SB 104-14: Senate Special Elections Amendment (Rejected)

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

AN AMENDMENT
To restore special elections

Be it enacted by the Senate of the Republic of Atlasia assembled

Section 1. Title

This legislation may be cited as the Senate Special Elections Amendment.

Section 2. Content

1. Section 2, Part 3 of the Fifth Constitution of Atlasia shall be amended to be

iii. At-large Senate vacancies shall be filled through appointment by the executive of the former Senator’s Party; but should a vacancy occur as the result of the death, expulsion, or resignation of an at-large Senator not being a member of a major Party, then a special election that shall be held within twenty days of the vacancy to choose a replacement to serve the remainder of the existing term.

Sponsor: Ishan

The gentleman from the Virgin Islands is recognized.

[Continential]

Pre-reset, if at-large Senators resigned, there were special elections for the seat and I introduced this amendment because I believe that special elections will make the game fun especially since the game is competitive and the game is more active when there are elections.

[OBD]

Not a fan of holding nationwide special elections. At-large terms are short enough that appointments aren't really a problem.

[AGA]

I find it odd that party chairs make appointments. Why not have the president make appointments with a same-party rule?

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

I find it odd that party chairs make appointments. Why not have the president make appointments with a same-party rule?

That could easily result in someone party-switching to give one side an advantage. For example if I resigned and let's say Razze suddenly switched to DA then was appointed and switched back, then Labor-aligned senators would have 1 more than before.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I find it odd that party chairs make appointments. Why not have the president make appointments with a same-party rule?

Even then, to prevent abuse you would have to allow the party chair to approve the president's choices. Otherwise a Fed seat could open and Labor could just register someone for the seat.

[AGA]

I find it odd that party chairs make appointments. Why not have the president make appointments with a same-party rule?

That could easily result in someone party-switching to give one side an advantage. For example if I resigned and let's say Razze suddenly switched to DA then was appointed and switched back, then Labor-aligned senators would have 1 more than before.

We could have a rule where the appointee had to be in the party for a certain time before the creation of the vacancy or that the president has to pick someone from a list given by the party.

[OBD]

I find it odd that party chairs make appointments. Why not have the president make appointments with a same-party rule?

That could easily result in someone party-switching to give one side an advantage. For example if I resigned and let's say Razze suddenly switched to DA then was appointed and switched back, then Labor-aligned senators would have 1 more than before.

We could have a rule where the appointee had to be in the party for a certain time before the creation of the vacancy or that the president has to pick someone from a list given by the party.

Still pretty easy to game the system if a party just stores 'plants' in the other parties for this express purpose. Best to just stick with the current system. If it ain't broke...

[SevenEleven]

Having the President appointing members to the legislature seems to go against our separation of powers.

[Continential]

Sestak's reasoning details perfectly on why a system like what AGA suggested is bad.

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.

[AGA]

I don't see how it can be gamed if the President has to pick from a list from the party. I don't think a party chair, someone who is not an elected official, should have so much power.

[wxtransit]

Not a fan of holding nationwide special elections. At-large terms are short enough that appointments aren't really a problem.

Fully agree. The appointment system has worked (mostly) fine over its history, and I'm not exactly a fan of having a vast difference in electorate sizes between the general and special elections for At-Large Senators (roughly 18-25 versus 50+ votes needed to win in each respective electorate).

[Saint Milei]

I find it odd that party chairs make appointments. Why not have the president make appointments with a same-party rule?

Why should the president make the appointments?

[AGA]

I find it odd that party chairs make appointments. Why not have the president make appointments with a same-party rule?

Why should the president make the appointments?

Governors fill vacancies if a regional Senate seat becomes vacant, and the president is the equivalent of the governor for the whole country.

[Joseph Cao]

I said this the last time we were debating this bill, for the record:

With all due respect to Ishan and Poirot, I'm not really sure that argument holds water.

