Do you support Atlasia adopting a bicameral legislature?

[Adam Griffin]

Throughout 2013-2014, I probably wrote 20,000 words on this board about the benefits of consolidation and bicameralism, explaining why the current system was bad for the game, and on and on and on...

Those posts are scattered all over the place and it's a pain for me to try and relocate them, so I'll just say this: the only way you can have bicameralism is if you reduce the number of regions. If you're not on board with doing that, then don't consider bicameralism. You otherwise will have too many offices for the game to work properly. Even now, with a historically higher-than-average number of players, filling all of the offices in a competitive fashion throughout the game is practically impossible.

Fix the Regions Amendment was pushed because it was a solution to the chronic problem of always having at least one (sometimes, two or three) inactive or barely existing regions. One of the benefits for the game at-large from its adoption was that it would have reduced the number of elected/judicial offices in-game from around 52 to 36. That figure came from there being (estimated) 6 fewer regional legislative positions, 2 fewer Governors, 2 fewer Lieutenant Governors, 2 fewer CJOs and 4 fewer Senators. In the end, this change would have eliminated 16 positions.

One of the final haggling points in the FTRA (if I recall correctly) was that the Senate would be reduced to a 6-member body; 3 regional Senators and 3 at-large Senators. This paved the way for bicameralism and made it possible to expand the federal legislative chamber. I believe that the Bicameral Birthing Amendment added a House with 11 members, alongside the 6-member Senate. This would ultimately produce a net reduction of 5 elected positions across the country.

In fact, BBA was built with a mechanism that stated it would not go into effect until FTRA was ratified, because otherwise, the game would swell with an even larger number of offices that would be unsustainable.

Was it as large of a reduction as I would have liked to see? No, but it would have addressed the primary problem (a game that, when divided into 5 different sections, cannot adequately field competitive atmospheres in all jurisdictions). From there, activity would have been more evenly distributed - particularly at the regional level - and what we would have ended up with is a new system of sorts at both the regional and federal levels to increase interest.

We tried, Duke.

Of course, all of this can be revived by passing both FTRA and BBA in 2 of the regions where each failed.

[Adam Griffin]

I would like to reaffirm my staunch and firm opposition to the Fix the Regions Amendment and the Bicameral Birthing Amendment. Quite frankly, the policy to reduce the regions from five to three comes from an archaic system that has already been fixed. Speaker Turkisblau and Governor Simfan have revived the Pacific, Flo has revived the South, and Governor TDAS made the Mideast active once again (as I have faith that windjammer will if he wins). It's also worth noting that Senator TNF has shown his commitment to Atlasia, and that I also have faith in him that the Midwest will be more active under his leadership. Instead of one region without activity problems, we have three, with two regions likely to have active governors by June.

After all, why solve the problems of May and June with a plan from last August and September?

With all due respect, this is just horribly wrong. The fact is that the problem with activity and competition is just as much of a problem now as it was before and will be just as much of a problem in the future, and an objective solution to the problem is always going to be valid because the problem itself is structural. Nobody could have anticipated the structural issues in the beginning with crafting five separate regions, yet it has remained unfixed for years. Let's break the regions down one-by-one with the actual stats, since they were referenced:

Pacific: FAILING

Turkisblau is essentially talking to himself. The Governor hasn't engaged with legislation or on the Regional Governments board since March 19th (excluding his court case Pacific v. Poirot). There have been a grand total of two bills introduced in the Pacific Council since the beginning of April: Reinstatement of the Pacific Protection of Commerce in Arms Act & The Pacific Organ Donation Act of 2015. Cranberry (not a Councilor) is the only other person besides Turkisblau to say a word about them. Before these, the last bill to pass/fail the Council passed on April 2. Elections are never competitive and even if they are, it is in name only, as Councillors are apt to never swear in or show up once they have.

MIDWEST: STRUGGLING

Very low levels of engagement in this region, but it blows the Pacific out of the water, for at least others are actually speaking. There have been three bills introduced in the Althing since the beginning of April: the Je Suis Charlie Day Resolution, the Fifth Most Serene Republic of the Midwest Constitution, & the Heating Fuel Reduction Bill. Speaker Dereich, Governor Gass and Representative Fuzzybigfoot are essentially the only three individuals engaging on legislation and amendments at this point. Fielding more candidates for Althing than there are seats is rare.

SOUTH: STABLE

Definitely doing better than either the Midwest or the Pacific, the South seems stable for the time being. There have been six pieces of legislation/regional amendments introduced since the beginning of April (I don't include federal amendments voted on by the Legislature as part of this measurement, because that's not really indicative of regional activity). There have been 73 replies to all bills; 64 non-procedural replies. 60% of all non-procedural engagement came from PiT and Duke (22 replies from PiT, 17 from Duke). It just had a competitive election and 2/3 seats' worth of turnover, so we'll see what happens in the future.

