[Discussion] Citizenship Act (October 2018)

[Amerion]

That is very useful.

Is it based on the number of days or can it be adjusted to the first of every month?

 

[New Rogernomics]

That is very useful.

Is it based on the number of days or can it be adjusted to the first of every month?

Number of days from the point it is set. So we would have to activate it on the 1st, for it to be active on the 1st of the next month.

 

[TempestShadow]

Could we maybe hold off on the activity requirement for now, until we see what the standard activity levels on the forum are going to be?

 

[Ryccia]

Can we have a clause where, if not denied entry because of OOC reasons, the applicant may appeal to the Courts? We must be extra safe regarding political games in the future, where Imki nor Treadwellia might be present (remember Funk's coup? The flood of citizenship applications for electoral fraud, maybe even from both sides?).

Also, since the Delegate can deny entry due to OOC reasons, and since this is the realm of the Administrative team, perhaps we can add "violated community standards through their out-of-character activities, if the Delegate has sought consultation with the Administrative Team;"? In this form, more than one person can discuss and/or point out such severe accusations of importance.

I apologize if I have misrepresented or missed something in my opinion. Do point that out.

 

[Amerion]

Could we maybe hold off on the activity requirement for now, until we see what the standard activity levels on the forum are going to be?

I am partial to removing that particular subsection and will do so in the upcoming edit.

 

[Amerion]

Can we have a clause where, if not denied entry because of OOC reasons, the applicant may appeal to the Courts? We must be extra safe regarding political games in the future, where Imki nor Treadwellia might be present (remember Funk's coup? The flood of citizenship applications for electoral fraud, maybe even from both sides?).

Also, since the Delegate can deny entry due to OOC reasons, and since this is the realm of the Administrative team, perhaps we can add "violated community standards through their out-of-character activities, if the Delegate has sought consultation with the Administrative Team;"? In this form, more than one person can discuss and/or point out such severe accusations of importance.

I apologize if I have misrepresented or missed something in my opinion. Do point that out.

There is a clause which addressed your concern:

The issue which you are referring to was a case where new citizenship applications were being accepted by the Sovereign (Funk) and who were voting en masse in a noticeable way. Our current system has no mechanism designed to counter this specific threat other than prohibiting the acceptance of citizenship-applications during a confirmation vote. On that thought, it may very well be feasible to perhaps install a 'challenge system' wherein a Citizen can challenge the acceptance of a new Citizen by the Delegate, and the Assembly can revoke that acceptance by three-thirds vote. What are people's thoughts on this?

I am leaning towards removing the subsection allowing the Delegate to reject an application on OOC grounds as the forum administration has been granted that power.

 

[Ryccia]

Sorry for missing that. But I'd still suggest the Courts, as they tend to be less prone to outright voter fraud and populism (imagine the Funk-controlled rubber stamp legislature seeing an appeal from one of Funk's political enemies lol). Sure, the Courts can also be horrifically corrupt, but I feel it is the more organized and principled of the two branches. Besides, it should be their job to rule on matters of cases and such. Anyone have an idea on another appealing body, or why the Assembly might be better?

First, regarding this "challenge" system, I could be open to the idea. It could even make the appeal to the Assembly valid as well in my eyes.

 

[Sheepshape]

augh post eaten by forum. Trying to respond to NR's post on the last page about denying cit to predators etc.

"I don't think you're necessarily right there; if admins ban someone from the forum for the behaviors you mention, they wouldn't be able to get citizenship since they'd have no way to request it. And if they already had citizenship, it would expire once they don't post for 30 days (or whatever we ultimately decide on).

I am going to post a separate response to the bill itself, because long. :silly:"

Actually, they wouldn't necessarily be banned. If a proven harasser/forum destroyer from another region comes here, then there is no scope to argue that they committed a crime in Lazarus. Which is why the community standards for ooc actions part was pretty important to include. With that added, we can exclude COPS violators,etc with ease.

They don't need to have committed a crime in lazarus for forum administration to ban them, and someone who's done something like that should be banned without question. It's not necessary to address their political citizenship, since administratively banned people can't access the forum to apply and have no IC rights to appeal.

 

[Amerion]

Spoiler: Version 4

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Citizenship Act (September 2018)Proposed by: Amerion [/align]

Preamble

In order to make provision for the acquisition, maintenance, and removal of citizenship, this Act shall codify the formal membership of the citizenry in Lazarus.

