Abolition of Forum Affairs Department Bill

[Ebowed]

Abolition of Forum Affairs Department Bill

1. Article VIII, Section 2, Clause 1 is hereby amended to read; "These Executive Departments are hereby established: State, Defense, Treasury, Justice, Federal Elections and Census. The Principal Officers of these Departments shall be Secretaries, with the exceptions of the Department of Justice, whose Principal Officer shall be the Attorney General, and the Census Bureau, whose Principal Officer shall be the Director."

2. Article VIII, Section 2, Clause 2 is hereby amended to read; "The Department of Federal Elections shall be responsible for administering all elections to the Presidency and the Senate."

2. Article VIII, Section 2, Clause 4 is hereby amended to read; "The procedure for absentee voting will be to make such declaration publicly to the Department of Federal Elections, and then for the absentee voter to email their vote to the Chief Justice, Secretary of Federal Elections and Attorney General."

Sponsor: Sen. Al

[CheeseWhiz]

I liked to hear more debate on this, but my first thoughts is that for a long time SoFA's have told us that their job is very difficult, and this will definitely help make the job easier on them.

[Colin]

What's wrong with the current system of opening up an absentee voting booth a few days prior to the election? It seems much less of a hassle than emailing three people all of whom may not have their emails readily available to all Atlasians.

Also how would this reduce the work load on the SoFA? All this seems to do is simply rename the department to the much more wordy Director of Federal Elections and the Census.

Until these questions are answered in a way to make them seem more reasonable to me then the current system my vote will be no.

[CheeseWhiz]

What's wrong with the current system of opening up an absentee voting booth a few days prior to the election? It seems much less of a hassle than emailing three people all of whom may not have their emails readily available to all Atlasians.

I don't know, unless someone has a good reason for that I will introduce an amendment to strike clause 3.

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No, it's two different positions:  Director of Federal Election and the head of the Census Bureau.

[Colin]

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No, it's two different positions:  Director of Federal Election and the head of the Census Bureau.

Well then that's incredibly redundant. We would have to assign funds to two departments to cover the current expenditures of one. We would need to have two people to do what one currently does. What exactly would this Director of the Census Bureau do? Just update the voter roles ever five days or so? That seems like very little work to justify the creation of two departments.

This brings forth another question to my mind. I would like to ask Q and all other former SoFAs to tell me whether they believe it was too much work for them to handle. I really don't want to be hard on a person by not supporting this if they truely think that it is too much work for one man.

[Sam Spade]

The correct question here has been asked.

Under this system, what would the Department of Federal Elections do?  What would the Director of the Census Bureau do?

[Peter]

There's a lot to get through in this sort of debate, and I'll take it a piece at a time.

First of all, it is my opinion that the proposal that splits the Forum Affairs Dept into a Federal Elections Dept and a Census Bureau is a fundamentally good idea and would be hugely beneficial.

My reasons are relatively simple: Of the 5 Cabinet departments, it undoubtedly has the largest workload. It requires regular maintenance of the voter rolls (at least weekly), and then the administration of all federal elections, with all that that entails. Some departments do, quite literally nothing; The main culprit presently is DoD, but it varies from administration to administration.

Anyway, at the time of the Presidential elections, the Secretary of Forum Affairs must not only oversee 1 national race and 5 Regional races, as well as any special elections scheduled, he must then immediately begin to prepare work on the federal census once that has finished. I actually went through all of that once, and I have to say that I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

Splitting these responsibilities makes sense because it is not realistic to expect one person to put in a massive amount of time in a short period as is presently required.

In the periods between elections, a SoFA presently has registrations to keep him busy. Undoubtedly, this would fall to the Census bureau, leaving the Federal Elections Secretary with some free time. I would impress upon this body that it has been severely lacking in producing any sort of sensible electoral reform for a while - a totally free SoFE could use this time to construct sensible reforms based on experience with the Senate.
This proposal, however, doesn't really capture that, and as is becoming more apparent with every attempt at forum affairs reform attempted in recent times, I suspect there was nil consultation on this. Whilst I successfully maintained the illusion of being all singing and all knowing with this stuff, thats all it was, I often took a wide circle of consultation.

I previously discussed why this should be a bill and not an Amendment here, so I won't cover the same ground twice.

Secondly, the duties of each office need to clearly defined. Whilst the duties of the DoFE are reasonably defined, we hear little about the CB. Also tied to this point is the matter of already existing statute: Take a guess at how many federal statutes presently explicitly mention the Secretary of Forum Affairs or require action by him? 5.
# Line of Succession Act
# Deputy SoFA Act
# Government Thread Act
# (Voting System Reform Act - if it is still in operation)
# Unified Electoral Code Act - Section 7
If you abolish the office, something must be done about these references, i.e. those duties or references should be explicitly directed towards one of the new departments.

Thirdly, this fun over Clause 3 which references Absentee Voting. I simply refer you to Article VIII, Section 2, Clause 4 (which is what the clause was attempting to amend) and then ask that you actually read it and consider what it means.

