Omnibus Bill

Great Council
36

@Pronoun To respond to your question on the forum, why not?
— ProfessorHenn, January 18, 2023

Sure, I’ll bite.

Why not overthink?

I’ll start with a warning: this post is going to run pretty long. 1,788 words long, to be precise. If you just want a summary, no hard feelings — I’ve provided one below. But if you have the time and interest to dive deeper, I’d encourage you to do so, regardless of whether that’s through my post or not. Personally, this proposal would introduce dramatic changes to our government, and I intend to give it the same depth of thought and consideration that I would give to any other proposal.

TL;DR:

  • There’s a fundamental trade-off between simplicity and structure. A minimal government shouldn’t cover our ‘needs’ (whatever that means) but should cover our based ‘wants’ (our interests).
  • Simpler laws don’t translate directly into simpler government. Often, the complexity is just shifted elsewhere.
  • Professionalism is more cultural than it is legislative, and we can’t bludgeon our way through our laws to fix it.
  • If we (or some of us) are expecting to establish regulations down the road anyway, we should just adopt them now.

Why not simplify our government?

Simple legislation leads to simple government. That makes for less bureaucracy and more flexibility, productivity, and accessibility. Pretty straightforward, right?

Oh, if only it were that simple.

Simplicity isn’t everything. If it was all we cared about, we could cut the Charter down to just a single, simple clause. Take a look:

Charter of the Coalition of the South Pacific

The Delegate of the South Pacific, as displayed in-game, wields ultimate authority over the region of the South Pacific.

Yes, this is a blatant strawman — nobody’s actually advocating for this kind of government. But the reasons why merit consideration.

At even the most basic level of our government, we inevitably trade simplicity for structure. All across NationStates, players gravitate towards some degree of structure within their regional communities. Those communities vary widely — democratic, autocratic, meritocratic, military-focused, roleplay-focused, and more — but all of them trade simplicity for structure. What makes that complexity worthwhile?

I could wax poetic about the virtues of democracy, but I think the deeper and more broadly applicable reason is interest. Players gravitate towards structures that accomodate and support their interests. For example:

  • If you’re interested in roleplay, you might want to introduce some structure in the form of rules or moderators for roleplaying.
  • If you’re interested in military gameplay, you might want to introduce some structure in the form of a command and control hierarchy.
  • If you’re interested in political gameplay, you might want to introduce some structure in the form of a legislature, executive, and judiciary.

Making a regional community more structured comes at the cost of greater complexity. It means that there are more rules, institutions, and roles to learn about because that’s how you create the structure in the first place. That’s not a bad thing! Here in the South Pacific, we found it worthwhile to introduce a democratic structure. It comes at the cost of greater complexity, but it’s worth it because we are interested in democratic political gameplay. Building a regional structure oriented around our interests makes sense. Our community is healthier when our members feel they can pursue their interests within the South Pacific.

This proposal showcases some of those interests. For example, consider the Security Council. Why do we need it? Why can’t security threats be monitored by any community member? Why can’t the Assembly set the endorsement cap through legislation? Why can’t the Prime Minister enforce it through their executive powers? The reason we have the Security Council is because it aligns with our interests; we are interested in protecting our community from hostile forces. We could simplify our laws by getting rid of the Security Council, but it wouldn’t be worth it.

I’m not trying to pick on the Security Council here — we can extend this line of reasoning to other aspects of our government as well. I mean, heck, what about the Assembly? Why do we need a law-making body? Why can’t we just trust the Prime Minister to write our laws? If we didn’t agree, couldn’t we just vote them out or take them to court? The reason we have the Assembly is because it aligns with our interests; we are interested in a democratic structure that gives residents a chance to shape their regional legislation. We could simplify our laws by getting rid of the Assembly, but it wouldn’t be worth it.

It’s unfortunate, then, that other interests are just glossed over in this proposal. There are a wide range of interests in NationStates — my interests include things like regional legislation, military gameplay, and roleplay, but there are many more things to be interested in. We should not and can not cover every possible interest, but we also should not cut interests out of our laws just for the sake of simplicity.