Section 1. Acquisition of citizenshipSection 2. Maintenance of citizenship

(1) A citizen shall maintain their citizenship should they continue to fulfil the eligibility requirements of citizenship.

(2) A citizen may apply for a leave of absence in a designated area. The Delegate may approve an application.

Section 3. Removal of citizenship

(1) A citizen may make a formal application to the Delegate in a designated area stating their desire to renounce their citizenship. The Delegate shall comply.

(2) Within the first week of a calendar month, the Delegate shall conduct a review of all current citizens and shall remove the citizenship of persons who fail to meet the requirements necessary to maintain citizenship.

Section 4. Appealing a denial of a citizenship application or removal of citizenship

(1) A person may appeal a denial by the Delegate of a citizenship application or removal of citizenship to the Assembly. The Assembly may overturn such decisions by three-quarters vote.

(2) A person may not appeal a denial by the off-site property administration.

Section 5. DefinitionsSection 6. Constitutional law

(1) The Citizenship Act is a constitutional law, and further amendments to it must meet constitutional amendment requirements.

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[Amerion]

I have updated the bill in the above post.

As I don't think it is full-proof yet, I'm going to leave it open to discussion for an indefinite period.

I'm unsure whether the denial of citizenship applications by off-site forum administration should be open to appeal (to the Courts) so I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks.

 

[Mysterious Player]

I have updated the bill in the above post.

As I don't think it is full-proof yet, I'm going to leave it open to discussion for an indefinite period.

I'm unsure whether the denial of citizenship applications by off-site forum administration should be open to appeal (to the Courts) so I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks.

I don't think it should be, since the Courts are an IC entity, so they shouldn't be for OOC offenses. I don't see the need to allow appeals for bans from off-site administration.

 

[New Rogernomics]

I have updated the bill in the above post.

As I don't think it is full-proof yet, I'm going to leave it open to discussion for an indefinite period.

I'm unsure whether the denial of citizenship applications by off-site forum administration should be open to appeal (to the Courts) so I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks.

Yep. Bans by off-site forum administration shouldn't be open to appeal. Rather the Delegate, the Courts, and Off-Site Forum Administration should discuss together around whether a ban should be reviewed or revisited.

If denial of citizenship by Off-Site Administration were to become beholden to the Courts and the Assembly entirely, it would create plenty of new problems such as:
With 1 through 4, if those restricted or banned by Off-Site Administration, are Citizens or Residents, then Off-Site Administration would limit the masking to prevent more of those activities occurring, and it would likely go through the Courts - should they seek to continue participating in the community. Procedure wise, if someone voluntarily leaves the forum or discord, then realistically the ban/restriction remains in place.

PS: This is a bit TL;DR, but essentially it can be summed up as, if an issue arises Off-Site Administration will act to fix it, in most cases out-of court discussions on bans are more likely and realistic, than a court case decision for every Off-Site Administration ban.

 

[Amerion]

No worries. I've taken note of all your comments.

I'm just waiting on Sheep's comments before I make another edit.

 

[Sheepshape]

Sorry for the delay on my end, life's been a bit

In order to make provision for the acquisition, maintenance, and removal of citizenship, this Act shall codify the formal membership of the citizenry in Lazarus.

I think the wording on this could be improved:

This act codifies the regulations around the acquisition, maintenance, and removal or loss of citizenship in Lazarus.

For Section 1, I've added a mention of residency as well as citizenship; this would allow us to reference residents

Section 1. Residency and the Acquisition of Citizenship

(1) A resident is any person with a nation in Lazarus.

(2) Any resident may apply for citizenship by submitting an application in a designated area of the forum and swearing the following oath:

From this time forward, I voluntarily without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, pledge my loyalty to Lazarus and her people, whose community ideals I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

(3) In addition to the oath, the application must include the applicant's:
a. nation in Lazarus;
b. World Assembly nation, if applicable;
c. current or previous affiliations to foreign entities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application;
d. current or previous identities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application;
e. criminal record, if applicable; and an
f. oath of membership.

(4) Off-site property administration has one week to refuse to approve an application based on risk to the security or safety of off-site property or its users, or violation of terms of service.