[Colin]

What the hell? I never thought that you had to email it to three people currently. It's always just a thread that you vote in prior to the election. Ugh I hate it when I miss things like this.

Another simpler thing to do is delegate more powers to the deputy SoFA, such as modifying the voter roles and certifying regional elections, in order to ease the SoFA's work load. Also we could have each region certify its results according to regional statute that would take away some of the additional work around the election.

[Peter]

What the hell? I never thought that you had to email it to three people currently. It's always just a thread that you vote in prior to the election. Ugh I hate it when I miss things like this.

Oh indeed. In fact from the very moment that the absentee ballot was invented it was just like this. See the Amendment to the Original Constitution which brought it in. For some reason, every SoFA has simply ignored the Law. Its great.

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This has been tried, and actually worked when True Dem and I did it together. However, Alcon and ILV didn't really work well together when they tried this. Q and Yates worked reasonably well together.

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Ignoring the fact that its probably unconstitutional, having 5 different standards of counting votes is never sensible. Also the sheer incompetence of Governors such as 9iron should tell us that that isn't feasible.

[12th Doctor]

While we are at it, I think we should rework the Line of Succession so that niether of these two possitions are in it.

[Colin]

Amendment to the Original Constitution

NixonNow got all the data from the old Wiki back online?

[Q]

I would like to ask Q and all other former SoFAs to tell me whether they believe it was too much work for them to handle. I really don't want to be hard on a person by not supporting this if they truely think that it is too much work for one man.

I don't think it's too much work, except if some unweildy bureaucratic secret ballot scheme is introduced.  The census work is fairly easy; it's mainly the election monitoring that provides opportunities for issues of contention to arise.

I think encouraging more reasonable behavior by individual voters toward the SoFA would be more effective in making the SoFA's job easier than would dividing up the office's responsibilities.

Also, certain changes in election law and procedure would make the job easier as well.  One that comes to mind is requiring candidates to register officially in the candidate declaration thread (which as a Senator myself I lacked the foresight to support) rather than leaving it up to the SoFA to determine whether, for example, establishing an exploratory committee constitutes an official declaration, among other issues.

I don't wish to speak against the President's agenda here, as he is my boss after all, but I'm not sure that there are not less radical means of achieving perhaps more practical reform.

[Peter]

Amendment to the Original Constitution

NixonNow got all the data from the old Wiki back online?

No, but he found an early backup from April, which means we have some of the data.

[Brandon H]

Also we could have each region certify its results according to regional statute that would take away some of the additional work around the election.

Ignoring the fact that its probably unconstitutional, having 5 different standards of counting votes is never sensible. Also the sheer incompetence of Governors such as 9iron should tell us that that isn't feasible.

I have discussed this idea with Joe once, placing the Regional Senate election in control of the region, allowing the SoFA to focus on just the Presidential election. Joe had a concern about this but I can't remember what it was.

[MasterJedi]

Not sure if I'll support this either, right now I'm leaning towards nay though I'll still listen to all the debate before I make up my mind.

[Joe Republic]

I don't explicitly remember drafting Clause 3 (which appears to have been numbered 2), but this was a long time ago, after all.  The existing constituional clause reads as follows:

"The procedure for absentee voting will be to make such declaration publicly to the Department of Forum Affairs, and then for the absentee voter to email their vote to the Chief Justice, Secretary of Forum Affairs and Attorney General."

Therefore, all Clause 3 of this amendment does is change the wording.  It doesn't change the existing law, if you see what I mean.

[Joe Republic]

Well then that's incredibly redundant. We would have to assign funds to two departments to cover the current expenditures of one. We would need to have two people to do what one currently does.

What funding?  None of us get paid to do anything here.

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He/she would also be responsible for managing the census every four months, and interpreting voter laws, executive orders and past precedent.  It's a pretty tough job even by itself, especially since this is not a full-time game.

[Joe Republic]

The correct question here has been asked.

Under this system, what would the Department of Federal Elections do?  What would the Director of the Census Bureau do?

The DoFE does all the jobs of the SoFA with regards to running elections, counting votes and absentee ballots, etc.  The Census Bureau manages the voter rolls, as described in my last post here.

[MasterJedi]

After hearing clarification from Joe and having Q say it isn't that difficult I'll be voting Nay on this. We don't need more government positions.

[Joe Republic]

MasterJedi, I refer you to Peter's earlier post, which helps describe the intent of this bill:

There's a lot to get through in this sort of debate, and I'll take it a piece at a time.

First of all, it is my opinion that the proposal that splits the Forum Affairs Dept into a Federal Elections Dept and a Census Bureau is a fundamentally good idea and would be hugely beneficial.

My reasons are relatively simple: Of the 5 Cabinet departments, it undoubtedly has the largest workload. It requires regular maintenance of the voter rolls (at least weekly), and then the administration of all federal elections, with all that that entails. Some departments do, quite literally nothing; The main culprit presently is DoD, but it varies from administration to administration.

