[Proposal] Assembly Procedure Act

[McChimp]

[10:31 AM] Cormac: That said, I'm not sure how to address it, because letting someone interpret "insubstantially different" is going to piss people off if (when really) the court interprets it too broadly and strikes down a law that is in most people's view substantially different.
[10:32 AM] Cormac: If a Delegate has a specific problem with a bill, vetoes it, the author corrects the problem, but the problem and its correction doesn't make the bill substantially different... I trust you see where I'm going here.

I'm not disagreeing that this might be a potential problem, but this seems like a very flawed way to fix it. I don't have any other ideas though, so at this point I'm wondering if we should just not do anything and simply continue voting down legislation if someone continually submits it until they finally stop, or if we should go with your suggestion despite the flaws of leaving "insubstantially different" to judicial interpretation. I'm honestly not sure what the best course of action is, so I hope to hear from others. 

It isn't a perfect solution, but if the court makes an unpopular ruling through bad faith, the assembly does have the means to respond-it can remove court justices. The court is already capable of striking down laws as a result of their interpretation of the constitution-all this does is add one more just cause for doing so. There is an implicit trust in the court's ability to interpret these things in good faith.

[Sheepshape]

I've read all three proposals and I think this one is the strongest, so I'm going to comment here. If another version starts to get support, I will offer thoughts on that one separately.

II. Legislative Procedures

(1) A minimum discussion period, beginning at the time a proposal is submitted, will be required before any proposal may be brought to vote.

a. Any proposal requiring a 50%+1 vote will be subject to a minimum discussion period of three days.
b. Any proposal requiring a two-thirds vote will be subject to a minimum discussion period of five days.
c. Any proposal requiring a three-quarters vote will be subject to a minimum discussion period of seven days.

I'm not sure that a minimum discussion period makes sense, or that it needs to be different for different types of proposals. A major legislative change deserves more discussion than a minor tweak to the mandate. I could probably live with a single minimum discussion period for all types of votes, but I wouldn't want it to be more than 3 days. I'd be happier just giving the Speaker the discretion to decide that a discussion hasn't gone on long enough, and decline to schedule a vote until enough time has passed. This language could look like one of these:

(1) A minimum discussion period of three days is required before any proposal may be brought to a vote. The Speaker is not required to open a vote if they determine that the proposal has not had sufficient discussion, but they may not delay opening a vote for more than seven days under this clause from when the author of the proposal motions it to vote.

(1) No minimum discussion period is required before any proposal may be brought to a vote. However, the Speaker is not required to open a vote if they determine that the proposal has not had sufficient discussion. The Speaker may not delay opening a vote for more than seven days under this clause from when the author of the proposal motions it to vote.

 

(2) In order for a proposal to be brought to vote, a citizen eligible to vote on that proposal must make a motion to vote, and another such citizen must second the motion.

I alluded to this above, but I think the author of the bill should be required to actually motion to vote. It is not unheard of for a bill to still be under discussion and being worked on, and for someone else to motion whatever the latest draft is to vote against the author's wishes because they don't like whatever changes have been suggested after it was posted. I suggest:

(2) In order for a proposal to be brought to vote, the author of the proposal must make a motion to vote, and another citizen eligible to vote on the proposal must second the motion. The author of a proposal is defined as the citizen who created the proposal's thread, regardless of what contributions other citizens made to a final draft of the proposal.

 

(4) After a motion to vote has been made and seconded in accordance with procedure, the Assembly Speaker may delay a vote for up to seven additional days to allow for more discussion.

I folded this in above. I think seven days is a good amount of time there. It lets things slow down, but doesn't let the Speaker delay indefinitely if they don't like a bill.

(5) In the event that there are multiple competing proposals regarding the same matter, the Assembly Speaker will simultaneously bring such proposals to vote, and the proposal receiving the most votes in favor will become law provided it has achieved the threshold needed to pass.

This is tricky. What exactly defines a competing proposal might get murky, unless you explicitly define it as "attempting to amend at least one of the same clauses as one another"... but that could get overly broad. If my bill corrects a misplaced comma in a line, and yours adds a "not" elsewhere in that line, they're not reallllly competing.

I'm inclined, instead, to discourage this sort of situation and simply say that the Speaker will put the one that was first motioned to vote up for a vote, and delay opening a vote on any competing proposal until the first one has closed - and so on down the line, if there are more than 2. Maybe something like this:

(5) In the event that there are multiple competing proposals regarding the same matter, the Speaker will bring them to vote one at a time, in the order that they were motioned to vote. "Competing proposals" are defined as those which contain an amendment to at least one of the same clauses. The Speaker may designate other proposals as "competing" if they are deemed to address substantially similar topics.