(5) The Delegate may refuse to approve an application if the applicant has:
a. not met the criteria for eligibility;
i. the Delegate may, at their discretion, issue a waiver in instances where the applicant has not met the criteria;
b. not satisfactorily completed the citizenship application;
c. violated community standards through their out-of-character activities;
d. been rendered an adverse security threat by the Delegate or the Council of Lazarene Security; or
e. engaged in conduct with the intention of attaining multiple accounts.



(7) The Delegate may not approve an application during the period in which a confirmation vote is occurring in the Assembly.

Alright, so I have some concerns about clauses 3-7 of this section, which I will lay out. I've color-coded them because it helps me keep things straight. Sorry not sorry.

(3) In addition to the oath, the application must include the applicant's:
a. nation in Lazarus;
b. World Assembly nation, if applicable;
c. current or previous affiliations to foreign entities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application;
d. current or previous identities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application;
e. criminal record, if applicable; and an
f. oath of membership.

Yes to nation in Lazarus. But... no to everything else. Honestly, we don't need someone to tell us their WA nation. If it's a well-known nation we'll probably already know it, and if it's not a well-known nation, it isn't going to help anything. This question also prevents anyone who wants to join Lazarus honestly, but who is engaged in certain areas of R/D (sleeper missions, espionage against an enemy group) or is already undercover on behalf of another region in which they are a member (like if I'm known to be a member in TWP, but my WA is undercover in TEP to ferret out a suspected coup plot), from doing so. They'll either have to lie, or they'll have to stay away. Personally I don't feel like those are great choices to force someone to make. And given how Section 2 is phrased, the implication is that even if I'm an innocent regular tagger/detagger and update my WA multiple times a day, if I don't keep Lazarus updated on exactly what it is at all times, I might be failing to fulfill my eligibility requirements and subject to losing my citizenship. And, y'know, that *is* a choice a region can make... but I don't think Lazarus has the activity to spare to make that a smart choice. We should be making it as easy and straightforward as possible for people to join us and get involved, not wrap them up in legal requirements. All Lazarus needs to know is whether someone's citizenship/residency nation is or is not WA for the purpose, if desired, of determining WA voting. It doesn't need to know what their WA nation is if it's not here.

I feel similarly about requiring affiliations and identities. It forces anyone who is engaged in certain areas of gameplay or of R/D to lie or to stay away, even if they have no ill intentions toward Lazarus. Additionally, those aren't really very clear-cut terms. If I raid occasionally on the side with a raider group, but am not a member and don't have a nation in their region, is that an affiliation? Or is affiliation only citizenships I hold? What if one of those citizenships is under false pretenses, so I don't *really* consider myself affiliated with the region? As for identities, is that just names I generally go by or also other nicknames people might have for me? Do I need to list all of my puppets, any one of which might be in the WA at any given time? Or are those not really separate *identities*? What exactly is the point where a name becomes an identity and needs to be included? And if I leave a region and abandon a name I used there, do I then have to go back and take that identity off the list to retain my citizenship?

I can get behind asking if people are members of certain specific regions or organizations that Lazarus has determined might be a threat. Like, if we fight off a coup attempt by TRR, I think it's reasonable to then pass a law saying nobody can be a citizen of both TRR and Lazarus, that anybody currently with both citizenships must choose which one to keep, and that future applicants must answer whether they are citizens of TRR in their application. But that's all. We don't need to know all of their NS business - it really doesn't benefit us in the slightest. Liars and would-be coupers are gonna lie regardless, and honest people will just get tripped up.

And finally... criminal record? Please, please no. This is such a useless semi-factoid. Different regions, different governments, and different time periods all have wildly different standards for what counts as criminal, what's found criminal, what's punished. For example, TNP is notoriously prone to not convicting even obvious criminal behavior over technicalities and legal complexities, such that even Durk doesn't have a "criminal record" for his coups there. Meanwhile, I personally have been convicted of espionage by The Pacific and sentenced to burning at the stake, aka, a permanent ban, in a show trial that lasted something like five posts. (The permanence of my ban was later revoked...)

Not only are there different standards in how and who to convict, different regions also have entirely different sets of crimes to choose from. Some regions prosecute OOC behavior as a crime. Some regions have deeply complex legal codes, while others are simple and go just for the biggies. Some regions consider a particular act a major felony; for others it's a minor misdemeanor.

Sure, ask if they've ever been convicted of a crime in Lazarus. But nothing else gives us any valuable information about that player as a risk. It's just... idk. Dredging up old wounds.

