Marokai/Antonio V: Let Us Cling Together.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Marokai/Antonio On: Game Reform.
An issue we hold dear.

Throughout my time in Atlasia, mechanical changes to the game itself have been where I have put most of my energy. Everyone who has ever worked with me on anything knows this very well. Some have worked out for the better, some have taken refinement, but tinkering with the game itself is a love of mine, and if you go back far enough, many things in the game today bear my mark.

But these things are team efforts, and fresh perspectives on those old ideas are always needed. A willingness to experiment, to throw out ideas that didn't work out, or tweak the ones that haven't quite gotten there, defines how this game moves forward.

Many of us have ideas on where Atlasia needs to go, ranging from sweeping changes to election systems and merging of regions, to simple streamlining and oversight changes. But trying to move forward with the larger ideas with Atlasia where it is now is like trying to sprint while waist-high in mud, which is why these things must be handled in an order.

(You can definitely tell which banners I make...)

• It's Time: Atlasia's Constitution Needs Consolidation Once Again.

Nearly four and ahalf years ago I stood before you all with Purple State to declare that our Constitution had to change. Termed "the BIG IDEA" Purple State and I desired a Constitution that more reflected our time. Five years and nearly thirty Amendments had led us to a point where this game was creaking under the weight of a spaghetti-coded document, patched together by Amendments, many of which were contradictory, named in our history books with titles none but the most nerdy of us could ever remember.

After four years, and nearly thirty Amendments more, we are at that point again. The time is at hand for us to put aside differences on substantial reforms and start with a clean document we can all understand.

It is vitally important to remember that our best chance at a new, modern Constitution is through a ConCon limited in scope and laser focused. The Convention under Purple State's guidance succeeded because it started with a specific goal: A straightforward, re-edited Constitution that merely brought together, in a single document, all of the heretofore passed Amendments, leaving major changes to be discussed afterwards.

Purple State was a shepard of that process, using all of his time and effort to ensure that we all remembered we could not languish over grander philosophical differences, or let the Convention be bogged down in bureaucracy. If elected, Antonio and I promise to be a similar whip. The Presidency is the greatest bully pulpit of them all.

This debate must be had in good faith. This is not a trick, nor an effort to sneak changes through. Die-hard reformists must practice restraint, and the more conservative among us must be able to trust the good-intentions of this process. You don't have to trust Labor, but you should be able to trust me.

Good citizens have recognized this need, Tyrion, Talleyrand, Nix, and others, and they deserve all the credit in the world. But there has yet to be a true rallying cry. My opponent Lumine has questioned the necessity of it, but there is no doubt in my heart. There is no more time to waste. A petition to call for a Constitutional Convention started over a year ago. I ask of everyone reading this to sign it! It must be a team effort.

• Post-Consolidation, We Must Be More Forward-Thinking In Wiki-Editing.

To safeguard our change, it is imperative that we do all within our power to maintain a Constitution and a Wiki that is navigable in a far better fashion than present. Many aspects of the Wiki present information incredibly poorly. For instance, this is how the Third Constitution template is supposed to help people read up on past Amendments:



This is abysmal! What Amendment is which. Do you know? In fact, I dare you to accurately place an Amendment to its proper name.

This style of presenting information about the Constitution made sense at the time, when a new Constitution meant very few Amendments to actually keep track of. In times where we had merely a half-dozen additional Amendments tacked on to document proper, we didn't struggle so much in keeping track of information, and remembering the powers and clauses that each one entailed.

Compare the present situation to how I propose we start thinking of Wiki-editing in the future:



With this style of template-page editing, immediately gathering information from the Wiki will no longer be as much of a hassle. This is the style of presenting information I would like to see from Atlasia moving forward, helping to keep a potential Fourth Constitution as navigable as possible.

And not just the Constitution. Similar template pages suffer from the same problem. The Senate Elections template page shows that we don't even have some entire elections properly preserved for history. The "Senates" template page just sort of puts information out on blast in the least organized manner possible.

In a place in time where much less than sixty different Senates had existed, this style of formatting made sense. But it no longer does. If elected, Antonio and I will endeavor to modernize the Atlasian Wiki, presenting as much information as possible, in as compact a manner as possible.

