The Senäts Bar Cover Charge Act

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

WHEREAS it seems strange that a political party must pay $10 to take up seats in the Cosă, but a winning Senator is not obliged to make any financial contribution to the running of the country;

and WHEREAS I'm continuing to go down my list of Free Democrat policies which haven't been proposed yet:

BE IT ENACTED by the King, Cosă and Senäts of Talossa in Ziu assembled that El Lexhátx section B.9 shall be amended to read as possible (amendments in bold)

9. The Secretary of State, or his appointed agent, shall charge, as prescribed by the Organic Law, a registration fee of 6¤40 (six louise and forty bence, equivalent to $10 USD) to each political party in forthcoming Cosă elections, and a registration fee of 3¤20 (three louise and twenty bence, equivalent to $5 USD) to each candidate in forthcoming Senäts elections. Any Party or Parties, candidate or candidates which fail or refuse to pay the fee shall be deemed not registered. (48PD02) (42RZ14)

9.1. The fee may only be paid by:

9.1.1. Sending a Money Order, Cash or Cheque by snail mail to the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue: Only fees which have been received in full, by the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue will be deemed paid. Fees that are in transit, delayed, lost in the mail or not received by the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue for any reason, shall not count as paid fees, even if accompanied with proof of postage. Payments made by Money Order or Cheque shall not be deemed as paid until they have been cleared, the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue, will notify the nation when such fees have cleared or if said payments have bounced. If a party or candidate’s cheque or money order bounces, they shall be liable to pay costs incurred by the Kingdom for their payment bouncing and shall not be registered until their fee plus these costs have been paid.

9.1.2. PayPal: Fees may be paid by electronically transferring the appropriate funds into the Kingdom of Talossa’s PayPal account managed by The Ministry of Finance (Ministrà dal Finançù). The Minister of Finance is to notify all Political Parties and candidates in advance of the Election of details regarding the PayPal account into which they may deposit their fee. Once a fee has been received by the Minster of Finance from a party or candidate, he shall notify the Nation and Burgermeister of Inland Revenue publicly that said fee has been received and arrange for said fee to be deposited in the Kingdom’s Account managed by the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue.

9.1.3. Payment directly to the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue: Payment may be made directly in person to the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue, by cash, cheque or money order. The Burgermeister of Inland Revenue shall notify the nation which such payments have been received. The policy of Cheque and Money orders in 9.2.1. applies equally in this instance.

9.2. Once a fee has been received by the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue and/or the Minister of Finance and/or their appointed agents, it is not refundable for any reason. If, however, a party or candidate overpays or pays more than once for any given election period, excess fees may be credited to the party or candidate against a future payment of fees or refunded, at the discretion of the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue, minus any fees or costs incurred.

[Lüc da Schir]

This is ModRad policy, except that it applies to winning candidates only. Crucially, losing Senate candidates wield no power, unlike "losing" Cosa candidates - as each party still gets seats, plus, "losing" is subjective to each party (the TNC hardly "lost" in the 49th Cosa elections despite arriving fourth; in the same elections, the FreeDems may have "lost" as they didn't govern even though they "won" the plurality).

The issue with forcing every candidate to pay upfront is, of course, possibly "scaring away" people from contesting certain seats:

- Say there's a normally safe seat in play like BE/FL/FV, all places where the last elections yielded comfortable majorities or unanimity - in FL's case to the point that the last competitive election was a 5-4 win for Pol d'Auribuerg against a member of his own party, and the seat has never flipped away from the RUMP in ten years.
Now, there is a chance a non-RUMP candidate would win, but that entails a good candidate (Breneir springs to mind), campaigning (which hasn't really been done) and low RUMP turnout (which is, conversely, happening to some degree). But this is overall pretty unlikely and would scare away at least some candidates who in their mind would 99% lose their five bucks.

- Conversely, say a seat is open, even a relatively competitive one like VD or KA. The incumbent retires, some relatively new citizens may think they want to try and run for the seat, only for a much more experienced person to jump in as the clear frontrunner, maybe even endorsed by a couple of the major parties (think V running for Etho's seat). Now the new citizens aren't so sure if they should pay the $5, given that their independent candidacies would be overshadowed by the experienced candidate.