It’s unfortunate that the debate thus far has often brought up the necessity of legislation rather than the benefit of legislation. Some of our laws, I agree, create negative externalities that outweigh the benefits they provide. But others may not be ‘necessary’ (however you define that) but still benefit the region. Our laws should not be the bare minimum we need to hold our government together; they should encompass the legislation we want to shape our government and accommodate our interests. Some of those interests, clearly, have been preserved. Others, as far as I can tell, have simply been pushed off into the murky, undefined world of ‘flexibility.’

Why not make our government more flexible?

Where does complexity go when we cut it from our laws?

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t just magically disappear. The ugly truth is that when we simplify our laws, there are only so many ways to handle the complexity we cut out.

We could, of course, just get rid of it for good. Our laws don’t establish an official format for legal deadlines? Get rid of it. Our laws don’t establish official regional holidays? Forget about them. Our laws don’t establish a foreign ministry? Abolish it. Our laws don’t establish rules of legislative procedure? Don’t need them.

Clearly, there are some things we may want to keep around, in which case the complexity is simply passed to our government officials. If our laws don’t establish any responsibility for integrating new players, but the Prime Minister wants to, that’s their complexity to deal with. If our laws don’t establish any procedures for court cases, but the High Court wants to, that’s on their shoulders now.

Since it’s come up in the discussion, I’ll use legislative procedure in the Assembly as an example. In our current system, our legislative procedures are codified into law. If anybody — including the Chair — wants to read through the procedures of our Assembly, they can do so in our law archive. If the Chair doesn’t like those procedures, they, like any other legislator, can propose changes to the relevant laws.

By simplifying our laws, we’re just making Assembly procedures more complex. Now, the Assembly has to figure out the procedures they want to use from scratch. Do we want a presiding officer? Do we want multiple? Do we want to elect them? Do we want to choose them by lottery? What procedures should we follow? Should we require motions? Seconds? Thirds? Should we hold legislative sessions? Should we establish a quorum? Who sets these rules? How often are we going to change them? How many people should it take to change them?

Maybe when we’re done coming up with all these rules, we’ll want to write them down. Perhaps we could call it legislation!

Maybe we don’t want to bother with this headache again, so we decide to keep the rules the same as long as they work for us, and if anybody feels the rules aren’t working well anymore, they can propose a change. We can call those changes amendments!

By the way, our government is flexible, because the laws that shape it can be amended, repealed, and replaced. But it doesn’t help to just wave our hands broadly at our current laws, blame them for our current problems, and say we really only need the bare minimum. It doesn’t actually fix our governance problems, and it doesn’t fix our cultural problems either.

Why not discourage professionalism?

Professionalism can mean different things to different people, so to start out, let’s ask the New Oxford American Dictionary.

professionalism | prəˈfeSHənlˌiz(ə)m, prəˈfeSHnəˌliz(ə)m |
(noun)
the competence or skill expected of a professional: the key to quality and efficiency is professionalism.

Fundamentally, we should expect a level of professionalism from our government officials — not to the level of a real-life professional, but certainly a reasonable degree of competence and skill at playing the game. That’s why we elect or appoint them!

Perhaps, this isn’t the kind of professionalism we like to complain about; but for the most part, it’s the only kind of professionalism actually codified into law. There’s no law that says our government officials must format their forum posts nicely because someone else started doing it. There’s no law that says our ministers must have dozens of staffers because another ministry does. There’s no law that says you have to write hundreds of words in response to me just because I had too much free time for my own good this week!

Dramatically simplifying our laws doesn’t address this culture. There are problematic laws on this front, but it’s not all of them. And instead of lowering those barriers to entry, this proposal just piles more on the plates of our government officials.

Why not leave it for the future?

Forgive me for simplifying, but it feels like the response to many concerns raised so far has just been that we can figure out the details later as needed. If we’re already discussing that now, it sounds like some of us are interested in writing those laws — so why not write them now?

I don’t believe that this proposal is really the bare minimum we need, but even if so, that doesn’t make it the bare minimum we want. If there are things we want our government to do — if there are things we want to do as part of our government — then we ought to put that into legislation. That’s what legislation is for!