So, I strongly feel this section should be changed to:

(3) In addition to the oath, the application must include:
a. the applicant's nation in Lazarus;
b. whether the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime in Lazarus, and if so, what they were convicted of;
c. affiliation with any region, organization, or group which has been declared a threat to Lazarus, her people, or her government.

(4) Off-site property administration has one week to refuse to approve an application based on risk to the security or safety of off-site property or its users, or violation of terms of service.

For this one, I just wanted to comment on the small change I suggested. In general I think placing a time limit on processing applications is important. It's not fair for people who want to join to have to wait indefinitely until administration decides whether or not to let them in, particularly because there are times that admins might be backlogged or dealing with bigger problems. I'm not strongly settled on one week to review; a bit longer would probably also be fine, but I wouldn't want to go longer than about 2 weeks.

I don't think adding this limit indicates any real increased threat to the forum - if admins realize after someone's been approved that actually they are Notorious Forum Hacker PhishMan254, it's entirely their prerogative to step in and ban them from the forum at that pint. Admin jurisdiction doesn't end when citizenship begins - this is just a preliminary look on the way to citizenship and government participation.

I'm glad that you specified the security of offsite property, rather than the security of the government itself - one is a political matter, the other an administrative one, and I appreciate you capturing the distinction.

(5) The Delegate may refuse to approve an application if the applicant has:
a. not met the criteria for eligibility;
i. the Delegate may, at their discretion, issue a waiver in instances where the applicant has not met the criteria;
b. not satisfactorily completed the citizenship application;
c. violated community standards through their out-of-character activities;
d. been rendered an adverse security threat by the Delegate or the Council of Lazarene Security; or
e. engaged in conduct with the intention of attaining multiple accounts.

So, some of these I like and some of these I don't.

Firstly, I'm not actually sure about the Delegate being the one to approve or deny applicants. Not that they don't have a role to play, but the Delegate has a ton of work on their plate and this is pretty easily one that can be farmed out to another official. It could be the Speaker, or a minister created specifically for that role, or we could invent a separate office for appointment/confirmation ("Immigration Specialist" or something like that maybe) - anything to a) take work off the Delegate's busy busy busybusybusybusy hands and b) spread that work, that activity, around to other members of the community. The more people we can get involved and doing things, the better this community will function.

I'm not stoked about the delegate being able to issue a waiver for citizenship; I think that runs the risk of the delegate being able to politicize things by stacking votes. For example, if the Delegate doesn't like a mandate amendment but it looks like a majority of citizens support it, they could bring in their RL friends who have no nations, give them waivers from having to have nations, and get them all to vote it down. The delegacy is a powerful role but it shouldn't be able to completely subvert things just to win every disagreement.

As for out of character activities, IMO that's on forum administration to decide, not the delegate. The delegate could be swayed by political factors, like "Yeah this person was accused of bad things, but they would make such a great Speaker, so I want to just let them in and appoint them." Whereas forum administration is supposed to be above such considerations, and able to just say "No, this person was accused of bad things, we've seen the evidence from the region where it happened, this is NOT acceptable, GOODBYE." Also it would already be covered under representing a threat to Lazarus' users.

Finally, with multiple accounts, I'd prefer to clarify the wording to specify that it refers to multiple citizenship accounts - it's not impossible we could allow people to have multiple accounts on the forum that are not for citizenship. These reasons could be "I want to RP with two nations and keep their posts separate" or they could be "I, an admin, want my political role to be fully separate from my administrative role" or they could be "I, a citizen and a diplomat from another region, would like my domestic and foreign roles to be fully separate from one another". They could even just be innocent, like "Oh I made an account yearrrrrs ago and forgot the login info before I made this one."

Oh, and I think there should be a time limit on this one as well - otherwise someone could be "soft denied" just by the delegate ignoring them indefinitely, and that's not a great state of affairs. New citizens are the lifeblood of the region.

One final thing - I don't think discretion in denying in certain cases is good. If someone doesn't include an oath, I don't think the Citizenship Official should be able to admit them anyway. So I added in some firmer language and split things apart a bit. And I made the person who does the IC-security stuff the Vice Delegate, since they run the CLS and security is their jam. Spreading the wealth around!