MIDEAST: STABLE

The Mideast is the largest region, so it should be the most prosperous. However, I don't believe that is the case - maybe the 2nd most prosperous, but it has structural issues. The Governor is constantly coming and going, which can make legislative processes more difficult depending on the outcome. There have been five pieces of legislation introduced since the beginning of April. There have been 184 replies to all bills; a healthy mixture of contributions from all elected representatives. Again, weighing the issue with inactivity in the executive branch here against the concentration of contributions in the South makes it hard to say which region is better off.

NORTHEAST: THRIVING

Since the overall purpose was to outline what's wrong, I'm not going to write much here about the Northeast. It is both large enough and naturally competitive enough - with a variety of different parties and ideologies having roughly equal presences and no one possessing a majority - that the best rises to the top. By my quick count, 23 pieces of legislation have come to the floor since the beginning of April. Debate by and large is healthily spread across representatives.


So yes, as almost always, we have three regions that are either doing well or are sufficiently healthy enough to be considered successes, and two other regions that are floundering. The current environment is actually a pretty good (but still average) result: just as often, we have only two stable or thriving regions with three struggling or failing. The names of the regions considered healthy or not may and do change over time, but the overall balance is always present: three decent regions and two terrible ones. The only long-term and permanent solution to guarantee the health of all regions is to recognize this reality and reduce their presence to three.

[Adam Griffin]

Yes, if you insist on the eleven member lower house like that which you Duke proposed and had numbers to justify with. Basically, you would transition activity and candidates to the Federal level from the regional level, end up with a slightly fewer number of offices overal. One think you definately would have with that many members is the concern that things would take much longer to sort out and for the legsilative branch to function.

It contains what I insisted on regarding the Senate so AYE

Consolidation is polling worse then bimcameralism (52% Nay versus 60% Nay).

Both are down considerably from two years ago. But Bicameralism's support number was 48% and now it seems to be 47%. The difference is the undecideds are all being pushed in this current poll being conucted and are going for the safe bet, "no".  Consolidation has fluctuated wildly though in support and runs headlong into regional jealousies over territory and such forth.

I wasn't aware consolidation was polling at all right now. I suppose implicitly it is, by virtue of polling bicameralism, because you literally cannot have bicameralism without consolidation or you will crater the game.

Bicameralism has merits on my own in my view and as well as negatives, it certainly is more than just a tagalong to consolidation and in this case, a more subdued lower house (smaller) that still leaves the balance roughly the same (five to seven members, for a net 0 change in offices) might be the more practical option.

Again, from a practical standpoint, no, it doesn't - without consolidation.

And what? The only way you can have no change in offices without touching the regions is to gut the Senate to what? Three members? And at that point, you'd have a 3-member Senate and a 7-member House. There is literally no point to that and it would be completely ridiculous.

The regions have 32/47 (68%) of the offices in the game - 37 (79%) if you include regional Senators (for what it's worth, I counted incorrectly last night when I said there were 52 offices: apparently I counted regional Senators twice). There are too many offices. The regions are not being asked to become a minority. In fact...

Currently:
47 offices in-game

FTRA/BBA Proposed:
42 offices in-game

Currently:
Regions: 32 offices - 68%
Federal: 15 offices - 32%

Proposed:
Regions: 22 offices - 52%
Federal: 20 offices - 48%

[Adam Griffin]

So the competative regions do well and those that are one sided are not? Shocker.

That's a funny way of looking at it.

The dynamics in the Pacific suggest it is very competitive, if the Right could get its sh**t together.

The Midwest has had plenty of competitive elections in recent months (Lebron's recall, most of TNF's elections, Governor's election with Gass, and on and on and on).

The South and the Mideast aren't really competitive in the sense that the "oppositions" there are a awkward mixture of competing factions that can only successfully beat the ruling party if they vote against the leaders instead of voting for themselves.

The Northeast is the only truly competitive region outside of hypotheticals and in all three major attributes (partisan, ideological and personality-based).

[Adam Griffin]

So the competative regions do well and those that are one sided are not? Shocker.

That's a funny way of looking at it.

The dynamics in the Pacific suggest it is very competitive, if the Right could get its sh**t together.

The Midwest has had plenty of competitive elections in recent months (Lebron's recall, most of TNF's elections, Governor's election with Gass, and on and on and on).

The South and the Mideast aren't really competitive in the sense that the "oppositions" there are a awkward mixture of competing factions that can only successfully beat the ruling party if they vote against the leaders instead of voting for themselves.

The Northeast is the only truly competitive region outside of hypotheticals and in all three major attributes (partisan, ideological and personality-based).

Adam, the Pacific is cursed. The first time I tried to "get the right's sh**t together in the region", we got Hamilton in the game who proceeded to pull every right winger out and move them to the NE.

