Midwest Senate Debate

[minionofmidas]

If elected, my priorities in the Senate will be to stop badly drafted and/or economically far-right legislation, and to seek a solution to Atlasia`s electoral woes that doesn`t take us back to fptp, and that reduces the number of pitfalls a voter has to navigate to cast a valid ballot.

I`d like to add that I also have some pieces of progressive legislation prepared that I want to try and pass ... but that would be lieing. I would definitely be ready to work with other Senators on these if elected, though. I know I`m often better at amending other people`s ideas, spotting the weaknesses in them, than at drafting something from scratch. Personality flaw, if you will.

Oh, lest I forget. Hi, audience! Hi, audience watching on tv! Great to be here in South Dakota.

[minionofmidas]

Next question?

[minionofmidas]

I oppose all attempts to reintroduce first past the post (as I said above...)
Beyond that, I'm very open to suggestions. I think, however, that we need to cut down on the number of rules governing elections, and to make bureaucratic reinterpretations impossible.
To give an example of what I mean by that, originally the consensus in Atlasia was, no editing of votes. This meant, once you cast a vote you couldn't unmake your vote. This quickly changed to its opposite, with people editing their vote to void it and thence change the outcome of the election. Instead, voters who edited spelling errors in their vote had their vote discounted. That's the sort of garbage that needs to be prevented. I'll admit it's gone down recently, probably because we have far fewer first-time voters.

Personally, I would also like to see the Senate elected proportionally, which would remove the old contentions of redistricting and of uneven regional populations, but I understand there is no chance of winning a political majority for this idea.

[minionofmidas]

Ah yes, thanks for reminding me of that. Forgot to mention that: "Voting reform would likely include an amendment that moved all but the most basic principles of how elections are held out of the constitution and into ordinary law."

[minionofmidas]

Eh, what can I say... Ernest is spot-on on that.

As to the current debates about the budget deficit, slash and burn on government services while introducing ever further tax breaks for businesses is not the answer and can never be the answer. Believe me, I came to Atlasia from a country where nothing but that has been tried for the past 20 years. We'll have to see towards broadening the tax base by repealing subsidies and tax breaks that don't benefit the needy. That would be the general direction, I have no concrete proposals at this point.

[minionofmidas]

No.
Of course I would still vote on any that might come up during my Senate term, but I'm not going to introduce any bills on that field.

Oh wait ... going by my experiences last year I suppose health care counts as a wedge issue here ... I don't have any specific plans at the moment on that front either, but I wouldn't rule out bringing something up...