Discussion about the New Constitution

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
Because of VP is approved by the senate, there is a protection against the pres putting a lacky in there. If you don't like the VP nominated, don't approve him.

I approve the VP nominated, but that is not in contradiction with my not supporting the VP partipating in the veto. The VP cannot be distinguished, politically from the President ; the Senate approval, as I understand it, is only to ascertain that he has a profile in line with the job (he has not played ahead before, he has not been impeached previously, he does not enter in conflict with everybody, things like that). In other words, an approval is not equivalent to an election.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by adaMada

Are you saying there must be a reason for the Veto? If so, how would you enforce that clause? Let the court decide if a reason is worthy of veto?

-- adaMada

Yes, that is what I am saying. The veto is a very interesting feature, but so powerful that it must be handle with care. A veto not justified by reasonnable arguments looks arbitrary and discouraging : what can I do next time not to get a veto if I am not told the reasons ?

I think that with the two suggestions I made, the veto will be used rarely, but its existence will make everybody more deliberate.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by notyoueither
UnOrthOdOx, I salute your good nature and desire to improve things.

re your question on the making of peace...

As things stand, the FAM has sole control over making peace. 'The Foreign Advisor is granted the power to make peace...'

We felt it good to modify this and we did. As you have pointed out, he would now need either the President or the SMC to agree. That means he controls the timing. Peace cannot be made without his approval. I do not think we wished to give the SMC a veto over it though. If we required the SMC's approval, that is what it would be.

Why not the Senate? We did not wish to slow down the playing of the game too much. As it is proposed, we must stop the game to declare war in some circumstances. We did not feel it necessary to stop again for peace. We felt that the FAM, SMC and President should be familiar enough with our war aims that they could make the decision.

I see one case where the SMC approval is technically necessary ; it is when the SMC himself for military reasons want that we make peace. When the ennemi ask for peace, his approval seems not necessary even if his opinion is usefull.

[GodKing]

ada-
don't get to releaved that the comments have slowed down. I plan on disecting this document this weekend. I suspect that as people get the free time this weekend, they will do the same.

From what I have gleaned regarding abstains, I agree with unortho. What I have done in the past when proposing votes for constitutional items it this:

1) Yes
2) No
3) Abstain. I don't care enough about this to vote either way, but I want to count as quarum
4) Banana, just let me see the results without having to click on the button every time I look at this thread.

If the yes is less than or equal to the no + the abstains, it does NOT pass. It worked well for the times I used it, and I think this system could be used for all our votes. All it does is give people the fourth option (which is what many abstains are used for) and defines the choices in the ballot.

Perhaps I am just rambling on as I have not delved into this issue as you all obviously have.... just wait til this weekend.....

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
I approve the VP nominated, but that is not in contradiction with my not supporting the VP partipating in the veto. The VP cannot be distinguished, politically from the President ; the Senate approval, as I understand it, is only to ascertain that he has a profile in line with the job (he has not played ahead before, he has not been impeached previously, he does not enter in conflict with everybody, things like that). In other words, an approval is not equivalent to an election.

You can vote against the VP for whatever reason. The VP doesn't always have to vote with the president though. I don't believe this veto thing will have any real affect on the game anyway. It was a minor part of the constitution. Many of you seem to be missing the point of it. We want to keep the game running by addressing the concerns brought up in the failed revolution, and make sure election problems like those in terms 4 and 5 are fixed. You also must realize, politics don't play a large part of this game. At least not since Linney and Trip left.

On abstain. Why would someone abstain to watch the election? You can easily press the view results button. Voting abstain just to view the results also removes your chance to vote later. You might argue that pressing abstain will allow people to only press something one time to view the results every time but this argument is rather silly. If someone cares enough to continually check on the poll in multiple instances, they will probably vote either yes or no at some point in time.

[DAVOUT]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Apocalypse

The VP doesn't always have to vote with the president though.
[QUOTE]
You bet ?

[QUOTE]
I don't believe this veto thing will have any real affect on the game anyway.
[QUOTE]
I am surprised that such an unimportant thing was incorporated in such an important text.

You also must realize, politics don't play a large part of this game. At least not since Linney and Trip left.

You misunderstood. I do not refer to political parties but to the fact that the President is elected, which is a truly political event, and that the VP is nominated by the President, and therefore, for the voters, cannot be politically separated from the Pres.

