The Final Draft of the 2019 Amendment to the Organic Law

[Glüc da Dhi]

Alternatively, I can imagine that this was intended as a way to allow a minority government to happen if a majority of the Cosa cannot agree on a seneschal, but in that case why still require majority support for ministers? Why not either use IRV for ministers as well, preventing multiple ministers being approved on the first vote or no ministers being approved at all, OR just have the minority government appoint its own ministers, allowing the Seneschal some flexibility in government.

(Additionally if this is the plan, but I'm guessing it's not?, it might be an idea to the replace the VoC with a system where the opposition can only remove a Seneschal if a majority can agree on a replacement candidate. That actually more or less ensures a regular election schedule as well so it might not be such a bad idea.)

[Glüc da Dhi]

and (c) all rules and procedures must be promulgated three months prior to the national election.

Why? I can think of loads of reasons why changes might be made later. What if a law regarding the elections passes of a different procedure is adopted and then the VoC fails?

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Feb 12, 2019 18:44:45 GMT -6 Glüc da Dhi said:

and (c) all rules and procedures must be promulgated three months prior to the national election.

Why? I can think of loads of reasons why changes might be made later. What if a law regarding the elections passes of a different procedure is adopted and then the VoC fails?

Again, this is one of the minor details that the Constitutional Convocation was supposed to sort out, but as we've previously established, some people didn't get involved in the Convocation because they didn't think the Government meant what we said about its goal; and others tried their best to sabotage/boycott the process, because they didn't want the best possible version being Clarked.

If (assuming the New Draft is adopted) there were a Joint Committee in the next Ziu to consider and propose amendments to the New Draft (such as this) before it comes into effect in 12 months, then right now we could deal with the simple question of support or opposition to the essential structural changes of the New Draft. I know I would have some suggestions that escaped everyone's eagle eye during the convocation.

[Glüc da Dhi]

I don't think many of the points I raised were just minor details. It's also not clear to me which changes are the essential/structural ones and which aren't. Wasn't fixing inconsistencies the essential purpose of this?

The above doesn't appear to be just an unintentional oversight/mistake to be fixed. It seems rather specific. I don't know how much thought went into it, but surely someone at some point thought it was a good idea to have the rules set in stone 4 months before the elections. Did my question about it immediately change the governments mind? Are we all agreed that it was a bad idea and that the big mega reform amendment to fix the current big mega reform amendment will include removing that clause again? If not, then shouldn't we debate it before the law is passed? As an individual reform I suspect this might not have passed the Ziu, but apparently that won't stop the Ziu from passing it now.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Some changes of course clearly do seem to be oversights or at least not all the implications were properly thought through. That doesn't however mean that the way to fix it is obvious.

For example this contradiction:

Feb 3, 2019 9:20:43 GMT -6 Glüc da Dhi said:

Part 2. (a) The Ziu shall set by law the procedure for the administration of national elections; (b) the Ziu may delegate the responsibilities of conducting an election to the Secretary of State or any ministry it deems necessary; and (c) all rules and procedures must be promulgated three months prior to the national election.

I'm not sure it is wise to have an outgoing Cosa majority to appoint a ministry of the government it supports to conduct the next elections. (Then again, the Ziu sets the rules for appointing the SoS without Organic restrictions anyway.)

Either way, if the plan is ever to appoint a ministry to run the election, why still organically

* require the SoS to conduct referenda on impeached senators during the elections (III, art 2, sec 5, part 3)
* have the SoS announce the final vote tally (III, 3, 2)
* allow the SoS to promulgate regulations regarding party registration (III, 5, 1, 1b)
?

All these seem like things that should be done by whoever conducts the election, but according to the OrgLaw that does not have to be the Seneschal, while all these organically remain the SoS's responsibility even when the Ziu appoints some other party to conduct the elections.

I doubt this was the intention, but is the way to resolve this to require the SoS to always conduct elections again or to make the related functions more flexible as well. Claiming this will all be sorted out and everyone who disagrees can go back to sleep cause it will all be fixed assumes that the solution will be obvious and satisfactory to everyone, but will it?

[Glüc da Dhi]

Another example where we most likely agree that it needs some work is this mess:

Feb 6, 2019 9:14:42 GMT -6 Glüc da Dhi said:

I'm not sure that the outcome being predictable is in itself enough to prevent this from happening. Again, the Seneschal under this proposal does not need majority support to be elected, whereas ministers do, so what incentive does a party that does not support the proposed seneschal to vote in favour of the ministers proposed by that seneschal?

Either way, where does it even say that ministers will be voted on simultaneously to the Seneschal? I can only find that

a) The Seneschal may recommend the appointment of various Ministers to the cabinet.
(Recommend to whom? Who actually appoints these ministers? The Ziu? The King? I can't seem to find an explicit mention of this. Also, is this exclusive to the Seneschal or can other recommend Ministers as well?) ,

b) Each Minister must receive a simple majority vote of the Cosa, and

c) The Seneschal shall immediately seek Royal Assent for each Minister, excluding the Seneschal. If the Crown is silent for a period of two weeks, assent shall be deemed automatic, and if Royal Assent is withheld for a specific Minister, the Cosa may reconfirm the Minister by a simple majority.
(Does this mean Royal assent is required? This does not seem to be explicitly mentioned either. Does the Seneschal need to seek assent but is it irrelevant to the appointment? Again, who actually appoints Ministers? Also, immediately upon what? I'm assuming upon approval of that minister being given by the Cosa? )

If the recommendation of ministers is exlusive to the Seneschal, then surely what you're saying earlier isn't true. Ministers cant be voted on at the same time as the Seneschal, because the new Seneschal is not the Seneschal yet, so I'm guessing instead anyone can recommend a Minister? If that's the case then why include a) in the first place?

