Congressional Discussion Thread

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Hiuse is voting on the Deregistration Waiting Period Act. Ciizens can revoke a deregistration within seven days.

The Senate has also adopted the Deregistration is for Real Act. In this citizens have 49 hours to revoke a deregistration. You have to wait 30 days after deregistration came into effect (so I guess in total 32 days) to register again.

I prefer the 48 hours waiting period.
What happens to the 30 days to register again in the Deregistration is for real act? Will it be added to the 7 days waiting period in another bill? Maybe it should be changed to 21 or 23 days if there is a 7 days waiting period before coming in effect, to have around 30 days total and not 37 days total before re-registering..

As I said in the thread, the waiting period is not a limbo. The person is a fully enabled citizen and registrant of Atlasia until the expiration of the waiting period, be it seven days or 48 hours. Therefore it doesn't extend the restriction, since during that wait time they can withdraw their deregistration request, which by definition cuts into the "cannot reregister thing" You don't need to reregister when you can just stay registered and avoid being deregistered to begin with.

Frankly as for melding these two bills together I find it hilarious that the Senate produced bills with two divergent wait times to begin with, considering that chamber originated both pieces of legislation. It is not the first time that the People's House has had to grind through cleaning up the Senate's mess. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The House will have to debate a bill version with a period of time to register again. With agreement with Senate the House could have debated the more extensive bill right away.

Therefore it doesn't extend the restriction, since during that wait time they can withdraw their deregistration request, which by definition cuts into the "cannot reregister thing" You don't need to reregister when you can just stay registered and avoid being deregistered to begin with.

Technically it doesn't extend the restriction. In practice it does. Someone makes the decision to deregister and make a post and leave. The person might not stay for 7 days waiting for the RG to finally change the voters list.

For the person it's not 30 days before rejoining since they left (made the post) because you add 7 days before the RG makes the decision official. So it's 37 days after they decided to leave. It extends the time since they decided to deregister because we're asking the RG to wait before recording it.

Why is that any different from someone not returning on the other end of the restriction? Yes they may not return during the remainder of the 7 days, but they can under the law (assuming it is passed). Just like after the thirty days, the law says they can return, but they might not return until 35 days or forty days, or six months, or two years.

The restriction is the restriction, it is 30 days. Them not returning during the seven days, in which they can withdraw does not extend the restriction, anymore then them not returning for x number of days after the restriction expires would.

Of course as I said before, this is a theoretical discussion as no such 30 day restriction is presently in law and there is no guarantee that it will be. I presently lean no on it for a variety of reasons.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Senate passed a number of days before re-registration. Deregistration issues should be discussed in one bill to make it a coherent package bill to deal with an issue. It seesm logic to have a "cooling off" period to reverse a decision if you can't register again for weeks. If we don't have to wait to register again the waiting period for deregistration is almost about nothing. It gives someone a chance to keep an office and maybe vote if the election is withing a week but if you deregistered it was not that important for you anyway and you don't need 7 days for that, 2 days waiting period is enough. If we can register again whenever we want, there are little consequences to deregistering, there is no meaninful utility to have a law on waiting period for deregistration.

Not adding a waiting period for deregistration keeps things simple for counting days, you just check the post in the registration thread to see when someone deregistered. You don't have to add an arbitrary number of days decided by Nyman to make it official, and then add a number of days before you can return.

Let people be free to go when they decide. If someone decides to take a break it's effective when they decide. If ithe law says 30 days before coming back, someone decided to take a month break starting November 20, they can return December 21. A waiting period for deregistration extends the 30 day break because you are adding artificially a number of days before deregistration is officia. You are makin longer the period before someone can return (I'm not talking of people you change their mind every day and can reverse their decision the next day). It also makes keeping track less easy since the deregistration date in the registration thread is not the official date of deregistration.

My viewpoint is based on not making wait too long players before they can come back after deregistering and assumed there is going to be a period of wait before coming back.       

Well I would tend to agree at least in part, and a good bit of why I voted for the waiting period and for it to be at seven was in anticipation that the restriction would be past at some length (it did pass the Senate overwhelmingly), and if it is going to happen, we should definitely have that in place.

If that were to fail the House though, then I would be open to revisiting the waiting period and maybe even shortening it since it is not occurring against a backdrop of an anticipated subsequent bill coming down the pike like happened here.

