House Resolution: Amendment to Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution (Debating)

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I thank the Speaker for agreeing to bring this important bill to the floor. This will allow the house to scale in size according to the current interest in the game. Several times in the past, we have had 9 candidate for 9 seat elections. These are rather pointless elections because there is effectively little choice for the populace. It also demonstrates a current lack of interest in the House position. Thus in those situations, the size of the house should shrink to accommodate the fact that interest is less.

Conversely, when the interest in the game is especially high, the size of the house should increase to accommodate that interest. This will encourage a broader range of voices to contest the house election. Currently, because of the fixed size of the house, there is disinterest among third party ideologies among contesting the House as the seats are easily consumed by the major parties. Now, I am not suggesting we give representation to every washed up troll ideology that comes up, but should the numbers of such a third way ideology be large, the house should expand with the idea of giving that group representation. Further, even in the absence of the rise of such an ideology, I would note that all three regions currently up-size their legislatures in times of high interest to encourage such high interest, and thus the federal government should do the same during times of high interest.

The number at which the house increases is set at 14 because I think that would be a good representation of an exceptionally large field marking definite increased interest in the game. It is large enough that it will not happen routinely, but not so large as to be impossible. A probable combination would be 6 Labor/Pax, 5 Fed Candidates, and 3 DA/Green/etc.

The reduction threshold is set at 9 because that is when a 9 seat election becomes effectively uncontested, barring some late write in, which is not an argument for the current system as such efforts have always been party machine plans rather than a representation of something truly grassroots.

With respect to the 7-9-11 house size spectrum, I modeled this on Lincoln incrementing by the same amount (its spectrum is 3-5-7), but I'm not tied to this by any means and if someone wants it to be 8-10-12 or 7-10-11 or something that's completely fine. The main goal of this bill is for the house to scale along with current interest in the game just as regional legislatures do.


I again thank the Speaker for agreeing to bring this to the floor, and urge an Aye vote.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I would note that unlike Tack's non partisan elections act, this makes no effort to prevent Labor on the Labor banner from obtaining whatever proportional number of seats they earn. If Labor gets 67% of the vote in a 14 candidate race they would get 7 or 8 of the 11 seats just as they should under any good proportional system. The whole, well currently it fits game interest, so why change, I would note that the future cannot be known, and as regional legislatures grow and shrink with interest, as recently upheld in a Lincoln referendum, we should do the same in the House. I would also note that voters are aware of the current system, and may stay out of the race knowing that there will never be room in the House for anyone aside from the slates approved by the major parties plus one DA member previously approved by a major party. If there was a possibility that high interest could expand the size of the house, more candidates may be inclined to run.