The Catchment Area Reform Act

[Iustì Carlüs Canun]

Nonsense, everyone knows MM is merely a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sovereign Province of Maricopa, the Best Province!™

[Glüc da Dhi]

Mar 11, 2015 19:25:07 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

I don't think provinces should be just senatorial voting clubs. If they were completely random, whats the point? All provinces would be almost the same. Honestly, we might as well abolish them. I support real provinces, with an identity.

It's quite a leap, and quite a disingenuous one, to say provinces would just end up Senatorial voting clubs and nothing more.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here. If we would randomly assign all citizens to a difference province, then what essentially, would they be?

Tell me, do they sort people into 'voting zones' in the Netherlands to create uniquely identifiable zones?

No, "they" dont "sort" people. We have normal, real, geography based provinces. This creates a lot of diversity within provinces, because obviously people living nearby doesnt neccesarily make them the same. It also creates diversity between provinces, as there are cultural differences between the provinces. These would not exist if provinces were completely random.

They used to call similar measure segregation.

Maybe I messed up with my English again, but if you got the intention behind my first post, I cannot believe you would bring this up.

When you say you support real provinces, with an identity, I say I support real provinces with diversity.

Awesome, me too.

If the eight provinces end up homogeneous melting pots, well, I say good. I think it's more important for Talossa to have 8 active and functioning provinces with a mix of identities (even if they do end up fairly similar in demographic cross section)

I dont really think people will really be very motivated to invest in their province without it having any culture, history or anything of its own. Btw, I still think 8 provinces is really too much for them all to be active. Id rather have some be succesful, maybe helping the others to follow the trend than have them all fail. But different population sizes, different cultures, different levels of activity, that brings different challenges, which require different solutions, thus resulting in a different history. If all that doesnt exist, we might as well have all provincial governments function the same, and if there is not much more to discuss or to do or to celebrate, what exactly is left but to just show up once every 9 months to elect a senator.

than have an active Euro-province, an active American Province and near dead Chinese and African Provinces.

The current proposal does not at all create near dead Chinese or African provinces. I dont think anyone wants that. But its perfectly possible to have geographic correlation and at least try as best we can not to leave a province behind.

Added positive effect is that people who live in the same side of the world, who might meet up for a Talossa related event for example, are much more likely to live in the same province.

I've already spoke on this. It's not as if I wont't attend an event in London with all the British Cezembreans just because I'm Vuodean and it's not like they will not invite me in the first place for the same. Anything to the contrary is an imaginary argument. A fallacy. We would all get together because we hold the shared identity and interest in being Talossan. I really do not understand the argument that real world get-togethers have anything to do with provincial assignment.

Hmm, that may or may not be true, but the point I tried to make was not that people in same province would sooner meet up, but the other way round. That Talossans who meet (or personally know each other) are much more likely to live in the same province.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Mar 11, 2015 19:57:30 GMT -6 Iustì Carlüs Canun said:

Nonsense, everyone knows MM is merely a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sovereign Province of Maricopa, the Best Province!™

I would certainly support a bill that would make M-M a part of Maricopa. Of course, that would become a megaprovince, which means some of its catchment areas should be divided among the other 6 provinces.

[Eðo Grischun]

Solution: All provinces except Vuode are to be merged with M-M. New M-M's catchment area is to be the Arctic circle and Sol. Vuode get's everything else.

[Iustì Carlüs Canun]

Mar 11, 2015 21:56:43 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

Solution: All provinces except Vuode are to be merged with M-M. New M-M's catchment area is to be the Arctic circle and Sol. Vuode get's everything else.

I will cosponsor iff we change the name from "Maritiimi-Maxhestic" to "the Greater Maricopan Empire."

[Iustì Carlüs Canun]

Okay, after about three hours spent going down the list of sovereign states on Wikipedia, I think I have something. I set out to base it on what language was spoken in each country, but that fell apart pretty quickly after I got done assigning all the Francophones to Cézembre and doing similar stuff with German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, and Finnish. But I think I may have something. (I didn't mess with the US states, and I had Canada as a single unit.)

I came up with the following:

7.4. ATATÜRK PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Atatürk Province: All suburbs of Milwaukee within Milwaukee County, which lie to the north and east of the City of Milwaukee; the Wisconsin Counties of Washington, Ozaukee, Sheboygan, Calumet, Manitowoc, Kewaunee, and Door; and the U.S. states of Massachussetts, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

In Europe: Albania, Northern Cyprus, Scotland and Wales; in Asia: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region of China and Yemen; in Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia; elsewhere: all British Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories.

7.5. BENITO PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Mussolini Province: the Wisconsin counties of Waukesha, Jefferson, and Dane; and the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

In Europe: Italy, Moldova, Romania, San Marino and Vatican City; in Asia: Armenia and Georgia; in Africa: Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

7.6. VUODE PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Vuode Province: The City of Milwaukee (WI) and the U.S. states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and New York.

In Europe: Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania; in Asia: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam; elsewhere: Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Samoa and Tonga.