And yes I would agree completely, that these should have been kept together but I would note that these were both Senate originated bills and so their separation is something that the Senators would have to answer to.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'm not sure if this is the area to post this, but if the amendment for the MADA bill passes in the Senate, I will vote Nay on the bill in the House as it removes the major binding function of the bill. Once every two months is almost like our situation now. Once every month provides considerably more debate than present.

I'd rather see a complete bill passed than a half-baked one.

You can post this directly into the Senate debate thread so will be more apt to see it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Does Atlasia not have a conference system?

What do you mean?

Essentially, bills the houses can't agree on go to a conference committee by the following path:

House A Passes Bill
House B Passes Amended Bill
House A Rejects House B Amendment
(Optional step: House B Rejects Unamended Bill)

Both steps 3 and 4 would be done without debate/further amendment.

After conference, the resulting bill would be sent to both houses and immediately voted on. If it fails in either house, it's dead.

There was at the start of the bicameral system, but there was a lot of problems in other areas including blatantly unconstitutional aspects of the rules as well as a failure to integrate the VP into the proceedings, and his job is to manage that whole process according to the constitution leading to a complete collapse of the Congress during my term as President. When it became clear that I lacked the ability to grab victory from the jaws of defeat (which DFW went on to accomplish that month), I dropped down to House with a goal of either becoming Speaker or burning the place down to force change.

At the time my priority was making sure the chambers worked and that the VP was doing his job to keep things moving between them. But the house rules did maintain the conference provision, simply because it was passed first and before the discussion that took place later in the Senate.

House Rules

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When the Senate passed their updated rules (based off the ones that Never and myself composed for the House), they eliminated the passage about conferences.

Senate Rules

The main problem is that the Constitution dictates a precise process and doesn't really allow for an opening for a conference committee. The discussion between Siren, myself and PiT lays that out here: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=260538.msg5567786#msg5567786

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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This was I think modified slightly later on.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If I recall correctly, the ability to regulate campaigning in the voting booth was extracted out of the voting Rights Amendment by the Senate.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Wasn't there a congress special session held on mibbit one time? I want to see how the votes were reported back on the boards. Maybe the log was posted. How can I find the bill(s) in question ? Were special rules adopted for this to be done. 

It was in December 2016, right after Christmas I think.


The best one to ask would be Peebs, who was the only sitting member of the House who was present at that time. Also Truman might have been present also.

3rd Congress Noticeboard (contains rest of the member list)
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=254309.0

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

When it passes maybe some day we will find some change we have not spotted. And this is after people have many times criticized the current electoral act as not good or bad. Yet when it is time to deal with this, legislators don't seem interested. The public was not interested either. The SofE wasn't asked to offer an opinion or gave an opinion on the changes.      

The SoFE happens to be a sitting member of Congress, who is "asked" to participate on every bill by virtue of being a Representative. Also the PMs I send it her three, four some times five times a week, with links included to make it that much easier. Same goes for all the other members by the way. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There is a proposal in the Senate about the federal electoral act That I think removes the minimum activity requirement to be eligible to vote. Minimum activty has existed for as long as I remember and I think the number of posts was higher before the current number. I imagine activity is a way to discourage people to get votes from people that are not really on the forum and come on the site when they are asked to vote in fantasy election. With no minimum activity there is no defense against zombie voter. Maybe the number of posts could be reduced to eight in eight weeks (once a week) or five but total elimination seems dangerous.

The House doesn't seem to like the Dual office amendment. Allowing dual office holding in a period of low participation can be a short term solution but if for years you need players to hold many offices at the same time tham it's a sign the game is designed with too many offices. Dual officeholding should be kept at strict minimum (like combining RG and SoFE) and players stick to playing one role at a time.

I think we should be discerning about dual officeholding. I am rather uncomfortable with the AG holding other offices because he/she could end up in a position of suing himself/herself if a region/branch does something illegal.

We have already discussed Justices in this regards.

At the same time I have long favored the idea of pulling the SoIA/SoS from members of Congress and it would seem rather contradictory in this regards to restrict it at the same time we are discussing off and on parliament proposals. I would note this practice was introduced as part of an amendment called "Semi-Parliamentarism", or something very similar to that. On a similar note, I am hesitant about restrictions being applied to regional officials because of the possibilities for reforms that include Senators also being regional officials. Just like the former, it would amount to a one step forward/one step back kind of situation in terms of reforms.

