Constitutional Convention - Commentary thread.

[Adam Griffin]

Should've stuck to my original idea instead of watering down ideological representation to 1/5 of the delegates - roughly 2/3 of the delegation are conservatives*. This is not going to be an ideologically-balanced convention.

*Cannot confirm these are the actual elected officials because we have no idea who is and who is not a registered voter in the election

[Adam Griffin]

I think that ideology as in conservative/liberal/libertarian/moderate/socialist/etc. is less important than ideology as far as the game is concerned.

For example, I agree with ChairmanSanchez on more issues than with you, Adam, yet I disagree with his dissolutionist stance on Atlasia, but I like lots of your game reform ideas. And those are the things that matter more here. Tax policy, abortion, gay marriage, drug policy, gun control--none of those things matter in the Constitutional Convention.

Do you get what I'm saying? My point, to reiterate, is that one of the things everyone's been going on about is kind of irrelevant (sorry).

I have personally said that this presidential election should be - above all else - about proper game reform. In fact, I believe that primarily to be the only major issue.

However, within the halls of the constitutional convention, basic ideological balance is necessary. By and large, everyone in the ConCon agrees on the premise that the game must be saved and reformed (only a couple of trolls managed to sneak into it). The broader fights we will face (like the trolls who tried unsuccessfully to destabilize the game by attacking me) will come from outside such a group and after the fact.

Because there will be fundamental disagreements and arguments over specific game proposals within the ConCon that are rooted in ideology, I highly believe that the ConCon needs to resemble the voting bloc as much as possible. If the result from the ConCon is balanced along these lines, then an entire set of potential arguments against it will not exist. At that point and once again, we'll only have to face the blind obstruction and troll behavior like I forecasted in my opening presidential campaign statement.

If, however, the result of the ConCon is significantly out-of-step with the electorate who must inevitably accept/reject it, then it will unfortunately fail.

[Adam Griffin]

I totally agree--my argument is that conventional definitions of ideology in real-world terms (libertarian, conservative, liberal, moderate, socialist, etc.) is about as important as what people's favorite ice cream flavor is.

In other words, it should be balanced by ideology, but the issues aren't traditional ones such as economics or social matters, but issues as far as the game is concerned, so looking at conventional ideological terms does us no good to balance it by ideology, because that isn't the "ideology" that is important here.

I think that makes sense...

Well, if you had been around when the debate over whether to reform the game or not occurred two years ago, then you'd understand that the fundamental reactions based on what to do (or whether to do anything at all) were based in basic ideological viewpoints (predominantly, conservativism and regionalism with regards to obstructing reform, and the lack of concern for regionalism with regards to enacting reform). In addition, there were deep and obvious roots of partisanship involved in the process as well.   

[Adam Griffin]

Literally the only other arguments that come up in contrast to the CARCA map have been and are going to be:

"Well I don't like where my state is, so let's change everything to move my state into another region and pretend like the most detailed consolidation process that occurred twice over two years is no more legitimate than my personal wishes".

CARCA was supposed to leave everybody a bit upset, but at the same time, it balanced the wishes of multiple parties, people and interests as best as could be done. When something works, you know it has worked because nobody is ecstatic but everybody can live with it (and no, the people who are opposed to the process in general don't count in that).

[Adam Griffin]

When somebody is upset, requests a change, and gets their wishes, then the result of it is going to be that somebody else is now going to be upset, and they're going to want to do the same thing. Then you end up in an endless tug of war where everybody just fusses because caving in to those initial wishes gives everybody the feeling that they, too, can get their way. This is why - combined with the thoroughness of the two CARCA processes - that I've generally steered clear away from entertaining the wishes of everybody who doesn't think the map is perfect.

If anybody here has ran an organization and you send out via email or have a conversation in person with a group of volunteers, asking them "what time/date works best for you?", then you know how it works. Everybody throws out a time and date, followed by some people saying "oh, I can't attend that because I have [xxx]" and no matter what date or time gets picked, somebody isn't going to make it. It's the same process here. You balance out the interests, make the best well-rounded determination, and the people who can't make it...oh well!

[Adam Griffin]

Literally the only other arguments that come up in contrast to the CARCA map have been and are going to be:

"Well I don't like where my state is, so let's change everything to move my state into another region and pretend like the most detailed consolidation process that occurred twice over two years is no more legitimate than my personal wishes".

