SR 114-29: Vote Or Die Resolution (Passed)

[West_Midlander]

Object. I would appreciate some debate as this is a significant alteration.

My question is regarding the "three consecutive weeks" provision. As we have seen in this present session, the Senate may not conclude its deliberation for some time and final votes do not take place as expeditiously as we would like. If, for example, the Senate only votes on 2 or 3 bills in the span of three weeks, I do not think it is fair to allow expulsion proceedings.

This is a valid concern. I might also suggest that we do 10 consecutive missed final votes w/o a LOA as the limit since twenty as the limit could mean a Senator could be gone for the whole session and not miss that many votes if the Senate is not so active at that point.

[West_Midlander]

VOTE OR DIE RESOLUTUON

1. Article VIII, Section 4 of the Senate Rules and Procedures shall be amended as follows:

4.) Expulsion proceedings shall be initiated if:

a.) a Senator has not posted anything on the Atlas Fantasy Government board for 168 consecutive hours and has not posted a valid Leave of Absence (then the time covered by that LOA shall not count toward those 168 hours, but periods of inactivity before and after the LOA shall count as a continuous period, provided there are no interceding posts).

A Senator misses tentwenty or more consecutive final votes or all final votes in three consecutive weeks, unless the Senator has posted a valid Leave of Absence in either the Atlasia Elections or Atlasia Government threads.

...

Amendment.

[West_Midlander]

Aye

[West_Midlander]

It is fairly common practice for PPTs to open a whole bunch of final votes at once. If, say, eleven of them get opened as part of a single vote-a-rama, should they count as consecutive?

Yes, otherwise, several vote-a-ramas could make up the whole session before getting to 15 sessions. We can consider raising to 15-20 votes after this vote.

[West_Midlander]

Well, if so then a senator might be expelled for missing what is functionally a single vote.

The issue we want to fix is a senator being inactive enough to miss enough votes to be visibly neglecting their duties, but given the vast fluctuations possible in how active Senate business is at a given time it doesn't seem fair to peg it to just number of votes. Retaining the three-week provision was fine, just add something like

A Senator misses ten or more consecutive final votes or all final votes in three consecutive weeks, whichever number of final votes is higher, unless the Senator has posted a valid Leave of Absence in either the Atlasia Elections or Atlasia Government threads.

Thank you for the insight, Mr. President. I am introducing Cao's proposal as an amendment.

VOTE OR DIE RESOLUTUON

1. Article VIII, Section 4 of the Senate Rules and Procedures shall be amended as follows:

4.) Expulsion proceedings shall be initiated if:

a.) a Senator has not posted anything on the Atlas Fantasy Government board for 168 consecutive hours and has not posted a valid Leave of Absence (then the time covered by that LOA shall not count toward those 168 hours, but periods of inactivity before and after the LOA shall count as a continuous period, provided there are no interceding posts).

A Senator misses ten or more consecutive final votes or all final votes in three consecutive weeks, whichever number of final votes is higher, unless the Senator has posted a valid Leave of Absence in either the Atlasia Elections or Atlasia Government threads.

...

[West_Midlander]

Aye

[West_Midlander]

Nay.

It wasn't until now that I caught this wording:

A Senator misses ten or more consecutive final votes or all final votes in three consecutive weeks, whichever number of final votes is higher

Effectively, this renders the "ten or more consecutive final votes" portion moot, as one cannot by definition know "whichever number of final votes is higher" until the three weeks have concluded. In other words, this bill indirectly decrees expulsion cannot occur until three weeks of all final votes have been missed by a Senator.

It's definitely something that I believe could easily be argued in court even if the Senate didn't agree with this interpretation, so I think this should be shot down and/or redrafted.

The 10+ rule is for if the Senate goes to only 10 final votes in a period greater than 3 weeks due to low activity. The language is intentional since I doubt anyone wants to auto-kick Senators after being MIA for less than three weeks.

[West_Midlander]

Nay.

It wasn't until now that I caught this wording:

A Senator misses ten or more consecutive final votes or all final votes in three consecutive weeks, whichever number of final votes is higher

Effectively, this renders the "ten or more consecutive final votes" portion moot, as one cannot by definition know "whichever number of final votes is higher" until the three weeks have concluded. In other words, this bill indirectly decrees expulsion cannot occur until three weeks of all final votes have been missed by a Senator.

