[2333.AB] Voter Registration

[HumanSanity]

A few big picture thoughts on this proposal:

I think this proposal does correctly identify a problem: our current system ties being a part of the political community to Legislator status, even though many of the community’s members are not actually interested in being Legislators (which is fine!) but still are interested in being a “part” of things (in particular voting in Delegate and PM elections). I just don’t think it actually solves that problem because it leaves the law-writing body as an oversized, under-incentivized group of people, and mostly just removes some administrative burden from the VRC/LegComm.

If we want to make it so people won’t vote for no reason in the Assembly, and specifically if we want to incentivize people to contribute to the legislative process, then we need to add barriers to participation rather than remove them. After all, the status quo is basically no barriers, and that isn’t working. Glen put it best:

@Sandaoguo

previous “voter registration” ideas, but in my opinion none of those really addressed how we incentivize meaningful participation. Some just expanded the legislator population by decreasing participation requirements. Others just bypassed the Assembly for voting in elections. The framework above would satisfy all of our goals, instead. We would maintain a broad franchise for executive elections. Meanwhile, we’d have a legislative branch with true participation requirements that’s not also overly punitive for failing to meet them. And we can afford to enforce more real, meaningful participation exactly because membership in the legislature isn’t required to vote in executive branch elections.

Overall, this is moving things around instead of asking “what is the purpose of our legislature” (imo, it’s active and vigorous legislative debate) and “how do we achieve that purpose” (imo, it’s by incentivizing and rewarding active participation). Glen proposed having a more stringent debate participation requirement for the Assembly, that might work, but truthfully I prefer some other option that imposes a citizen/election-mediated barrier to participation in the Assembly. The resulting prestige of being a Legislator, along with the election debates about “who are our legislators and are they fulfilling our vision for the Assembly” are the kind of activity I want to see.

Other random things:

@Pronoun

under the sole direction of the General Corps

I think “or Council on Regional Security” should be added to this, since the CRS has a role in intelligence operations, and thus could direct a member of the South Pacific’s WA nation’s agenda/mission.

@Pronoun

provided that such review must take place no later than seven days after the end of said election and for that purpose the official who administered the election must provide a list of voters who casted votes

I’m not entirely opposed to this as a metric, but I do worry it could undermine the security of our anonymous balloting procedures. It may be worth it to sacrifice some integrity of our anonymous voting option in order to do this, but it is a cost.

@Pronoun

the current World Assembly nation of the individual (in case of a floating World Assembly membership, the applicant may list multiple nations such that World Assembly membership can be traced throughout the application process);

I think this language assumes a citizenship model where a WA nation could be floating but not in service of the SPSF and, under the new model suggested here, this language should be updated/removed.

@Roavin

Particularly the Legislative Procedure Act could be less gatekeepy about some things.

This feels like a separate (although also useful!) discussion.

@Roavin

Idea: Just call the status “Voter” rather than “Registered Voter”?

Why not just citizen?