I'm assuming from your answers that the intention/expectation is that the government formation is supposed to work as before, only formally mediated by the Ziu rather than the King. In other words, a majority agrees on a government first and the Cosa votes in accordance with what has been agreed. Is that correct? If that is the intention, then why allow the Cosa to elect a Seneschal who does not have a majority?

Also, if the government has majority support anyway, why is cosa assent for ministers required anyway? What is the purpose? We know if happens quite often that Ministers need to be replaced. Now, if this is the case at any time between the first day of the last clark and the first opportunity for a new minister to approve (a period of 3 months and 21 days!) there is no way to appoint a replacement in that time. Essentially during nearly 4 out of every 9 months we cannot have ministers going awol. Why? In addition every new appointment will need between 21 and 52 days depending on when it is needed! Why?

but again it is not all obvious or clear what the best way to resolve it is. It is also not clear what the interpretation of the current proposal is if it remains unchanged. Is appointing ministers exclusive to the Seneschal? No answer on that question. There are clearly multiple ways this could be resolved, not all of which might be agreeable to all the MZs who are now voting in favour of it, possibly assuming it will be fixed.

Btw, one of the main reasons that keeps being given for why all these changes are worth it is that the organisation and structure of the new proposal is so much better than the current one (without presenting a lot of examples of this), but in this particular case the organisation did not seem logical at all to me. The puzzle pieces required to interpret the process for appointing ministers had to be found in different articles, most of it in the article titled "general elections" even though this seems to have little to do with the elections themselves.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Also no answer on the reasons for removing some Ziu powers from the list. In that case I can't really tell whether this omission was an oversight or whether there's a reason for leaving it out. There might very well be. It's not clear what the consequences of removing those are. Was it just a mistake and will it be reinstated or was there a reason behind that. In that case, shouldn't we know what this means before we remove it?

[Glüc da Dhi]

The answer to these questions:

Jan 31, 2019 16:08:36 GMT -6 Glüc da Dhi said:

Section 4.
The Ziu shall have the authority to determine the citizenship status for any citizen who, without prior notification of good cause, fails to vote in any General Election or referenda or respond to any census for two years, as measured against their last vote or response, provided they have not otherwise made their presence known.

I assume determine the citizenship status in this case means terminate it. What counts as having made your presence known? Does it include posting on social media about non-Talossan affairs.? Instant messaging with a Talossan citizen? Whose job is it to keep a record of this? How do you proof that someone has not made their presence known to anyone? Can the Ziu arbitrarily decide to not terminate the citizenship of someone they like regardless of their activity? What if the Ziu simply can't be bothered to write legislation to remove people from the rolls?

was simply that everything will be fixed using the lexhatx, apparently removing any need for debate. No plan on how to fix it was given. But what if the current situation is simply preferable over arbitrarily letting the Ziu decide who gets kicked out and who stays. Is it possible that the result from rewriting the Lexhatx is better than the current situation? Maybe, but I can't be the only one who is not yet convinced. Can the lexhatx even provide an answer to all these questions?

[Glüc da Dhi]

It keeps being repeated that there is too much in the OrgLaw that needs to be fixed or that we don't know, again without all that many examples or with examples that have in fact been fixed after they were discovered. However, a lot of inconsistencies have been repaired. I understand people's frustration that the process for this has been very slow at times, but already it seems this proposal creates more new problems and situation where we simply do not know the interpretation than it resolves. Don't get me wrong, there are also a number of changes that I like, but at this point is passing these worth all the other stuff? And these were just the problems I found. There are more that I haven't discussed. Apparently Citaxhien Miestrâ has additional suggestions as well.


Here's another issue that hasn't been discussed either. Well it has been discussed in the past extensively, but then nothing was done with it, partly because the Ziu actually rejected a similar proposal: the second readings. I still think this is a bad idea without amendments. It removes time in which the bill can be discussed and changes can be applied, and replaces it with time during which the bill can no longer be amended but still has to undergo two votes. Is the Ziu really going to reject a lot of bills on second reading, especially when it's exactly the same bill and changes can no longer be made? Maybe there will even be situations where it's the penultimate clark and the Ziu feels forced to pass a flawed bill knowing that because any new bill requires two readings there won't be time to pass an amended bill.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Finally, a rather important question about interpretation, also potentially relating to the issue of the required majority: The clause stating that a Senator has one vote is repealed in this proposal. Does that mean the Ziu could theoretically adopt a weighted Senate vote by statutory law?

In the proposal it never says that each Senator has one vote. In the case of the Cosa, we know that an MC can hold multiple seats, but this is not specified either, so why would one Senator-one vote be implied but not one MC - one seat. When discussing majorities the proposal on multiple occasions talks about a majority of the Senate, not majority of Senators. It is not simply a matter of tradition either, because the past situation of one Senator-one vote was not based on tradition, but it was explicit in the OrgLaw (V.10). It was explicit, now it has been repealed.

This seems to suggest that it is possible for a Senator to have more than one vote based on statutory law. Is that correct? And whatever the answer is, are we sure about that?

(None of this is to say that weighted Senate voting would be a bad idea. It's actually a really good idea.)