SB 28-23: Increasing Requirements Act (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I motion to assume sponsorship.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

24 hours for objections.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This bill is obviously designed to curtail offsite recruitment and work to try and on site players of the game a little bit before they join. My objective here is to ensure that we strike the best balance possible between curtailing offsite, while at the same ensuring that we aren't going back to the over restrictive days 2010. I am generally supportive of the combination here, but I do have two concerns that I would like to try and address during the course of the debate.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I realize you will be leaving soon Scott, but I just noticed the House vote isn't hyperlinked.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The two biggest concerns that I have pertain to the last minute additions via amendment of the 40 and 30 days. If the 30 day requirement is to be done, I think that should be applied to registration not to the actual voting itself. While this might have been done to mirror regional efforts, it is important to remember regions cannot restrict registration only eligibility. Therefore since we have the ability to be more discerning, we should place it there. The main reason I think this should be the case is that doing it the other creates a pool of people who have joined, but delays their first vote and this can have a crippling effect on long term involvement.

I did not see much discussion on the reasons for placement of the 30 day requirement on the voting eligibility as opposed to registration after the amendment was made in the house. Perhaps it was early in the thread and I missed it, but I would like to here some feedback from YE and from Windjammer since the administration was referenced in this regards (I have PMed both to expedite their responses).

I will refrain from seeking alterations until I hear the reasoning behind this placement.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'm personally opposed to increase the voting requirements. The bigger the voting base is, the better it is.

Says the guy who just declined the redraft pen.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think we need to contain the offsite recruitment situation, so that it doesn't get out of hand on both sides and result in an inflated game population that is very difficult for us to play with.

Look know one has suffered more than me from game inflation, when it comes to the devastating realization that communicating with 80 people effectively and trying to keep them motivated is so much more daunting compared to the days when Dereich and I could split 40 people between us and send out prepared PMs in two groups of ten.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am in favor of the posting requirement, but opposed to the time requirement in general. 40 posts is enough to demonstrate a genuine interest in the forum itself, and the long time requirement only serves as a hard barrier that keeps even potentially active players out of the game if they are too new to the site.

I want to thank the President for stating where he stands in the debate. It certainly helps to frame such when the administration position is outwardly stated and stated right in the debate thread.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I asked YE to post in here and he said he would but it might end up being tomorrow (Saturday) at this point.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I will be offering an amendment when I get home.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

^that case had to do with a regional law so that statement by IKV seems poorly worded unless I’m missing something.

It's not unheard of for courts to rule beyond the confines of the present case in a ruling.

I will review the text of the ruling before offering my amendment.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Assuming I am reading the ruling right we have two options here. We can split this off into two separate texts contained in the same resolution one being a law the other being a proposed amendment an upon passage the Vice President would split the text as the directions in the text indicate with the appropriate portion going to Sestak and the other portion to the regions. I have done this before, it just requires proper structure and formatting for it to work. To not run afoul of the constitution the passage threshold would necessarily have to be that of the highest requirement for any portion therein (2/3rds).

The other option would be to just remove the account age from this text and proceed with that completely standalone as a proposed amendment.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Well clearly the President has endorsed option two.

I will sponsor it for the administration and give 24 hours to object.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The amendment is adopted.

I have one more amendment I would like to offer, but I am late for work now.

uh...bump? Amendment has passed and I hope the Senate can do a final vote soon.

I was building a computer yesterday and ran into problems. I expect this to be at vote and maybe even passed by the weekend.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Increasing Requirements Act

1. Section 3, Part 8, of the Census Act of 2019 is amended as follows:

Section 3. Registration
8.In order to be eligible to register, a poster’s Atlas Forum account must have been registered for at least one hundred and sixty-eight hours and must have accumulated at least forty thirty posts.

2. Nothing in the above change shall be construed as permitting the census administrator to remove the registrations of any voter who has already been registered due to not meeting these requirements.

3. Upon passage of this amendment, a new page entitled "Census Act" shall be created on the wiki. It shall contain the most up to date text, with amendments, of the Census Act as active in law. The page for "Census Act of 2019" shall continue to contain the original text. Both pages shall contain disclaimers at the top of the page explaining this and linking to the other page.

[/quote]

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I really don't feel comfortable with anything outside of the 25-30 range be it on the low side or the high side at this point. I get YE's point about it being 40 being less than the 50 in 2010, but considering how 50 did turn out, I would worry that 40 is still too high.

I might be wrong about this, but I seem to recall 25 being the requirement for a number of years.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Senators have 24 hours to object to the sponsor originated amendment.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It won't pass the House with such a weak threshold. Pericles is right.

Will it pass the house with it?

This is literally your Speaker, that you elected:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=244860.msg7991064#msg7991064

30 is much more reasonable. 40 is absurdly high. I'd rather go with 25 but 30 is acceptable.

If the house fails the Senate version with Sestak's amendment, the original version with the constitutionally questionable provision (opposed by the administration) gets sent back to us for an up or down vote.

MB has vowed to vote down 40 but is open to 30.

I am trying to get this bill to Sestak with his amendment in the text and it would really help if you guys in the house could get on the same page, and if not, work out some kind of an agreement.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I also oppose the amendment. The offsite recruitment problem requires a serious response, it is disappointing that preserving game norms has become a partisan issue. 30 posts isn't good enough, we need the extra layer of protection so that the game remains playable and some level of persuasion is still necessary to win elections.

Read my latest post.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would like feedback on my previous post on the situation in the house.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

My plan is to start the amendment vote when I get home. Unusual for us to have amendment debate like this reminds me of the good old times.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

some level of persuasion is still necessary to win elections.

I also miss when persuasion could win elections.

But I also miss when persuasion existed in Congress, along with with engagement, coordination, communication, cooperation and dare I say compromise.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

some level of persuasion is still necessary to win elections.

When was the last time before this election which persuasion was needed to win elections, the only example in my head was last August, and before that was probably June 2019. There are only like 5 swing voters in the game, and with a game with over 200 voters, their votes don't amount for much.

Edit: Zombie voting also has an impact on reducing the impact persuasion, and unless we have a commission to purge zombies, persuasion will be more useless as time goes on.

You really want that HAEV?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

some level of persuasion is still necessary to win elections.

When was the last time before this election which persuasion was needed to win elections, the only example in my head was last August, and before that was probably June 2019. There are only like 5 swing voters in the game, and with a game with over 200 voters, their votes don't amount for much.

Edit: Zombie voting also has an impact on reducing the impact persuasion, and unless we have a commission to purge zombies, persuasion will be more useless as time goes on.

You really want that HAEV?

At the very least a commission to remove discord zombies from all parties ideally.

Who is a discord zombie and who isn't? Do they where different color hats?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

some level of persuasion is still necessary to win elections.

When was the last time before this election which persuasion was needed to win elections, the only example in my head was last August, and before that was probably June 2019. There are only like 5 swing voters in the game, and with a game with over 200 voters, their votes don't amount for much.

Edit: Zombie voting also has an impact on reducing the impact persuasion, and unless we have a commission to purge zombies, persuasion will be more useless as time goes on.

You really want that HAEV?

At the very least a commission to remove discord zombies from all parties ideally.

How will all parties on the commission even know who is and isn’t a Discord voter considering many Discord Atlas servers are basically invite only cliques?

I guess by people who look like they do enough posts to get valid on a single day.

So we going to boot voters based on how things "look".