Structure, size and elections of Senate/House (Debating)

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

proposal:

lower house composed of regional legislatures (19 offices under current system → 19 offices in new system)

upper house composed of regional governors (5 offices under current system → 5 offices in new system)

keep president, cabinet, supreme court (9 offices under current system → 9 offices in new system)

abolish vp, current senate, other regional offices (16 offices under current system → 0 offices in new system)

cuts total offices by 1/3, no reduction in regions necessary.

[Classic Conservative]

I couldn't not support that a confederation is not the right way to go, UNION FOREVER!!!

[Associate Justice PiT]

proposal:

lower house composed of regional legislatures (19 offices under current system → 19 offices in new system)

upper house composed of regional governors (5 offices under current system → 5 offices in new system)

keep president, cabinet, supreme court (9 offices under current system → 9 offices in new system)

abolish vp, current senate, other regional offices (16 offices under current system → 0 offices in new system)

cuts total offices by 1/3, no reduction in regions necessary.

     I like this proposal a lot.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I applaud Evergreen for finding a way to cut so many offices. Sadly, her proposal upends the balance of power between the Regions and the national government (in that it eliminates it entirely). I suppose its not a bad plan if you want to replace the federal system with a confederation, but I don't think that's the way to go.

[Talleyrand]

Evergreen's idea is a good one if we go with a confederation, but I think the idea behind the convention should be to preserve the basis behind Atlasia as a presidential republic as much as possible, while hopefully making it more competitive and cutting down on the bureaucratic, legalistic bulk.

[Leinad]

I like bicameralism, BUT...does it lower seats enough? Yes, I know it doesn't add any seats. I get it, we still decrease seats by a good bit due to the regional consolidation. But obviously we could have even fewer seats by only having one house. Of course 6 Senators and 9 Representatives is more than 7 Senators and no representatives (change numbers slightly and it's still true), as fun as bicameralism would certainly be.

We should answer a question: what's the target number of seats? Just a general number. And then we can determine something that would get us close to that. Current number of seats: executive branch (7) + legislative branch (10) + judicial branch (3) + regional governors (5) + regional legislatures (19) + other regional offices (5, I think) = 49 total officers. How many of those people are inactive? We need to have more active people than offices to keep things interesting.

Now, I kind of like Evergreen's idea, BUT...the multi-tiered system is there for a reason. Newer people can get introduced to the game via the regional legislature, now they go straight to federal government. Another reason, which is even better, is that it's good to separate the regional governments with the federal--we'd lose a lot of additional dynamics in the game if we do that.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

6 member senate and a 9-11 member House of Representatives. One elected entirely at large and the other entirely at the regional level. We've had this plan in place for years. Now is the time to implement it.

^ This, it was the best aspect of the Duke plan two years ago and it remains so it my opinion. It might be better to go with a smaller house component in the current environment though like say 7 to 9 instead of 9 to 11.


Duke, I would recommend posting an outline of your original plan. Is it still on google docs?

[Senator Cris]

I propose we act about this matter after that the number of regions is established in the other thread.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I propose we act about this matter after that the number of regions is established in the other thread.

Seconded.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The number of regions is the hinge on which everything else swings, so it definately needs to be decided first. Once that is decided, then this becomes the next stage because whether or not we have bicameralism influences the VP decision and so forth.

[Former Lincoln Assemblyman & Lt. Gov. RGN]

Favoring bicameralism, but even though I know it won't work, I'm on with giving parliamentary a try.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I'm on with giving parliamentary a try.

The trouble is, we already have a Mock Parliament game on the forum. I don't think there's a need for a second one.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Indeed, having two games means one can be tailored to suit the Parliamentary prefering players whilst the other can cater to those who dislike it. In that way it allows for the players to have more enjoyable experience by allowing them to elect to participate in their preferred design.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I'll post my original plan from 2013 when I get home. It surely needs tweaking but most of the questions that we have are answered in it.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

But yes I wholly oppose making this game a parliamentary style game.  If we want to kill the game once and for all we can do that, otherwise I see why both games cannot coexist as they are currently.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Duke? Its been three days?

[Senator Cris]

We already know there will be 3 regions, so we should start to work on this.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I motion for a principle vote on whether to establish a unicameral or a bicameral legislature.

[Chief Justice windjammer]

My proposal:

        A senate composed by 7 senators:
-2 senators per region: 1 of them elected by the popular vote, the other by the regional legislature.
- Make the VP a senator so we won't have to deal with activity issues anymore (of course he won't be able to break the tie).



- Why keeping the regional system?
Basically, 2 games coexist. I'm not a specialist of AAD but I think that they are all elected at large. This is important to make 2 different games, in order to make them both attractive.

-Why making 3 senators elected by state legislature?
Simply, regional activity has always been much lower tha federal activity, and that's a shame because I have always preferred my time in the region than in Nyman.

-Why keeping the VP and making him a senator? For these following reasons:
    - A ticket of 2 persons (P/VP) greatly encourages multipartism. Indeed considering there are 2 posts, parties are basically forced to ally with at least an another party. If there is just the VP, it would strongly encourage bipartism. And bipartism sucks. Multipartism is much more interesting in term of gameplay etc etc.
    - People have always struggled to make this office active, no there won't be any problem with that considering he will be a full senator.
    - If there are 6 senators, a tie will often and it needs to be broken. So 7 senators would be better, because there would be much less tie.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I think Windjammer's plan is a good one.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Windjammer's plan is quite interesting. I would posit though that we should consider a holistic approach that also takes into account regional offices, so we have a complete picture of the number of offices in Atlasia.

[Chief Justice windjammer]

     Windjammer's plan is quite interesting. I would posit though that we should consider a holistic approach that also takes into account regional offices, so we have a complete picture of the number of offices in Atlasia.

Let's go!

Currently there are:
-The president, VP and the cabinet: 8 offices
-The senate: 10 offices
-5 governors
-3 supreme court justices
-5 regional court justices
-2 Lt governor: Mideast and MW
-19 members of state legislatures (5 for NE and ME, 3 for SE, PA and MW)

TOTAL: 52 offices


With my plan:
The president and the cabinet:
- President
-Attorney General
-SoIA
-SoEA
- RG
-SoFA
-Game moderator
= 7 offices

The senate: 7 offices

The Supreme court: 3 offices

The Governors: 3 offices

The region supreme court: 3 offices

And now the members of the states legislatures: I have the feeling 2 regions will have 3 representatives and one 5 representatives: so 11 representatives

TOTAL: 33 offices


So 19 offices less! Quite a big.


I would favor as well letting people have 2 offices in some cases. For example, I see no problem that a senator is as well a member of a state legislature. Or the SoEA being at the same time the SoIA, the RG being at the same time the SoFE etc etc. Of course, the president should never be allowed to have an another office. If we allow letting people have 2 offices, the number of officeholders would basically be cut by half I guess if we compare with the current situation.




 

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I've never been a fan of the odd number senate or having 6 regional and 1 at large. Just seems clunky and not streamlined enough for my liking. I think we still need an even numbered senate and odd number house.

If I didn't post my original plan from September 2013 here I'll do it when I'm back at my laptop. It has everything laid out in a simplistic manner with explanations for everything.

[Chief Justice windjammer]

I like the idea of bicameralism, but I won't support that because cutting the number of offices should be the top priority.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I like the idea of bicameralism, but I won't support that because cutting the number of offices should be the top priority.

     I agree; bicameralism would be really cool, though I fear it may be impractical under the current circumstances. I remain open to other suggestions, but I like this one a lot.