Anyway, at the time of the Presidential elections, the Secretary of Forum Affairs must not only oversee 1 national race and 5 Regional races, as well as any special elections scheduled, he must then immediately begin to prepare work on the federal census once that has finished. I actually went through all of that once, and I have to say that I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

Splitting these responsibilities makes sense because it is not realistic to expect one person to put in a massive amount of time in a short period as is presently required.

In the periods between elections, a SoFA presently has registrations to keep him busy. Undoubtedly, this would fall to the Census bureau, leaving the Federal Elections Secretary with some free time. I would impress upon this body that it has been severely lacking in producing any sort of sensible electoral reform for a while - a totally free SoFE could use this time to construct sensible reforms based on experience with the Senate.

[MasterJedi]

Maybe you should also listen to what Q has said here, which is one of the main reasons I'll be voting against this.

I would like to ask Q and all other former SoFAs to tell me whether they believe it was too much work for them to handle. I really don't want to be hard on a person by not supporting this if they truely think that it is too much work for one man.

I don't think it's too much work, except if some unweildy bureaucratic secret ballot scheme is introduced.  The census work is fairly easy; it's mainly the election monitoring that provides opportunities for issues of contention to arise.

I think encouraging more reasonable behavior by individual voters toward the SoFA would be more effective in making the SoFA's job easier than would dividing up the office's responsibilities.

Also, certain changes in election law and procedure would make the job easier as well.  One that comes to mind is requiring candidates to register officially in the candidate declaration thread (which as a Senator myself I lacked the foresight to support) rather than leaving it up to the SoFA to determine whether, for example, establishing an exploratory committee constitutes an official declaration, among other issues.

I don't wish to speak against the President's agenda here, as he is my boss after all, but I'm not sure that there are not less radical means of achieving perhaps more practical reform.

[Joe Republic]

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But this is something I'm not too sure about.  The clause that defines the various Cabinet offices is right there in the Constitution.  How could a statute redefine this?

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Indeed, I will now draft an amendment to this bill that now deals with each of those statutes.  Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

[Joe Republic]

Maybe you should also listen to what Q has said here, which is one of the main reasons I'll be voting against this.

I would like to ask Q and all other former SoFAs to tell me whether they believe it was too much work for them to handle. I really don't want to be hard on a person by not supporting this if they truely think that it is too much work for one man.

I don't think it's too much work, except if some unweildy bureaucratic secret ballot scheme is introduced.  The census work is fairly easy; it's mainly the election monitoring that provides opportunities for issues of contention to arise.

I think encouraging more reasonable behavior by individual voters toward the SoFA would be more effective in making the SoFA's job easier than would dividing up the office's responsibilities.

Also, certain changes in election law and procedure would make the job easier as well.  One that comes to mind is requiring candidates to register officially in the candidate declaration thread (which as a Senator myself I lacked the foresight to support) rather than leaving it up to the SoFA to determine whether, for example, establishing an exploratory committee constitutes an official declaration, among other issues.

I don't wish to speak against the President's agenda here, as he is my boss after all, but I'm not sure that there are not less radical means of achieving perhaps more practical reform.

Q may have little difficulty in managing the workload, because he is fully competent and capable.  That's why I nominated him.  However, what if we are faced with another Ilikeverin in the role of SoFA?

[MasterJedi]

Maybe you should also listen to what Q has said here, which is one of the main reasons I'll be voting against this.

I would like to ask Q and all other former SoFAs to tell me whether they believe it was too much work for them to handle. I really don't want to be hard on a person by not supporting this if they truely think that it is too much work for one man.

I don't think it's too much work, except if some unweildy bureaucratic secret ballot scheme is introduced.  The census work is fairly easy; it's mainly the election monitoring that provides opportunities for issues of contention to arise.

I think encouraging more reasonable behavior by individual voters toward the SoFA would be more effective in making the SoFA's job easier than would dividing up the office's responsibilities.

Also, certain changes in election law and procedure would make the job easier as well.  One that comes to mind is requiring candidates to register officially in the candidate declaration thread (which as a Senator myself I lacked the foresight to support) rather than leaving it up to the SoFA to determine whether, for example, establishing an exploratory committee constitutes an official declaration, among other issues.

I don't wish to speak against the President's agenda here, as he is my boss after all, but I'm not sure that there are not less radical means of achieving perhaps more practical reform.

Q may have little difficulty in managing the workload, because he is fully competent and capable.  That's why I nominated him.  However, what if we are faced with another Ilikeverin in the role of SoFA?

This amendment wouldn't help that, they could still not do their job and nothing would happen. This is really nothing but making the government bigger, sorry but I can't support this.

[CheeseWhiz]

I got an idea, why don't we make the DSoFA the in charge of the Census Bureau, and the SoFA keep up with the Federal elections.  It would accomplish the same goal (making the SoFA's job easier) but not make in extra positions.