New Unicameral-Subregional Plan Proposal

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

I was glad to work on crafting this proposal to actually fix the problems plaguing Atlasian politics and government. I hope this gets somewhere and passes.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

I support this proposal but I have a few questions.

• As a resident of the Virgin Islands, what subregion will I be in?
• Also, how will regional senate elections be administered?; Will it be administered by the RG like it was administered pre-reset or will it be administered by the regions?
• How will subregion vacancies be handled?; Will the regions decide how the vacancies will be handled or will the federal government handle it?

Subregional senate vacancies should have special elections that are held under the same laws as the regularly scheduled subregional senate elections and administered by regional election administrators.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

I like this idea. I was going to complain that we'd see some of that same region-moving to try and gain an advantage, something that would be laughably easy in current times with smaller voter bases as it would be in the subregions, but then I saw the point where voters would have to move several weeks in advance, far ahead of the election shaping up.

I personally had thought a unicameral legislature would be better for efficiency purposes, and this is pretty damn near perfect.

I do feel somewhat left out since obviously y'all made this Labor-Federalist bipartisanship, but I support this plan nonetheless

X Weatherboy1102, Chair of the Democratic Alliance, former President

Obviously we did think long and hard about the question "How can this arrangement be rigged?" I do believe that us going through and watching several recent elections made us realize that it is time for real no nonsense change in how elections are ran in Atlasia. The whole package is going to be needed for this reform to be successful.

Yes this was crafted in by the four of us in our secret Deep State lair.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

I like this idea. I was going to complain that we'd see some of that same region-moving to try and gain an advantage, something that would be laughably easy in current times with smaller voter bases as it would be in the subregions, but then I saw the point where voters would have to move several weeks in advance, far ahead of the election shaping up.

I personally had thought a unicameral legislature would be better for efficiency purposes, and this is pretty damn near perfect.

I do feel somewhat left out since obviously y'all made this Labor-Federalist bipartisanship, but I support this plan nonetheless

X Weatherboy1102, Chair of the Democratic Alliance, former President

The only other complaint I might have is that it seems hard enough to keep our current congress active, and adding 3 seats would presumably make that harder.

The premise behind expanding it is that in a unicameral system every vote matters equally and that it is harder to get a situation like the current congress where you have a senate majority of 4 hardline Labor hacks potentially overruling any interesting idea proposed by the minority in the House but is able to pass there on the votes of more mavericky members such as MB or Ishan. Oftentimes the situation is reversed with the House being far more partisan than the Senate. It also makes it so that all 3 Southern Senate seats valuable since it's not so unbearably hard to have a tied Senate in this unicameral proposal. Activity is bound to be driven by incentives, and I do think that this proposal gives more incentives and opportunity for anyone who gets elected to make an impact in serving.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Finally this was released! It's a great plan that I fully endorse.

I have one question though. Will the subregional elections be ran by the regions or by the federal government? I presume it is by the regions?

Also come to think about it this technically mandates to the regions that at least for the 6 subregional seats elections must happen. While no region has ever even attempted to do so, and it would be very dumb given Atlasia is 50% elections game; technically regions could switch to legislative appointments like the US before the 17th Amendment. This "loophole" is now partially closed.

I also wonder how would subregional vacancies get filled if the region decides to just not have special elections (indeed I think the South lacks special elections and just has gubernatorial appointments). I presume the governor of the region would appoint someone just like for the regional seat? Or will the reform mandate special elections?

Of course special elections would be mandated. The South currently would have special elections if there's a vacancy over two months before a term expires.

Why not making some senators elected by the regional legislature? That would force anyone to focus more on local elections.

(it's great btw)

Subregional senators would be elected by the method and under the laws outlined here since it defeats the purpose of the reform if they can just be manipulated like senate elections currently are. As for the senate seats representing the whole region, I guess it would be fine to leave as an option as it currently is under the constitution.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

I support this plan! Very well done!

I assume you all have backup plans if all the seats don't get filled, though, correct? I'd imagine every so often we wouldn't have enough people running to fill all the seats, especially at the regional level.

There's going to be someone elected whenever there is an election and a valuable seat is up for it.

Whilst I am not opposed to the conceptual framework of unicameralism or even subregionalism, I fully reject the creation of parallel classes of members with different term lengths within the same body.
I could see myself supporting this if the tenure of the at-large Senators were raised in length to four months.

That is a weird aspect of the plan. I am open to perhaps making it so that the arrangement is subregional senators are elected during presidential elections while at-large and regional senators are elected during midterms. I think that having all 9 at-large senators elected at the same time is beneficial since it allows more people the chance to get elected to the house especially those with a more narrow ideological base. In making this plan we kind of just deferred to tradition as we have had have 2 month elections for House for the past 5 years. That part is negotiable.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Yankee, supporting unicameralism? Wow.

Its an interesting plan, though I do fully expect people to vote in the wrong subregional elections. Is there any plan for making this easy to understand to those who don't already know about this change?

I suggest that regional election administrators put a picture of a map in the voting booth showing which states are in which subregion. Some voters did get confused by the regional consolidation in 2016, but I guess this is a change that will be easier for certain voters to accept since it leaves our regions as they are.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Will we limit each region's number of officeholders to account for the increase in federal offices?

100% supportive of the plan, btw.

I figure that if there are more opportunities for people to get elected to the Senate, we'd see fewer 7 member regional chambers since in most cases they only really happen due to parties being concerned about managing the partisan composition of them by having more candidates run. With the strategic registration barriers and voting requirements set in place under this plan, we'd hopefully see less of that in the regions.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

How will At-Large Senate vacancies be handled, will there be special elections like there was pre-reset, or will it be filled via party appointment?

