Yeah but what is the point of requiring voting in elections for legislator status? You could add a line that says that doing the duties of a legislator makes you keep legislator status. In my opinion, the proposed rule is harsher than the current rule. Under the current rule, if you are active, you can miss a vote as a legislator, but under your proposal, you miss an election and are out of the Assembly. I think that the requirement to maintain legislator status requires no changes and the people who are proposing changing them are proposing change for the sake of change.
Also, even if the requirement is easy why should you have to vote in elections you don’t care about or spoil your vote? Many people might not care about who is delegate but care about who is Prime Minster or vice versa.
I currently do not vote in any elections. I do not care who is the Delegate, who is in the Cabinet, or who is the Prime Minister. The only reason I am here is for the Assembly. If the current version of the proposal passes, I will either vote to re-open noms or spoil my ballot every election.
A better system would allow people to hold citizenship and vote in the elections they care about instead of getting a flood of people voting with the majority and not reading any of the campaign threads. Like having citizenship be a resident right but you have to pass a check to vote.
Now I am not suggesting that what I am about to say should be implemented in TSP, but if the goal is removing barriers, I would rather have a system of citizenship like Lazarus and other regions where residents have to pass a security check to become citizens, and then they hold citizenship in perpetuity, with the only requirement being residency. Sure this system does not do anything to promote activity. However, it allows people to play the game the way they want. If you want to be a minister but do not care about Delegate elections, fine. If you want to vote/debate in assembly and nothing else, fine. If you only care who is Prime Minister, fine.
Yes, I intentionally worded the requirement to refer to ‘casting a ballot,’ not ‘voting’ — I figured that it’d be a bit harsh to revoke the voting rights of people who just accidentally mess up a ballot, and that abusing that system would fall under the bad faith prohibition.
There’s a lot to your post, and I’ll try to respond in more detail this evening when I have more time. But in the meantime, just one short response, and then a question that might help me see your point of view more clearly.
I think this overstates the harshness of the requirement. The proposal builds in both leaves of absences and allowances of leniency for otherwise active citizens who simply miss an election. As you indicate, there are still folks who just don’t want to vote in elections, but that is the group that this requirement would affect; it wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) affect all citizens / legislators who miss an election.
I guess I would ask in response–what is the point of requiring voting on legislation in order to vote for the head of state and government? If your response is “there is no point,” then fair enough. I take it then that you oppose most if not all activity requirements, and feel the current system unfairly (or at least unnecessarily) requires folks who just want to vote for PM / Delegate to also participate in the Assembly. That view would suggest we should have a much broader conversation about activity requirements overall. I’m not sure I would agree with you on that, but I would certainly understand your perspective and basis for concern with this legislation.
People can already file a leave of absence under our current rules? This is objectively more harsh, under the current rules you can only lose status if there are more than two votes in a month and you only have to vote in half of the votes, which means, you can miss a vote and be fine. Under the proposal, you miss an election for whatever reason, forget to fill out an LOA, and just lose citizenship. The only safety net is an LOA. I don’t think this helps the region.
I don’t see the other allowances the proposal clearly states that “1) Members of the Coalition are eligible to become and remain citizens if they: … d. cast a ballot in all elections in which they are eligible to vote and are not on a leave of absence…” The proposal unambiguously states that if you do not vote in an election you cannot remain as a citizen.
I mean there is no point, I already said that I prefer a system where the only requirement to vote in anything is residency and security check. But, that system does not seem feasible here.
At least the activity requirement that we have for legislators actually makes sense. If we are going to separate legislator status and voting in elections then I would propose allowing people who pass a security check to vote in elections without being compelled to vote even when they do not care and allowing keeping the current requirements for legislators in place but making so you have to be a citizen first. So the only legislators would have requirements, not ordinary citizens.
Not true. Citizenship Act’s 3.2.a:
An otherwise active citizen can be granted leniency for failing to vote during an election at the discretion of the Citizenship Committee.
This is an incredibly destructive and dangerous attitude to have in a democracy. I would caution all citizens against ever thinking this way. The health of our democracy relies on your engagement and your vote. Don’t ever take it for granted.
I didn’t see that. However, I do not think a subjective committee vote is a sufficient safeguard.
