The Proportional Representation Act is garbage

[Adam Griffin]

In the wake of the confusion and unexpected LOA requested by one of Labor's Senators, I wanted to ensure that the Senate would be able to operate in the short-term with minimal disruptions to activity. As a result, we had planned for said Senator to resign his seat for the remaining 10 days of this term and have the party appoint a replacement, pursuant to the Proportional Representation Act.

The Proportional Representation act states in Section 3, Clause 3:

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Unfortunately, the bolded part above is the point of contention. After conferring with several individuals throughout the game, we've all come to the conclusion that an appointment for this seat cannot be conducted, and rather, there'd have to be a special election held to fill the seat for a total of four days.

Due to the poor wording of this act, an appointment can only be made within a timeframe of less than three weeks before the election for a vacated seat, but not after the election itself. That means that in the two weeks or so in between an election and the beginning of a new term, an election would have to be called to deal with a vacancy. I'm pretty sure there have been vacancies in the past that have fallen into this time-frame and that the seats have usually been left unfilled. We also had an issue several months back with this act, when Napoleon resigned and wanted the Progressive Union to appoint Flo to his seat (the issue there was more one of technicalities than the act itself, but I digress).

The Proportional Representation Act has been amended several times, and its contents are scattered about several Wiki pages as a result.

Due to all of this, I implore any current Senator to introduce a revised version of the Proportional Representation Act immediately, and that it address the concerns mentioned above, as well as any other issues that may need to be revisited in the statute. It'd be nice to scrap the entirety of the original act formally - even if the majority of the act is kept - so that people don't have to bounce from one Wiki page to another in order to determine what's been altered and what has not. If the emergency slot is open (not sure with the pending job legislation on the floor), it'd be nice if this could be bumped into it.

[Adam Griffin]

In terms of the current time frame issue, I don't really think it's all that terrible to have a vacancy in the senate for a week or two. It's certainly preferable to a blatant politically-charged appointment, and an election just isn't possible. So that act does need to be changed, hopefully to permit vacancies during this period. I mean, we always have vacancies before a replacement can be made when possible. It just so happens that this time the "replacement-making" is a swearing in, not an election followed by an immediate swearing in. That's fine. We know the seat will be filled eventually.

The concept of a "politically-charged appointment" already is codified into law: it's just that it only applies for the period measuring roughly five to two weeks before the end of the term. It's the final two weeks or so of a term that is subject to having to go through with a special election, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I don't see how a two-week appointee could be as detrimental or more so from your perspective than one that under current law could be there for five weeks.

By the sound of it, I'm guessing that you'd be okay with there being vacancies for up to five weeks before the end of a term (if politically-charged appointees are an actual problem)? Currently, there's no part of the act that condones maintaining a vacancy; is that what you're advocating that we add, and remove the appointment process for the two-to-five week window altogether?

It makes no sense to purposefully add the acceptance of vacancies in the final two weeks of a term when we already have provisions that attempt to prevent that; instead, we should be revising those provisions so that they make sense and not lead to having vacancies in the Senate because of poor wording.

[Adam Griffin]

I don't know how you reached the conclusion that there would be an election. The seat would remain vacant.

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Assuming it can't be filled by the exceptions specified in Section 3 (which it can't), would this not apply?