7.7. MARICOPA PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Maricopa Province: the Wisconsin counties of Polk, Barron, St. Croix, Pierce, Dunn, Chippewa, Eau Claire, Clark, Pepin, Buffalo, Trempeleau, Jackson, La Crosse, Monroe, Juneau, Adams, Vernon, Crawford, Richland, Sauk, Grant, Iowa, Lafayette, and Green; and the U.S. states of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Hawaii, and California.

In the Americas: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela; in Europe: Andorra, Portugal and Spain; in Asia: Bhutan, East Timor, India, Nepal and the Philippines; in Africa: Angola, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé & Principe.

7.8. FLORENCIA PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Florencia Province: the Wisconsin counties of Florence, Douglas, Bayfield, Ashland, Iron, Vilas, Burnett, Washburn, Sawyer, Rusk, Taylor, Price, Oneida, Lincoln, Langlade, Forest, Menominee, Shawano, Marinette, Oconto, Outagamie, and Brown; and the U.S. states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Minnesota.

In Europe: Denmark, Iceland, Malta, Norway and Sweden; in Asia: Bangladesh, Burma, China, Israel and Tajikistan; in Africa: Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Uganda.

7.9. MARITIIMI-MAXHESTIC PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Maritiimi-Maxhestic Province: All suburbs of the City of Milwaukee within Milwaukee County which lie to the south and west of the City of Milwaukee, and also the Wisconsin Counties of Racine, Kenosha, Walworth, and Rock; and the U.S. states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

In the Americas: Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago; in Europe: Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

7.10. CÉZEMBRE PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Cézembre Province: the Wisconsin counties of Marathon, Wood, Portage, Waupaca, Waushara, Winnebago, Marquette, Green Lake, Fond du Lac, Columbia, and Dodge.

In the Americas: Canada, Haiti and Suriname; in Europe: Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, England, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine; in Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal and Togo; in Asia: Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; elsewhere: the nation of Seychelles.

7.11. FIÔVÂ PROVINCE.
Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Fiova Province: The U.S. states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri.

In the Americas: Antigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, Grenada, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent & the Grenadines; in Europe: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Ireland, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and Transnistria; in Asia: Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Palestine, South Ossetia, Taiwan and the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China; in Africa: the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Somaliland and South Sudan, elsewhere: Australia, Cook Islands, Maldives, Micronesia, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

I feel as though we might be able to synthesize the two lists--maybe using the non-US and Canada parts from mine and the US/Canada parts from the bill as it is now.

Any thoughts?

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

You know, I'm increasingly convinced that:

a) the idea of weighted voting in the Senäts by population is an excellent one;
b) the idea of just assigning citizens to the next Province on the list is better than geographical assignment.

Why? Because that combination of proposals will mean we won't have to revise the sodding catchment areas every year or two, having this same completely arbitrary discussion that we have been having since before 1997. I'm tired of it. Cut the Gordian knot.

[Lüc da Schir]

Mar 11, 2015 17:04:06 GMT -6 Dr. Txec dal Nordselvă said:

do we really have to keep all the republicans together? Maybe Maricopa would benefit from a republican or two...or Vuode, or Florencia.

Not at all, but if we're going to talk about tweaking catchment areas based on politic beliefs, it becomes gerrymandering. Which I'd like to avoid, if possible, regardless of which faction would gain from it.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Looks like I'm on pretty much the same page as Glüc and Lüc: provinces are geographic entities, so it makes sense that assignment to provinces be done on a geographic basis. And in drawing up provincial catchment areas, the primary considerations for me are geographical contiguity and compactness. This is consistent with the basic principle of provincial assignment that was adopted in 1988: you belong to the province you live in or nearest to. Catchment areas were initially defined to make clear and predictable which province an immigrant from any given state would be considered to live "nearest to". Things got screwed up due to a couple of bad decisions made in 2003, which were never critically examined after Ben quit in 2005, so the 2003 map was just accepted as "the way things are". This proposal is more in keeping with the spirit of the provincial assignment laws in effect between 1988 and 2003.

I will have further comments and some suggested changes soon (I've made maps of the proposed catchment areas which I hope to post tonight when I'm on my home computer tonight), but I think this bill is definitely a step in the right direction. In the meantime, I would encourage anyone interested in further background information on this issue to read this thread and my article on the history of provincial assignment laws in Beric'ht Talossan #13.

One proposed change to the bill to start with, though: this really should be titled as a "People to Provinces" or "You Are Where You Live" act, in accordance with ancient Talossan tradition.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Maps of the current catchment areas for the United States and the world are in the thread linked in my previous post. Here are some rough maps of the catchment areas proposed in this bill:

World:

In the world map I screwed up by painting the Atatürk territories in Asia and Africa in yellow, which is the colour indicated for Vuode in the key. There is no Vuode catchment area outside of the United States under this proposal. The yellow areas in this map should be brown, like eastern Canada.

United States:

You can see I didn't spend a lot of time on the details, like fixing the coloration of Canada's insane coastline. You get the general idea, though.

[Iustì Carlüs Canun]

For reference, here's how my proposal looks:

I used the same colours as Sir Cresti, except that Fiôvâ is lavender rather than light blue.

