Parliamentary Bicameralism (Discussion Open)

[Lief 🗽]

Aye for discussion's sake, but I don't really like it.

[Lief 🗽]

So, this is essentially the Presidential Parliamentary proposal but with an upper house?

[Lief 🗽]

So, this is essentially the Presidential Parliamentary proposal but with an upper house?

Whatever it is it got an avid anti-universalist (Marokai) and a staunch universalist supporter (Hashemite) to agree. Whatever you want to dub it, it is what it is.

That's cool, or whatever, but I'm still not really seeing the big difference.

[Lief 🗽]

I think the best idea for the number of regions is 0. We can keep regions solely as electoral districts, but they shouldn't have (in-game) governments.

I also think this compromise is pretty bad (essentially being presidential parliamentarian with a bunch of stuff added on top), but apparently it's what everyone's settled on, so whatever.

[Lief 🗽]

Removing regions allows us to concentrate on national governance, which is much more fun, enjoyable and active, and it includes everyone, rather than just the people who happen to be in the one or two regions that are temporarily seeing a burst of activity.

And we don't have to make 12 at large seats. We can do a proportional, party list election (something I'm very partial to), we can divide the election into half nationwide seats, half district-elected, etc. I'm not against keeping regions as territories or electoral districts, as I said; I'm merely against giving them in game governments.

[Lief 🗽]

A regional government has, at the very least, two office-holders, sometimes 4 or 5 (if we give each one an assembly). That's up to 15 people in participating in the "side game" and not able to participate in the "main game." This is an ambitious plan, and for it to work, we need many people to be interested and able to take seats in the lower house and the upper house. Regional governments would just be a drain on activity.

[Lief 🗽]

I oppose it, as I've made clear earlier.

[Lief 🗽]

We're not going to allow dual office holding though. It's pretty clear that that's incredibly unpopular.

[Lief 🗽]

Nay

[Lief 🗽]

I agree with Daniel. Why I'm strongly opposed to term limits in real life, this is a game, and they think they serve a purpose here.

[Lief 🗽]

Aye, I guess, though I really think that electing people from the regions is a bad idea. Which elections are currently more exciting and competitive, our national Senate elections or our regional Senate elections? Often we're lucky if more than one person runs for a regional seat.

[Lief 🗽]

While I was originally an advocate of party lists, thinking about it now, I feel like that would make elections pretty boring. The fact is, Atlasia has very few swing voters, and especially in a proportional system, I fear that every election would end up with each party party getting roughly the same number of votes. Maybe I'm wrong though.

In any case, the type of proportional elections and the rules of seat division should not be spelled out explicitly in the constitution, but instead defined in statute.

[Lief 🗽]

Yes, especially because many parliaments have both a Prime Minister and a speaker, who perform very different roles.

[Lief 🗽]

Option 1

[Lief 🗽]

Aye

[Lief 🗽]

Aye on the Supreme Court.

Could people explain why they're voting nay on the President section?

[Lief 🗽]

Aye, Aye, Nay.

Regions should be abolished.

[Lief 🗽]

Regions should be abolished.

I still don't understand what harm the regions do. At best they provide a training ground for new members. At worst? They are inactive and boring. You don't gain anything by their abolition.

I don't think it's a good idea to have an entire section of the game that is "inactive and boring."