Misc Articles (Amendment, Supremacy, Officeholding, &c) LAST CALL for new topics

[Leinad]

I prefer a clean two-thirds all the way through for amendments.

2/3rs of the Senate (4), 2/3rds of the House (6) and 2/3rds with the Regions (2) with a 2/3rds Popular vote override on the later.

I agree with this. Simple, effective, and it gives a say to everyone.

[Leinad]

Alright, we'll let this "foundation" pass and then we can hold a principle vote on how we ratify amendments.

Also, if anyone thinks we missed anything, I think now would be the time to speak up about it.

[Leinad]

Alright, my fellow Delegates, I have a crazy idea...so crazy it just might work...

What Senator Truman wants is to make it more proportional to the national vote. What Senator Yankee wants is to retain the ability for regions to have a say in the matter.

I think we can do both.

Before I detail how, I'd like us to take another look at Truman's example:

Region A:   50 Yes, 10 No
Region B:   19 Yes, 21 No
Region C:   18 Yes, 22 No

Should regions B and C have the right to keep the amendment from passing? Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with Yankee in this regard. But in this example, it's basically a tie in those regions, correct? So it's hard to say that that region, as a whole, opposes that amendment as anything close to a consensus, since over 40% of the region actually supports it.

We can retain the ability for the people of (a) certain region(s) to reject an amendment and still have an approach centered on the national popular vote. Without further ado:

The Leinad Amendment Ratification Plan:

1. If an amendment has three-fifths of the vote overall, it will pass...

2. ...unless three-fifths of the voters in multiple regions oppose the amendment...

3. ...or four-fifths of a single region oppose the amendment.

Great, right?

In practice, most votes that achieve #1 (get 60% of the national vote) won't be stopped by #2 (less than 40% of the vote in two regions) or #3 (less than 20% of the vote in one region), but it will still avoid any form of plot to damage regional sovereignty.

I think this plan is a "compromise"--if you can call it that, I mean, both sides get what they want!--that anyone can get behind, and I see no reason why any person in their right mind would oppose it. (Opposition in three...two...one...)

[Leinad]

The Leinad Amendment Ratification Plan:

1. If an amendment has three-fifths of the vote overall, it will pass...

2. ...unless three-fifths of the voters in multiple regions oppose the amendment...

3. ...or four-fifths of a single region oppose the amendment.

This just might work. A suggestion to make it simpler: a three-fifths vote in a national referendum will ratify a proposed amendment, but 2 of the 3 Regional legislatures can veto it. That would increase the importance of the Regional governments and Regional elections (one of the goals of devolution), preserve the historical role of the Regions in the ratification process, and give the national electorate a voice in the matter.

I suppose you have a point by making regional elections more important, but I don't think it's much simpler than my original plan, and it also doesn't take the will of the people into consideration as much as mine.

I'd love to hear what the other delegates think about all this stuff. I still like my plan best, although I'd probably accept Truman's alteration on my plan. The point is to retain both the role of the regions and the will of the national electorate--two objectively good things that we don't have to be forced to pick from.

[Leinad]

The Leinad Amendment Ratification Plan:

1. If an amendment has three-fifths of the vote overall, it will pass...

2. ...unless three-fifths of the voters in multiple regions oppose the amendment...

3. ...or four-fifths of a single region oppose the amendment.

This just might work. A suggestion to make it simpler: a three-fifths vote in a national referendum will ratify a proposed amendment, but 2 of the 3 Regional legislatures can veto it. That would increase the importance of the Regional governments and Regional elections (one of the goals of devolution), preserve the historical role of the Regions in the ratification process, and give the national electorate a voice in the matter.

A nifty compromise would be to let the regions decide how to "veto" it, would it not? So, either my plan or yours.

And I also like the idea of a region being able to veto something by themselves if 4/5ths oppose, although I doubt that would happen too often in practice.

[Leinad]

Why not three-fifths nationwide or three-fifths of the voters in a majority of regions?

No, that wouldn't work. It basically combines the worst of both worlds from Truman's plan (the region's can't really stop it) and the status quo (the people as a whole could reject it but it still goes through).

I'm not a fan of the unilateral veto power, though: conceivably, you could have a scenario where 4/5 of Region X opposes an amendment but the other two Regions support it by similar margins. Allowing Region X to veto the amendment over the objections of the other two would undermine both the Regions and the popular will.

But when would that ever happen?