I prefer to keep them as they are by party appointment since 51% shouldn't replace a seat elected by 11%.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Also, will the DPOCship be abolished?

Yes.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

How would this increase activity?

I did partially address this point here.

The premise behind expanding it is that in a unicameral system every vote matters equally and that it is harder to get a situation like the current congress where you have a senate majority of 4 hardline Labor hacks potentially overruling any interesting idea proposed by the minority in the House but is able to pass there on the votes of more mavericky members such as MB or Ishan. Oftentimes the situation is reversed with the House being far more partisan than the Senate. It also makes it so that all 3 Southern Senate seats valuable since it's not so unbearably hard to have a tied Senate in this unicameral proposal. Activity is bound to be driven by incentives, and I do think that this proposal gives more incentives and opportunity for anyone who gets elected to make an impact in serving.

It basically is a set up that makes it so that more bills can actually have a chance of passage since the tipping point vote in the Senate would be more likely to be moderate or less hackish even if there's an overall Labor majority. It also makes it much easier for us to pass an agenda which I think will be more conducive to promoting activity in a situation where every vote actually matters. Of course inactive members will always be bound to be elected occasionally but the system is designed to captivate as much interest as possible.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Some interesting ideas here. I will likely need more information about how this will operate and ways to prevent voters from becoming confused about this new set-up. Great work though.

As with any system it will be something new for people to get used to. I do expect that those who conduct gotv efforts to know how to provide guidance on which election their voters should vote in and know which voters are in which subregion. We do plan on continuing to have more questions and details of the transition hashed out in the congressional debate.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Yankee, supporting unicameralism? Wow.

Its an interesting plan, though I do fully expect people to vote in the wrong subregional elections. Is there any plan for making this easy to understand to those who don't already know about this change?

I suggest that regional election administrators put a picture of a map in the voting booth showing which states are in which subregion. Some voters did get confused by the regional consolidation in 2016, but I guess this is a change that will be easier for certain voters to accept since it leaves our regions as they are.

I think (at least for the first couple of elections) providing a list of which voter goes to which subregion wouldn’t hurt as well.

It probably should be sorted by subregion on the census with a column indicating when a person becomes eligible to vote after moving to another subregion when it happens.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Are we expecting that each and every voter will know precisely what state they registered in? And which sub-region this falls into? Wait, is this a covert anti-zombie voter measure? Based!

I will note that pre-reset, when pre-filled ballots didn't exist/were uncommon and regional elections were all in the same federal ballot, voters didn't have an issue with this. I don't expect them to have issues now either

You are going to have issues initially, especially with the zombies obviously. But most people who play this game aren't stupid. They can be extremely lazy, but most of them can figure out how to open a google sheet and read a color coded map.

Also let's be honest, their will be plenty of "help" from various sources, be it candidates seeking to win, parties seeking to win etc.

Can confirm.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

I doesn't make sense to reduce the number of federal offices when the game's population is the largest it has ever been. The size of the game is considerably larger than it was when the current system was introduced, so adding seats isn't unfathomable, and taking them away most definitely is. And I have yet to see any instance of reducing seats increasing activity.

The nominal population is higher than ever, yes, but how many citizens are actively involved?

It's certainly a low proportion; the number of people meaningfully engaged hasn't changed measurably.

I've been thinking that someone with a lot of time on their hands might want to pull together some data on the number of 'active users' (at least one post per month on the FE boards?) vs. the surge in population because I guarantee there's basically no relationship any more. Evidently it is not the case the nominal number of active participants is a constant percentage of the voter rolls. The nominal number of "active users" has, as far as I can tell, at best remained stagnant and quite possibly even declined over time.

As I've said previously, this drastically accelerates the structural flaws in Atlasia, because elections will grow increasingly disconnected from the unrepresentative tiny number of people who actually participate in the game on a regular basis.

Certainly there's a balance that needs to be struck: reducing the number of offices, in principle, will increase competition and make for more interesting and engaging elections, but, obviously, taking this too far would result in too many people holding no office - and having no prospect of doing so - leading to a dwindling of interest and activity.

I find the problem of how offices are currently arranged to be more about the lack of distinct things that someone can run for rather than just simply how many total offices there are. The current status quo gives 2 senators who are elected by each of the 3 regions. That seems redundant since we have scientific management of the voting population of the regions. It would be much harder for a machine to keep control of 6 subregions with the heavy restrictions on strategic registration. These safeguards will actually give regions more room to build their own cultures and let local politics actually matter within them rather than just be seen as something to extract senate seats from by any means possible which results in less competition a majority of the time since it will take so much effort to recruit,  get voters valid, and move voters from other regions while fearing what the other side will do if you want to win a senate race under the current scheme. Perhaps just having subregional senators and at-large senators could work. There are real and reasonable concerns to keep it balanced between regionally elected and popularly elected members and to not cut the at-large size since it would just result in upwards of 35-40 votes being needed to get elected to a seat which would only serve to shut out independents, third parties, and those whose ideologies mean they have a smaller base to draw from like social conservatives and libertarians.

This plan does serve to give more avenues for people to get engaged and have a chance of winning. A lot of voters don't get involved because they either see no chance of winning in their region or find congress to be too boring.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

I think we should have the number of Senators at 15, rather than add three. I worry expanding the size of the unicameral chamber could harm activity in regional governments by drawing talent away.

Accordingly, I would propose we either ditch the three regionally elected Senate seats (and keep the sub regions), or only elect six Senate seats nationwide instead of nine.

Drawing away talent from regional governments is very much a concern with enlarging the federal congress. I guess regional senators are the most redundant aspect of this plan as at-large and subregional senators seem to be the most valuable part of this plan in my opinion. However the whole package of this plan is fine with me as well and I do prefer it as is.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Mission accomplished!