I added the last bit because if we just defined competing as sharing an amended clause, two people could propose two similar new laws out of whole cloth and they wouldn't be competing because they weren't amending anything. I'm OK giving the Speaker pretty free pass to designate competing laws, because the most you can abuse it to do is delay a little bit.
 

(6) All votes will take place for three days. Citizens eligible to vote may vote "Aye," "Nay," "Abstain," or votes of clearly similar intent in the judgment of the Assembly Speaker. Voters may not post any other content in a voting thread, and votes that include additional content will be discarded and split from the voting thread.

Two things on this one. The voting lengthseems a bit short, particularly if a vote is started over a holiday weekend. I know there are also some players who only really get to play NS on the weekends, and they'd miss out on mid-week votes. Plus, for important things like mandate amendments, it probably makes sense to let the vote be longer so it can be more representative of the assembly's wishes. What about giving it some leeway to the Speaker?

The second thing is the "or votes of clearly similar intent". That has major potential to backfire and to get crazy trolly. It happened in TNP when its Speaker tried to use that kind of language - first you had people voting "for" and "against", then voting with thumbs-up and thumbs-down emoticons, then voting in well-known non-english like "oui" or "non" or "ja" or "nein", and then voting in more esoteric languages like Klingon or Arabic or Mandarin. I'm not saying the people of Lazarus might decide to troll, but I'm not not saying it either... illy:

So maybe like this:

(6) All votes will last between three and seven days. Citizens who are eligible to vote may vote "Aye", "Nay", or "Abstain". Voters may not post any other content in a voting thread, and votes that include additional content will be discarded and split from the voting thread.

(I did not include an equivalent of TNP's requirement that all votes be in plain black text without embellishment, but that's maybe something to consider too. *cough*thanksthatoneguywhovotedingiantboldedpurple*cough* )

(7) Voters may cast their votes either via forum poll or via votes cast in each voting thread. The identities of voters will be made publicly visible in forum polls.

It seems like this one kind of conflicts with the above clause, though I guess if the poll's options are aye, nay, and abstain, it probably works out okay. I'm personally against the use of polls to vote, but I'm not gonna fight it too too hard. But I do think it's key that the voters be made public, and if they can't be made fully public but are only available to mods, the Speaker should be required to post a screenshot of the voter list when the vote is tallied and closed.

(1) The Assembly Speaker may appoint deputies to assist in presiding over the Assembly according to its procedural rules. Appointment of such deputies will be subject to 50%+1 vote of the Assembly.

Since the Speaker is already confirmed by the Assembly, I don't think it's necessary to have their deputies confirmed as well. I'd be fine with simple appointment. If the Assembly isn't happy, it can recall.

I could probably get on board with requiring an Assembly vote to appoint a deputy speaker who had previously been recalled by the Assembly. That could make sense, to prevent a Speaker from reappointing someone who had just been removed.

(3) Any powers or responsibilities assigned to the Assembly Speaker by these procedures, Mandate 12, or any other law, unless explicitly directed otherwise, may be delegated by the Assembly Speaker to their deputy or deputies, and rescinded by the Assembly Speaker.

Maybe exclude the power to appoint other deputies. That seems best reserved for the Actual Speaker.

(2) Unless otherwise noted, all amendments brought to vote in the Assembly will be formatted as legislation, and the amendments therein will be formatted as follows:

(1) This is an example of text that is not amended. This is an example of text that is stricken.This is an example of text that is added.

So I like the idea of templates for actual bills, but I think enforcing this on amendments might get challenging. Some amendments involve moving portions of text around, and I'm not sure the clearest way to indicate them is with striking out the text where it first occurred, and bluing it where it later appears.

It might be better simply to encourage authors to post a marked up version of their bill showing the changes they are making, where such markups are reasonable.

I'm not gonna fight this one too hard, just note that correctly marking up a major bill can be a headache if you're stuck with strict rules.

(4) The Assembly Speaker will reformat proposals that are not properly formatted prior to bringing them to vote.

Hm. I'm concerned that reformatting could lead to the Speaker introducing changes into the proposal that aren't what the author intended. I think instead the Speaker should be able to simply decline a vote on anything that doesn't conform with the format properly, and insist that it be fixed.

The Speaker will not open votes on proposals that are not properly formatted according to the above templates. No motion to vote on an unconforming bill will be recognized.

[Sheepshape]

Oh, separate post for this: To comment on the question of someone putting something to vote multiple times... eh. I'm not super worried about it.

I think, though, that the Mandate might cover allowing the Speaker to unilaterally halt debate on something, as long as no laws are adopted forbidding such. ("In the absence of procedural rules to settle a procedural matter in the Assembly, the Assembly Speaker may establish such rules.") I think that stopping debate could be considered part of procedural rules.