That was a long example, but in summary, there already is much less interest in Senatorial races than I would like - after all, they basically are the only races at any level where multiple individuals are pitted against each other. If the paywall is before the race, the risk is that most strong incumbents would go unchallenged, or that open races would only be contested by people who are 99% sure they would have a chance to win (old/prominent citizens, former Senators, former high officeholders...).

If the paywall is only after the race, for the winning candidates only, then this reasoning doesn't apply anymore: only people who can't physically pay (I'm assuming everyone can pay $5) would avoid to run, which is I think a much smaller subset of people than the one I've mentioned earlier.

Yes, it's less money, assuming the same number of people would contest the seat in both cases, but this assumption is probably not true. Let's take the next election cycle: FV, MM, BE, and a special election in VD. The "normal" races are all safe or solid seats; FV may go unchallenged, MM could attract an opponent, BE even two given its large size; then let's say it's V vs Trotxa for the VD seat.

That's $40 in fees under your proposal; but if people don't challenge incumbents for fear of losing their $5, then it's only $25 - only $5 more than the $20 "winning only" paywall.

A "middle of the road" option would be, for example, only forcing losing candidates to pay if they have received more than 30/35/40% of the vote (calculated at the last IRV/RCV stage if it's an IRV/RCV race), but how do you enforce that - especially if the race was so close (or even tied and resolved by percentile dice or RANDOM.ORG) that I could picture the losing candidate just not accepting it and not paying the fee? The only way would probably be having jungle primaries for Senate races, and *then* making the two top vote getters pay the $5 to get on the GE ballot, while write in candidates have to pay if elected.

But this would probably not work, because 1) single provinces can basically override all of this if they wish; 2) there's the low enthusiasm for Senate races factor still in play.

Ultimately then we're still down to the winning candidate / all candidates thing.

[Lüc da Schir]

This was way longer than I intended. Also EDIT: I just realised there's an extra special election in MA, but the example still stands.

TLDR: your bill is ModRad policy, so I'd agree with it, except that there's far too little enthusiasm for Senate races to expect "weak" candidates to run if they have to pay $5 just to be on the ballot. Our original proposal is for candidates to pay to accept their seat if they won, which would net roughly half the money. A middle of the road option (landslide losers don't pay, or only the two final IRV/RCV candidates pay) would be unenforceable, in the latter case especially without a jungle primary, which I presume nobody cares/wants to run.

I mean, this bill could work as it is, IF the Senate races carried more weight, such as if the two Houses had different powers (which I have spoken about extensively here). But this is not the case right now. We've had two three horse races lately, in MA and VD; that would quickly potentially become the exception.

[Ián Tamorán S.H.]

There is a big difference between party and individual.

A party - a group of people (even if that group consists of only one!) - shares its costs our amongst its members. In practice the leader may simply stump up the cash him/herself, and not bother asking the members - but that's up to the group, not Talossa.

An individual, however, should not - in any way - be impeded from standing in a personal election. Asking for  personal fee is an impediment.

If I stand as a member of a party, at that party's behest, then the party should pay. If I stand as an individual, however, I should not have to pay anything.

Remember that Talossa is the best thing that money can't buy.

[Béneditsch Ardpresteir, O.SPM.]

I agree with Justice Tamoran's take on the subject.

Furthermore, I'd like to add that, as per information available on the wiki, only two independents were elected to the Cosa: Nicholas Hayes and Béneditsch Ardpresteir, whilst there has been three independents who were elected to the Senate or held a Senate seat: Ián Anglatzarâ, Txosué Roibeardescu (after being suspended by the Free Democrats), and Tric'hard Carschaleir (appointed to the seat, joined the MRPT before reelection). In fact Béneditsch Ardpresteir did not pay his registration fees after election and the seats were thus divided between the rest of the parties.