[Apocalypse]

The presidential election is largely decided on who is viewed most capable. Ninot won because Trip was blamed for everything bad that went on in the civilization. MWIA won largely because Ninot would only play turnthreads and WB is less experienced and because MWIA said he'd have a lot of free time this month.

[notyoueither]

Well DAVOUT, the VP is a heart beat, or a hard drive crash, away from full Presidential powers, so we did not see a problem in him being on the veto list. It is honestly not something I considered.

What we did discuss, at length, was how to best ensure a good relationship between the President and VP. For that reason, we chose the route of confirmation or rejection of appointment.

You may be correct. From time to time we may have a VP who is a creature of the President. I think it would be fairly uncommon though, given the participants of the game.

[DAVOUT]

NYE,

I appreciate all efforts made by the four of you, I am just, with many others, trying to fully understand what you did so that your purpose to solve problems once and for all be met. You have certainly anticipated that introducing a new feature makes the difficulty greater; I do not believe that you expected us just to applause and say OK that is fine, lets go with it.

The fact that the VP is potentially a President does not implies that he is a duplicate of the President and enjoys the same powers at the same time; he is just a substitute and has no powers which are not shared, literally, with the President.

In the absence of indications, I believe that the VP can be demoted at will by the President; if this is thru, the VP has no independence at all; this situation does not make of the VP a creature or a lackey, but creates a link of dependency that deprives the VP of the possibility to act freely.

I would like also to draw your attention on the delay during which the veto can be exercised, because I did not found it in the draft. I understand that there is a time limit allowed to the President to veto a Senate bill; it would not be reasonable to let such a Damocles sword above a bill after it has been promulgated.

[notyoueither]

No problems DAVOUT. I would hope that we be questioned closely on many of the things we did. I expected nothing less. It falls to us to explain what we did and why.

And I believe you may have found a hole. There is no time limit for the exercise of the veto. Normally, a veto by the president of the US would happen before proclamation (or whatever the US does). We have not provided for that event and thus the veto could be rather open ended... Well done. I will alert the others.

As for the VP, no I do not think the President can demote him once he is approved. No more than he could fire a judge. True, this is not stated openly, but there are some things that are implicit.

[Kloreep]

Looks good to me. I really like the new senate.

However, I would like to see a runoff clause added. As most of the ConCon members have pointed out, the smaller number of elected positions means more choice; however, this means we will likely be seeing more elections like the one for Science Minister. No candidate received a majority of the votes in that election; yet, because we have no runoffs, that one election was the final word between three candidates, all obviously liked.

Anyway, that's my one major concern, since it obviously has to go in the Constitution. (Yes, it could be an amendment, but I think it would be best to make sure this is included in every post-NewCon election.) There are other things that concern me as well, but they would all fall under the category of laws and should go in the Senate thread.

[notyoueither]

Kloreep, is the highest vote getter OK? That is what we have now. We did not intend to change this as far as i know.

[Kloreep]

What I mean is that I think if no candidate gets over 50% of the vote, a second election poll should be held between the two candidates who got the most votes.

Here's a fictional example: in the recent Science Minister Election, Thud and PlagueRat, who both ran a builder campaign focused on making our research good enough that we wouldn't have to buy so many techs, had split, with Thud getting 35% and PlagueRat 25%. Duddha, who campaigned on toning down science and waiting longer on raising science funding, gets 40%. Under our current system, Duddha wins.

But, in a runoff system, a new election would be held between Thud and Duddha (the two candidates with the most votes). Most of the voters who supported PlagueRat prefer Thud, so Thud now wins the election with around 60% of the vote.

This system isn't quite as good as preferential voting in a situation with four or more candidates, which is similiar, but eliminates candidates one at a time until it's down to two. Still, I think it would help such close (and crowded) elections go more in line with the majority's choice.

[notyoueither]

I see Kloreep. I really do, because I live with that in my country IRL.

But I have to ask, how many people would be in favour of prolonging the election period for these single month terms?

What happens if it is the presidential candidate? What happens to the turn chats while we pare down the number of candidates to the final 2 and wait 3 more days for the result?

[adaMada]

Kloreep,
Have no time to fully consider this now, and will do a LONG post with everything that's been covered so far in this thread once I get home tonight (Yes, I'm still alive ), but very quickly -- could there be a three-day runoff if and only if the winning canidate got less than 50% of the vote, and the runoff was between the two leading canidates?

-- adaMada