So essentially I think any changes to dual office holding should be done based on the other institutions and thus change as they change to reflect said reforms and avoid the Constitution becoming a facsimile of the Holy Roman Empire.

I also am fine with someone holding both SoFE/RG and likewise if someone can be active in both roles, I see no problem pulling a cabinet Secretary from a regional legislature.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The other problem is this conflicts with other interpretations by labeling Senate elections as Federal. Including the activity calculus for removing voters from the rolls.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I have always regarded it as kind of an "Atlasians abroad type" thing, like the Democrats have for their Primary/caucus process in RL.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Do I need a confirmation hearing for my appointment to Deputy GM?

I think so. Encke was.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I guess it is the logical extension of a more developed and realistic foreign policy simulation, that things like Common Markets are going to be problematic, the anachronistic imposition of a pre-reset function when the idea of a serious and consistent realism from the Game Moderation team was merely a vivid wet dream inside my head.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Copied from the Double posting leniency:

Isn't that a little to wordy for the constitution though? I recall Truman desiring to keep things in the Constitution simple and where further clarity was needed such as this, it should be left to statute for the sake of simplicity. Perhaps this situation necessitates it, but I would like to have his input on the matter first since I recall him saying that back in the convention.

The reason why we have the no multiple ballots thing in the constitution is because of Blair vs. Rpryor, which ruled in pertinent part that we cannot invalidate votes for reasons not specified by the constitution. Before that case, multiple ballots and foreign language ballots were only prohibited by statute.

It's impractical to have to change the constitution every time we need to adjust reasons to invalidate a ballot. After the court case that saw the majority interpret the right to have ballot counted in such absolute way, we should have changed the constitution to right to vote and ballot being counted as long as voters respects voting laws and regulations in place. Then you detail in statute different reasons ballots are invalid or requirements to be counted. It's more flexible but also subject to mischievous objective by a majority in Congress.

Just post in the debate threads, I am not Polnut, I welcome discussion from all corners.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Just post in the debate threads, I am not Polnut, I welcome discussion from all corners.

I was educated when it was written somewhere that people not in government should not write in the debate threads, use the discussion thread. I see the reason for this, if many start writing in debate bills it can make debate more difficult to follow, someone writes when a vote is going on etc. And using the discussion thread could get debates among citizens or make them aware of some issues discussed.

Around a year ago I floated a Lincoln Bill called the "Legislative Respect Act", which would have established a blanket policy that if someone who was not a federal or regional elected or appointed official posted in a Lincoln bill debate thread, their post would be immediately reported to the mods with a request to delete the post, regardless of its content. I was promptly criticized for it in private and ended up withdrawing the bill. Anecdotal Evidence is Anecdotal Evidence, but that certainly suggests we are living in different times.

Back in early 2014, during what were arguably some of the most productive debates we have ever had in the Senate, we had in depth debate on issues and these often involved non-Senators such as Superique and Cincy (though he later became Vice President) who had a particular set of knowledge.

This mindset came into being in late 2014/early 2015 of exclusionary practices and was largely championed ironically by those tied to Atlasforum IRC (a place which had a reputation for being exclusive as well) and rejected by people such as Windjammer and I.  To the extent it ever existed, at least in the Senate, it was a mere blip on the radar of Atlasian history as I can never remember a time from 2009 through 2014 where such participation was restricted, nor since late 2015 as post July anarchy such an approach was viewed as closely identified with the radicals.

It is the height elitist exclusion for politicians to presume themselves more knowledgeable than the people they represent to the extent that one would willingly exclude valuable contributions for lack of title.

The reality is most members barely check the debate threads, thus one can be certain they don't check this thread. Offshoring relevant discussion to another thread is a sure fire way to compartmentalize and ignore valid points and contributions, which is probably why certain folks at the time preferred it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Whenever I start a vote. I update the topic line, I update the noticeboard and I PM/DM the Senators about it.

Disruption is a different matter, but most posts by outsiders are not disruptive. For instance I asked Lumine to post on the GI Joe Bill because I felt he was more knowledgeable about military hardware and could provide some perspective to the bill.

His posting contributed to the debate.

