Senate Protest and Analysis Thread

[Associate Justice PiT]

I'd be willing to accept something like 2 weeks, but even that I'm kind of uncomfortable with.

     It's actually two weeks (or perhaps 15 days, I'm not sure which one) currently.

[Associate Justice PiT]

The Strategic Registration Amendment

1. Article V, Section 2, Clause 7 is hereby amended to read: "Persons may only change their State of registration once every 180 days."

I strongly support this legislation.

     Yes, I urge all Senators to vote in favor of this amendment. Perhaps an exception should be included for moves in real life.

[Associate Justice PiT]

The Strategic Registration Amendment

1. Article V, Section 2, Clause 7 is hereby amended to read: "Persons may only change their State of registration once every 180 days."

I strongly support this legislation.

     Yes, I urge all Senators to vote in favor of this amendment. Perhaps an exception should be included for moves in real life.

Is that really enforceable though? Unless you mean by matching IP addresses to locations.

    Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I'm happy with a harsh limit. However I think we could insert an amendment that allows the SoFA to exercise discretion to allow a switch before then if the voter has a legitimate reason in order to do so. There may be an appeal for someone to fill an office, but there is a lack of candidates in that region so someone moves at the Governors request for example. That has happened in the past.

     Perhaps the Governor could file a formal request for a candidate with the SoFA. Then the SoFA would be required to approve the first three or so non-officeholders who offer to move there. It could use some tweaking, but such a system should be set up so as to not allow partisan abuse on the part of an unscrupulous SoFA.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Tickets are nice because of the possibility for odd unity tickets, like Keystone Phil/Ebowed. There'd be little impetus to do anything other than support your own party for both President & Vice-President if they were elected separately.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I didn't mean that they be given any more power than the regional Senate seats already afford. However, when the regional Senate seats are replaced by a body that cannot propose or vote on bills, but merely veto them, why should we be happy?

     As I made a point of saying once, people think that the Atlasian right is just about saying nay to this, saying nay to that, so on & so forth. When we have to fight tooth & nail to make people realize we actually have proposals for new policies, doesn't it make sense that we don't want our position to be reduced to making it easier to say nay?

[Associate Justice PiT]

I'm willing to accept the ability of the CoG to amend legislation and send it back to the Senate. I'm uncomfortable with them introducing legislation, however. If they want something introduced it's really easy to find a willing Senator to introduce it for them.

If they do get the power to introduce legislation, they should only have the power to introduce certain types of legislation, otherwise things could get quite hectic.

     That definitely sounds like an interesting proposal. Giving them the ability to modify bills as well as vote them down is a much better deal than just letting them vote it down.

     It might be anathema to certain people, but I think that if this proposal is passed amendments should be required to pass the Council of Governors as well as the Senate. It might be acceptable to me to require a mere majority rather than a supermajority, though.

[Associate Justice PiT]

As the person who first came up with the idea, I hope I can get a word in here lengthwise.

I believe I brought up an idea similar to that of Vepres, in that the regions can choose how their representatives are chosen and the length of their terms. It doesn't really matter to me whether they can introduce legislation; it isn't as though the queue is filled to bursting.

When a bill is sent by the Senate to the Council, the Council would have three options. The first would be to approve it, in which case it would be sent to the President. The second would be to reject it, in which case it would be sent to the Senate, which would need a two-thirds majority to send it to the President. The third would be to approve it with modifications, in which case the Senate would take a vote on whether to send it to the President in its original form, which would require a two-thirds majority. If this failed, the Senate could send the edited bill to the President with a simple majority. If the Council were to take none of the described actions within seven days, this would be considered approval.

Just some thoughts.

The only question is what if the President vetoes it? Or line-item vetoes it? Can get confusing at that point and those scenarios would need to be hashed out in the Constitution.

A veto would be handled in the same way it's handled today.

And a line-item veto? Say the CoG amends something and the Senate sends it to the President because it can't overturn it by two-thirds but still wants some sort of bill. Then the President amends it back and sends it back to the Senate for their approval. Kinda cutting the CoG out there.

     Maybe after the Senate votes to approve the edited version, it should be sent back to the CoG, with the option of then sending it back to the President or vetoing it.

[Associate Justice PiT]

On the other hand, I do respect that you are sticking up for your principles regardless of its chance at success/popularity. That is commendable, and something the ARC likes to see from Senators.

Appreciated

It does seem, though, that the ARC might even be sympathetic to my proposal here. After all, regardless of whether you believe a fetus constitutes human life, the issue here is capital punishment.

Considering the primary goal of the ARC is to reduce the power of the state and fight for freedom from the state, couldn't it be possible that the party comes to realize that capital punishment, a state monopoly on murder, is unacceptable?

Just a thought!

     While I am not a member of the ARC, I will point out that murder is murder. It is my firm belief that a crime being committed by the state is never justified any more than a crime being committed by an individual actor is.

[Associate Justice PiT]

The Trolls Can't Vote Act.

Any person banned from posting on the forum by the moderators or Dave Leip is prohibited from voting, being listed on a candidate on a ballot in any election, or serving in any Atlasian office during the term of said banning. Any write-in votes cast for a banned individual are not to be counted.

I see one problem with this....you need to find a way around the use of "person". From my perspective at the DoFA, any new voter with a different forum name is a new person, even if that's not a sensible position in practice.

     It also happens to be the position that has been assumed by the Supreme Court of Atlasia, though that has always been one of the Court's more controversial rulings.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Legalizing cocaine? For real?

Yes.

For what actual reason?

     Because it's none of the government's business if somebody wants to use cocaine.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Isn't capital punishment already outlawed on the federal level, making this amendment largely pointless?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     For what it's worth, the argument of wanting to avoid the list continually shrinking seems quite weak. As far as I can see, there's no meaningful difference between having someone on the list who has left the forum & not having that person on there.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     For what it's worth, the argument of wanting to avoid the list continually shrinking seems quite weak. As far as I can see, there's no meaningful difference between having someone on the list who has left the forum & not having that person on there.

It affects the size of the Northeast Assembly and the GM population and budget numbers. Not sure if that is a strong enough reason, but those are reasons.

     The Northeast Assembly issue is actually a good reason to repeal it. The bloated registration numbers mean that the Northeast gets more Representatives, which reduces the competitiveness of the elections since it is harder to recruit more candidates than there are seats so there can be a contested election.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Looks like nothing I propose is ever going to have any support. So what's the point of my service here?

you've been proposing plenty of legislation, so please don't be upset if a couple bills don't go anywhere.  you are still one of the more active and hence influential Senators in the debates.

     Indeed. When I was Senator, I suspect that a majority of the bills I proposed were defeated in the Senate, some by large margins. Setbacks are inevitable, especially when you aren't exactly "middle-of-the-road".

[Associate Justice PiT]

Why not just ask a Senator?

     This has come up before & that has always been my reservation. It is also the reason that, even though I am empowered by the IDS Constitution to introduce bills for consideration by our Legislature, I never do so. If you cannot find a member of the actual body who is willing to introduce the bill for you, then it obviously won't succeed. If you cannot find a member who is active enough to be corralled into introducing it, then the Senate has far more serious issues than people having to wait an extra day or so for a bill to hit the queue.