• In a Post-Third Constitution Atlasia, Presidential Elections Should Change.

While Antonio and I are unified in the firm belief that the fight for a new Constitution should be solely focused on editing the present Constitution down to a clean, consolidated document, that doesn't mean we can't look toward the horizon with hopes of where to take things from there.

In a refreshed Atlasia, Antonio and I believe in establishing a region-based Presidential election system. Through allocating numbers according to population, with minimum numbers so that smaller regions can remain competitive, and safeguards to protect against carpetbagging, we believe this system would make actually winning regions a meaningful feat.

Straight-forward national elections are some of the most boring fair, and a regional system of election would provide much-needed variation.

[Marokai Backbeat]

• Greater Oversight In Amendment Ratification.

Falling firmly in the "streamlining" camp, it has become more and more clear as time goes on that ratification of Constitutional Amendments has been treated a bit... lackadaisically at times. It is unacceptable that votes on matters as serious as Constitutional Amendments should ever go un-certified or ignored outright.

Though efforts have been made to solve this issue in the past, they have been somewhat heavy-handed; Antonio and I do not believe in taking away the power of regional executives to conduct these votes altogether or directly taking away powers granted by the 17th Amendment. However, should these votes be conducted sub-optimally, there should be greater oversight to ensure the referenda can reach some sort of professional closure.

Antonio and I support an Amendment to give the Secretary of Federal Elections the ability to open ratification voting booths on behalf of a region's executive if that executive does not do so within 48 hours of passage through the Senate, as well as the power to certify referendum results if the regional executive does not do so within the appropriate time. This preserves the regional executives power, so long as those responsibilities are being performed punctually. We believe in regional power and self-governance, but some basic safeguards are a harmless way of reducing a potential constitutional conundrum.

• Make State of the Unions Matter.

Though Section 1, Clause 7, of Article 3 of the Third Constitution affords the President the ability to give formal State of the Union Addresses, few have taken the opportunity to do so. In a time where communication between the Executive Branch and the general public feels sparse, we believe it's time for that to change.

Though many different steps need to be taken to solve that broader problem, we believe this step will be a good first. Antonio and I support a Constitutional Amendment mandating at least one formal State of the Union speech per term, to be made in the Atlasia Fantasy Elections board for maximum viewership.

• Our Thoughts On Consolidation.

Regional Consolidation has been a recurring issue for awhile, and while we understand there is a dedicated group of individuals in Atlasia that make good points on the merits of that idea, over 60% of voters opposed efforts to achieve this in January, and in a recent merger referendum between the Midwest and the Pacific, the Pacific voted against.

I personally oppose regional consolidation. As Hagrid once said, it just strikes me as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I've been around these parts for a long time, I've seen regions become active, die down, and then rise up again. Literally all of the regions have gone through these periods, and efforts to solve regional depressions provide opportunities for new people to rise up, and the population of the country to shift. These changes in activity and enthusiasm are natural and typically self-correct.

Antonio is of a different mind on consolidation, but we agree on at least one thing: It is not any one person's decision to make. If regions are to merge, those regions will decide, and we will support their rights to self-determine regardless of our personal beliefs otherwise. The battle over Consolidation will occur in the regions, among The People, and we happily defer to them.

• Miscellaneous Positions.

• I have, for a long time, supported the abolition of the Secretary of Internal Affairs position. It's nothing personal to those who have taken up the job over the years, but it has never quite found its niche. The position was originally meant as some sort of liaison between the federal government and the regional governments, but the responsibilities exploded into something resembling the Game Moderator. Though many (rightfully) support GM assistant positions to lighten that workload, it shouldn't be the SoIA's responsibility, and we should free up that position to better make use of the manpower elsewhere.
• Though I generally like to consider myself open to most ideas and arguments, I have yet to be convinced by bicameralism proposals ever since they were first pitched to me back in 2009. I'm still open to hearing arguments in favor, but like with the SoIA issue, we have better uses for manpower these days, particularly on the regional level.
• And speaking of regions, though we've tried to get this done in the past, the Regional Government childboard deserves front-page recognition. We've tried to pester Dave about this before (he did, afterall, recognize the request to create the childboard in the first place) but we should continue to advocate for raising that board's status.
• We should probably sticky the National Initiative system thread(s) so people stop forgetting it exists.

