Amendment Proposal III

[Thud]

Wartime Legislation
Under II, 2, H,
Polls
i.) When our nation is at a state of war with another nation, polls dealing with military issues must be open for at least 24 hours. All polls dealing with non-military issues will remain open for the standard 72 hour period.
ii.) A "military issue" is defined as any issue regarding peace treaties, military alliances, mutual protection pacts, or determining the purpose of a great leader.
iii.) Any senator may propose a wartime poll during a state of war.

Under II, 2, I, Chats
i.) This amendment gives the Senate the authority to declare an emergency meeting to be held in a chat room.
ii.) The chat meeting must have notification at least 24 hours in advance and define the issue to be debated on the forum.
iii.) Polls, as defined by the Constitution, excepting that they need not have any expiration restrictions, may be undertaken during a chat; decisions made in the chats have full authority.
iv.) At least one member of the court must be present during an emergency chat, whom will take and tally votes.
v.) Absentee votes must be able to be sent in for people who can not make the chat. Absentee votes will be sent in to an agreed upon court member who will add them to the final tally.

[Arnelos]

This deserves some debate. Everyone has 10 days to vote on it... perhaps they should withhold their vote until it receives some needed debate.

As for the general idea, I think it has a lot of merit.

[Thud]

It did have much debate: this comes from a summary of that debate, which can be found on page two, in Davouts pre-amendment discussion thread.

[Arnelos]

You're right. Well... I think the overal thing is pretty good, I'm just undecided on the specifics

[Aro]

War-time quick polls... I like it.
I voted yes.

[Kloreep]

I need to come back to this later and look at it in more detail, but it looks good on first glance.

[DAVOUT]

There are two different issues in that amendment; I agree with the first one and I totally disagree with the other, so I voted No.
The reasons why I disagree are :
- Emergency meetings can be organized by the Senate in a Senate Bill, no need of an amendment.
- Members of the Court cannot perform operational tasks or executive duties in their quality of Justice; this would destroy the balance of power, and weaken the ability of the Court to judge any case raised on matters they were involved in their accomplishment. We can even question that a justice can act outside the Court. We could see soon calls for impeachment of Justices.
- The absentee is an issue in itself. The absentee problem appears suddenly although it is not really new that there were absentee from the beginning. The answer to that problem was the quorum, that the Senate has the power to modify if need be. Till now the 25% quorum has been quite appropriate since NO Senate bill has been rejected for the quorum not met. In addition, the solution proposed does not work: the Senators are informed 24 hours before the chat (when they are present) of the issue to be debated, but not of the poll the text of which being in its final format only after the discussion in the chat, that is at a time when the absentee are absent. Therefore they cannot vote since they do not know what the poll is exactly for. If the text of the poll is posted in the chat room at the beginning of the chat, as it was recently, the whole thing is a farce aiming only at the end to make by any means Senate decision during turnchats.

As I don?t want that the Senate become a puppet of the turnchaters, I support the first part of this amendment which is enough to improve considerably the Senate decision process. As you know, the prepoll discussion is a practice commonly used in order to reach an acceptable text for Senate bills, but it is not a constitutional obligation, it is just the way we used to work in peace time. Instead of calling for a chat with a 24 hours notice (when the absentee are present ) the Cabinet could just post a 24 hours emergency poll.

[Panag]

hi ,

24 hours is a short time , .....

this could lead to some stuff being done in haste , and later we might regret it , .....

have a nice day

[Arnelos]

DAVOUT,

You've laid out a very convincing argument. Thud, any response?

[civman2000]

DAVOUT, please help me with court case 10! (jk)

[mrmitchell]

how do we decide the judge to which the absentee votes is sent to, and who runs the tallies, in case more than one want to?

[Kloreep]

Hmm... this poll is closed, but it shouldn't until tomorrow. (Which is coming in 20 minutes for me, but it should close tomorrow evening to meet the 7 day requirement.)

I know I shouldn't try to do math this late at night.

Well, I guess this amendment was defeated.

[Arnelos]

This proposal is dead. Please de-top it. Thanks

[Aro]

Done.