It's definitely something that I believe could easily be argued in court even if the Senate didn't agree with this interpretation, so I think this should be shot down and/or redrafted.

The 10+ rule is for if the Senate goes to only 10 final votes in a period greater than 3 weeks due to low activity. The language is intentional since I doubt anyone wants to auto-kick Senators after being MIA for less than three weeks.

Maybe I've short-circuited, but I feel like we're more or less agreeing here? My point was that the 10 final votes provision was completely irrelevant and should be excluded entirely from the legislation given its wording; it seems you're saying that such would only kick in after three weeks if there was a slower-than-usual workload...but the way this is written, missing all final votes in three weeks in such a scenario would still be the criteria and therefore the only number by which such is assessed. It doesn't say "10 votes only if there are fewer than 10 votes in a three-week period" or what have you.

Am I missing something or misreading here?

I think you're misreading. I scanned it several times and it appears that non-votes in slower weeks aren't counted against someone, but ten unexcused missed votes overall will be enough to penalize.

Maybe, but breaking this down, to me, it appears to read as such:

A Senator misses:

[ten or more consecutive final votes]
or
[all final votes in three consecutive weeks]

whichever number of final votes is higher

It's "Line 4" [above] that I'm hung up on: it's straightforward to me. There's no clarification in the bill as to one or the other applying because of a slow/busy session.

Saying "whichever number of votes is higher" reads as irrelevant in that context, because if we're saying that a slow three weeks doesn't result in expulsion, then "Line 4" as an absolute kicks in and the process starts at three weeks. If there are fewer than 10 votes in a three-week period, then Line 4 applies; if there are more, I'd still argue very semantically (as I did originally) that one cannot know which number would be higher until the 3 weeks have elapsed (since the bill specifies explicitly "whichever number of final votes is higher"; mathematically, the two would be one and the same, but pedantically, one can't know until the designated period of three weeks has occurred!).

The intention is that if there are fewer than 10 final votes in 3 weeks the requirement to begin expulsion proceedings is 10 missed votes but more than ten votes missed in less than three weeks is not grounds for expulsion by itself.

[West_Midlander]

Maybe I should try to write out what I mean in numerical terms:

Let's say - with hindsight - that over a 21-day period, there are 13 final votes held. This ignores for a second that we can't know how many final votes are held over a 21-day period until such has elapsed & that the 10 consecutive votes portion can't apply until after the three-week period has elapsed, but that was the other part of my argument that we'll set aside for now.

Over the first 18 days of that period, a Senator misses 10 final votes. However, there are an additional 3 in the final three days of that period.

While a Senator may have missed 10 consecutive votes, there were a total of 13 held over such period, with the Senator voting on the final 3 held.

The bill says "whichever number of final votes is higher": 13 beats 10, meaning the Senator is judged based on their three week performance (i.e. they did not miss every final vote within a 3-week period). They cannot be expelled under the provisions of this bill.

As far as the opposite (what WM said earlier; where activity is low), I see no provisions explicitly stated in the bill that would guarantee such. In other words, the "10 final votes" part is moot as best I can tell.

I figure expulsion proceedings would begin whether there are 10 missed final votes or 13 in three weeks but in the former case the Senate would likely vote against expulsion.

[West_Midlander]

Nay.

It wasn't until now that I caught this wording:

A Senator misses ten or more consecutive final votes or all final votes in three consecutive weeks, whichever number of final votes is higher

Effectively, this renders the "ten or more consecutive final votes" portion moot, as one cannot by definition know "whichever number of final votes is higher" until the three weeks have concluded. In other words, this bill indirectly decrees expulsion cannot occur until three weeks of all final votes have been missed by a Senator.

It's definitely something that I believe could easily be argued in court even if the Senate didn't agree with this interpretation, so I think this should be shot down and/or redrafted.

The 10+ rule is for if the Senate goes to only 10 final votes in a period greater than 3 weeks due to low activity. The language is intentional since I doubt anyone wants to auto-kick Senators after being MIA for less than three weeks.

