LOA

[S019]

LOA Until August 8th, Western Democrat will proxy vote for me during this period.

[WD]

LOA Until August 8th, Western Democrat will proxy vote for me during this period.

Confirming

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Atlasia has proxies now? Guess Labor does take advice from the RL democratic party. Does S019 send specific instructions like in RL or does WD just assume how he'd vote?

[Joseph Cao]

…you won’t be online for two hundred and sixteen consecutive hours?? Crikey, I had no idea our European friends had such terrible internet.

[Joseph Cao]

Atlasia has proxies now? Guess Labor does take advice from the RL democratic party. Does S019 send specific instructions like in RL or does WD just assume how he'd vote?

One important advantage of S019ism is you can predict all his votes two weeks before the votes in question are even opened. Perhaps he could just vote now before going offline on all the pending amendments and save the trouble of having WD cast an extra vote. Not like that hasn’t been done before.

[Continential]

LOA Until August 8th, Western Democrat will proxy vote for me during this period.

Is this even legal?

[Joseph Cao]

For the record I am pretty sure the only time an Atlasian body ever considered the issue of having an elected representative vote by proxy for another, the verdict was unanimously against the idea.

We haven’t touched the legality of it but it has been dubious for quite a while.

[Devout Centrist]

Why not just get a prepaid SIM card?

[S019]

WD reserves the right to change any of my preemptive votes if bill language changes, he also will vote on amendments as my proxy.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

While there's strong precedent for voting ahead of time and that being counted, giving another member a right to change your vote or vote for you on unforeseen questions seems to be a novel concept. If there is no such allowance in the SOAP I would think the logical assumption would be that it cannot be done.....in RL, the house created the procedure explicitly and set up regulations...it didn't just poof into existence on some member's Twitter page.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

The PPT shouldn't even bother counting these "proxy votes."

[Senator Spark]

As there is no established procedure for proxy voting, I cannot recognize it. However, WD, as leader of the opposition can do his best to inform Senate colleagues while in absentia.

[S019]

The PPT shouldn't even bother counting these "proxy votes."

The doxxer being pro disenfranchisement is not surprising.

As there is no established procedure for proxy voting, I cannot recognize it. However, WD, as leader of the opposition can do his best to inform Senate colleagues while in absentia.

Looks like someone caved to pressure, also given you cannot count, I expect you’ll mess up the vote count anyways. What a sick joke of a party. No one should join the Fashlists.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

For me, this incident shows a need for us to establish a clear set of rules for how proxies work in Atlasia:

1) (For Members being their own proxies) How far in advance can a proxy vote be cast?

2) (For Members being their own proxies) What if text changes after the proxy vote is cast - does the vote remain valid or must it be re-cast? Should a simple grammatical change be treated differently than a more substantive amendment?

3) (For Members being their own proxies or designating another as their proxy) Should there be a limit on how often one can do this, and/or should they be required to attest that they are doing it for a given reason or set of reasons?

4) (For Members being their own proxies or designating another as their proxy) If the absent member logs in to Atlas during the actual vote, does that invalidate the proxy? If they post on AFE/AFG, does that invalidate it? If the absent member votes on another bill, does that invalidate the proxy on a vote being taken simultaneously? Should Proxy votes be counted for quorum purposes?

5) (For Members designating others as their proxies) Should there be a limit on the length of an LOA? If members want to come back early, can they simply start voting or do they need to formally revoke their LOA?

6) (For Members designating others as their proxies) Can they designate only other members of the chamber, or are they allowed to designate people outside of the chamber? Should there be a limit on the number of people one can be a proxy for (for instance, should a request for WD to be the proxy for the rest of the entire Labor caucus be valid?)?

7) (For Members designating others as their proxies) Should the proxy have unilateral power to just assume how the absent member would vote or must specific instructions be provided, or should the absent member have the right to choose which of these is the case? Do the instructions need to be detailed to each possible question, or can, say, the absent member's vote on invoking cloture be inferred from their instruction for final passage?

8) (For Members designating others as their proxies) If there are unexpected votes like a motion to table or an amendment of which the absent member was not aware, must the proxy await instructions from the absent member, and if none provided, abstain from the vote? Or can they assume how the absent member would vote?

9) (For Members designating others as their proxies) If there are changes to the text of a bill, does a previously issued instruction for final passage remain valid or must the proxy re-consult the absent member or abstain from the vote?  Should a simple grammatical change be treated differently than a more substantive amendment?


As you can see, if we actually want this to be a system we have, there's a lot to think about, and it can't just be poofed into existence on some random thread.

[Continential]

Maybe we shouldn’t have proxies.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Maybe we shouldn’t have proxies.

I agree we shouldnt have proxies. I also dont believe we can allow proxies, at least under the present rules. Kind of crazy that a hypothetical Senator could lose an election, get corruptly appointed to a seat by a hypothetical party boss against the wishes of the People, and then assign his or her voting rights to the hypothetical party boss who crookedly appointed him. Why bother having individual candidates in elections, if we are just gonna have faceless party voting like this?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Senate rules don't mention proxies, so this would be up to the discretion of PPT Spark and that of course can be challenged either way, but you'd want all 18 senators voting on this. It's not an issue that I recall coming up during my multiple terms through the years, but whether we allow or don't allow proxy voting should be settled by an amendment IMO.

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

FYI, I had won that election in a BIGLY landslide!