[Proposal] Assembly Procedure Act

[Cormac]

Full support on this. I feel it is a concise, well worded and would serve the needs of this assembly admirably

Thanks!

A very well written act, although I think tallying the votes for the public would be easier if one method of voting was standardised. As it would not be that intuitive for the poll results to not represent the actual vote tally.

Thanks for the suggestion. As discussed on Discord, the issue is that some mobile users encounter problems with MyBB's polls, so it's important to make sure they can vote via post. I know we already had this conversation on Discord and you've changed your mind on it, but I just wanted to post it here as well so anyone else thinking the same thing would have an explanation even if they didn't see the conversation on Discord.
 
[spoiler=Long Reply to Chanku]

First off, I heavily disagree with the proposed format, it's needlessly complicated, the format I provided is more general and is easy to grasp, following the format of our constitution too much will only make bills harder to draft.

There is very little difference between your format and mine. The primary difference seems to be the absence of numbered articles. I think you're being needlessly nitpicky at this point.

I also dislike the fact that debate increases according to the votes necessary to pass it, but not all proposals are equal. For example, a constitutional amendment to fix a grammar or spelling mistake does not require as much discussion as other forms of amendments.

It's the cleanest way to do it. Your system would require a motion to extend, and it just isn't practical to have people endlessly voting on motions throughout discussion periods. At some point you're going to have to accept that NS legislatures aren't like RL legislatures and that a lot of the things you're proposing simply aren't practical. An endless litany of motions is one of those things.

Additionally, you have no written procedures for any motions, or even a list of some basic motions, aside from a motion to vote, which is just bad practice in any legislative system.

See above. There isn't a single Feeder or Sinker -- or even a large mainstream gameplay UCR -- that has motions to expedite, motions to extend debate, motions for this, motions for that. It isn't practical to have people constantly voting on this or that motion. It just isn't.

I object to Article II, Sections 3 and 4. Section 3 is needlessly restrictive, and is unnecessary due to the fact that these matters would have to go to the delegate regardless, and be approved by the delegate. Section 4 gives the Speaker way to much power.

In regard to Section 3, the requirement that the Delegate must submit treaty and war proposals is a constitutional matter, as it's mandated by Article I, Sections 4 and 5 of Mandate 12. So that requirement is already a matter of constitutional law, and I'm only reiterating it here for ease of recollection. Allowing only the Delegate to move a treaty or war proposal to vote only makes sense because only the Delegate can legally submit them, and the Delegate should be ready to vote before it goes to vote. What if a treaty is hastily moved to vote and then the other party wants an amendment, but it's already at vote here? It just makes practical sense to only let a treaty or war proposal go to vote when the Delegate moves for it.

In regard to Section 4, I don't think giving the Assembly Speaker a week's discretion to move something to vote makes the Assembly Speaker too powerful. The Assembly Speaker can't endlessly delay anything, it can only be delayed for up to a week after a motion to vote. There are a variety of reasons that might be desirable -- maybe discussion is still ongoing, maybe there are already several things at vote and the Speaker doesn't want to inundate people with simultaneous votes. You've already acknowledged in your draft that there may be reasons to extend discussion, the difference is that you're subjecting extension of discussion to an impractical motion to extend discussion, where I'm leaving it to the Speaker's discretion as does almost every other region.

There is no way to help prevent the stacking of votes, which my proposal actually includes as well.

This is a good catch. I'll add some language in for that.

Also why the hell are Deputies voted on? I see no purpose in voting on them, except for some unexplained reason that 'voting is good', yet you fail to provide any written procedure on confirmations and the like.

Why wouldn't we vote on deputies? The Assembly should have voting input in who is administering it; granted, the Assembly already confirms the Assembly Speaker, but why not the Assembly Speaker's deputies as well? I mean, I suppose it isn't strictly necessary, but I don't see the harm in it either.

Confirmations would be subject to the same process as any other proposal. To spell out the process would be needlessly redundant unless I were to use a different process, and I wouldn't use a process like yours because it's unnecessarily detailed. I am very much against unnecessary details that serve to make a law longer and thus less readable. NS laws should include only what is necessary, they shouldn't be bloated for no purpose.

Simple is good, but when it comes to procedural rules, things need to be spelled out explicitly when possible. Also poll voting is just no.

Things are spelled out fine here. The level of detail you've included in your draft, and the level of detail you include in most legislation you propose, is completely unnecessary and makes legislation inaccessible to casual players who don't want to read multi-page documents full of legalese. A minimalist approach to legislating is better on NS unless you want the vast majority of players to be disinterested in the legislature and only passively participating, if they're participating at all.

There is nothing wrong with poll voting when all voters are visible to everyone.[/spoiler]