HB 28-15: Filling Congressional Vacancies Fairly Amendment (Failed)

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

This has been amended by the Senate and returns to the House for a final vote. Members, please vote Aye, Nay, or Abstain.

Fill Congressional Vacancies Fairly Amendment
Section 3 Article 5 of the Atlasian Constitution shall be amended to be
Vacancies in the House of Representatives shall be filled by the executive of the affected Party; should the executive of the affected Party resign at any time between the creation of the vacancy and the appointment of a replacement Representative, or be otherwise unable to fill the vacancy within 168 hours, the Speaker of the House shall fill the seat with a member of the Party of the departing representative, who was a registered member of said party at the time the seat was vacated. But, should a vacancy occur as the result of the death, expulsion, or resignation of a Representative not being a member of a major Party, then a special election shall be held to choose a replacement to serve the remainder of the existing term.

People's House of Representatives
Passed 6-1-0-2 in the People's House of Representatives Assembled

People's Regional Senate
Amended version passed 4-0-0-2 by the People's Regional Senate assembled

Sponsor: Not needed
Status: Final Vote

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You removed this:
People's House of Representatives
Passed 6-1-0-2 in the People's House of Representatives Assembled

Remember to preserve the paper trail for the wiki editing at the end of the line. Someone will thank you for it.

Technically this should go directly to an up or down vote on the senate passed version.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

You removed this:
People's House of Representatives
Passed 6-1-0-2 in the People's House of Representatives Assembled

Remember to preserve the paper trail for the wiki editing at the end of the line. Someone will thank you for it.

Technically this should go directly to an up or down vote on the senate passed version.

Thanks, Yankee. I've been in a bit of a rush to get everything where it needs to be, so I just took the amendment Ted posted.

Hopefully now, everything's straightened out.

[Sestak]

hold on.

I really don't see what this does? I mean I see what it's attempting to do, but all it does is allow the Speaker to transfer the house seat to some {x}INO staunch ally of theirs - and they'd be able to do this far more easily than any group attempting to raid a party to take the chair.

Like to be clear, under this amendment, if a representative also happens to be the chair of his or her party, and then resigns and deregisters right afterwards, the Speaker gets to pick anyone from that party - a longtime member or someone who joined the party minutes earlier - and they get to do this even if the party has a clearly established Deputy Chair position or other line of succession which is perfectly intact. All this does is allow the majority to continually come swoop in and add extra seats to itself. The provision about being a party member at the time of the vacancy is also irrelevant, as the speaker's party could easily register duds ahead of time.

I understand that this is well-meaning, but it's incredibly poorly formulated. First of all, the amendment should not kick in if there is still an intact line of succession to take over the Chair position upon the resignation. And secondly, I am highly doubtful that it's a good idea for the Speaker to have any special say in the replacement of their colleagues - were it up to me, if there was no clear succession in the party leadership, then major party status would be considered forfeit and the seat would go to special election. That being said, I understand the arguments against the special election concept.

Again, clearly good intentions. But the execution raises too many problems. Thus I will be opposing this amendment as written and will vote against it should it come to the ballot box.

[SevenEleven]

Aye.

[Mike Thick]

I urge the House to vote this down and start over, or at the bare minimum suspend the vote. There are extremely dire issues with the legal language here that have to be fixed.

[Mike Thick]

Does anyone know what the statute defining a major party is?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I have requested that my party's caucus vote this amendment down. I urge non-Labor members to also reject the amendment unanimously.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

hold on.

Like to be clear, under this amendment, if a representative also happens to be the chair of his or her party, and then resigns and deregisters right afterwards, the Speaker gets to pick anyone from that party - a longtime member or someone who joined the party minutes earlier - and they get to do this even if the party has a clearly established Deputy Chair position or other line of succession which is perfectly intact. All this does is allow the majority to continually come swoop in and add extra seats to itself. The provision about being a party member at the time of the vacancy is also irrelevant, as the speaker's party could easily register duds ahead of time.

First part of this, regarding providing for a Deputy chair appointing someone - I see no issue with if still feasible to add at this stage.

The second part - asserting that the majority could use this to expand its majority- seems extraordinarily unlikely:

The hypothetical resigning representative you created here is not only a chair, but a chair of a party diametrically opposed to everything being done by the Speaker. Therefore, they are hardly going to telegraph their intentions to resign and deregister ahead of time. Rather, it is near certain the event would happen suddenly and at a time the speaker's party could not predict. So in order to "register duds ahead of time", the speaker would have to direct certain individual(s) to not just register with a non preferred party for a few days, but for an extended period of time of months or perhaps years, in hopes that the opposing Chair-Representative might possibly resign suddenly one day. Beyond such problems as these shadow members not being able to vote in their preferred party's conventions or receive automatic endorsements, and the fact they'd need to spend months deflecting questions on discord about what exactly they're doing (making it unlikely active players would agree to such a long term scheme that would have no guarantee of even resulting in anything at its outset), It would also be highly likely that the Chair-Representative would put two and two together, realize what was being attempted, and ensure they did appoint a replacement after their eventual resignation and before their eventual deregistration.

So, in short, to take advantage of this "loophole", the Speaker would need to set up a scheme far more elaborate and long lasting than the GGPR, and also get incredibly lucky to keep anyone from noticing what was being planned, since the signs of suspicious registration would be out there and public well ahead of time. And then they would have to luck out that the opposing Chair-Representative ended up just deregistering without appointing a replacement, even though the Chair-Representative would know that doing this would let a speaker they emphatically oppose appoint such a replacement.

This scenario is so out there that I'm not even sure it's worth preventing.