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Anything that is not mentioned in this post, I consider to be satisfactory (to me). If it is mentioned in this post, it does not mean I disagree with it but want to either see a word choice change or would like further debate/explanation on it.

The Charter:

First off is a simple word choice change: “The Assembly passes amendments” becomes “The Assembly may pass amendments”.

I would also be open to seeing “a minimum of three days” included in the debate/vote length rather than a set three days. Or, we could take the length requirements out and place them in a separate law.

I also am intrigued by potentially seeing a provision about “quorums” in the sense that an Assembly vote automatically fails if a majority of legislators fail to cast their votes. The failed vote would still count towards the number of total votes for the month for legislator status.

I don’t particularly like seeing RO spots listed in several spots within the charter. I would much rather see it mentioned once in the Delegate article along the lines of:
“A law to regulate the delegates granting, modification, and removal of regional officer powers will be established by law”

This section could be included in the Executive article to bring it in line with the Assembly, Court, Security Council, and Administration grants of authority to self-regulate.

While it is implied, it could be argued that an absence of a provision like the one above could mean that the Executive doesn’t have the power to self-regulate.

Did we mean to have the Delegate appoint the Court? Is this a joint appointment (like how the CRS is now)? Is there any justification for such a change?

I am not necessarily opposed to this change, but I just want to find out the rationale for it.

Do these sections provide the Court the ability to create its own version of the Judicial Act and/or Criminal Code, or will another section need to be included to grant the Assembly task of developing the aforementioned laws?

Similar to the Delegate appointing members of the Court, is there a reason why we allow the Security Council to appoint its own members under this proposal? Perhaps the Delegate should have the power to appoint members of the Security Council since they are tasked with “upholding regional security,” which would logically include some measure of control over the Security Council.

See my comment above regarding RO spots as it relates to the delegate article.

Very supportive of this provision. However, perhaps we could include a provision saying that the Assembly has a sort of Amnesty power granted to it? After all, a coup 10 years ago was in a much different environment and NS world than a coup from only a year ago. Allowing the Assembly to extend a second chance to those who they think are worthy might be worthwhile. Any thoughts?

This one is minor, only word choice. I think removing “must” would be beneficial since the section means the same thing when the word is removed anyway.

See my comment above regarding RO spots as it relates to the delegate article.

I somewhat agree with your decision to leave the SPSF out of the Charter, but I think it would be beneficial to at least include our military’s name, defender stance, who the commander-in-chief is, the general corps, or, at the very least, “the Assembly may establish a general law for all military matters”

I will eventually get around to giving comments on the proposed Voter Act and Transition Resolution, but I am tired of staring at the text on my screen for now :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thank you. I really appreciate the effort and willingness to work on specifics, and I see many good ideas here.

I wouldn’t be opposed to leaving voting and debate times out of the Charter, though I do think that, either way, voting shouldn’t take more than 3 days. People already vote mostly in the first 2 days, with very few others voting in the third day, so there really isn’t much of an upside to having longer voting times.

That is an interesting idea. I don’t know if it belongs in the Charter, but I think it’s something worth exploring in general.

Perhaps “The Delegate appoints regional officers and assigns them authorities as provided by law, but at least three regional officers must be members of the Security Council assigned border control authority.”?

I think this is reasonable.

I think this might be a leftover from a joke draft I wrote where there was no Prime Minister. I think that amending this to say that the Prime Minister nominates judges would be reasonable.

I think we should distinguish between laws passed by the Assembly regulations issued by an institution to facilitate the its functioning. Clearly the High Court cannot and should not be able to determine which crimes exist and how they are defined, since that is a critical task that is best left to the Assembly, but it certainly should be able to pass rules similar to the ones we already have (see the Standards for Case Management) that clarify how it conducts its business.

The Assembly is already described in the Charter as the “supreme legislative authority” of the region and given the power to “pass laws”, so I don’t see a need for the Assembly to be given a list of things on which it can legislate. I think we can safely assume that, while obviously there are exceptions (and that is why we have a Court), the Assembly has a general power to legislate on all things.

I’m hesitant to have provisions that allow an individual to be appointed without the support of the Security Council, given the need for collegiality, but we could have that discussion.

