Praise and Criticism for the New Constitution

[Togas]

I suppose someone had to create this thread, so here it is. Please post here with comments, good and bad, about the New Con's final draft.

You can find the text of the New Con and the ratification poll HERE.

The final draft does not have many major changes but it does have countless "minor" changes and clarifications that came as a result of the first discussion thread. All of our core ideas are entact. We believe we have closed up all of the loopholes that were brought to our attention and fixed areas that seemed unclear.

One of the major additions was the inclusion of run-off elections.

Anyhow, I'm sure there will be people who are unhappy with how it turned out, I just hope there won't be too many. I just want to say that we're happy with it. We've worked very hard on this and put in more hours than we could even begin to count.

--Togas

[GodKing]

I will look at it in detail later. I want to say thank you to all the members of the ConCon, for all the hard work that they obviously put into this document.

[Togas]

Unortho made this comment in another thread, but I wanted to address it here:

Section VII.11 seems a bit redundant to me. Don't know if I just missed it in the first one or something, but if there is no candidate for President, how can the Senate elect one? The candidates would come out of the Senate to begin with, so obviously no one wants to do it? How can they force someone?

The section he's referring to reads, "In the event that there is no candidate for President, the Senate must immediately elect a President."

This line was put in to close a potential nightmare. In the event that NO ONE publicly stated that they wanted to be President before the election deadline, the entire government would be screwed as there was no other means to get President and we didn't want to force the Dom Minister to do the job (see Chain of Command).

This seemingly redundant bit of law allows the people (the Senate) to use whatever method necessary to give us a President, deadlines be damned, ... most likely they'd just informally extend the deadline, bully someone to say he'll do it, then run a poll.

Anyhow, we didn't want to get caught without a President so we added this little bit in just in case the situation ever came up.

--Togas

[ruby_maser]

all in all, a very comprehensive document and, especially so, considering it was no-doubt a monumental undertaking to construct.

One question I have regards Article 2: Section 3...

3 Senators may also propose motions, resolutions, orders, and decisions of the Senate. These are proposed in the same way as laws and follow the same rules. These carry the same authority as a law.

Could one of the ConCon members please elaborate on the intention of this section. From my understanding, these options are just another way to say law... or were they intended to suggest the same level of authority but having the possibility of non-binding status?

Also, I might have liked to see impeachment more loosely defined on the basis of incompetence, gross negligence or misconduct rather than just breaking the law of the Constitution (as described in Article 5: Section 3a). But lets hope it never comes to that

Overall, great job though

[DAVOUT]

All praises made are deserved, but I voted nay on one fundamental issue which is the veto.

This new feature was not explained, and your refusal to limit this power to the matters the government is in charge of, makes it unacceptable. The vote gives to the elected executives a legitimity for one month; this cannot allow a veto for ALL laws passed by the Senate with long term objectives. The only answer received on this issue was that the veto was not important : it is simply not enough; if it is not important suppress it, if it is important, explain how the Government can have the last say as far as all laws are concerned.

It was said that amendments would be much easier with the new constitution; we will test it soon, although I would have much preferred let your work untouched.

[civman2000]

WHy is the poll closed????

[Togas]

Originally posted by ruby_maser
One question I have regards Article 2: Section 3...

From my understanding, these options are just another way to say law... or were they intended to suggest the same level of authority but having the possibility of non-binding status?

Also, I might have liked to see impeachment more loosely defined on the basis of incompetence, gross negligence or misconduct rather than just breaking the law of the Constitution (as described in Article 5: Section 3a). But lets hope it never comes to that

"motions, resolutions, orders, and decisions" are all equal to laws. Same rules, same power. We just didn't want to limit the Senate to only being able to pass "laws", so we allowed for other options like "Senate Resolutions" and "Senate Orders" etc to cover things that don't really feel like "laws" but should be within the realm of the Senate.

Long story short, you can call your bill a new Law, or a Resolution, or a Order, or whatever and it will all be the same thing legally.

As for impeachment, we pretty much just kept the old system in place. One important note is that an official can be impeached for breaking the law or Constitution. The Senate creates the law. Therefore, the Senate can control the terms and standards of impeachment.

--Togas

[adaMada]

Originally posted by civman2000
WHy is the poll closed????

I wonder if it closed the poll when MWIA closed the thread... I didn't think that happened, but who knows?

MWIA, if you're reading this, any chance you could reopen it (sorry to be so bothersome after I went and asked that you close it)...

-- adaMada

[Togas]

When the thread was closed for discussion, the poll must have also been accidentally closed. Perhaps the two functions are one and the same.

Anyhow, we need to get the ratification poll reopened pronto. If that's not possible, please PM one of us and we'll remake the poll.

--Togas

[Ninot]

I'll give some praise and complaint

Here here, the new constitution is a blessing upon our heads. Thanks to those who worked hard to build it.

This constituion is incomplete! It has no promisses for free tacos!!!!

Post(yet more coherent) script: Except for blatant mistakes, i think the best and only way to realise mistakes of the constitution is to actually use it in a long term basis.

[Arnelos]

I haven't read the latest version yet, but I'm sure I won't have any problems with it that I didn't already raise. By now, you've decided what's worth changing and what isn't worth changing and that's good enough by me.

So unless you guys suddenly decided to make the President the supreme dictator or something, it's cool.

I support you guys, I'll vote for it

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

I would have voted for it, so I'm glad to see 8 of the Elite Nine voted for it.

Do we have nine regions and each region got one vote in the ratification process?

Was 8 enough to pass it into law?

[adaMada]

Ghengis, it's gotta be open for seven days for it to be 'real' . (Trust me, I'd be happy to take those seven votes and call it if I thought we could get away with it. With 10% of the precents reporting... ).

Well, I PMmed MWIA to see if he couldn't open it again. If it doesn't work, like Togas said, no biggie -- one of us'll create a new one. To be honest, it's totally my fault, since I asked him to top and close it -- I always assumed that it would let people edit posts and vote but not post. Guess I'm wrong .

-- adaMada

[Nimitz]

Looks very nice, much better then our current CoL. It should serve us well.

[GodKing]

Truly an excelent job. I agree with UnOrthOdOx's concerns regarding the how abstains are handled. Other than that, after reading through the first half, I see much has changed in terms of clarifications, but the substance is still there. I suspect the second half is the same.

Thank you Togas, adaMada, Apocalypse & NotYouEither for all your hard work on this.

Time to word that amendment on abstians.... just joking.

GK