If 3/5ths of the overall population supports something, I highly doubt 80% in one region would oppose it. Unless it was something that would hurt that one region.

But again, it would be rare. I mean, you were the one who said regions aren't all that different, right, so why would they vote that drastically different unless it's something unfair to one of them?

Also, as I believe Yankee mentioned earlier, the secession risk is a real factor. If 80% of one region opposes something, this reduces the chances they leave over it.

[Leinad]

Can anyone explain to me a practical reason why the nominal will of the game at-large shouldn't determine whether or not an amendment passes nationally?

With my plan the will of the game at-large will generally decide what happens. 3/5ths to pass. Boom. The only exceptions being when two of the three regions have 3/5ths opposed (very unlikely to happen if it's getting 3/5ths support nationally) or one region has 4/5ths opposed (which would surely almost never happen if it's getting 3/5ths support nationally).

[Leinad]

1. C
2. B
3. D
4. A

Leinad, forgive me for being blunt, but what exactly is your argument? Is the unilateral veto a purely decorative ornament that will never be used, or a highly necessary safeguard of the Union? It's not clear to me why the former would be a reason to support this provision, or why the latter makes any sense at all.

It's a safeguard of the Union that will rarely be used. I'm not even sure if it will ever be used, but in the off chance it needs to, I think it's a very good thing to have.

Me pointing out that it would be rare was just so you and Adam don't have a fit over it. A quest in which I was evidently ineffective. If you must, though, I would be perfectly fine to go without the one-region 4/5ths veto. As long as the gist of my plan (national 3/5ths to pass, with input from the voters by region) is included, I'll be perfectly fine with the amendment process.

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These two sentences nicely sum up the contradiction at the core of your argument: the idea that the majority cannot be trusted to never abuse its power, but the minority (if given power over the majority) can. If we assume it is likely that the national people will vote to strip a single Region of its rights, we must also assume that that Region would vote to strip the national people of their rights.
[/quote]

False equivalency. The ability to veto constitutional amendments gives a region no power other than that. A region couldn't unilaterally do anything to alter the Constitution in it's form prior to the vote in question, or impose anything on the other two regions.

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It is very unlikely, but that doesn't mean it isn't a useful provision to have.

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This is the sort of argument that John C. Calhoun made to rationalize his support for Nullification: according to Calhoun, the states must be given the power to destroy the Union, and then - to make sure they never use it - the majority must never do anything that the minority does not like. I'm not by any means putting you in the same class as Calhoun (the South Carolinian was a horrible, racist b*stard; you are very much otherwise), but the logic of your argument is worryingly similar to that of Calhoun's Fort Hill Address. This does not surprise me: I predicted that this would happen when the right to secede was first proposed:

Sooner or later, the national legislature is going to pass a law that a majority of citizens in one Region do not like: if that majority can declare itself out of the Union on a dime, we have a situation where the national government will be paralyzed by threats of separation.

Replace "law" with "Constitutional Amendment" and you basically have the argument for the unilateral veto, only with national paralysis re-imagined as a positive good.
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Ah, yes, strawmanning with John C. Calhoun and/or the Confederacy. The exact same tactics were used when the Right to Self-Determination was discussed, and it was just as reckless, silly, and pointless then as it is now.

Also, it requires a supermajority to leave the Union, so please avoid fear-mongering about this Convention's recognition of the Right to Self-Determination.

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Oh, the infamous Slippery Slope argument. I could make the same case for your argument: if you take the regions out of Constitutional Amendments, why not take them out of other things? Why not abolish regional governments, or let the Federal government redraw regional boundaries unilaterally? Of course, though, I'm not accusing you of that, because that would be silly. You've never said any of those things, so attacking you for positions you don't have would be merely a distraction from the topic at hand, right?


Basically, this comes down to a question: do we want regions or not?

If we want regions to be separate entities, we should include regions in the amendment ratification process. This is what we've always done when this issue has came up, by the way.

If you view regions as imaginary, as nothing more than lines on a map, then by all means vote plan A. But if you view regions as separate entities, the building blocks of this Union, and that the people, together as a region--and yes, that is what regions are, groups of people, I'm sick of this "people vs. region" false choice--should have a say, plans B, C, and D are the better choices. I agree with Truman that the national vote should be of importance, so I think B and C are better (I have no clue why he preferenced D second, by the way).

I think that B and C are the best options, that give both sides what they really want. D is the status quo, while A is the most radical change from what we currently have.

Ultimately, it's the decision of the delegates.