Petition for a Constitutional Convention

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I have seen three different conventions in my day. The most successful one required blood flowing in the streets and backroom deal by four parties on the basic underlying framework to achieve a success. It also took almost a year.

The most successful one without all that took 6 months and only made minor changes and structural improvements without changing anything big.

The least successful one had little in terms of direction beyond just a desire to see changes, it wondered aimlessly for 3 months and then it was shut down without even agreeing to a proposal.

If Windjammer wants reforms, and in a reasonable time frame, he would be better off negotiating with Congress.

These conventions also tend to sap activity and attention spans from Congress and the regions and thus create a self fulfilling prophesy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'm usually not on Yankee's side on constitutional reforms - to put it mildly -, but there's a lot of merit in the idea that something like a Constitutional Convention is not something to be done on a whim or without a clear idea of what one wants to accomplish.

I would dispute the point of being "better off negotiating with Congress" given the historic reluctance to embrace meaningful or drastic constitutional changes and the sheer difficulty to muster the required quorum with legislators, but at the same time, it's important that there's clarity on whether such a Con Con would seek to address very specific issues (in which case the idea of going to Congress makes more sense), or whether it is intended to make larger changes into the constitutional framework of the game, in which case calling for one makes a lot more sense.

All in all, having a public debate - here, not in Discord - and more importantly, having proposals (like Talleyrand's) of the problems people or parties can identify, and the solutions they believe are best, is what truly matters. If one can have a more transparent public debate and have a clearer idea of the intentions or aspirations behind this, it will be to our collective benefit and/or clarify whether a Con Con is actually needed (it may well be, a lot of things aren't working) or not.

Notice I said, "in a reasonable time frame". If a multi-partisan deal were to be struck, as was discussed in that scenario, yes Congress would be given and such a deal would ensure any concern about "necessary quorums" whatever that means. If you mean passage threshold that would be a given in that scenario.

I certainly support debating the problems in public. Discord can suck...

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

However what I will oppose 100% (at least for now) is a Constitutional Convention. The Fourth Constitution is working perfectly fine and is not a disaster like the First Constitution (or in more recent times, the First Constititution of Fremont). And Atlasia is not facing an existencial crisis like it faced in 2014-15. (I am not sure why the 2nd constitution was changed though, but I doubt the situation is comparable either)

IF you mean 2nd Constitution of Atlasia, it had flaws in its wording and structure even to do what it was designed to do if that makes sense. It had also been amended like 40 times IIRC in the space of two plus years.

After attempts at a massive overhaul failed in 2009 with the Third Con-Con, the Fourth Con-con convened in 2010 to write the third constitution with Purple State and Marokai Blue as the driving forces behind it. I think it started before PS became President though I cannot recall for sure and he barely finished before he left office. The Senate had to extend its mandate for instance.


PS Summarizing it:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=126154.msg2685114#msg2685114

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How will the delegates to the convention be selected if it happens?

Congress would have to adopt rules for delegate selection, as we did in 2015. Back then there was a mix of regional, party, and congressional (senatorial) delegates.

How would the composition of delegates be determined in a majority Labor congress?

I will be the sole appointed delegate and revise the constitution from my dungeon lair.

Truman by himself is the only constitutional convention I really trust, to be honest. I don't even trust myself that much

I will go this far, Truman is one of the few that should be charged with compiling any drafts and running qc on proposals precisely to avoid the stuff tack and blair are talking about with 1st Constitution.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don't know how a convention would fix the issue of political parties imbalance.

That is an issue no one wants to touch right now. Everybody is in a purge the immigrants mood because of the offsite recruitment situation.

Dispensing with that for a moment lets look at the reality. The problem is the status quo population wise is not sustainable from a political standpoint and thus the game is not sustainable because sooner or later constantly losing is going to have a devastating impact on the game. No one is going to play a game that almost completely cannot win.

Equilibrium has to be restored. For most of last year I openly said as many will recall, that any chance for an equilibrium was in a Biden administration driving more conservatives to join the site and hoping in the meantime that we could "hold out" until Biden took office. As you will recall this statement was what prompted the Fairbol challenge to my chairmanship back in June because it wasn't direct action now. That should illustrate the appetite for change now and the impatience with waiting for this process to occur naturally (assuming it does at all and I have heard compelling arguments that it won't because of the preference for echo chambers these days).

The oft repeated line on lokcord by the talking heads there that "the Feds need to move left" or the "Feds need to move center" won't work because unlike in RL, their is a close personal dynamic among most of the Laborites, even those in the center and so at most you gain a couple of votes and Labor still has a dominant edge. Certainly not enough to replace those you would lose on the right in doing so. There are more dissidents on the far left then there are on the center left.