I don’t think that would be positive. You will notice that this provision doesn’t ban someone from registering as a voter or becoming a legislator, it bans people from being elected or appointed to higher office. I think it makes sense to keep from high office any individual to tried to coup the region.

I don’t think that belongs in the Charter. The Assembly can establish a military via law pursuant to its powers as the supreme legislative authority of the region.

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We actually applied the same need for activity in voting for elections and legislating in the Assembly, that is, you need to vote in every vote (sans LOA). See the Voting Act, Article 2, Section 5.

A fair point, and I’ll adjust it to follow suit. I wrote the RO slots clauses at the very end, before posting, so I was more concerned about matching up institutions in the Charter.

In light of the added clause for Assembly self-regulation, I have no problems with one for the Executive, but Article 2, Section 5 does state outright that the PM wields executive power, which I interpret as the implicit ability to self-regulate. Again, no problems about including another clause for it.

You could have a discussion about the Delegate appointing a Justice, since both roles are predominantly non-political, but I’ll change it to the PM. Either options works for me.

I’m interested by this idea, particularly the idea of some measure of control over the Security Council. Once upon a moon ago, the Vice Delegate was the legal head of the CSS, and they were an elected official. Maybe we can introduce something similar.

As much as I like the idea, the Assembly did grant amnesty to the coupers in 2016 and that’s not something I want to see happen again. If we had a system where all parts of our government are in unanimous agreement on granting amnesty to someone, and that’s a big if, I could see myself supporting that idea. Maybe others have different thoughts, though.

Kringle hit it on the head. As far as I’m concerned, the Court or the PM can establish the regulations necessary for their duties, unless the Assembly wishes to legislate a specific course of action, certain parts such as a criminal code notwithstanding.

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I’m sure it’s easier to debate specifics than it is to debate broader viewpoints, but I do think that it is important we do not neglect the bigger picture.

The Assembly is the supreme legislative authority of the region, and it can always establish anything it wants later. But where do we draw the line? There is nothing in this proposal, aside from the Assembly itself, that could not be established later through the legislative process. Why not leave it to the Assembly to establish the court? The security council? The executive?

I don’t want to get into petty arguments about whose job is more necessary or important because that misses the point. We’re not South Pacificans out of necessity; we’re here because we want to be. There are ways we want to play the game and things we want to do in our government. After all, what’s the point of establishing a regional government anyway if we don’t want to get involved in what it does?

Consider for a moment what our government currently does, what it would do under this proposal, and what you personally want to do.

Government Entity Current Laws Proposed Omnibus
Assembly
High Court
Security Council
Elections + Election Commissioner
Prime Minister
LegComm
Military
Integration
Culture
Foreign Affairs
Chair of the Assembly
Local Council
Coral Guard
OWL
Proscriptions

You might not be interested in all of these aspects of our current government, and that’s okay! If there are areas that few people want, and especially if others feel that those areas create negative externalities, then we can and should abolish them. But there is no good reason to just focus on a specific subset of what we want. We’re in a constitutional convention, and the whole point of a constitutional convention is to think about the government we want.

There is an important distinction between not personally wanting to participate in a particular area of government, and not wanting others to participate in that area of government either. As we consider our own interests, it’s also important to consider the interests of others in our community. I do not believe there are that many areas of our government that are harming our community by being codified into law, and I do not believe that appealing to some interests but not others out of ‘necessity’ is conducive to the health and activity of our community.

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I am not going to stand here and let you paint the image that I am somehow seeking the prevent others from participating in the areas of their interest.

You are correct that this is a constitutional convention, and as such I have every right to draft and propose the laws that I want according to my view of what is best for the region and what is most fun for myself. There are nearly two dozen other participants, yourself included, who can also draft their own laws according to what they think is best for the region.

I respect that not everyone has the time or the inclination to draft laws, but that does not mean that my own drafts must be adjusted to fit others’ needs to the point that they lose their essence. There is compromise, and then there is being treated as if I was the official drafter of this convention. I am not.

If you think there are laws missing in this proposed omnibus, then propose them. If there is grounds for collaboration then I am most happy to collaborate, but I will not have my motives questioned, nor this work treated as if I owed the Great Council a product that all find agreeable, when I owe them nothing beyond my own good faith participation, which I have given in droves.

