Activity Fairness Amendment (Tabled)

[Senator Cris]

The amendment proposed by Senator Bacon King regards the repeal of 19th Amendment (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_Third_Constitution) and 21th Amendment (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Twenty-First_Amendment_to_the_Third_Constitution). The last one, the 21th Amendment, is basically a correction of the 19th Amendment.
I think that abolish these two amendments is wrong. Our constitution on these issues needs to be changed, but I desire to remember to all the Senators that Citizen SirNick  presented an amendment, sponsored by Senators Windjammer and Bore, that in my opinion is a better way to solve our problems.
This is the SirNick's amendment (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=39557.msg4412685#msg4412685):

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I don't know why a thread wasn't open on the SirNick's amendment, but I think that it would be a better way.
But at the same time I desire to highlight that the SirNick's amendment regards the repeal of only 19th amendment and not of the 21st amendment and repealing only the 19th and not the 21st could create problems. So, when Speaker Bore will open a thread on the SirNick's amendment, I will introduce that changes.

But now we are debating on the BK's amendment and so I think that reject the Senator Bacon King's proposal and debating, working on the SirNick's amendment would be a better way to solve this problem.

[bore]

The senate rules give me no leeway in what comes to the floor when, and unfortunately windjammer has introduced a lot of bills and some of his are on the floor at the moment, so Bacon King's take precedence.

[Cranberry]

The senate rules give me no leeway in what comes to the floor when, and unfortunately windjammer has introduced a lot of bills and some of his are on the floor at the moment, so Bacon King's take precedence.

Didn't you cosponsor the amendment to the constitution in question?

[bore]

The senate rules give me no leeway in what comes to the floor when, and unfortunately windjammer has introduced a lot of bills and some of his are on the floor at the moment, so Bacon King's take precedence.

Didn't you cosponsor the amendment to the constitution in question?

That's true, but I posted that before looking over the rules and they are quite clear that co sponsorship is no longer a thing:

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and this governs how bills come to the floor:

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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So Bacon King had already been expelled TWICE?

Yes he was successfully expelled in 2010 and again 2012 (or was it 2013?).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The senate rules give me no leeway in what comes to the floor when, and unfortunately windjammer has introduced a lot of bills and some of his are on the floor at the moment, so Bacon King's take precedence.

Didn't you cosponsor the amendment to the constitution in question?

That's true, but I posted that before looking over the rules and they are quite clear that co sponsorship is no longer a thing:

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and this governs how bills come to the floor:

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Co-Sponsorship had no impact on floor access before either.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

People are getting upset because the concept of activity applies to them, too, and not just to others. There is nothing inherently wrong with the amendments. No Senator should go a week without posting on this board and without posting a LOA - period. No President or Vice-President should go a week without posting on this board and without posting a LOA - period. The Vice-President should maintain a level of dialogue in debate, especially since many of the position's former responsibilities no longer exist (otherwise, let's just abolish the Vice-President altogether, instead of abolishing/altering pieces of the Constitution to fit a now-condoned abdication of prior responsibilities). If the President is going to post updates on FE in an office, then the President can double-post it in an office on FG, too. The only excuse any of these individuals have for not meeting basic constitutional activity requirements is shame for what they've done and laziness with respect to adhering to a very low bar.

Furthermore, short of one party having both control of a supermajority of the Senate and a hive-mind among all of its Senators, it is extremely unlikely that a Senator would be (or ever has been) expelled from the Senate for activity reasons; only when it has been someone who is extremely unpopular both within the body and the electorate (Xahar, wormyguy) has it ever actually been done. Let's not make it even harder to censure, reprimand and if necessary, expel Senators who don't do their job: it's already practically impossible as-is.

We expelled MoPolitico and B fing K (twice). Hardly polarizing figures there.

How many people have been impeached period?

Also if you cannot expell a Senator for lack of a single-party supermajority (the worst way to do it in my view and has historically not been necessary), what is having a duplicative impeachment proceeding that requires a similar threshold going to get you anywhere?

I remember MOPolitico being expelled; that happened right when I first joined the game (in mid-2012). In his case (if I recall correctly), he had completely disappeared from the forum, which is a different case. With BK, I seem to recall one instance in which expulsion came up but he voluntarily resigned before the Senate could vote on it (or maybe that was the time where he voted AYE on his own expulsion; I can't remember exactly). Barnes was also expelled, but that was because he too had disappeared entirely.

My point is that in most federal cases where an expulsion is successful, it is usually when the person has completely disappeared from this game and the forum - it seems that if they are active on the forum but not active here, they usually get away with maintaining their seat.

Also if you cannot expell a Senator for lack of a single-party supermajority (the worst way to do it in my view and has historically not been necessary), what is having a duplicative impeachment proceeding that requires a similar threshold going to get you anywhere?

The reason why we shouldn't gut these amendments is because what I said and what you said are two different scenarios. I feel you're twisting what I said a bit.

I said - preemptively, perhaps (though I thought someone had mentioned it as a concern prior) - that we shouldn't be afraid of people being expelled from the Senate solely based on political bias because that, at least in recent memory, has never been an issue. Even with a supermajority Senate from one party, it's just not going to happen because members from the same party never have a hive-mind. You're always going to have at least 1 or 2 Senators who are worried about "political repercussions" for doing such a thing. In other words, this shouldn't be a reason for abolishing the current system.

I did not say that the only way the current system could be effective was through having a supermajority (and therefore that in the absence of such, it cannot be effective); I said that even in that particular case, it'd be unlikely to change the dynamic. That doesn't mean that it's justified to repeal it. Objectively, repealing these amendments would make removal of Senators even more difficult without a better solution put in place because it would limit the pathways to do so, and as both of us alluded to, it has been used in the past to some degree (though I don't think the system has ever successfully been used since the 19th/21st were passed to expel a Senator, as Xahar used legal loopholes to reinstall himself in the Senate; all of the other examples you and I gave were pre-May 2013).

So perhaps I would support a repeal of these two amendments (seeing as how it is nearly impossible as-is to remove an inactive Senator, as we haven't done so since their passage; I think this has everything to do with the attitudes of people in this game and not the amendments themselves), but only if we reverted to a system in which expulsion was automatic and occurred after 7-10 days of their last post on the FG board. A carte blanche repeal of the amendments without replacing it with something that has more teeth, however, would be reckless and through simple deduction, would make removing dead weight even harder.

I probably misread you. Sorry about that.

Indeed, it has been a while though I do think we expelled Xahar in the waning days of that Senate and successfully (Talleyrand was appointed by his Party as his Successor though I don't think he actually took the oath until the new Senate started).

[Cranberry]

The senate rules give me no leeway in what comes to the floor when, and unfortunately windjammer has introduced a lot of bills and some of his are on the floor at the moment, so Bacon King's take precedence.

Didn't you cosponsor the amendment to the constitution in question?

That's true, but I posted that before looking over the rules and they are quite clear that co sponsorship is no longer a thing:

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and this governs how bills come to the floor:

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Oh okay, now we see again what happens when I put my commentaries in things I don't know particularly much about
Thank you for clarifying it.

[Bacon King]

I'd like to withdraw this bill, if I could do that

[bore]

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Senators have 36 hours to assume sponsorship.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'd like to withdraw this bill, if I could do that

May I ask why?

Also what happened to your "Compromise" on the previous page. I thought we were proceeding with that.

[bore]

As no senator has assumed sponsorship, this proposed amendment is tabled