The Proportional Representation Act is garbage

[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.