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I’m not introducing a bill I don’t personally agree with.

After a single candidate for Prime Minister, a single candidate for Minister of Culture, three candidates for Minister of Foreign Affairs, and two candidates for Minister of Engagement, with no candidates for Minister of Defense, as well as two OWL Directors that have both resigned, I believe it’s safe to say that there’s a very small number of people that want to get involved in our government we’ve established.

I agree. Kringle and I did. This is our idea. If you have different ideas, nobody is stopping you from bringing them up.

Where are we restricting the ability of others to participate?

Who are you considering “others”? Great Council participants who haven’t posted in this thread? Legislators that aren’t Great Council participants (but can still post in this subforum)?

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It’s better this way. I will admit, I was slightly skeptical in the beginning, but now I see. I have, in fact, come around. I understand the concern about proscriptions but I always thought those were stupid. If someone wants to come to our region, let them, and if anyone cares enough we can charge them with treason to get them out.

My only concerns with this resolution are the question of the Chair of the Assembly and the lack of a criminal code. I know the point is to get rid of defining the Chair, but I would appreciate some kind of code specifying who will open votes or whatever. I’m sure we could just have the EC do this, but it would be nice to have a different person in charge of that.

Also, it seems there is no criminal code. This is probably an issue. We could just carry over the old once since we don’t really have anything to add. Not a big issue, just something I was thinking about.

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Kris, I’m not sure why you feel I was attacking your personal motives, but I can assure you that was not my intention. It feels to me (do correct me if I’m wrong here) like some of my arguments in my previous post were interpreted as ad hominem attacks, and I do apologize for that. I do not feel that anybody here is participating in bad faith, and my arguments were not directed toward any particular participant(s) — my use of a second-person point of view at times was nothing more than a rhetorical choice.

I’m not suggesting that you are seeking to prevent anybody from participating in anything. I am suggesting that this proposal will have the effect of deterring participation in areas not referenced in legislation.

I have every right to debate and criticize the laws that I want according to my view of what is best for the region and what is most fun for myself.

I’m honestly not sure how I gave you this impression, but if it helps clarify: for as long as I disagree with a proposal and I find it fun to debate against it, I will. That does not mean you must be the “official drafter of this convention.” You do not have to respond to me. You do not have to compromise. You do not have to win my support.

I’m not supporting a bill I don’t personally agree with.

I don’t disagree with your diagnosis per se — I disagree with the treatment you’re proposing. I believe that we will not find it any easier to convince players to participate by just appealing to fewer interests.

I know! That’s what I’ve been doing in this topic, for instance…?

I don’t know if restriction is the right terminology here. My argument is more that, by codifying some avenues of participation that some of us are interested in, but not codifying other avenues of participation that others are interested in, we discourage participation in those areas.

Under this proposal, if I’m interested in becoming a judge, I’d know the process: I need to be appointed by the Prime Minister and appointed by the Assembly. Once on the Court, I’d be responsible for “the interpretation, reconciliation, and voiding of laws and regulations, and the conduction of criminal proceedings, from indictment to sentencing.”

Meanwhile, if I’m interested in military gameplay, I wouldn’t feel as encouraged to participate. Presumably, I’d first need to join the Assembly and then propose the creation of a regional military. And if the Assembly doesn’t want to process military enlistments, I’d then have to go sign up with whoever’s in charge of that.

Who are the “others” we’d like to see in our community? If we want to get more players interested in something, the way to do that isn’t by saying “our laws don’t mention that at all, so figure it out yourself.” Is that flexible? Sure. Is it simple? I’m not so sure. Is it appealing? I would say no. We can word it in a nicer way, but it doesn’t change our bottom line.

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To that end, the Voting Act does provide for a security check process. I’m not in support of wildly accusing people of treason without merit.

The Assembly can provide for its own organization, via both the clause I’ve updated earlier and its inherent power to legislate. Plus, our existing system says that any legislator can open a vote if the Chair doesn’t.

In the absence of a solid replacement draft, I’m alright with that.

Then I’d ask you to propose your own draft or drafts of legislation.