I don't foresee this being used often, but if someone truly was motioning the same failed proposal to vote over and over again, or if someone brought a bill that was maliciously targeting another member of the community, the Speaker may safely be able to say "sit down, shut up, grow some decency."

[Roavin]

(2) In order for a proposal to be brought to vote, a citizen eligible to vote on that proposal must make a motion to vote, and another such citizen must second the motion.

I alluded to this above, but I think the author of the bill should be required to actually motion to vote. It is not unheard of for a bill to still be under discussion and being worked on, and for someone else to motion whatever the latest draft is to vote against the author's wishes because they don't like whatever changes have been suggested after it was posted. I suggest:

(2) In order for a proposal to be brought to vote, the author of the proposal must make a motion to vote, and another citizen eligible to vote on the proposal must second the motion. The author of a proposal is defined as the citizen who created the proposal's thread, regardless of what contributions other citizens made to a final draft of the proposal.

The issue here is that the OP may not even be around (loss of citizenship, CTE, whatnot), so you'd be forced to make a new thread. Or alternatively, people just take it to a new thread because they made a version OP didn't like. That would lead to Assembly clutter, and tbh, it's not something I've ever seen to be an actual problem, at least after nearly 2.5 years of TSP madness — A responsible Speaker would, when reasonable, just delay the vote for a while, and maybe allow OP and somebody else to motion their version as a competing bill. I think it's fine as-is.
 

(5) In the event that there are multiple competing proposals regarding the same matter, the Assembly Speaker will simultaneously bring such proposals to vote, and the proposal receiving the most votes in favor will become law provided it has achieved the threshold needed to pass.

This is tricky. What exactly defines a competing proposal might get murky, unless you explicitly define it as "attempting to amend at least one of the same clauses as one another"... but that could get overly broad. If my bill corrects a misplaced comma in a line, and yours adds a "not" elsewhere in that line, they're not reallllly competing.

I'm inclined, instead, to discourage this sort of situation and simply say that the Speaker will put the one that was first motioned to vote up for a vote, and delay opening a vote on any competing proposal until the first one has closed - and so on down the line, if there are more than 2. Maybe something like this:

(5) In the event that there are multiple competing proposals regarding the same matter, the Speaker will bring them to vote one at a time, in the order that they were motioned to vote. "Competing proposals" are defined as those which contain an amendment to at least one of the same clauses. The Speaker may designate other proposals as "competing" if they are deemed to address substantially similar topics.

I added the last bit because if we just defined competing as sharing an amended clause, two people could propose two similar new laws out of whole cloth and they wouldn't be competing because they weren't amending anything. I'm OK giving the Speaker pretty free pass to designate competing laws, because the most you can abuse it to do is delay a little bit. 

TSP has the same simultaneous vote system that Cormac proposed and it works a charm. I do agree that it should be Speaker's discretion to reasonably determine what is competing and what isn't, and really that should be the primary focus. The issue I see with your proposed language is that it would encourage looking for changes to the same clause first, but I can easily see instances (and cite from TSP) where either two amendments to the same clause aren't competing, or two amendments that don't overlap anywhere that address the same general topic. It probably suffices to just keep it at the Speaker's discretion, imho.

[Roavin]

I don't foresee this being used often, but if someone truly was motioning the same failed proposal to vote over and over again, or if someone brought a bill that was maliciously targeting another member of the community, the Speaker may safely be able to say "sit down, shut up, grow some decency."

And also, at some point the individual won't find anybody to give a second!

[Cormac]

I've looked at Sheepshape's suggestions and taken into account Roavin's suggestions, and I will be making the following revisions:

Assembly Procedure Act

I. Administration

(1) The Assembly will be administered according to all provisions mandated for the Assembly by Mandate 12 and according to the below procedures.

II. Legislative Procedures

(1) A minimum discussion period, beginning at the time a proposal is submitted, will be required before any proposal may be brought to vote.

a. Any proposal requiring a 50%+1 vote will be subject to a minimum discussion period of three days.
b. Any proposal requiring a two-thirds vote will be subject to a minimum discussion period of five days.
c. Any proposal requiring a three-quarters vote will be subject to a minimum discussion period of seven days.

(1) A minimum discussion period of three days is required before any proposal may be brought to vote. The Speaker is not required to open a vote if they determine that the proposal has not had sufficient discussion, but they may not delay opening a vote for more than seven days from when the motion to vote on the proposal was seconded.

(2) In order for a proposal to be brought to vote, a citizen eligible to vote on that proposal must make a motion to vote, and another such citizen must second the motion. A motion to vote may only be made by the initial author of a proposal unless the initial author is no longer a citizen or has not posted on the off-site regional forum for more than seven days without posting a leave of absence.

