Hello all, of the othe proposals introduced to the Assembly stemming from the recent recall, this is also a prudent measure.
The purpose of this should be obvious. This merely seeks to prevent the importation of legislators into the Assembly when a vote is to occur and says that a legislator should have, at least on paper, had the time to read through and contribute to the debate before casting a vote as a newly admitted legislator. Coupled with the proposed clarification/amendment of the criminal code to clarify what āelectoral/voterā fraud is, this closes any such Assembly loophole that may open as a result of that amendment.
It has been a while since I presented an amendment to the assembly, so please feel free to suggest wording or formatting changes if needed.
But I think that voting eligibility ought to be in the Legislative Procedure Act, rather. I have also simplified the language used and made it more consistent with the similar provision in the Elections Act.
Assuming you mean a legislator must have held legislator status for a continuous period equal to [at least the minimum required discussion period of that proposal immediately preceding the opening of its vote.], so they must have held legislatorship generally for 3/5 days before they can vote:
I think that while on paper this section may look good, itās fails to do anything effective in practice.
The aim of this, as you stated, is to ensure a legislator has āhad the time to read through and contribute to the debate before casting a vote.ā It does not take three/five days to read through a discussion topic. You can read through a topic in one sitting. The only thing this serves to do is restrict the ability of a new legislator to participate, without any meaningful effect. Delaying someoneās ability to vote isnāt going to significantly increase their likelihood to have read the discussion.
This would also be needlessly complicated to enforce. When already considering for the ācannot vote on proposals at vote when admitted,ā this part does not prevent anyone from ultimately voting. The worst it can do is delay someoneās vote, assuming a legislator follows it.
New legislators would be unlikely to know of this, and will likely cast their vote anyways. Since their invalid vote will become valid at some point during the vote, how will that be handled? Does the vote get invalidated? If it then becomes valid once they reach the time, despite being invalid when cast then the section does nothing. If they cast their vote, and recognized that it would be invalid, how would they recast it so it could be recognized as valid? If no one saw when they cast their vote, how do you know it was cast validly or invalidly? I think a few of these questions could be solved with the discourse API, but thatās far more technical knowledge than should be required to serve as chair, and far more hassle than itās worth. The requirement of being a legislator before voting starts is enough to give someone ample time required to read the discussion, and doesnāt cause any major logistical difficulties in enforcement.
Assuming you mean a legislator must have held legislator status for a continuous period equal to [at least the minimum required discussion period of that proposal] immediately preceding the opening of its vote, so they must have held legislatorship for the 3/5 days before the vote started:
I still do not think this is appropriate. The only thing it does is unfairly restrict new legislators from participating.
You do not need to have been present for the whole debate to participate in and understand the totality of everything that has been said. I think itās incredibly unfair to deny someone participation in a vote just because they were not there for the full duration of something any other legislator could ignore until the last day and still be able to effectively participate if they desired.
This also creates the incentive of delaying the vote in order to be able to actually vote in it, which is not an incentive that we should create. It creates a very political situation for the Chair, where if they choose to delay voting or not, potentially has an effect on the outcome.
So, Iām a little curious about this intuition. I get the feeling of thinking you know your audience only for it to change mid-debate (I know Iāve felt that before with some of my less popular proposals[1]), but I struggled a bit when trying to think through the difference compared to elections.
Letās say elections are coming up and I want to run a get-out-the-vote effort by encouraging members to become citizens. Intentionally or not, this probably nets me more name recognition and an implicit sense of authority among the citizens I reach, and Iām probably most likely to reach the members who run in similar circles to me. In a sense, then, I am importing citizens into the citizenry when an election is about to occur. But I think the popular sentiment would be āmore citizens is goodā and not āvoter importation is bad.ā
In a different hypothetical, letās say Iāve been working on an Assembly proposal and I want to run a get-out-the-vote effort by encouraging members to become legislators. Intentionally or not, this probably nets me more name recognition and an implicit sense of authority among the legislators I reach, and Iām probably most likely to reach the members who run in similar circles to me. In a sense, then, I am importing legislators into the Assembly when a vote is about to occur. And I think the popular sentiment would be ālegislator importation is badā and not āmore legislators is good.ā
The thing is, to an extent, I share this intuition too! But I struggled to reason through it myself. I thought it might have to do with whether the timing of the vote is known beforehand, but the Assembly has retention votes and chair selection too. So Iām not really sure what gives. Maybe someone who feels this intuition more strongly than I do can explain it better
I think the Assembly category is public and you donāt even need to be a legislator to participate (just to vote). I guess we can restrict it further if weāre concerned about, like, importation of public comment or something, but personally I think thatās not really the same thing.
Iām fine with restricting legislators from participating in votes that are ongoing when they gain legislator status. But I am very skeptical of the enforced debate āwaiting periodā before a legislator can vote.
In addition to all the concerns that Utopia raised, I can imagine good reasons why active citizens would not have applied for legislator status but would for the purposes of participating in a discussion / vote. For example, letās say a new citizen joins TSP during a period of low activity in the Assembly (like we experienced until quite recently). They might not have much idea of what the Assembly does, why they should join, or how they could contribute. But then a major bill, policy discussion, appointment, etc. is raised, and this new citizen sees it and gets interested. I canāt think of a good reason to restrict their ability to vote on that proposal just because the Chair doesnāt act on their application in time for them to be a legislator for the full debate period.
I support the general sentiment of both Utopia and Welly. I donāt really have any issues with not allowing one to vote on something if they enter the assumble mid-vote (though I think the easier and cleaner way to do this would be for the Chair to simply not admit people into the Assembly while there is a vote on). But given the context that:
Most proposals are motioned to vote as soon as the minimum discussion time lapses, and
Most debates happen in public areas,
What this proposal does is unecessarily punish someone who sees a public discussion, then wishes to join the Assembly because they care about a particular issue. It makes it so that once a discussion has started, in most cases, no new voices can effect it.
This honestly feels like a knee-jerk reaction to recent events rather than something that fixes any actual problems.
Iām against this. Itās a knee-jerk reaction to recent events and itās a solution in search of a problem.
Citizen importation is an issueāitās a way for foreign powers to stack votes in their favor. Legislator importation is a non-issueāthe Legislators are already citizens and South Pacificans at that point. If they want to become involved in the Assembly, there is no reason to restrict their ability to do so.
Sure, the downside might be minimal, but thereās some cost in terms of administrative overhead for the Chair that makes me go from neutral to no.