These ideas are not legislation. That was my original intent with that statement, that one’s on me for not clarifying, but nonetheless.

Why would you need to legislate the existence of the military as your first step? I would imagine that the PM (who would be in charge of the military in this draft and in the first Charter the Great Council passed) elected immediately after the adoption of this omnibus would keep the SPSF as an institution, to their detriment at the voting booth otherwise.

This is our largest disagreement and where I doubt we’ll find common ground no matter how long we’re here. To me, there is something appealing about having that blank slate, and working to fill it out.

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Frankly, all of this is moot. We do not have the capacity and community interest to maintain all these things and haven’t for well over a year.

And there wasn’t much interest to discuss any of what you’re saying over the past however-many months the Great Council has existed! I think this spurt of rhetoric would be great, if it was actually backed up with a vision and drive to turn it into something concrete. But I think the most likely outcome of not adopting this resolution is that nobody (including you! and me!) actually does anything else anyways.

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I’m not advocating for maintaining all these things — I just don’t feel the subset included in this proposal is the most accurate picture of what the capacity and interest currently exists for.

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So it’s whataboutism?

You’re arguing with passion against, but don’t have an alternative or a plan to present one, just the argument that an alternative must exist.

On a side note, it’s weird and wrong to talk about things like roleplay when considering governance. Roleplay has nothing and should never have anything to do with our government, the Charter, laws, etc.

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Help me understand — how would this proposal, if adopted, spur you to do the things you aren’t doing right now?

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It won’t and that’s not the reason I’d vote for it. Would it be the catalyst for others to kick things into gear? Maybe, and in my opinion that’s enough reason to support it. I think the 10% of legislators who historically actually participate in the Assembly are probably using the fallback of our existing laws as a crutch.

TSP has always been most active legislatively when something actually needs to be done. So it makes sense to me that maybe the best way to promote future Assembly activity is to allow the Assembly to legislate when it’s needed. Wait for a situation to arise where we need a law, then we can write a law. If the GC isn’t leading to the kind of highly engaged convention I originally hoped for, then this is a good alternative as far as I’m concerned.

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Okay, I feel like it merits clarifying my position/thoughts on this since I think the introduction of this Omnibus has been produced by some degree of interpersonal animosity and then has further amplified and exacerbated that same animosity. To me, it feels like the assumption of good faith engagement is gone, which is unfortunate, and I’m going to make an effort to return to it despite my own misgivings.

I’m OK to include a “barebones” version of the Charter with some additional content. I don’t see an inherent value of pushing all further debate/discussion on other bills to the post-Great Council Assembly when we have drafts and debate ongoing. We’ve had over 120 posts back and forth about the Defense Act, almost 80 about Regional Security, and almost 40 about voter registration/citizenship procedure. While things aren’t moving fast, I think it’s a misconception that we have no debate or engagement, or that we won’t get something out of these discussions.

We can use the drafts in this Omnibus as the start for that. I’ll offer more specific feedback on those drafts later in this post. What I want to make clear from the start, however, is that I’m strongly opposed to this Omnibus becoming the be-all-end-all of our laws coming out of the Great Council. That would leave us without a military, a procedure for determining our WA vote, options for dealing with infiltration or subversion, an outline of relevant criminal acts or court procedure, and more. I do think that would be a mistake that leaves us scrambling later to create infrastructure that we’re perfectly capable of creating now. Yes, those threads have stagnated for a few weeks and I take responsibility for allowing bills I think are important to stagnate. That isn’t a reason for the Great Council as a collective to abandon the project of drafting individual bills, even if a specific Great Council member is tired of engaging with those conversations. If the purpose of this Omnibus was to light a fire under people’s butts to push those bills forward and finish debating them, then it likely will work.

Now my thoughts on specific provisions of this Omnibus.

I know this was discussed with Griffindor above, but

I think this is a security issue. By mechanics, the legitimately elected Delegate is also the greatest threat to regional security at any given moment. If you give them structuring appointment power over the body tasked with countering a coup, you give them a chance to appoint lackies or appoint no-one at all, allowing SC membership to stagnate. Sure, Assembly approval is a check, but the Delegate can set the narrative or avoid appointment altogether using this power. I think the current system of apply-and-SC-appoint works fine.