Our special elections are a carryover from the USA OTL, where House special elections are held to fill a vacant seat for the remainder of a term. In OTL these elections are held within a district, with a specific electorate which is reasonably close to the electorate that previously elected the dead, expelled, resigning, or incapacitated representative. When we say "will of the people," this is the constituency of people we are referring to. But we use STV for House elections, and there is no guarantee that this OTL property will hold in Atlasia under those conditions. Technically speaking, the same nationwide electorate elected razze and Jessica in December. Their voters are scattered around the country, however, and it is not a given that, in the hypothetical event of a Jessica resignation, Jessica's voters will be the ones getting to decide on a replacement for the representative to whom they previously gave a mandate, even though they are the "people" whose will we wish to gauge. In fact, as things stand, they will always be overridden by razze voters. It is more democratic in the sense that the majority of our electorate would prefer a left-leaning representative to fill a vacancy, and thus a 9-0 House if all nine seats simultaneously required a special election for each seat.

If Lumine's goal is to give voters a direct say over who represents them, and we are referring to the voters who elected the vacating representative, then there is no directly democratic way of satisfying their will – it would be disingenuous to hold an election for them and them only. (Lumine can correct me if my assumption is faulty, of course, though the alternative would seem to be giving the nationwide electorate the final say over who gets elected to a seat that only a fraction of them previously voted on.) In existing situations where the party chair can appoint, statutory law can be modified to enforce an ideologically similar appointment to the vacating representative (as Yankee currently does) so as to preserve the will of the people who elected that representative. If the party chair is also required to explain their decision, so much the better for purposes of transparency.

There is no consistent theoretical basis for electing an at-large senator by one method (STV), with one voter base, and then switching to a different method (FPTP) and different voter base to replace that representative in the event of a vacancy. It does not do the job of making sure those voters are represented, as the goal for special elections ought to be. That is done far better when party chairs can appoint an ideologically similar replacement that preserves the will expressed by those voters.

I would be more convinced if there were some attempt to fix the situation with resigning independents, as that is in fact an actual problem to be solved and one where the House (including myself) collectively faceplanted the last time we had this debate, but judging by his advocacy this does not appear to be a problem for the sponsor.

Similarly, I am not a fan of getting the president to change the legislative composition by fiat. I don't think AGA's analogy is right — the president is a separate branch of the same government. A more accurate comparison would be the governor appointing members of the regional legislature.

[wxtransit]

I would be more convinced if there were some attempt to fix the situation with resigning independents, as that is in fact an actual problem to be solved and one where the House (including myself) collectively faceplanted the last time we had this debate, but judging by his advocacy this does not appear to be a problem for the sponsor.

A potential solution for the Independent Senator problem could be to adopt a France-type system where the candidate names a substitute who would take their place in case the Independent prematurely leaves office. I would envision the system as having the Independent name their substitute before the election is held, though obviously there are alternative methods that exist for naming such a substitute. If there was support for such a system here in the Senate, I would be willing to introduce an alternative amendment to the floor to accomplish such an aim.

[Continential]

There is no consistent theoretical basis for electing an at-large senator by one method (STV), with one voter base, and then switching to a different method (FPTP) and different voter base to replace that representative in the event of a vacancy. It does not do the job of making sure those voters are represented, as the goal for special elections ought to be. That is done far better when party chairs can appoint an ideologically similar replacement that preserves the will expressed by those voters.

The Senate seat would be filled with the RCV voting system, not FPTP. Also, a counter argument I'd like to make is that the people elected them, and even if they were replaced by someone who was "ideologically similar", the replacement wasn't chosen by the voters who voted for the person who resigned.

I'd be fine with a system where if someone who put the Senator who resigned in their top 5 preferences or something like that, they can vote to replace the Senator in the special election.

Also, the regions of Lincoln and Fremont have a system like this and nobody in recent memory has complained about that.

[Joseph Cao]

There is no consistent theoretical basis for electing an at-large senator by one method (STV), with one voter base, and then switching to a different method (FPTP) and different voter base to replace that representative in the event of a vacancy. It does not do the job of making sure those voters are represented, as the goal for special elections ought to be. That is done far better when party chairs can appoint an ideologically similar replacement that preserves the will expressed by those voters.

The Senate seat would be filled with the RCV voting system, not FPTP. Also, a counter argument I'd like to make is that the people elected them, and even if they were replaced by someone who was "ideologically similar", the replacement wasn't chosen by the voters who voted for the person who resigned.

I'd be fine with a system where if someone who put the Senator who resigned in their top 5 preferences or something like that, they can vote to replace the Senator in the special election.

Also, the regions of Lincoln and Fremont have a system like this and nobody in recent memory has complained about that.