When looking back on my time with Purple State, and the things we went through in our campaign, I came across a question directed at him that struck me as odd. "Why do you have to be President to do this?"

The truth is, well, I don't. It's a preposterous question in general because the Presidency has precious little direct power over the Constitution or Statute. You don't really need to be President to accomplish any of those things. Neither does Lumine "need to be President" to do 90% of the things he'll propose in the campaign, either. Even so, the Presidency matters more than any other position because of its power to lay the groundwork for where Atlasia the country, and Atlasia the game, is taken.

Other aspects of my platform remain unveiled, but I've chosen to emphasize this point because it is why I ask for your vote in the Presidential race. My intentions have always been true, my perspective on this game always open-minded and focused on hearing what doesn't work, and making it better.

If the GM is the "God" of the game, then the President is the "director," choosing where to place emphasis, and what the vision and atmosphere for the overall product is. What general goals to achieve, and the bully pulpit to achieve them. The power to raise awareness over anything he or she touches. Though any Senator could propose a law, or an Amendment, no Senator has that level of weight to their words, or the power to build a productive team with a specific attitude in mind.

The vision I have of the Presidency is one of a communicative, active participant in all aspects of the game, a game that it is his or her responsibility to focus on being productive and fresh. A mega-phone of epic proportions. I hope that you allow me to be that person.

I will continue to roll out platform planks of other important areas as they are done. Thanks for your time, guys. As always, I encourage people to PM me anytime they please if you need anything.

[Flake]

Let's not go to an electoral vote system

[Bacon King]

What is your opinion of a Statute Reboot where we abolish all laws and start over

[Marokai Backbeat]

What is your opinion of a Statute Reboot where we abolish all laws and start over

I definitely see the value in scrapping a lot of statute, particularly as earlier years of statute is written in a very different style, but a complete legislative reboot seems shortsighted to me. Stuff like our criminal code doesn't seem like something we'd want to just scrap, and if we start creating exceptions to assuage different concerns, it starts to defeat the purpose.

I think the most obvious concern with abolishing everything and starting over is that it would just lead to us re-litigating literally the same issues yet again, just in the name of having something to do. Do we need to debate issues like gay marriage again? Would that even be a debate? Perversely, I've always thought that despite how exciting a legislative reboot sounds in theory, in practice it would probably be sort of boring.

That, and despite a lot of the concern that we've "solved" a lot of issues and don't have much left to argue over, a lot of people have been saving that since we did the first re-consolidating of the Constitution, and we still seem to have economic issues worth arguing over.

The statute page is a gigantic nightmare at this point, though, I won't disagree.

[Bacon King]

What is your opinion of a Statute Reboot where we abolish all laws and start over

I definitely see the value in scrapping a lot of statute, particularly as earlier years of statute is written in a very different style, but a complete legislative reboot seems shortsighted to me. Stuff like our criminal code doesn't seem like something we'd want to just scrap, and if we start creating exceptions to assuage different concerns, it starts to defeat the purpose.

I think the most obvious concern with abolishing everything and starting over is that it would just lead to us re-litigating literally the same issues yet again, just in the name of having something to do. Do we need to debate issues like gay marriage again? Would that even be a debate? Perversely, I've always thought that despite how exciting a legislative reboot sounds in theory, in practice it would probably be sort of boring.

That, and despite a lot of the concern that we've "solved" a lot of issues and don't have much left to argue over, a lot of people have been saving that since we did the first re-consolidating of the Constitution, and we still seem to have economic issues worth arguing over.

The statute page is a gigantic nightmare at this point, though, I won't disagree.

There's also the issue that many of the problems we've "solved" have actually been solved several times over by Senates unaware of the previous solutions buried in the wiki. I'm pretty sure we've established universal healthcare like three different times by now

My Statute Reboot platform I ran on in my last Senate election (which ended up mostly being about commemorative plates instead) was to pass a bill that would abolish every statute like maybe a month after passage, and in that month the Senate can save whatever bills they want via simple majority vote. That way, we can clean the books up while keeping the stuff that works.

