Provisional Parliament: Voting on Amendment

[Leinad]

X Leinad

Alongside Sanchez and Spiral as a member of The Pioneers.

[Leinad]

I fourth Blair. He's never accused me of being a sock.

[Leinad]

Provisional Parliament - Election of the Speaker

Choose one person to serve as Speaker of the Provisional Parliament:

[    ] TNF (Workers' Party)

[ X ] Blair (Nonpartisan)

[Leinad]

anyone not voting for the guy who did the most to work to establish this new game is nothing more than an idiot hack.

And voting based off of Atlasia drama and issues is obviously idiotic and has no place here.

Nothing against Blair himself but there's no reason why the guy who wrote the rules and started this shouldn't at least be our 1st elected Speaker...

I suppose that makes sense, but (assuming you're referring to me) this isn't "drama" or "issues," it's a matter of him accusing me of being a cheater and (since I had previously denied the claims multiple times) liar. And he did it several times. I'm not being petty, and it has nothing to do with ideology, I just can't in good conscience support someone who treats people like that. I also think it's telling that his supporters are calling people who disagree "idiotic." Please, let's keep this civil.

[Leinad]

Holding a grudge against someone on an online political forum seems pretty petty tbh

That's the thing, it's not a grudge. It's one of those "character issues" things. I have trouble entrusting any amount of authority to someone who would repetitively call people socks, just how many would have trouble voting for president with shaky personal lives (see: Herman Cain 2012).

If it was a grudge, yeah, that would totally be petty. But it isn't. It's also petty to accuse people of being socks, and petty to call people "idiotic" because they voted for a different person as speaker, but I digress...

Anyway, let's get this vote on and get to more important things. Right now TNF is up 5-2, with 13 yet to vote.

[Leinad]

I'd be interested in doing a western Europe version. It'd seem to strike a middle ground between the US-Canada and South American proposals

Co-sign. A European version would be fun--it's different than North America, but more familiar to us than South America. I'd like to hear a European tell me why that idea is good/bad.

post soviet union russia would be a fun choice

This also sounds fun. I might put it as my second choice behind Europe.

Although, really, I'm not against South America either, or Australia (maybe?), or democratic China (ooh!), or whatever the rest of the Parliament decides is best. But I'd like to warn my fellow members not to simply go with the first good idea they hear.

[Leinad]

Nay.

Don't get me wrong: I like the South America idea, but we haven't even looked at any other proposals. We should depart from Aye/Nay votes and do an IRV vote on what we like the best, after full debate on the pros and cons of every proposal.

However, it must be noted that the ayes already have it, so we might as well get on with it.

[Leinad]

I concur with both sentiments; while I'd like to see constituencies added at some point (but never straight FPTP, I loathe that system) it would be silly if we only have about 4 voters for each one. I also second the motion for 25 members. In fact...

...I motion to amend the bill (assuming SJoyce's amendment is official) to this:

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[Leinad]

Alright, I'll agree to 21.

How about "Sudamerica" or something like that? If South America is too boring, saying it in a language more popular locally would make sense. Thoughts?

[Leinad]

Aye.

Alright, one more vote needed to get 11, then I'll propose an amendment to rename it...something. I'll try "Sudamerica" first unless someone would rather I do another name.

I think the main issue here is that we're voting things in a parliamentary fashion already, but for these types of things a different sort of vote would work best, with more options than Aye/Nay/Abstain. Like South America/Sudamerica/Aallpanchik/Amerigo/None Of The Above.

[Leinad]

I made a poll and therefore thread for the name. Hopefully that will be a helpful tool in sparking a debate and finding a true consensus.

[Leinad]

Good. Now the number is settled.

I offer the following amendment:

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I'm okay with South America, I suppose, but I'd rather Sudamerica, and I'd like to put it to a vote (because democracy).

[Leinad]

Aye.

[Leinad]

Down with "democracy".

You wouldn't say the same thing if the informal consensus had agreed "Sudamerica" was best, now would you? I won't be upset if "South America" is the name, as long as it comes after reasonable debate and a vote. It's the same logic of why it's incorrect to say that the Scottish Independence Referendum "failed," when actually, it succeeded: they voted, and went with what the majority thought was best.

[Leinad]

I'd advise amending the bill so that it's clear that a prospective prime minister should be able to command the confidence of the house.

I absolutely agree.

I third this idea. But...we didn't finish voting on my amendment, right? It looks like 7 against, 2 for. I'm okay if it's not accepted (again, that's democracy) but it would be a rather confusing precedent to set if we have more than one amendments on the table, correct?

Down with "democracy".

You wouldn't say the same thing if the informal consensus had agreed "Sudamerica" was best, now would you? I won't be upset if "South America" is the name, as long as it comes after reasonable debate and a vote. It's the same logic of why it's incorrect to say that the Scottish Independence Referendum "failed," when actually, it succeeded: they voted, and went with what the majority thought was best.

Are you ever off?

Off what? Off my rocker? Some would say. Off the wall? Quite often. Off the charts? What charts? Off-broadway? Not really. (Nick) Offerman? No.