I didn't fiddle with the US/Canada ones, since I didn't change them in mine.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Mar 12, 2015 2:34:10 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

You know, I'm increasingly convinced that:

a) the idea of weighted voting in the Senäts by population is an excellent one;

Fully agreed

b) the idea of just assigning citizens to the next Province on the list is better than geographical assignment.

But then if someone I know becomes a Talossan he/she will be assigned to a diffferent province. And provinces would in many ways become the same. Plus the geograpical element would be completely lost, which I think would be regrettable for many reasons.

Why? Because that combination of proposals will mean we won't have to revise the sodding catchment areas every year or two, having this same completely arbitrary discussion that we have been having since before 1997. I'm tired of it. Cut the Gordian knot.

The goal of not having to redraw the catchment areas that often again is one I actually completely agree with. Not because Im tired of discussion. Discussing how to make provinces function better is part of our job and definitely something we should continue doing. Taking the easy way out now and just completely abolish the idea of having real geography based province is something I believe we will regret later. Rather, I agree, because all this moving and shifting does not make the provinces anymore stable and is destructive to the idea of geographic based with citizens being assigned to the wrong province because the borders shifted again. Yet, the current system is a weird compromise between randomness, geography, some element of choice, language, that really doesnt seem to make proponents of either faction very happy. Maybe Im optimistic, but I actually do believe we could find a solution that would stop us from having another redistricting for a long period of time. Some things that might help in achieving this:

-Catchment areas that actually make sense. This bill seems to be a great step towards that. The recent system seems to have been made in haste without much discussion.
-Making the immigration flow as equal as possible. We can never predict immigration for 100%, and immigration will most likely change as well so equality with georgraphy based provinces seems unachievable but personally I dont really think this is needed either. There is no inherent benefit for provinces to all have the exact same populations. What is a problem is when provinces become too small to function, but this is not dependent on how large the other provinces are. (Further there may be problems with representation and closed provinces, but Ill get to that.) However, if we can change the catchment areas now in a way that immigration in the foreseeable future is going to be reasonably equal hopefully it will take so long for provinces to drift apart that by that time population of all provinces has significantly increased, so this problem wont be as serious anymore. If not, then hopefully we would have at least a significantly longer period between catchment area changes. (Or if in 20 years we still dont have functioning provinces, we maybe should really start to consider the conclusion that we simply dont have enough active citizens to divide among 8 provinces.)
-Abolish the closed provinces rule. If the province do drift apart, I still think this rule is particularly destructive to provincial functioning. It means that people who personally know each other outside Talossa may still end up in completely different provinces. I dont really see the benefit to the province gaining new citizen as bigger than the harm to the province, which is not only loses a citizen but also personal connections between its citizens.
- Like you said, introduce weighted voting.
- Actively encourage the execution of the Move Like Jagger Act, which has already been passed this term and allows us to restore geographic connections that have been lost.

Perfect, then pass this bill. Add weighted voting, abolish closed provinces and I would actually be optimistic that we can do without catchment area changes for a long time.

Additionally we could also amend the orglaw to make catchment area reform more difficult. Bit too much maybe

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Mar 13, 2015 19:25:39 GMT -6 Glüc da Dhi said:

-Abolish the closed provinces rule. If the province do drift apart, I still think this rule is particularly destructive to provincial functioning. It means that people who personally know each other outside Talossa may still end up in completely different provinces. I dont really see the benefit to the province gaining new citizen as bigger than the harm to the province, which is not only loses a citizen but also personal connections between its citizens.

I agree with this. What makes the provincial closure rule really toxic is its arbitrary effect. If your "natural" province is closed your assignment is almost random. I think it would be preferable to make considered adjustments to the catchment areas every few years if and when things get really unbalanced. In particular, if we redraw the catchment areas to make them more geographically contiguous, as has been proposed here, because then catchment area adjustments can be accomplished in a minimally disruptive way by shifting regions on the edge of one catchment area to a neighboring catchment area. For example, if Cézembre started getting too big at the expense of Benito, it would be easy to transfer some of central and eastern Europe to Benito so that immigrants from those countries still get placed in a province with people who are somewhat close to them geographically.

Here are a few maps of a different sort, to help visualise how recent immigrants have actually been distributed geographically, what provinces they are supposed to go to under current law, and what provinces they would go to under the bill as currently drafted. It may be more useful than the kind of map that just colours the whole world, because vast expanses of colour hide the fact that there are large parts of the world that rarely or never produce citizens. On these maps I've placed one coloured dot for each of the last 161 immigrants (dots for Wisconsin immigrants are blank because I don't know what county in Wisconsin they live in). Pay no attention to the size (or shape--I drew them quickly) or specific location of the dots; only the country or state they are located in matters.

U.S. immigrants, current law:


U.S. immigrants, this bill:


Non-U.S. immigrants, current law:


Non-U.S. immigrants, this bill:

[Owen Edwards]

I would back Sir Cresti's model, because it unites the British Isles.

I'm also pretty shocked at Edo's description of catchment reform as segregation, but assume he didn't mean it.

[Lüc da Schir]

Planning to submit this bill for the Second Clark as it's currently written. Do you want to cosponsor, Sir C. M. Siervicül?