[2501.AB] Re-Approval Votes

Ugh, I think that’s ugly but know I should probably prefer form over function here. I’m not sure your I would read your proposal this way though. If the Assembly doesn’t hold a re-approval vote, one could certainly reasonably argue that the Assembly has ‘fail[ed] to re-approve the officer’ by failing to hold a vote at all. (Yes, the law says when the vote should happen, but to say that if nobody actually holds it, that we can just assume it would pass, seems… a bit far-fetched?)

The issue seems more related to the double negative than to what framing we adopt. As worded, we aren’t saying officers remain in office until the Assembly votes them down, we’re saying they remain in office until the Assembly doesn’t vote them up. I think you could just as easily phrase it as a term that expires at the conclusion of the next term renewal vote, unless renewed (and then require annual votes as you already have drafted).

A very fair point. Let me tinker with the language a bit.

Edit: revisions made. Thoughts? I also added some language in the Legislative Procedure Act to specify the vote thresholds and place an express onus on the Chair or their designee to bring forward required re-approval votes.

I worry that this would become unmanageable for the Chair, with how many different dates there would be to track. Would a single date for all positions, or for each position (as in, one for all justices for instance) not make things easier to handle?

Yes, I agree that is a concern. My countervailing concern with using a single date was that it could mean an officer could be subject to a re-approval vote almost immediately upon taking office. So say the re-approvals take place on March 15 annually (the Ides of March–seems fitting), and the official was confirmed on March 10. Must they really face a re-approval vote 5 days later? But I believe I may have a solution to that issue. Let me tinker with the language once again.

Edit: change made. Now the section applies only to officials who have held their appointed position for longer than six months. So the shortest possible period of time between initial confirmation and facing a first re-approval vote would be six months (if the officer were initially confirmed on September 14). That seems like a reasonable range of variance for the increased administrability of a single date for all votes. Thoughts?

My response to that would be that the law should require the vote to happen no earlier than a certain time after initial appointment, say 6 months. That way we protect officials from unreasonably prompt approval votes.

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Agreed. That is what my most recent edit attempted to accomplish. Let me know if the new version is along the lines of what you had in mind.

I like it but I do have a few suggestions per above.

I agree with all of your amendments (and have edited the proposal accordingly), except that I would prefer “which shall commence on” to “held on.” I agree that “held on” is a more concise, less cumbersome way of putting the point. And that’s actually how I initially drafted the section in my head. But it seems somewhat inconsistent with how our Assembly actually conducts votes. If you say that a vote is to be “held on” a particular date, that suggests to me that it commences and concludes on that date. But that’s not what will take place in this instance–our votes require a multi-day process as set out in the Legislative Procedure Act. The “commenced on” language was designed to indicate that the Chair is to launch that process on March 15, not that the entire vote must be completed on that day.

That’s a fair point, I agree with it.

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I like the bill, but I will say that “re-approvals” sounds terrible, in my opinion. The more “correct” term would be a retention vote.

Sigh. I wish I disagreed with you so that I wouldn’t have to go back and change every instance of “re-approval” to “retention.” But I agree that would sound better. Give me a second to make the changes.

Just decided to create a new post, so that everyone could view the current proposal without all of the other discussion in my previous post.

Is the plan to immediately move into reconfirmation votes on March 15th? Or would debate take place/begin on that day?

Would it be one mega thread for all appointees, or individual threads?

Those are administrative decisions for the Assembly and the Chair, but I don’t think the Charter needs to micromanage to that extent. What the bill does say is the retention vote must commence on the 15th. It’s not even a matter of motioning it on that day, the vote would necessarily commence then by direction of the Charter.

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