LGC 2.1 Activity Enforcement Amendment (final vote)

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

I am proud to sponsor this amendment.

As many know last court there were some serious activity problems, most notably Leinad just completely went MIA after the Wealth Tax was passed. I believe part of the issue is that there is no current activity enforcement in the constitution. This amendment would force legislators to vote, with the penalty of forfeiture of office for those who repeatedly miss votes.

From a historical perspective, The Philadelphia Plan did have some activity enforcement, albeit extremely low and not applicable to much.  I chose not to bring up the issue during the Repeal Debate in the interest of keeping it as clean as possible and not wanting to suggest the members of the new GC would be inactive. But I believe it's now clear there are some outstanding activity issues within the GC. If we want to have a prosperous region, we must have active legislators.

I understand RL comes first, but as I've said before, there is a difference between RL coming first and RL taking over. This amendment does not punish legislators for missing every little procedural mishap that may come up, recognizing that threads are hard to follow sometimes and you can only care so much. Nor does it attempt to mandate how much legislation one must introduce, recognizing that good ideas sometimes take time by nature. But it does ensure that when we reach the final disposition on an item before us, everyone shows up to vote, at least most of the time. Therefore the will of the people in the elections will be accurately reflected in the actions of the GC, and deputies will be responsible for actually doing the job they were elected to do.

In recognition that this could take away a seat from a party without its consent, it sets up a strong preference for these vacancies being filled via gubernatorial same-party appointment, instead of a special election.

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

I would prefer a manual recall instead.

My concern with that is it could be misused for partisan purposes. In the past how such things worked is a certain number of signatures on a public petition generates a recall election. This can easily be used by either coalition for partisan purposes - Federalists could try to distract Labor from doing anything by repeatedly subjecting them to recall campaigns, or vice versa. Alternatively it could be used to change the majority control of the GC at a particularly opportune time with respect to public dissent, such as immediately after a tough vote.

We could try to combat this by say, requiring 10 signatures from each political party with over 20 members, but people could just switch parties so it might not deter anything.

This proposal was written to take as much partisanship out of this process as possible.

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

Autorecall doesn't have the greatest of track records even if it worked well in Lincoln historically. Still this proposal seems a bit too harsh to me

Feel free to offer an amendment to make it more difficult to get recalled

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

IIRC the Philadephia Plan activity requirements didn't account for a leave of absence, but I guess we can add that in.

If the Speaker will withdraw the final vote motion:

Amendment to add in consideration for Leave of Absences:

Activity Enforcement Amendment

To the end of the Lincoln Constitution, add the following new Article:

Article VI - General Court Automatic Recalls Due to Inactivity

1. Notwithstanding any other part of this constitution, if a Deputy of the General Court misses 4 consecutive final votes, they shall immediately forfeit their office.
---a. This shall be interpreted to include veto override votes, confirmation votes, and votes for Speaker, along with final votes on legislation and constitutional amendments.
---b. However, this shall not be interpreted to include bill amendments, tabling motions, points of order, motions for a final vote, or other procedural matters not covered by a.
---c. However, this shall not be interpreted to include any votes taken while the deputy was on a publicly announced leave of absence, provided such leave was announced in the Atlas Fantasy Elections, Atlas Fantasy Government, and/or Regional Governments (Sub-)board(s), and such leave has not yet exceeded 504 hours.

2. Notwithstanding any other part of this constitution, if a Deputy of the General Court misses 8 final votes in any session, regardless of whether such votes are consecutive, they shall immediately forfeit their office. The definition of final vote shall be the same as established in 1.

3. Any vacancy created by 1. or 2. shall be filled via a gubernatorial appointment, which shall be from the same political party as the incumbent who forfeited their office. If the incumbent was an independent, or their party has ceased to exist, or their party is not a major party for census purposes, the governor shall not be restricted by party in making an appointment. No special election shall be required.

4. If the governor cannot make an appointment within 168 hours, the seat shall go to a special election, which shall begin on the first Friday after the expiration of the 168 hours, or if such time expires on a Wednesday or Thursday, on the second Friday after the expiration of the 168 hours. If such special election would be concurrent with or later than the next general election, it shall be cancelled and the seat will be vacant for the rest of the term.

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

Aye

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

Do we feel good about supporting this now, or should we adjust further? I could supporting doing 5/10 or 6/10 instead of 4/8 for the thresholds if people prefer that.

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

I motion for a final vote

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

Aye

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

I know this sadly didn't get 4 ayes, but can we formally close the vote and put this out of its misery please?

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

It becomes very tough if this is a standalone bill, because it couldn't directly remove someone from office.

One idea would be to mandate the GC start an immediate vote on impeachment of the Deputy if the inactivity thresholds above are reached, however it's debatable how much of an effect this would have due to the 3/4 threshold for impeachment - even if we have a seven member GC again down the road, the inactive member and one 'buddy' could simply block all such impeachments. If a GC of three or fewer ever happens, the vote would have to be unanimous - including support from the inactive Deputy.

Another method could be to mandate the GC vote on a resolution censuring the inactive Deputy and recommending the region not reelect them. However this wouldn't solve anything during the current term.

---

Given this:

Nay

If Tack can identify for us what inactivity threshold he would support, we can try again on the amendment with said new threshold.


Edit: Despite some forum statements to the contrary, the provision in the Constitution is 3/4 not 4/5, unfortunately this difference is not very significant in the calculation noted above.