(3) Only the Delegate may introduce a proposal to enact, amend, or repeal a treaty or declaration of war, and only the Delegate may make a motion to vote on such a proposal.

(4) After a motion to vote has been made and seconded in accordance with procedure, the Assembly Speaker may delay a vote for up to seven additional days to allow for more discussion.

(5) (4) In the event that there are multiple competing proposals regarding the same matter in the judgment of the Assembly Speaker, the Assembly Speaker will simultaneously bring such proposals to vote, and the proposal receiving the most votes in favor will become law provided it has achieved the threshold needed to pass.

(6) (5) All votes will take place for three five days. Citizens eligible to vote may vote "Aye," "Nay," or "Abstain,." or votes of clearly similar intent in the judgment of the Assembly Speaker. Voters may not post any other content in a voting thread or embellish the format of their vote in any way, and votes that include additional content or embellishment will be discarded and split from the voting thread.

(7) (6) Voters may cast their votes either via forum poll or via votes cast by posting in each voting thread. The identities of voters will be made publicly visible in forum polls.

(8) (7) The Assembly Speaker will determine which discussions will take place publicly and which will take place privately, and may accordingly move discussions to and from the Assembly's private forum, except that the Delegate may determine whether proposals to enact, amend, or repeal treaties will be public or private. All votes will be conducted in public.

III. Deputies to the Assembly Speaker

(1) The Assembly Speaker may appoint deputies to assist in presiding over the Assembly according to its procedural rules. Appointment of such deputies a deputy will be subject to confirmation by 50%+1 vote of the Assembly if the deputy-designate has previously been removed from office by the Assembly.

(2) Deputies to the Assembly Speaker will serve until resignation, removal from office by the Assembly or the Assembly Speaker, or automatic removal from office as defined by Mandate 12.

(3) Any powers or responsibilities assigned to the Assembly Speaker by these procedures, Mandate 12, or any other law, unless explicitly directed otherwise, may be delegated by the Assembly Speaker to their deputy or deputies, and rescinded by the Assembly Speaker. Deputies will not have the power to appoint or remove other deputies.

IV. Legislative Formatting

(1) Unless otherwise noted, legislation brought to vote in the Assembly will be formatted as follows:
 

Example Title

I. Example Article Title

(1) This is an example of a section.

(2) This is an example of another section.

a. This is an example of a subsection.
b. This is an example of another subsection.

(2) Unless otherwise noted, all amendments brought to vote in the Assembly will be formatted as legislation, and the amendments therein will be formatted as follows:

(1) This is an example of text that is not amended. This is an example of text that is stricken. This is an example of text that is added.

(2) Unless otherwise noted, all amendments brought to vote in the Assembly will be formatted as legislation, and the amendments therein will be marked up so as to clearly delineate the changes being made.

(3) Only general laws and constitutional laws will be subject to formatting for legislation, but all amendments will be subject to formatting for amendments mark-up.

(4) The Assembly Speaker will reformat proposals that are not properly formatted prior to bringing them to vote.

(4) The Assembly Speaker will not open a vote on a proposal that has not been properly formatted and/or marked up in the judgment of the Assembly Speaker, and no motion to vote on such an unconforming bill will be recognized, until the proposal has been properly formatted and/or marked up.

[Cormac]

The above revisions have now been edited into the OP as well.

[Cormac]

The existing Article II, Section 6 is also really clunky, so I'm going to revise Article II, Sections 5-6 as follows and appropriately renumber the subsequent sections:

(5) All votes will take place for five days. Citizens eligible to vote may vote "Aye," "Nay," or "Abstain." Voters may not post any other content in a voting thread or embellish the format of their vote in any way, and votes that include additional content or embellishment will be discarded and split from the voting thread. (6) Voters may cast their votes via votes cast by posting in each voting thread.

[Cormac]

I decided I prefer Asta's suggested way of handling competing proposals, so I'm going to revise Article II, Section 4 as follows:

(4) In the event that there are multiple competing proposals regarding the same matter in the judgment of the Assembly Speaker, the Assembly Speaker will simultaneously bring such proposals to vote, and the proposal receiving the most votes in favor will become law provided it has achieved the threshold needed to pass.

(4) In the event that there are multiple competing proposals regarding the same matter in the judgment of the Assembly Speaker, the Assembly Speaker will bring them to vote one at a time, in the order they were motioned to vote. If such a proposal is enacted, the subsequent competing proposals will not be brought to vote.

[New Rogernomics]

Legislation Title (Date Proposed)

Proposed by:

[Optional] Preamble: 

Article I. Example Article Title

(1) This is an example of a section.
a. This is an example of a subsection.
b. This is an example of another subsection.

^I think this would be a better format.