Competative as in, will actually vote them out of office. Those 51-49 races look good on paper, but if they always turn out the same way, the effect isn't the same.

I make that joke all the time, too, but in reality, nothing is "cursed" and superstition is silly. The Pacific seems to naturally have a lower population profile due to the natural geographic composition of people who join the forum (again, another huge flaw of the initial region boundary creation) and as such, needs to be combined with other states in a consolidation effort to ensure a larger baseline population. That's the only "curse" it has - ditto for the Midwest.

Whenever people "invade" it, that is only a temporary solution and will not naturally hold. I wholly maintain that when Labor/NM-AM invaded the Pacific and tried to destroy it, it was the best thing for the region in years. The Labor leadership there under Tyrion and others produced many months of consistently active, thoughtful and engaging legislative affairs and competitive elections. No modern party or movement (since 2012, because that's all I can personally vouch for) has generated as strong of a Pacific climate before or since. It's a shame that some forces sought to undermine Labor and then take over the Pacific, only to revert it to its genuinely inactive and crappy self by making it non-competitive and neglecting it.

[Adam Griffin]

Another interesting element when assessing regions: who the hell decided that having such widely disparate real-life population compositions was a good idea? These numbers don't seem to be proportionate in terms of who actually joins the forum (more people join from the Northeast, fewer people from the Pacific, etc), but still...

In Millions:

South   93.058
Mideast   72.972
Pacific    63.289
Northeast   56.210
Midwest   24.846

[Adam Griffin]

Yes, I misspoke and edited my statements after you began replying. The natural forum population and the organic tendency of who joins and from where is the problem.

Nevertheless, a way to at least partially solve this issue/take it into account perhaps is to ensure that each region has as many states as possible with larger populations. I think this might be a key to it, although I can see why some might argue that it has no bearing - perhaps some underlying sociology mechanism at work here? Look at the South, the Mideast and the Northeast: all of them have multiple states with sizable real-life populations. The Midwest and the Pacific have one or zero states with sizable populations.

[Adam Griffin]

Yes, I misspoke and edited my statements after you began replying. The natural forum population and the organic tendency of who joins and from where is the problem.

Nevertheless, a way to at least partially solve this issue/take it into account perhaps is to ensure that each region has as many states as possible with larger populations. I think this might be a key to it, although I can see why some might argue that it has no bearing - perhaps some underlying sociology mechanism at work here? Look at the South, the Mideast and the Northeast: all of them have multiple states with sizable real-life populations. The Midwest and the Pacific have one or zero states with sizable populations.

The Pacific does have the largest state and two medium sized states, plus three fast growing smaller states also.

Meh, "sizable" in my book means near or more 10 million people. The South has 4. The Northeast has 3. The Mideast has 4. The Pacific has 1 and the Midwest has 0.

At any rate, I'm not here to argue over technicalities and tangents forever and ever. There's a structural problem with the way the game's regions are designed and I and many others spent over a year hashing out the finer details in multiple areas on how to solve that. All of these efforts involved dozens of people across partisan lines. We crowdsourced the ideal map with the maximum chance of being amenable to all involved. We spent a combined total of 33 pages of Senate debate crafting two separate amendments that would pave the way for all of this to be fixed and for the game to enjoy a truly unique and new form of gameplay (unlike the whole district stuff). At the end of the day, the majority of people who supported it couldn't be bothered to come out and actually support it in the booth.

There was arguably more effort put into this proposed series of reforms and molding public opinion of it than any other attempt at game reform in the history of the game. This is why I'm resistant to people suddenly wanting to debate all of this stuff over again, especially considering most of them were here when this was done before and either chose not to be involved or fought it. Therefore, I really don't care about their opinions. There are already solutions available and on the books that can be enacted if any of this is to become something.

There's no need to come up with new ways in which to consolidate, draw maps, add a second chamber that is unsustainable, dredge up the tired concept of districts or anything else, because it's nothing more than feel-good nonsense for people who want to accomplish something they can put their own names on rather than substantive or pragmatic progress - especially when most of that doesn't address the most structural problem in the game itself. And of course on principle and because I'm jaded, you know what I'll attempt to do if any of that nonsense gains any traction.

Want reform? Then pick up the banner of the most substantive effort to bring it to the game, and run with it.

[Adam Griffin]

I like both proposals, though I do question the putting of like representation in both chambers and would prefer for instance the Senate be all regional in bicameral system and a House be composed of either a singular or multiple forms of proportional representation covering the whole nation.

As pro-region as I am, I am leary of regions dominating both branches of a legislature for the same reason I would be learly of them being dominated in both branches. The people deserve a co-equal voice to the regions in the legislative branch.

Which is why you must support the Bicameral Birthing Amendment for a Senate of the Regions and a House at-large (and obviously that means supporting Fix the Regions Amendment/CARCA)!