Maybe I've short-circuited, but I feel like we're more or less agreeing here? My point was that the 10 final votes provision was completely irrelevant and should be excluded entirely from the legislation given its wording; it seems you're saying that such would only kick in after three weeks if there was a slower-than-usual workload...but the way this is written, missing all final votes in three weeks in such a scenario would still be the criteria and therefore the only number by which such is assessed. It doesn't say "10 votes only if there are fewer than 10 votes in a three-week period" or what have you.

Am I missing something or misreading here?

I think you're misreading. I scanned it several times and it appears that non-votes in slower weeks aren't counted against someone, but ten unexcused missed votes overall will be enough to penalize.

Maybe, but breaking this down, to me, it appears to read as such:

A Senator misses:

[ten or more consecutive final votes]
or
[all final votes in three consecutive weeks]

whichever number of final votes is higher

It's "Line 4" [above] that I'm hung up on: it's straightforward to me. There's no clarification in the bill as to one or the other applying because of a slow/busy session.

Saying "whichever number of votes is higher" reads as irrelevant in that context, because if we're saying that a slow three weeks doesn't result in expulsion, then "Line 4" as an absolute kicks in and the process starts at three weeks. If there are fewer than 10 votes in a three-week period, then Line 4 applies; if there are more, I'd still argue very semantically (as I did originally) that one cannot know which number would be higher until the 3 weeks have elapsed (since the bill specifies explicitly "whichever number of final votes is higher"; mathematically, the two would be one and the same, but pedantically, one can't know until the designated period of three weeks has occurred!).

The intention is that if there are fewer than 10 final votes in 3 weeks the requirement to begin expulsion proceedings is 10 missed votes but more than ten votes missed in less than three weeks is not grounds for expulsion by itself.

But just to clarify here: intentions aside, I don't see where in the bill it explicitly states such. Can you correct me on this?

If we're changing expulsion procedures, then we need to be damn sure about the wording and the letter of the law on such.

I was simply explaining the text in other words.

[West_Midlander]

Maybe I should try to write out what I mean in numerical terms:

Let's say - with hindsight - that over a 21-day period, there are 13 final votes held. This ignores for a second that we can't know how many final votes are held over a 21-day period until such has elapsed & that the 10 consecutive votes portion can't apply until after the three-week period has elapsed, but that was the other part of my argument that we'll set aside for now.

Over the first 18 days of that period, a Senator misses 10 final votes. However, there are an additional 3 in the final three days of that period.

While a Senator may have missed 10 consecutive votes, there were a total of 13 held over such period, with the Senator voting on the final 3 held.

The bill says "whichever number of final votes is higher": 13 beats 10, meaning the Senator is judged based on their three week performance (i.e. they did not miss every final vote within a 3-week period). They cannot be expelled under the provisions of this bill.

As far as the opposite (what WM said earlier; where activity is low), I see no provisions explicitly stated in the bill that would guarantee such. In other words, the "10 final votes" part is moot as best I can tell.

I figure expulsion proceedings would begin whether there are 10 missed final votes or 13 in three weeks but in the former case the Senate would likely vote against expulsion.

So in this case, I have to respectfully vote against this bill. It leaves too much up in the air; that kind of subjectivity is exactly the last thing we need when it comes to expelling our own. "Likely" in my experience just isn't good enough.

Imagine the fiasco if a future Senate expels one member for one action by such an open interpretation, but not another down the line. Horrifying!

To be clear this initiates expulsion proceedings, it doesn't automatically expel members.

[West_Midlander]

Amendment.

VOTE OR DIE RESOLUTUON

1. Article VIII, Section 4 of the Senate Rules and Procedures shall be amended as follows:

4.) Expulsion proceedings shall be initiated if:

a.) a Senator has not posted anything on the Atlas Fantasy Government board for 168 consecutive hours and has not posted a valid Leave of Absence (then the time covered by that LOA shall not count toward those 168 hours, but periods of inactivity before and after the LOA shall count as a continuous period, provided there are no interceding posts).

A Senator misses ten or more consecutive final votes over the span of more than three weeks or all final votes in three consecutive weeks, whichever number of final votes is higher, unless the Senator has posted a valid Leave of Absence in either the Atlasia Elections or Atlasia Government threads.

...

[West_Midlander]

Aye