Hence it seems that while political parties are supposed to have presence in the Cosa, their presence is not negated in the Senate. If something is to be changed, let's change the word 'Cosa' to 'Ziu' for political registrations. In such circumstances only those individuals (who do not wield a political clout) would be allowed to enter the Ziu after payment of a nominal fees, which may be half of the registration fees of the registration fees for parties.

Then again as Justice Tamoran reminds us, Talossa is the best thing that money can't buy. If that's true, why sell the seats?

[Ian Plätschisch]

Jan 9, 2018 12:14:31 GMT -6 Ián Tamorán S.H. said:

There is a big difference between party and individual.

A party - a group of people (even if that group consists of only one!) - shares its costs our amongst its members. In practice the leader may simply stump up the cash him/herself, and not bother asking the members - but that's up to the group, not Talossa.

An individual, however, should not - in any way - be impeded from standing in a personal election. Asking for  personal fee is an impediment.

If I stand as a member of a party, at that party's behest, then the party should pay. If I stand as an individual, however, I should not have to pay anything.

Remember that Talossa is the best thing that money can't buy.

As you recognize, a party is just a group of individuals. If a party is charged a fee, Talossan individuals will have to pay it. Therefore I don't understand how charging a group of individuals is acceptable while charging an individual is not.

Per the Organic Law, election fees are charged in order to cover the cost of the election. Senate candidates partake in the election just as much as parties, so it makes sense for the winning candidate to pay a small fee (note I do not support charging all candidates a fee).

Jan 10, 2018 7:44:45 GMT -6 Béneditsch Ardpresteir, O.SPM. said:

I agree with Justice Tamoran's take on the subject.

Furthermore, I'd like to add that, as per information available on the wiki, only two independents were elected to the Cosa: Nicholas Hayes and Béneditsch Ardpresteir, whilst there has been three independents who were elected to the Senate or held a Senate seat: Ián Anglatzarâ, Txosué Roibeardescu (after being suspended by the Free Democrats), and Tric'hard Carschaleir (appointed to the seat, joined the MRPT before reelection). In fact Béneditsch Ardpresteir did not pay his registration fees after election and the seats were thus divided between the rest of the parties.

Hence it seems that while political parties are supposed to have presence in the Cosa, their presence is not negated in the Senate. If something is to be changed, let's change the word 'Cosa' to 'Ziu' for political registrations. In such circumstances only those individuals (who do not wield a political clout) would be allowed to enter the Ziu after payment of a nominal fees, which may be half of the registration fees of the registration fees for parties.

Then again as Justice Tamoran reminds us, Talossa is the best thing that money can't buy. If that's true, why sell the seats?

We are not "selling" seats. That would imply that if you paid, you automatically got a seat. Of course, that is not what is proposed. As I said, a fee for winning a Senate election goes, according to the Organic Law, to cover the cost of the election, not to somehow buy the seat.

[Magniloqueu Épiqeu da Lhiun]

Why, oh why, must thou refer unto thyself in the third person, with thy full name?

[Béneditsch Ardpresteir, O.SPM.]

As far as I know, BenArd was able to manage his election win as an individual by voting for himself and using some of his pocket votes (however if I remember correctly there was no votes for him from his family as the other voter failed to vote/ voted for RUMP). Had BenArd chosen to pay the fees, he would actually have bought his seat. In fact morally he did not subscribe to the idea of having bought a seat and thus ended up not participating in the said Cosa - had there been a considerable number of 'other' voters voting for him, he might have taken a different decision.

[Although out of context in this thread, Sreu: Ardpresteir, Sr. just narrowly escaped from having a heart failure due to his admission to the hospital based on symptoms. He's hale and hearty now, although a little weak.]

[Alèx Soleighlfred]

Jan 10, 2018 9:15:24 GMT -6 Magniloqueu Épiqeu da Lhiun said:

Why, oh why, must thou refer unto thyself in the third person, with thy full name?

Alexandrèu Soleighlfred, former Senator for Cézembre and Member of multiple Cosas, co-founder of MRPT and former leader of CAC/HaRP, Sénéchal of Cézembre, member of L'États de Cézembre, the northernmost citizen of the Kingdom, does not understand what's wrong with this.