Special Commission on the Constitution

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

   Let me begin with stating that I don't think that we should be looking at this section of the Constitution in isolation.  Provisions dealing with the removal of Atlasian officials are found in diverse portions of our Constitution.  The Federal Activity Act was an attempt to remedy perceived defects of the removal processes that even had it not been ruled unconstitutional created a hodgepodge of methods for removing officials.

   A listing of Constitutional provisions relating to the removal of officers seems like a good place to start.

• Article I Section 3 - Impeachment

Provides for the permanent removal of any official from the Forum Government.

• Article I Section 4 - Expulsion

Provides for the Senate to expel its own members

• Article I Section 5 Clause 1

Majority quorom needed for any Senate action.

• Article I Section 5 Clause 2

Repeats provision found in Section 3 that it takes two-thirds of the Senate to impeach.

• Article II Section 1 Clause 3

Powers of the President to appoint and remove appointed officals

• Article II Section 3 Clause 3

Presidential inability

• Article III Section 1

Repeats the portion of Article II Section 1 Clause 3 that relates to the Supreme Court

• Amendment III and Amendment X Clauses 6-9

Specify trial rules that apply to the extent that they can in impeachment trials.

  Next, I would like to consider when we want to remove officials.  Basically, it boils down to three reasons:
1) The official has committed some illegality.
2) The official is performing his office is a legal but disruptive manner.
3) The official is not performing his office.
Reason 1 calls for an impeachment process.
Reason 2 calls for a process to censure or remove the official.
Reason 3 calls for a process to remove the official.
Since impeachment can be seperated from censure or removal, the rest of this post will deal exclusively with impeachment and leave the other matters for future posts.

  Impeachment is a trial process, hence we need a body that can serve as the grand jury and a second that can act as the trial jury.   We have at present two bodies that could in theory serve either function, the Senate and the people.  The House has too few members to make it a body useful for impeachment uses.   Since forum votes tend to be unweildy affairs, I think that it would be better to use the Senate as our grand jury so that a forum vote is called for only after the Senate has acted.  This is currently implied, but not made explicit by the Constitution.

   Another question to be resolved is the margin required at each stage.  The US Constitution requires a simple majority to impeach and a two-thirds vote to convict, but the Atlasian reverses these proportions.  I feel that if they differ, it should be the trial jury that has the larger margin, as they do in the US Constitution.  Changing the portion required for the Senate to impeach would require revising not only Article I Section 3, but also Article I Section 5 Clause 2.  Hence, for simplicity's sake, unless we determine that two-thirds is absolutely the wrong proportion to require for impeachment, impeachment by the Senate should be left at two-thirds and conviction by the Forum should be set at two-thirds or higher.

    The last issue to determine is one of procedure.  Our current process calls itself an impeachment, but it doesn't use any judicial procedure as would be expected of a proper impeachment process.  I feel that the procedure could use some reform, but I am not prepared at this time to propose a specific reform.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Your Impeachment Amendment can be slimmed down if you use two-thirds as the requirement at each stage of the impeachment process as there would be no need to revise Article I Section 5 Clause 2.
There are a few minor technical glitches involving Regions and Federal elections.  Here is a proposed amendment to clear then up:

§1.The first sentence of Article II Section 1 Clause 6 is hereby repealed.

§2. Article II Section 2 Clause 4 is hereby amended by adding:  “Any ballot which casts a vote for a President and a Vice President from the same Region shall not be counted.”

§3. The fourth sentence of Article IV is hereby repealed.

   Sections 1 and 2 of my propsal are related to each other.  In the context of Atlasia, the restriction of Article II Section 1 Clause 6 that the President and Vice-President aren't from the same State should be changed to the same Region instead.  Also, what happens if a President or Vice-President were to move into the same State (or Region if that change is made)?  Switching to a restriction that applies only at the time of election removes that worry.

   Section 3 removes an ambiguity.  It might be interpreted on the basis of the sentence that I propose repealing that in the case of a vacancy in a District that is entirely within a single Region, such as District 2 in the old map and District 1 in the new map that the Governor gets to appoint a replacement instead of having a special election.  I doubt that is the intent, but why risk it being misinterpreted?