CARCA was supposed to leave everybody a bit upset, but at the same time, it balanced the wishes of multiple parties, people and interests as best as could be done. When something works, you know it has worked because nobody is ecstatic but everybody can live with it (and no, the people who are opposed to the process in general don't count in that).

My opposition to the CARCA map goes beyond where it placed my state. It goes to the place of I oppose and will always oppose consolidation. Could we have flipped a state or two from one region to another? Yes. I simply think that an issue like this should be one of those instances where the most direct of democracy is applied and it's has been this way numerous times. The people spoke and they have defeated consolidation. Now it's in the hands of 25 of Atlasias finest political minds and a simple majority of them blows the will of the people out of the water. Their only recourse may be voting against ratification. I hope this one issue isn't the cause of failing to make the reforms we need to make this game all she can be. Regardless of political stripe.  

Then read the last sentence of mine again. Both the overwhelming majority of the game and the delegates agree consolidation is necessary, so if you cast a vote against ratification based on that, then that's your choice. I know radical conservatives such as yourself like to make-up this concept of "the will of the people" out of nowhere and always align their supposed beliefs with your own, but it's not true that everyone disagrees with the map - a representative sample comprising 1/5 of the game supported its design not once, but twice, and a majority in a comparable number of people support it in the ConCon. Acting as if the people in both of these cases are completely out of line with the electorate at-large is ridiculous, as they were selected to represent them based on multiple criteria. I guess you're the same guy who doesn't believe polls because only 1,000 people were asked a question.

In no way, shape or form should your amending of the map for the state of your residence then be taken into account if you're essentially admitting "I don't agree with any of this anyway and so I'm just trying to gum up the works".

[Adam Griffin]

I laid forward a sound argument on why Kansas is a better fit in the South with Missouri and Oklahoma. So far there hasn't been a compelling argument against anything I said, just shouts that I (and others) should sit down and shut up because a different group of citizens, not the ConCon delegates, already picked a map. These are debates that should be held.

There's a multi-page argument I had with windjammer a month or two ago somewhere that explained my take on how current population figures shouldn't be the sole basis for how the maps are drawn because population will balance out if we implement regulations that ensure competitiveness (such as automatic reductions of legislative seats in regions that become too big or too small). As I said in the thread, there will be a natural balancing act take place once the regions are formed that will help balance some of this out.

However, the western region as proposed with the removal of KS, MN & IA would leave the western region less populated than the Pacific and Midwest combined are right now: with just 28 out of 144 people. While I have vociferously argued - essentially in defense of what you believe - that current population shouldn't be treated as a golden god in determining maps, there do still remain long-term baselines in how various segments of the game are organically populated. If we move to a three-region map and one region organically features less than 20% of the game's population that also just happens to be historically the least-populated area of the game, then the legislative seat regulation mechanisms have to be mandatory and must be designated prior to ratification (and not just as "the Senate can decide the specifics later").

Otherwise, a future Senate could just object to the notion based on one of the many pro-regional arguments we have heard for the past two years, gum up the works, and leave that western region in terrible shape (while simultaneously providing no direct incentive for people in over-populated regions to relocate there).

[Adam Griffin]

Literally the only other arguments that come up in contrast to the CARCA map have been and are going to be:

"Well I don't like where my state is, so let's change everything to move my state into another region and pretend like the most detailed consolidation process that occurred twice over two years is no more legitimate than my personal wishes".

CARCA was supposed to leave everybody a bit upset, but at the same time, it balanced the wishes of multiple parties, people and interests as best as could be done. When something works, you know it has worked because nobody is ecstatic but everybody can live with it (and no, the people who are opposed to the process in general don't count in that).

My opposition to the CARCA map goes beyond where it placed my state. It goes to the place of I oppose and will always oppose consolidation. Could we have flipped a state or two from one region to another? Yes. I simply think that an issue like this should be one of those instances where the most direct of democracy is applied and it's has been this way numerous times. The people spoke and they have defeated consolidation. Now it's in the hands of 25 of Atlasias finest political minds and a simple majority of them blows the will of the people out of the water. Their only recourse may be voting against ratification. I hope this one issue isn't the cause of failing to make the reforms we need to make this game all she can be. Regardless of political stripe.  