I think it is important to outline that something necessary for regional security is that trusted members of the region are identified and hold high endorsements and influence. I’m open to the Security Council either doing this themselves or identifying a future Coral Guard-like entity to do this, but imo it has to be defined as a responsibility otherwise we risk it not actually happening (or not being able to say that it needs to happen).

I’m concerned about giving this authority to the Security Council without also doing something about the activity issues of the Security Council. From my perception, Kris, Glen, and sometimes Jay are the only active members of the Council, and really only Kris is active on the level of being able to process daily legislator applications and Glen and Jay are the ones “tuned in” to potential security issues. I don’t necessarily hate the system which puts all the security related powers in one set of hands, for simplicity sake, but I am concerned about the system which puts all security-related powers in the hands of a body that, when criticized in the past, is honest about its persistent activity issues and the fact it isn’t generally following interregional politics, and thus potential infiltration threats.

I think this needs to be a little more fleshed out. How long is the second round of Delegate voting?

I just wanted to highlight that I like the 3 month terms.

I am concerned this proposal gives the Delegate too much power by giving them appointment over the head of government. In my mind, the role should be as apolitical as possible. I think a better solution would be to that if a PM needs to be elected with less than half the term remaining, the PM election that results supplants the next scheduled PM election, and the elected PM serves a longer term.

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To address one of the problems identified in the above post in the most direct and simple way possible, I suggest the following amendment:

This draft adds clause (4) which puts WA voting in the domain of the Prime Minister.

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This is changed from “the SC will appoint its own members, subject to approval”, but I will adjust it. Stay tuned for possible wording shifts as necessary.

One could probably successfully argue the point that “oversight of regional security” includes creating a body of trusted high endorsement nations, but I do see the point in specifically defining it.

Our reasoning for this was that this body is LegComm’s successor, and moving its authority over to the Security Council (as well as defining it in the event that we don’t have enough ‘LegComm’ members to handle, the SC can just step in and handle some of that workload too. I don’t have an answer with regards to the activity issues of the Security Council. The few ideas I have are likely not particularly great ideas, but I hope we could have a broader discussion about this outside of this specific charter, as well, since one intent is to avoid having to make Charter amendments where feasible in the future.

I will edit it to read “first round of three days . . . second round of three days”. I agree it is a little unclear, at the moment, but by default the voting period in elections is three days, as defined in the act.

:+1:

I agree with this, and will adjust accordingly.

I am not opposed to it either, and indeed that was part of my motivation in trying to write a barebones charter, so that additional acts (whether adopted in the Great Council or later by the Assembly) have a greater degree of freedom with which to address issues. To that end. . .

Based on the votes about a PM-led and General Corps-led SPSF, this might not be a winning ticket item, but I firmly believe the military has no part in working independent of the executive, in that the PM should be able to define the structure of the military, much as they can define the structures of the other ministries as they feel. This draft was written in such a way that the PM had total control over the military, much like other aspects of the executive, unless the Assembly wanted to define it more in a subsequent law. I’m not opposed to adopting such an act, but I cannot supporting detaching it nearly entirely from executive control.

I will add your recommendation, although I will admit that determining the WA vote was not a big priority, and something I figured the Delegate would defer to the PM for anyways on.

This would be left up to the Security Council to handle, as these issues are under the purview of regional security, but, we can include a small act concerning proscriptions.

Court procedure would fall under the Court’s ability to provide its own regulations, unless the Assembly legislates otherwise, but criminal acts is a valid criticism.

Wrapping up, I am curious what your thoughts are concerning the KWB omnibus.

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Have asked the CRS → SC if they want the additional undertaking of day-to-day tasks. I would wager that the majority do not enjoy the idea of doing the added job.

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To be fair, that’s why there is a provision where they can nominate people to assist in those functions. The point of having the Security Council be ultimately responsible is not to give them the day-to-day duties, but to:

  1. Ensure that they can step in in case someone who could endanger the region is trying to join and is somehow at risk of being admitted.
  2. Ensure that there is a temporary fallback in case this LegComm successor is unexpectedly busy and applications are piling up.