That being said, if this is a real concern, and one that the majority actually wants to resolve, there are a few other entities the Speaker could be replaced with:

- The most senior remaining congressional member of the party of the departed member - if the departed member was the only member of their party in the Congress and it has no leadership then it goes to special.
- A supermajority vote of the legislative chamber
- Perhaps some sort of special Bipartisan Committee on Vacancies - this would need fleshing out.....

[Sestak]

First of all, the scenario I proposed is a logical extreme for demonstrative purposes - more generally it's a bad idea and I think an unintentional one: if a party has a chair resign in the midst of a vacancy and there is a clear line of succession established, the next person in the line of succession, and not the Speaker, should have the right to appoint.

And secondly, you're underestimating the extent to which enterprising party leaders can very quickly figure out how to take advantage of a poorly constructed provision like this. When dealing with a constitutional amendment - especially one with a matter such as this - it's very important to be as careful as possible with the language.

That being said, one particular part of your post is so asinine that I feel a need to respond to it.

Rather, it is near certain the event would happen suddenly and at a time the speaker's party could not predict. So in order to "register duds ahead of time", the speaker would have to direct certain individual(s) to not just register with a non preferred party for a few days, but for an extended period of time of months or perhaps years, in hopes that the opposing Chair-Representative might possibly resign suddenly one day.

Yes. Given the size of this game this isn't difficult to do. In fact, both parties currently contain INOs who are relatively loyal to the other major party's leadership.

Beyond such problems as these shadow members not being able to vote in their preferred party's conventions or receive automatic endorsements, and the fact they'd need to spend months deflecting questions on discord about what exactly they're doing (making it unlikely active players would agree to such a long term scheme that would have no guarantee of even resulting in anything at its outset),

so we're supposed to rely on the Discord mob to uphold fair play here?  Ignoring the fact that this is the equivalent of relying on Robert Mugabe to prevent inflation, how...is this even relevant? The vast majority of registered voters in the game do not use Discord, or at the very least, not the Discord servers you are thinking of. I don't, and several other major active players don't. So why on earth does it matter what the hell Discord thinks?

It would also be highly likely that the Chair-Representative would put two and two together, realize what was being attempted, and ensure they did appoint a replacement after their eventual resignation and before their eventual deregistration.

People do emergency-deregistrations all the time. It's a sad thing, but it's not at all hyper-rare for either exigent RL circumstances or frustrations with the goings-on within the game to cause a member of it to resign from all their positions and deregister - and very often this is done without stopping to consider the consequences to their party, who will be their successor, etc. - after all, if you have pressing RL issues or are burned out on the game, why would you care?


All of this is essentially an excuse to be lazy here. There is no rush here, and it's a constitutional amendment we're dealing with. We can and should take the time to make sure it's done properly.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

Nay … ?

[OBD]

Nay/Hold

[Continential]

Maybe you could have not amended it to remove the original purpose of it to have special elections, something that would work way better then this system.

[YE]

Nay.

Let Sestak fix this down the line.

[YE]

Does anyone know what the statute defining a major party is?

Six members IIRC.

[Mike Thick]

Does anyone know what the statute defining a major party is?

Six members IIRC.

No, like which law?

[Mike Thick]

I've been looking on the wiki for a long time now. I can't find this anywhere. It seems like the last time we defined it was the 2016 FEA, which got repealed by the 2019 FEA without a provision replacing the one that defined "organized political party." Neither the Census Act or the 2019 FEA define "organized political party," and it looks like together they repealed virtually all the previous election laws. Obviously if "major party" is undefined we have a ton of problems on our hands.

Somebody please either tell me I'm wrong or confirm this. I feel like I'm going insane. Every time I type "federal statute" into my browser and I click the suggested link, it sends me to the High for Hours Act.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I've been looking on the wiki for a long time now. I can't find this anywhere. It seems like the last time we defined it was the 2016 FEA, which got repealed by the 2019 FEA without a provision replacing the one that defined "organized political party." Neither the Census Act or the 2019 FEA define "organized political party," and it looks like together they repealed virtually all the previous election laws. Obviously if "major party" is undefined we have a ton of problems on our hands.

Somebody please either tell me I'm wrong or confirm this. I feel like I'm going insane. Every time I type "federal statute" into my browser and I click the suggested link, it sends me to the High for Hours Act.

Peebs consistently uses a threshold of 3 for listing parties on the census post, so I feel like that had to be passed at some point. But it may have been accidentally wiped out by the census act reauthorization and then just continued out of habit...

You may have to go here: https://talkelections.org/AFEWIKI/index.php?title=Federal_statute and check through everything to figure it out

[Mike Thick]

Yeah that’s what I did. Couldn’t find it.

[Harvey Updyke Jr🌹]

Nay

[SevenEleven]

Changing my vote to Nay. This now has enough votes to fail. 24 hours to change your vote.

[Poirot]

nay

[Joseph Cao]

So… that happened.

Nay.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Yeah that’s what I did. Couldn’t find it.

Okay - I think I've managed to confirm you're correct - Via the re-posting of Ninja's old legislation in the offsite recruiting thread, I've figured out that the Peebs practice of 3 to be listed on the census was in the 2016 FEA. I checked through the 2019 FEA...and it appears the congress forgot to include the provision. So major party is at this point, quite literally, "whatever Peebs declares it to be". Which....is not ideal.

[Deep Dixieland Senator, Muad'dib (OSR MSR)]

Yeah that’s what I did. Couldn’t find it.

Okay - I think I've managed to confirm you're correct - Via the re-posting of Ninja's old legislation in the offsite recruiting thread, I've figured out that the Peebs practice of 3 to be listed on the census was in the 2016 FEA. I checked through the 2019 FEA...and it appears the congress forgot to include the provision. So major party is at this point, quite literally, "whatever Peebs declares it to be". Which....is not ideal.

Considering that "Major Party" has no clear definition, Nay.