I suppose it's not strictly necessary to go with the "repeal everything" route but honestly the disaster of the wiki statute page is far more pressing than cleaning up the Constitution itself. At the very least we need some semblance of a proper legal code, organized by category or something

[Marokai Backbeat]

I could see the case for a staggered sort of auto-abolishment of laws, but one month is definitely on the harsher side.

The statute page of the Wiki is something of a monster at this point, but it's also a monster that's been roughly a decade in the making. Making laws fall out of effect a year (or two) after passage seems far more reasonable, and allows for political trends to ebb and flow by the time auto-abolition rolls around so we wouldn't just get a nearly word-for-word re-implementation of a law almost immediately by most of the same people who just put it into place.

Basically making a checklist of every law to re-approve at the end of the month is sort of asking for most of Senate business to get held up by old laws over and over again, which is the sort of thing you seem like you want to prevent. But there is definitely merit in the general idea overall, assuming much more lenient implementation.

Though, as noted, I hate to distract from the more immediate issue of re-editing the Constitution we already have. I worry other issues might just get everyone in a twist, resulting in nothing at all.

[Bacon King]

I think we're mostly in agreement here, and I like your rolling auto-abolition idea; for clarification though my idea isn't a cyclical process, it would basically be a one-time law saying something to the effect of "every existing law the Senate votes to keep by November 1st is saved, everything else is abolished, and then we go back to normal from there". My bad if I wasn't describing it clearly

[Marokai Backbeat]

We call the Game Moderator the Game God for a reason.

In my time in Atlasia, since reformation of the GM position in 2009, no GM has ever been fired for personal or political reasons. While SirNick did what he did to get attention, he had every right to do so, and would not be the first to make a provocative story for the purposes of rallying people together and demanding respect for his position.

The GM is the most important job in the game and I treat it with the utmost reverence. Dismissing the GM for any reason aside from genuine belief that he is bad at his job is not acceptable. Period.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I respect Lumine quite a bit, and he and I were very much of one mind throughout the recent crisis ("Can we get this over with already?!") but supporting the expulsion of a member of the Senate for his (admittedly extreme) political beliefs is a rather dangerous precedent to be setting and I completely oppose it.

Let me be clear about that: I don't support regional secessionist movements in any way and I never have. But these are opinions that Deus is free to hold in a free f**king country. Arguing that holding those beliefs means a person "no longer desires to perform the duties vested in him" is an incredibly stretch of logic.

Given the instability Atlasia has suffered in recent days, we don't need to continue that by letting the Senate start eating their own.

[Marokai Backbeat]

[Antonio the Sixth]

C'mon guys, we can win this!

[Marokai Backbeat]

Thank you to everyone who supported Antonio and I throughout the campaign, and I congratulate all of the winners. It was a fun, very polite campaign, all-told, and I'm very thankful for that. I'm optimistic that Lumine will do a perfectly fine job as President and I ask that we all, regardless of what party we throw down with, give him that chance.

And thanks to Antonio for running with me.

Take care, everyone.

[Barnes]

I was very happy to see the two of you return to frontline politics in Atlasia - you ran an intelligent, good-spirited campaign, and even though we didn't prevail, I'm quite proud to have voted for this ticket.

I hope you both will stick around and continue to use your talents in the game.

[Dr. Cynic]

I'm still proud to have supported you. I genuinely hoped you guys would win and I hope you both stick around and continue fighting the good fight.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

If only we had run together again, like old times..... I mean, we still would get our clocks cleaned, but I miss the old days..

You ran a good race, and while you did cheat on me with Antonio, I'm glad you came back if even to run in this impossible race. You're a special guy, Marokai. Please don't disappear again for too long. I've always missed you, and things are far better when you're here than when you're away.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You ran a good race man.

Though you did not win, I hope you both will maintain a presence in the game.


Also, I would be remiss if I did not reference the continuation of the curse I vexed you with in twenty ten. By which I mean the imminent second installment of Governor John Kasich.