I would argue that voting in the Assembly, and this discussion is contributing to the health of democracy. I am contributing to the health of the direct democracy in this region by voting in the Assembly but not the representative democracy, that is true. However, I think that direct democracy is more critical than representative democracy. PM abuses their powers? Yes, you can vote them out, but that wouldn’t fix the core problem; only the Assembly can fix that by changing the law.
So is engagement with executive government? Frankly, the idea you can be an informed legislator and oversee the Cabinet if you don’t care who’s in it is bizarre to me, but that’s also immaterial to this proposal because we can’t design our entire citizenship system around your bizarre approach to regional participation
You do realize you can abstain, right?
I’ll give some specific provision feedback here…
Why do we need this section? It doesn’t exist in the current Charter, and if we do need to have it, then it could be moved to another section. It just doesn’t feel right to have it in “Rights and Freedoms” since it doesn’t actually grant a right or a freedom…
What is a member of the executive, exactly? How are they different from a Minister?
(3) feels like a reduplication of (4) effectively. If one doesn’t have a WA nation in the region, then it would be difficult to maintain the endorsement requirement, no? Also, continuously for how long? I think the 6 months of citizenship + maintain citizenship + influence/endo requirements are sufficient.
I am concerned by these provisions, unless our intent is to move to a system where the CRS and CitCo can eject an existing citizen. Obviously, the CRS can do that by issuing a proscription, but then it has to meet specific requirements and can be overturned by the High Court, so there’s judicial review. This gives the CRS total authority to remove citizens which, well, we could have a debate about if we want to do that, but if so let’s have that debate.
I do think CRS should be able to prevent a citizen from becoming a citizen, and that CitCo should be able to reject an application for bad faith, but that’s different. Perhaps separating “become” and “remain” into two separate clauses…
As an aside, why remove the subject/noun in clause a from the current law? i.e. the current Legislator Committee Act says who does the determination of bad faith
Why remove the requirements in the current Legislator Committee Act for declaring their nation in the South Pacific? (Having that nation declared and kept a record of is important for administration/legislator checks.)
Can we add a clause requiring disclosure of any alternate citizenships/affiliations, current and historic?
Uh, do we declare people persona non grata?
This feels like a bit of overhead that will be hard for the CitCo to continuously keep track of/remember to do, and I don’t see it as hugely necessary.
How does one become ineligible? I guess by resignation, nation moving out, or CTE? Why “at least monthly”, why not just at CitCo discretion?
Why not keep the requirement that CitCo/LegComm act on applications in a certain timely manner?
Why keep this clause just for legislators but not citizens? To be honest, I think it’s silly for both, but I don’t see why there should be a difference between the two.
I think this is good intent (raising the bar) but in actuality it will often lower it, given the number of 2 vote months that we have. I could see saying “if we have 2 votes, you need to make 1; if we have 3+, then you need to do 2/3”
Nail on the head, and the minimum monthly requirement is to match our current requirement’s frequency. Leaving it up to CitCo means they could just not do it at all between elections and I’m absolutely opposed to not doing some sort of a check on citizens to make sure they meet the criteria needed to become citizens.
Fair enough, I’m fine with it as written
If no one has any further objections or comments, I’d like to motion this updated voter registration bill to vote. I’d also like to motion that any remaining time remaining for debate be waived (I don’t think there is any mandatory debate time remaining, anyway, but hey!).
I second this motion
Uh, no? I left a whole boatload of comments that weren’t responded to yet (which is fine, it’s been a day). I agreed with Henn about one of them. There’s not “no further comments”
It hasn’t even been a week since this was resubmitted. Surely there’s no such urgency that we need to vote on this so soon?
My apologies!! I mistook your comment that you were fine and ready to proceed.
And no, there isn’t an urgency to it, however, seeing as though the only major change from the previous proposal was dropping the WA requirement, and the previous debate thread was discussed for two months, I figured it was time to vote on the consensus that the proposal was fine, save the WA requirements.
Office of the Chair
I’m going to take Griff’s apologies as a revocation of the motion to vote, for the record.
Sorry if my delayed response caused any confusion! It’s been a busy few days in RL. But I’ve read through all of your helpful comments and should be able to type up responses / make edits tomorrow.
No worries. I’m not annoyed at your not responding immediately to a textwall, I was annoyed at the motioning to vote 
Take your time