Such a provision may have indeed been in the old OSPR, but if such was the case, it predated my time here and like many provisions of that beastly 7,500 word document went unenforced.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Federal Electoral Act of 2019 in the process of being adopted reapeals the The Deputy Secretary of Federal Elections Act.
In the Deputy Secretary Act it says
"2. The office of Deputy Secretary of Federal Elections, nominated by the SoFE and confirmed by the Senate, shall hereby be created."
https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/The_Deputy_Secretary_of_Federal_Elections_Act

Does it mean there will no longer be a Deputy Secretary of Elections or does the SoFE have the power to create a deputy position with the power to manage a department.

I discussed this with Sestak and he pointed out an interesting note.

The Fourth Constitution set out to make cabinet positions derived from Executive Order to increase flexibility and thus it is even possible that the act in question is not even constitutional. Certainly in that arrangement that President could create such a deputy by EO.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What is the current "green" cards(legal citizens) and naturalized citizens per year allowed yearly into our country? I'd like to see massive reduction in these numbers as it is hurting our people and lowering wages for our workers.

Legal immigration reform is a bill I'd like work on, but I just need to know current levels. 

Come out of the Shadows tied some of these levels to a SoIA determined formula for economic need in a given sector or at least something along those lines.

I think Labor since passed subsequent legislation though.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What's the rough estimate on how many uninsured exist across Atlasia?

The sliding scale subsidy is available to everyone according to income and age, so it should be much lower especially with a public option in the mix.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don't understand the worshipping by Congress of a former citizen name olawakandi. Unless this user is known under another name I don't recall this person so for the last 8-9 years has not made huge things in Atlasia. I have not seen a justification of great realizations made in Atlasia before that. The only thing I read is the user was registered for a short time. Besides I don't like when people name places or holidays after players.

Its basically a cult of personality that has grown up around him in regard to all his posts essentially being Memed to no end.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Our hands were forced by bad faith tactics. If you want to place the blame on someone, pick the person who recruited from alt-right discords.

LTE isn't a alt-right discord. I've been on it.

Conservacord is.

The ironic thing is Conservacord is overwhelming composed of pre-existing or former Atlas posters unless that has shifted in the last few months.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Trouble in Fremontian paradise,  General "I have suppressed the centralist element"?

The communists and the civil libertarians are confederating in opposition to regional rights. Fortunately, THE PEOPLE are on my side! I will respond with aggressive Jeffersonian measures.

The downfall of professing to be a regionalist is that it is kind of like professing to be a libertarian. Their is a presumption of absolutism involved and then you fall into a trap whenever there is some instance where absolute regions uber alles necessarily has to fall by the wayside. It is why I told you when you harped on being a "true regionalist" against "federalism" that true regionalism would degenerate quickly into secessionism when taken to its extreme ends.

Ultimately there are some areas where some form of compromise are unavoidable, but fortunately, I'm a man who doesn't have to explain the contradictions because unlike "regionalism", "federalism" doesn't create such a trap inducing complication. What it does do is ask the question not unlike that of WW2 era "Is this trip really worth it", "Is this centralism necessary here?" with the end goal of achieving a healthy balance.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Trouble in Fremontian paradise,  General "I have suppressed the centralist element"?

The communists and the civil libertarians are confederating in opposition to regional rights. Fortunately, THE PEOPLE are on my side! I will respond with aggressive Jeffersonian measures.

The downfall of professing to be a regionalist is that it is kind of like professing to be a libertarian. Their is a presumption of absolutism involved and then you fall into a trap whenever there is some instance where absolute regions uber alles necessarily has to fall by the wayside. It is why I told you when you harped on being a "true regionalist" against "federalism" that true regionalism would degenerate quickly into secessionism when taken to its extreme ends.

Ultimately there are some areas where some form of compromise are unavoidable, but fortunately, I'm a man who doesn't have to explain the contradictions because unlike "regionalism", "federalism" doesn't create such a trap inducing complication. What it does do is ask the question not unlike that of WW2 era "Is this trip really worth it", "Is this centralism necessary here?" with the end goal of achieving a healthy balance.

I have no idea how any of this is relevant.

Its relevant because her argument against you is that you are using regionalism as an escape hatch from Freedom of Speech. You disagree with this obviously, but matter of when does regionalism stand and when it does not is very relevant for a prominent figure who just so recently made a huge point of professing himself to be a "true adherent of regionalism".