So, here's my suggestion for how to reword this clause:

(5) The Vice Delegate has one week to evaluate an applicant to determine if they represent a security threat to the region or government of Lazarus and may refuse to approve any applicant who is a threat. Anybody who has been declared to be a security threat by the Council of Lazarene Security will automatically be refused approval.

(6) Some Other Official must refuse to approve an application if the applicant:
a. has not met the criteria for eligibility;
b. has not completed the citizenship application, or completed it incorrectly;
c. has been declared a security threat by the Vice Delegate or the Council of Lazarene Security; or
d. has already become a citizen under another name on the forum.

Moving on! I'm not enamored with this clause. For one thing, it has no end date - hypothetically, the Assembly could decide after years that they don't like someone, and vote to overturn their approval. At minimum, it needs to be time-limited. Something like "The Assembly may initiate an overturn of an approved citizenship within two weeks of its approval."

But even then, I don't love it. I think if the admins don't object, and the CLS and Vice Delegate don't see a threat, it's risky to allow the Assembly to self-police who gets to be a citizen. That's a road to homogenous memberships and a lack of healthy dissent and debate. The Assembly is stronger and better when there are competing ideas, competing talents, and a diverse set of views.

I would prefer this clause simply be removed. In an ideal world I'd want the Assembly to overturn refusals, but I think they are going to be rare enough that this isn't really necessary. If we start to have problems with the CLS being overly restrictive, then I think we can look at amending this to allow the Assembly to push back.

(7) The Delegate may not approve an application during the period in which a confirmation vote is occurring in the Assembly.

Last clause in this section! Hooray! I don't see the point of this one. It's so much easier to just say that people can't vote if they weren't a citizen when the vote was opened than to require a moratorium on accepting people while a vote is going on. The former is super easy to track with a simple spreadsheet of citizens and join dates (and I can help set one up if the Speaker is interested in that); the latter can grind things to a halt for a while in some cases. Like, if there's a vote for Speaker, and then after that ends but before the Citizenship Officer can get back to work, a new one opens to replace a Minister, and then one to add someone to the CLS... it's not implausible that things could jam up all together and then citizenships get behind.

So I suggest this:

(7) Citizens will not be eligible to cast a vote in confirmation hearings, legislative procedings, or other business of the Assembly when the vote on those items opened before they gained their citizenship.

The wording on that could still be cleaned up a bit I think, but it's a better approach.

I think I'm going to cut this off there and move to another post to continue - I'm worried about this getting too long!!!

 

[Sheepshape]

Second verse, same as the first!

Acutally it's completely different from the first.

C'est la vie!

Section 2. Maintenance of citizenship

(1) A citizen shall maintain their citizenship should they continue to fulfill the eligibility requirements of citizenship.

(2) A citizen may apply for a leave of absence in a designated area. The Delegate may approve an application.

So neither of these clauses is outright objectionable, it's just not really clear what they mean. What are the eligibility requirements of citizenship? Are they the things they had to disclose in the application? Are they activity requirements, which I think we should have? And what does a leave of absence do? Does it exempt them from having to keep a nation alive? Are they allowed to log in and vote while on a leave of absence, or would that force an end to their leave?

Without further clarification, I don't see the purpose of this section and think it can be deleted.

Section 3. Removal of citizenship

(1) A citizen may make a formal application to the Delegate in a designated area stating their desire to renounce their citizenship. The Delegate shall comply.

(2) Within the first week of a calendar month, the Delegate shall conduct a review of all current citizens and shall remove the citizenship of persons who fail to meet the requirements necessary to maintain citizenship.

(1) is kinda silly. Citizens don't need to apply to remove their citizenship. They should be able to just renounce their citizenship and then the [Citizenship Officer] will update their records. Renunciation of citizenship should be self-executing.

As for (2), this should also be the [Citizenship Official], not the delegate, and it's very odd to specify a particular timeframe. For one thing, if that official is busy or on vacation or unable to get to it during that one specific week, that means it just doesn't get done. For another thing, it means if someone moves their nation out of the region just after the check is done, they get to just... stay a citizen... for a whole nother month. And time itself is wonky - what is "the first week of a calendar month"? Is a week Monday-Sunday, or Sunday-Saturday? Is the first week the period in which the 1st of the month falls, or is it the first full week all of whose days occur in that month? Is it the first seven days of the month, whichever weekdays they fall on? Which timezone starts and stops this calendar week?

And... what are the requirements necessary to maintain citizenship, again? They haven't been laid out anywhere.