Then read the last sentence of mine again. Both the overwhelming majority of the game and the delegates agree consolidation is necessary, so if you cast a vote against ratification based on that, then that's your choice. I know radical conservatives such as yourself like to make-up this concept of "the will of the people" out of nowhere and always align their supposed beliefs with your own, but it's not true that everyone disagrees with the map - a representative sample comprising 1/5 of the game supported its design not once, but twice, and a majority in a comparable number of people support it in the ConCon. Acting as if the people in both of these cases are completely out of line with the electorate at-large is ridiculous, as they were selected to represent them based on multiple criteria. I guess you're the same guy who doesn't believe polls because only 1,000 people were asked a question.

In no way, shape or form should your amending of the map for the state of your residence then be taken into account if you're essentially admitting "I don't agree with any of this anyway and so I'm just trying to gum up the works".

The problem is you don't count those who oppose consolidation. The reason consolidation has failed is it was taken through the constitutional processes and it didn't have enough regions (by vote of their citizens)  voting to ratify consolidation. I'm not trying to " gum up the works" one bit. If we're gonna consolidate we should see it from the view of the folks who don't (for whatever reason).

Pray tell: how do you honor "the will of the people" who support consolidation and simultaneously "see it from the view of the folks who don't" support consolidation while either consolidating or not consolidating? That literally makes no sense - somebody's getting burned no matter what. In that case, the majority view is the direction. If you don't want to consolidate, then you're not going to be happy with consolidation no matter what. If you don't want to consolidate, then you're not going to be happy no matter how many states are moved about. The nation supports it - by margins much greater than before and across ideologies more diverse than it was then - so honoring the will of the people is to consolidate, pure and simple.

[Adam Griffin]

It's a large body. "Major parties" are defined (currently) as parties with 5 or more people. As it stands, we're nearly doubling the number of federal legislative offices. There is going to be more turnover. The elections will be every 2 months - not every 4 months - in the House. If you implement a system that requires there be a nationwide special election every time one of these seats go vacant, then we are going to be having multiple elections per month most likely. This will create election fatigue and it will lower overall voter participation in the long-run.

Furthermore, waiting in some cases up to 10 days to have a special election for a term that lasts all of 8 weeks is wasteful as crap. It's a short term. In addition, nobody knows yet the exact method for elections to the House. For all we know, it ends up being closed list PL-PR, in which case, party affiliation most certainly wouldn't "distort the will of the voters", who will be heard every two months anyway (however, I don't buy that this system distorts it, anyway). In fact, let's remember what will happen in a scenario in which a seat for a smaller party goes vacant. In all likelihood, a larger party is going to win it in a nationalized one-seat election. Unfortunately, there's no way to protect unaffiliated/independent seats from this concept, but my solution will at the very least prevent smaller parties from losing their representation to the top-two in a one-seat special election.

The last thing we need to be doing is watering down the significance of our primary election events by encouraging an explosion in special election activity in a bicameral chamber, which will happen if you decide to have special elections for individual legislative races when we are substantially expanding the number of people in office simultaneously. As a side-note: I've never liked the concept of one-seat at-large races anyway; they're basically presidential elections held for offices of relative insignificance (and that fact will become even greater and more frequent for seats in a larger, lower chamber). My proposed system will almost entirely do away with that concept - the regions hold special elections/appointments for the Senate, and the House will only have an at-large election in the event a minor party or independent seat goes vacant.

[Adam Griffin]

But I still have a problem with replacement Representatives being chosen by "party bosses" as Poirot calls them.

It's worth noting that the parties in question can determine whatever method they would like to utilize with the current language. They can have a popular vote, a committee, party leader, etc. It's not just a matter of "party bosses" using it.

The amendment is about party affiliation at time of vacancy, not party affiliation at election. A representative can do what it wants and not ask for approval in changing affiliation during the term. So someone is elected carrying the Labor banner, people in the party work to elect him. Two weeks later he swtiches party and then resigns. The new party, not Labor, gets to choose the replacement. It's a distorsion because I'm not sure the voters who supported the Labor candidate/representative will agree with the replacement made by another party 

I mean, I've faced the concept of nasty little defectors in office arguably more than anyone else in recent years, and while the switching of a party member to another party prior to vacating the office is a possible occurrence, how can we prevent that from being an issue? The only way to do so is to say "a vacancy will be filled by the party of the ex-Representative at the time of his/her election", but I'm pretty sure that would be getting criticized even more than this. From what you've just argued, allowing for an at-large special election would be just as bad because the original will of the people for that seat will then be circumvented by what the nation as a whole wishes to do.

At the end of the day, though, these potential, small issues definitely do not outweigh the issues we'll face if we're having special elections every time a House seat goes vacant.