Talk Elections

Senate Resolution Calling for a Constitutional Convention

1. This Senate calls upon the President to call a Constitutional Convention forthwith.

2. The Senate calls upon the Governors to send delegates to this Convention in the following numbers:
Northeast - 4
Mideast - 2
Southeast - 2
Pacific - 2
Midwest - 1

3. The Senate urges that the Convention elect a President as its Presiding Officer.

4. The Senate urges that the Constitutional Convention shall have its first meeting by the 17th January, 2005.

I hereby call for this to be put to a vote immediately

I hope the Senate passes this resolution so that we can get thing over with.

I hope the Senate passes this resolution so that we can get thing over with.

I support this

I support this 100% and I hope the Senate votes unanimously for this Resolution.

I call for the Yeas and Nays

Yea

Only the President of the Senate or the President Pro Tempore can call a vote on something......As we haven't got a President Pro Tempore yet we must wait for the Vice President to call a vote or for a PPT to be elected.

I urge the entire Senate to vote Yea on this.

I urge VP Keystone Phil to open up the vote on this immediately.

I don't think we really need to debate this; let's just bring it to a vote so we can vote "yea" on this already. ;)

Senator, the need of a Constitutional Convention is overwhelming.  Rather than be mired in procedure which is ignored half the time anyways, action must be taken now, lest the convention not conclude prior to the elections

Where is Keystone Phil, anyway?

Can we vote yet?

Formally, we need the VP to bring it to a vote, but I have no idea where he is, and we have no PPT to do it in his stead.

If he doesn't show within a day or two, I would say to go with what Defarge said.

Whoops, wasn't clear enough. What I meant was, are we actually Senators yet so that we have the standing to vote on this?

I'm voting for it in any event, I just don't want to jump the gun.

Oh.  Right, yeah, I think that, to appease certain people ( :) ), the senators-elect from last midterm election should probably wait until the 7th before actually voting.

That'll work fine for me.

I will put this to a vote on the seventh as has been requested to keep those outgoing Senators happy :).

Since you're going for proportional, here are the priority values for each Region with the current registered population.

(1) NE 49 voters
(2) ME 23 voters
(3) P  22 voters
(4) SE 22 voters
(5) MW 15 voters
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(6) NE delegate #2 PV 34.65
(7) NE delegate #3 PV 20.00
(8) ME delegate #2 PV 16.26
(9) P  delegate #2 PV 15.56
(10) SE delegate #2 PV 15.56
(11) NE delegate #4 PV 14.14
(12) NE delegate #5 PV 10.96
(13) MW delegate #2 PV 10.61
(14) ME delegate #3 PV 9.39
(15) P delegate #3 PV 8.98
(16) SE delegate #3 PV 8.98
(17) NE delegate #6 PV 8.95
(18) NE delegate #7 PV 7.56

6 delgates, 11 delegates, and 17 delegates make good breakpoints.

For something this important, you can be temporary senators :)

Which system did you use there? The one used for US House seats? 

Yes.

I must be a complete idiot but can you explain this to me Ernest.

This system is the same as that used to apportion the US House, which is called the method of equal proportions.

Step 1: Give each State a seat (Region a delegate).

Step 2: Determine for each State its priority value.
The priority value is equal to the population of the State divided by the square root of n*(n+1) where n is the number of seats it current has.  At the start this will be dividing all populations by the square root of 2 (2=1*2)  to get the priority values, then by the square root of 6 (6=2*3), square root of 12 (12=3*4) etc. as States add seats.

Step 3: Give the State with the largest priority value a seat and recalculate its priority value based on the fact that it has an extra seat.

Step 4: Until you have the number of seats you want,  repeat Step 3.

(Or alternatively, you could decide a priori that the cutoff will be at a certain priority value, if you don't want a fixed size for the group.

Mr. President Pro-Tempore, if you'd be so kind to bring this to a vote...

He said he would tomorrow.

I will indeed put this to a vote today (the seventh) as I said I would, however, would we prefer a 17 or 11 delegate convention? I think we should decide that first.

Thank you for that explaination.

I think we should do a 17 delegate convention.  The more people we have, the more opinions we have.  Although this could create more arguments, it will also give the convention more voices and ideas.

I agree.  Someone might have that key opinion that will lead to a better document.

I propose to amend the delegation apportionments to meet Ernest's recommendations.

I would like to quickly call a vote on the amendment.

All Senators please vote yea nay or abstain on my proposed amendment.


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Yea

Yea.

Yea

Once again, I urge the entire Senate to hurry up and vote yea on this.  We must start and end the convention before the next election.
All the Senators should start voting on this.  We need a constitutional convention.

YEA

Abstain.

Abstain, are you serious?

I think this isn't the actual resolution.  Isn't this just the amendment?
Mayve Bono disagrees with Ernest's way of distributing delegates.

I'm afraid that the constitutional convention will erode our liberties away,a s granted in the Civil Liberties Ammendment.

I would doubt highly that that is likely to happen. This is really just an exercise to put the present constitution into a sane framework with structural changes that people want, I don't think there'll be any assault on civil liberties.

You sound just like Patrick Henry before the real Constitutional Convention.

The point of the Constitutional Convention is just to remove all of the vague, contradictory, or problematic sections in the current Constitution and to replace them with clear, unambiguous sections that say essentially the same thing.  To my knowledge, nothing new will be added to the Constitution.

Yea.

If I counted correctly, that's six yeas and one abstention, enough to pass the amendment.
Could you call the final vote soon?

Five yeas and one abstention actually, but that is enough to pass.

Would all Senators now vote upon the amended version of the resolution (with 17 delegates allotted to the convention).

Yea

Yea

What system will be used to ratify a new constitution?

The midwest and pacific governors should be raising hell about being under represented.

Nay.

Thats what happens when you only have 25 voters comapred to something like 50 that i have.

The Pacific has the same number of delegates as the Mid-East and the South-Eastern Regions so I fail to see why they would be angry. The Mid-West has almost nobody in it so they aren't really either.

it means the northeast can trample the rights of the midwest at will.

Not on its own it can't. The North-Eastern Region has seven delegates out of a total of seventeen, the other regions could trample on the North-East if they joined together as could the regions by going against any of them, I fail to see your point?

I agree with the distuinguished Senator from California.

Yea

Yea.

I don't know how I missed voting until now.  Apologies for that.

Aye

The Convention will doubtless decide that by putting an appropriate clause/section into the Constitution itself. To date I've left that issue undecided in my draft because I think there are several ways for it to be done.

Yea.

With six votes in favour to one against the resolution has passed.

I believe it calls for the first meeting to be the seventeenth of January so I hope the Governors can get picking on delegates!

It also specifies that the President is to call for the Convention.

Yes it does :) I know he has to do that, as does he I believe, oh and to correct my earlier statement it says the first meeting should be by the seventeenth.

For the record, even though it already passed: Yea.

Why are some governors picking alternate delegates? No alternate delegates mentioned here.

Well, I picked an alternate, because I hadn't had the chance to confirm all of my choices by the time I made the announcement.

Yeah, ILV picked two alternates as consolation prizes because some people were disappointed he picked only two leftists. Which I can understand (the disappointment, not the consolation prizes.)

I seem to remember voting on this, but I guess I was wrong.

Yea