2 and 3 should be condensed and turned into something more like this:

Section 2. Maintenance and Removal of Citizenship

(1) Citizens must maintain a nation in Lazarus and must post at least once on the forum every 30 days in order to maintain their citizenship.

(2) Citizens may renounce their citizenship by public declaration. Renunciations take effect immediately, and the Citizenship Official must promptly update their records to remove the renounced citizen.

(3) The Citizenship Official must promptly remove any citizen who fails to meet the requirements to maintain their citizenship, as laid out in this section.

(4) The Citizenship Official must promptly remove any citizen from their records whose citizenship is revoked by the Delegate following a finding of criminal behavior.

(5) The Citizenship Official must promptly remove any citizen from their records who has been banned from the Lazarus forum by its administration team.

[Side note: replace "the Delegate" with whoever we actually have that would do that; I'm a little fuzzy on exactly what's passed at this point regarding criminal stuff.]

I'm strongly in favor of a small post-count requirement to maintain citizenship. If we don't have that then the citizenship rolls risk being overburdened by an inactive, non-voting, non-participating populace and there's just no benefit to that kind of citizen. It's not that hard to track; it sounds like this forum can actually keep track of people who aren't meeting it, and we can also build that into a spreadsheet that lists citizens without much difficulty at all. I don't see a reason to restrict where they can post; a spam post should count as much as a governmental post, but having nothing at all just... why even bother.

Section 4. Appealing a denial of a citizenship application or removal of citizenship

(1) A person may appeal a denial by the Delegate of a citizenship application or removal of citizenship to the Assembly. The Assembly may overturn such decisions by three-quarters vote.

(2) A person may not appeal a denial by the off-site property administration.

I kind of covered this in my previous post; I don't think denials are likely to happen often enough that we really need an appeals process right now, but I certainly am on board with one if people like the idea. I do think that this can go under Section 1, though, since they relate to the acquisition of citizenship, rather than a whole separate section. It may also make sense to change from "person" to "citizen or the denied applicant". I don't think an uninvolved 3rd party should be able to ask the Assembly to review why Joe Schmoe was denied, but Joe Schmoe should, and Lazarene citizens should always be able to raise things for discussion that are within the legislature's powers and duties.


Don't need (1); we can just create such an official - and should do so.

(2) is wrong. A three-quarters majority is 75% exactly, and a two-thirds majority is also that exactly. The only majority which requires a specification of +1 vote is 50% because an equal division of 50/50 isn't a majority at all - the specification of the additional vote is what creates it.

Think about it this way: 67/100 is a two-thirds majority. The two-thirds is met at 66.66666... votes, but you can't have a fraction of a vote, so the minimum required to pass the item is 67. But if you defined it as "66.666...% +1", then you would in fact be requiring 68/100 to pass, because you still can't get a fraction of a vote and 67.6666... rounds up to 68.

Same deal with 75%. 75/100 is a three-quarters majority, and so is 38/50. You don't need 39/50 because you met 3/4 at 37.5; you just have to hit 38 to get the next highest round number.

Given that, this section can just be deleted entirely.

Section 6. Constitutional law

(1) The Citizenship Act is a constitutional law, and further amendments to it must meet constitutional amendment requirements.

This is the first law where I think I actually support it being a constitutional law; I think the rights of citizenship are important enough to be protected at a higher level than most legislation. But I'm not sure if this really needs to be its own section - can't this just go in the preamble, that it's a constitutional law? And the mandate already defines what that means, so we don't need to say that amendments have to meet constitutional amendment requirements.

 

[Amerion]

Thank you for the input! I'll go through all of them thoroughly and write a response when I can

 

[Amerion]

Just a quick question here but:

(1) Do we use American or English spelling in Assembly documents?

(2) Should we include a specification in the Assembly Procedures Act under the sub-section on formatting?

 

[Legalist Zombal]

I mean we could... but I dont think we should. I dont like the idea of someone not being able to do something/being put off by having to spell words slightly different. Why should the assembly give a crap about color vs colour? They mean the same thing.

 

[Amerion]

I had the same thought. Then it occurred to me that the Speaker could just do it before archiving it in the law index

 

[Cormac]

Just a quick question here but:

(1) Do we use American or English spelling in Assembly documents?

(2) Should we include a specification in the Assembly Procedures Act under the sub-section on formatting?

(1) American English is the de facto