If you mean offline? Yeah, I am. But I have a habit of leaving the page open but going to do other things--i.e. I'm technically "online," but not actually actively on the site. Even if I was, it's rather off-topic (there's another one!), don't you think?

[Leinad]

I had wanted to stay in my thread, but maybe I'll get more traction speaking in here.

My suggestion is a Head of State (a President?) elected by the Parliament with a 2/3 majority who serves a single consecutive term of 3 months. That way, you could have interesting dilemmas and the like if the Parliament failed to elect the President on time (such as an automatic dissolution procedure?)

As a fair warning, I'm unaware of any country that demands a supermajority in parliament to elect a president and has not entered a political crisis over it.

That kind of makes it sound more fun, though.

I actually just meant do you ever stop clutching your lapels

My forte is not obscure phrases, so I must ask: what do you mean by that? I don't really wear lapels, nor would I clutch them if I did, so the literal answer is "no" (but I'm guessing you're question wasn't meant to be taken literally).

[Leinad]

For the record, I will not open a vote on Leined's 'amendment' because the bill he is attempting to amend has already passed. If you want to amend it you need to introduce your name change as a new bill.

I don't see anything in our Rules of Order (written by yourself) that backs that up. However, you're the rightfully elected speaker, so I suppose I'll do what you suggested and propose the name change bill:

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And this, of course, is to be voted upon after Potus and Talleyrand's bills (that is, unless Potus's bill passes, in which case neither of our bills will get a chance to be voted upon).

[Leinad]

Regarding this bill:

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Our job isn't finished. We still haven't came to a full democratic consensus on our name (we came close, though) nor have we said anything about the Presidential bill. The mission of this assembly is to set the main structure of the game, and we haven't yet done that. We've only voted on two things--two! The Provisional Parliament's work isn't done. We've been productive so far, but we need to continue our productivity. If we don't solidify these rules, the game itself will be chaotic.

Therefore I will be voting against this bill, and I encourage all my fellow members to vote against this bill along with me. Soon we will be able to get this mock parliament up and running, but we're clearly not yet at that point.

[Leinad]

For the record, I will not open a vote on Leined's 'amendment' because the bill he is attempting to amend has already passed. If you want to amend it you need to introduce your name change as a new bill.

I don't see anything in our Rules of Order (written by yourself) that backs that up. However, you're the rightfully elected speaker, so I suppose I'll do what you suggested and propose the name change bill:

Common sense would dictate that you would have to amend a bill that has already passed with a new bill, I'm afraid.

Which is why I didn't protest it.

[Leinad]

I motion to end debate and take the vote on Potus's bill. It seems that the consensus is solidly against it, so I see no reason to keep the debate going when we can start debating the other two bills in the queue.

[Leinad]

Could we vote on this before Riley's bill if at all possible? I'd be fine with voting for his bill if we got the situation with the Head of State out of the way.

No, I'd much rather we didn't break the rules by going out of order. The only thing that would accomplish is allowing your bill to be voted on but not mine, correct? Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't think of anything else that would compel us to go out of order on these bills.

[Leinad]

Nay.

Thank you for sticking to the rules, Mr. Speaker.

[Leinad]

Um, Mr. Speaker, that's not the amendment Talleyrand abjected. Nor is it one any sane person would vote against, I don't think. It's literally the exact same thing as the previous line.

Regarding the actual discussion point on the bill, rpryor's other amendment, I like the idea of having a super-majority in parliament. If people would like to see it be less than 2/3rds, how about 3/5ths? That would probably be a nice compromise.

Thus, I propose this amendment:

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(Yeah, I understand the irony of a three-fifths compromise. But this is not like that one.)

[Leinad]

There is also the fact 3/5 of our body is 12.6 as opposed to an even 14 for 2/3.

For one thing, we can round numbers, and for another thing, 21 isn't set in stone forever, it could very well be raised or lowered at some point.

Leinard, why exactly is 3/5 better than 2/3? Not a fan of this amendment, as it's a perfect illustration of the fallacy of the mean.

First of all...Leinard? I think that's intended to be a childish insult, but I can't quite tell what it means. Sorry if I've misread you and it's not.

Anyway, 3/5 might be better than 2/3 because those who prefer 1/2 + 1 might like it better. I agree with you that a larger majority would be better, and I was trying to help by making your plan more palatable to it's detractors. Why the hostile response?

[Leinad]

You seriously need to stop being so touchy-feely. Not everything is meant to be an insult towards you. You're new so roll with the punches!

Eh, I don't look at it as touchy-feely, more just confused as to why Talleyrand responded unfavorably to my amendment, but I see what you mean. I'm not really a "touchy-feely" person, it's just when someone seems upset with me I like to know why, so I can fix any problems or simply avoid making those mistakes next time.

I apologize to Talleyrand if it was simply a typo, and maybe in general I should roll with the punches more often, but I don't like civility towards anyone, be it me or someone else. I'm not being "touchy-feely," I just think this forum is better with less name-calling and baseless accusations.


Anyway, this thread is for parliamentary discussion. Anything else can be taken to PMs, if need be. We were discussing the Presidential bill proposed by Talleyrand, we should get back to that.