a special election. Perhaps we could change "regularly scheduled election" to "session"?

I apologize for any confusion and craziness caused by my unexpected attempt at absconding, and for my failure to account for this previously - I probably would not have run in the special election if I had remembered my exams started when they did.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

I don't really believe parties should have the right to appoint people directly to the senate at all, so I don't really care about the time frame issue. The existence of that power implies that Atlasia does not recognize the distinctness of individuals. It supposes that voters base their decisions in elections solely on party, which just isn't true. Rather than make that assumption, I'd rather have the law either permit the president (an elected official) to make the appointment or automatically give the vice president temporary senate powers.

In terms of the current time frame issue, I don't really think it's all that terrible to have a vacancy in the senate for a week or two. It's certainly preferable to a blatant politically-charged appointment, and an election just isn't possible. So that act does need to be changed, hopefully to permit vacancies during this period. I mean, we always have vacancies before a replacement can be made when possible. It just so happens that this time the "replacement-making" is a swearing in, not an election followed by an immediate swearing in. That's fine. We know the seat will be filled eventually.

I still think our big problem here is that a senator wants to hold onto his job while missing a month of work. Am I the only one who thinks it's kind of BS that a senator can resign as senator after he's won re-election and then get automatically rehired when the term turns over? A resignation symbolizes that you are no longer interested in serving. If Barack Obama had resigned on November 10th, 2012 after winning re-election, he would not have expected to ascend to the office again on January 20th, 2013. I mean, I know people get busy... but if someone is going to be missing entire months at a time, to me, they should maybe rethink being a senator.

Rather than resigning or taking a leave of absence, can't you just make an effort to take half an hour out of your studying to check up on things here? When I was a senator and had exams, I would always warn that I might miss some things, but usually I ended up checking in anyway just because it's impossible to study 24/7.

[Adam Griffin]

In terms of the current time frame issue, I don't really think it's all that terrible to have a vacancy in the senate for a week or two. It's certainly preferable to a blatant politically-charged appointment, and an election just isn't possible. So that act does need to be changed, hopefully to permit vacancies during this period. I mean, we always have vacancies before a replacement can be made when possible. It just so happens that this time the "replacement-making" is a swearing in, not an election followed by an immediate swearing in. That's fine. We know the seat will be filled eventually.

The concept of a "politically-charged appointment" already is codified into law: it's just that it only applies for the period measuring roughly five to two weeks before the end of the term. It's the final two weeks or so of a term that is subject to having to go through with a special election, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I don't see how a two-week appointee could be as detrimental or more so from your perspective than one that under current law could be there for five weeks.

By the sound of it, I'm guessing that you'd be okay with there being vacancies for up to five weeks before the end of a term (if politically-charged appointees are an actual problem)? Currently, there's no part of the act that condones maintaining a vacancy; is that what you're advocating that we add, and remove the appointment process for the two-to-five week window altogether?

It makes no sense to purposefully add the acceptance of vacancies in the final two weeks of a term when we already have provisions that attempt to prevent that; instead, we should be revising those provisions so that they make sense and not lead to having vacancies in the Senate because of poor wording.

[Napoleon]

I don't know how you reached the conclusion that there would be an election. The seat would remain vacant.

[Adam Griffin]

I don't know how you reached the conclusion that there would be an election. The seat would remain vacant.

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Assuming it can't be filled by the exceptions specified in Section 3 (which it can't), would this not apply?

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I still think our big problem here is that a senator wants to hold onto his job while missing a month of work. Am I the only one who thinks it's kind of BS that a senator can resign as senator after he's won re-election and then get automatically rehired when the term turns over? A resignation symbolizes that you are no longer interested in serving. If Barack Obama had resigned on November 10th, 2012 after winning re-election, he would not have expected to ascend to the office again on January 20th, 2013. I mean, I know people get busy... but if someone is going to be missing entire months at a time, to me, they should maybe rethink being a senator.

Rather than resigning or taking a leave of absence, can't you just make an effort to take half an hour out of your studying to check up on things here? When I was a senator and had exams, I would always warn that I might miss some things, but usually I ended up checking in anyway just because it's impossible to study 24/7.

I'm not intending to take a LOA for "months at a time", it'd be two weeks, give or take a few days. I could serve out the remainder of my extra-super-special term as a compromise and then take the LOA, missing out the first two weeks of my term and then serving to the best of my ability for the other 87.5% of it. I suppose I could also make an effort to keep a (relatively) significant presence on the forum during that time, but I feel I wouldn't be up to snuff if I were to do that.