RCV does not change the basic problem that it is not the same people who will elect the departing senator's replacement. It could be election by winner of a WWE cage fight and that problem would remain. "The people elected them" is useless if you're going to arbitrarily change who "the people" are.

Furthermore, I'm not going to make the relevant distinction one between senators that were "chosen by the people" and ones that were not. The more germane one, in view of the relationship between legislators and voters, should be which voters chose the senator and which didn't. This bill mangles that distinction.

As to the Lincoln and Frémont situations, I can express my disagreements with the concept as I have done here and elsewhere, but my responsibility lies with registering my thoughts in the federal legislature in my capacity as a legislator of this body and the regional legislatures have a similar responsibility in their respective bodies.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

At-large Senate special elections to me only sound like they'd sufficiently deal with Mr. Cao's concerns (which, I do agree with) if the franchise is limited to those who preferenced the previous incumbent in their top three.

[wxtransit]

At-large Senate special elections to me only sound like they'd sufficiently deal with Mr. Cao's concerns if the franchise is limited to those who preferenced them in their top three.

At least for myself, my issue with limiting the franchise in a special election is the inherently arbitrary nature of what preference number is chosen to be able to vote in the election. At the end of the day, partisan appointment for candidates who were elected under the label of a national party appears to be the least complicated and most logical option from the ones that have been presented given the fact that there is an inherent disconnect between the nature of a general At-large electorate and a special election electorate.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

At-large Senate special elections to me only sound like they'd sufficiently deal with Mr. Cao's concerns if the franchise is limited to those who preferenced them in their top three.

At least for myself, my issue with limiting the franchise in a special election is the inherently arbitrary nature of what preference number is chosen to be able to vote in the election. At the end of the day, partisan appointment for candidates who were elected under the label of a national party appears to be the least complicated and most logical option from the ones that have been presented given the fact that there is an inherent disconnect between the nature of a general At-large electorate and a special election electorate.

I don't disagree. I'm just saying that the most elegant and only clear way special elections could be reconciled with properly representing the voters who voted in someone is to limit the franchise to them and just them.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I gave this some thought, and ultimately I believe special elections are appropriate. I'm proposing an amendment to standardize when the elections take place and to not hold special elections if the vacancy is created less than two weeks before the general.

AN AMENDMENT
To restore special elections

Be it enacted by the Senate of the Republic of Atlasia assembled

Section 1. Title

This legislation may be cited as the Senate Special Elections Amendment.

Section 2. Content

1. Section 2, Part 3 of the Fifth Constitution of Atlasia shall be amended to be

iii. At-large Senate vacancies shall be filled through appointment by the executive of the former Senator’s Party; but should a vacancy occur as the result of the death, expulsion, or resignation of an at-large Senator not being a member of a major Party, then a special election that shall be held within twenty days one week from the Friday following the vacancy to choose a replacement to serve the remainder of the existing term, unless the vacancy is created less than two weeks before the general election.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Senators have 24 hours to object to the amendment.

[Joseph Cao]

Not opposed to the amendment per se, at least not in a vacuum, but objection so we can get the rest of the Senate to look at this.

I gave this some thought, and ultimately I believe special elections are appropriate.

Also, in the interests of hearing counterarguments, what's your reasoning behind that?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I will oppose this proposal. The At-large Senators as a collective group are meant to represent the popular majority, but this is done in 11% increments if that makes sense, which itself ensures that various constituencies and ideologies are represented and have a seat at the decision making table.

The reason why we moved away from the pre-reset setup here was for good reason and that is because it basically ensured that for some months of time, the people who elected a given At-large representative would go unrepresented, by changing the electoral threshold by which that seat is chosen.

11, 11, 11, 51, 11

The basic effect of this is that the same group, same ideology would almost invariably win every special election ever, regardless of which seat they are filling. This would always then distort the distribution of seats in the At-large class, giving that side an extra seat, that would barring a turnout failure usually flip back (or another one in its place) to the people who held it previously.

51% cannot pick a seat that can be won with an 11% subgroup in a normal election, without screwing that sub group out of its representation. This basically turns thus into a power grab as such.

As for why the party chairs do it, there have been mechanism under the current setup, by which parties pick the members for the Chair to appoint through some kind of primary, but more importantly it comes down to timing and efficiency as a complex process could very well break down. Either way that determination should be made by the party bylaws not forced from the top.