[Simfan34]

Surely the most straightforward solution is to simply permit the vacancy for the remainder of the term?

[Talleyrand]

It should be noted (as it has in the past) that before there were actual elections or any sort of governments in Atlasia, there were political parties. They're the backbone of this game.

[Flake]

Surely the most straightforward solution is to simply permit the vacancy for the remainder of the term?

Or we can hold a special election three days after a resignation so the people have full representation?

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Good catch, Adam.  Hopefully this can be fixed soon (although I have a potential argument to make that would allow the party to fill the seat, but it's a very long stretch that even I don't buy).

[Napoleon]

I don't know how you reached the conclusion that there would be an election. The seat would remain vacant.

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Assuming it can't be filled by the exceptions specified in Section 3 (which it can't), would this not apply?

If a vacancy shall occur in a Class B Senate seat more than twenty-one days before the regularly scheduled election for that seat, then a special election shall be called to fill the remainder of the vacated term within one week of the vacancy occurring; Special elections to the Senate shall begin within ten days of the vacancy occurring and shall begin between midnight Eastern Standard Time on a Thursday and 0001 Eastern Standard Time on the first Friday thereafter, and shall conclude exactly 72 hours after beginning.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I don't think we've ever had a potential vacancy after an election but before a swearing in. I'm currently leaning towards finishing up this term like normal and then taking a normal leave of absence afterwards, FYI.

[sentinel]

I don't think parties should have the power to fill seats either to be honest.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I don't think parties should have the power to fill seats either to be honest.

If there's not sufficient time to organize and hold a special election, I think the parties would be good at selecting a caretaker Senator that holds similar views to the other Senator. Perhaps we could let a Senator designate his or her successor if he or she resigns or is impeached?

[sentinel]

I don't think parties should have the power to fill seats either to be honest.

If there's not sufficient time to organize and hold a special election, I think the parties would be good at selecting a caretaker Senator that holds similar views to the other Senator. Perhaps we could let a Senator designate his or her successor if he or she resigns or is impeached?

How about there's a vacancy until an election can be held? I think allowing parties to internally select an "elected" representative is worse than a vacancy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I still think our big problem here is that a senator wants to hold onto his job while missing a month of work. Am I the only one who thinks it's kind of BS that a senator can resign as senator after he's won re-election and then get automatically rehired when the term turns over? A resignation symbolizes that you are no longer interested in serving. If Barack Obama had resigned on November 10th, 2012 after winning re-election, he would not have expected to ascend to the office again on January 20th, 2013. I mean, I know people get busy... but if someone is going to be missing entire months at a time, to me, they should maybe rethink being a senator.

Rather than resigning or taking a leave of absence, can't you just make an effort to take half an hour out of your studying to check up on things here? When I was a senator and had exams, I would always warn that I might miss some things, but usually I ended up checking in anyway just because it's impossible to study 24/7.

I'm not intending to take a LOA for "months at a time", it'd be two weeks, give or take a few days. I could serve out the remainder of my extra-super-special term as a compromise and then take the LOA, missing out the first two weeks of my term and then serving to the best of my ability for the other 87.5% of it. I suppose I could also make an effort to keep a (relatively) significant presence on the forum during that time, but I feel I wouldn't be up to snuff if I were to do that.

If you want to be sure, then contact Tyrion since anything I say seems to be either misinterpeted or ignored anymore.

No leave can be longer then 368 hours. Also, keep in mind that just because you are eligible to be expelled, doesn't mean the process will be started and just because it has started, doesn't mean that you will necessarily be voted out. We have never had someone get voted on that wasn't well on the sunny side of gone so we never had a chance to test the matter. However, there are circumstances where I would vote against expulsion depending on the circumstances and the gurrantees made about the time period afterwards.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If the emergency slot is open (not sure with the pending job legislation on the floor), it'd be nice if this could be bumped into it.

Cincy just filled the last one with Talleyrand's Proportional Representation Amendment, actually. So if you want to move quickly. Just expand the text of suggested improvements you made adn have someone offer it as an amendment to that.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Also, shua may have discovered the reason why the three week period is set in relation to the election like that.

Of course, another good way to find out why not the last two weeks would be to contact bgwah, since I am pretty sure he wrote this.