[Proposal] Assembly Procedure Act

[Cormac]

Assembly Procedure Act

Proposed by: Cormac

Section 1. Administration

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

Section 2. Legislative Procedures

(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) 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.

(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. Voters may cast their votes by posting in each voting thread.

(6) 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.

Section 3. 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 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.

Section 4. Legislative Formatting

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

Example Title

Proposed by:

Preamble

This is an example of a preamble. It should not exceed 50 words. Preambles are optional.

Section 1. Example Section Title

(1) This is an example of a subsection.

(2) This is an example of another subsection.

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

(2) The forum name of the author will be provided in the "Proposed by:" section of a proposal. In the event that the author's forum name changes, the Assembly Speaker may amend a law to reflect the author's new forum name.

(3) Following enactment of a proposal, the Assembly Speaker will append the month and year of enactment to the proposal's title.

(4) An optional preamble for a proposal will not exceed fifty words.

(5) 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.

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

(7) 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.

I have established the above as the Assembly's provisional procedures until we vote to adopt official procedures, and I am also putting these forward as the Assembly Procedure Act for consideration as our official procedures.

It should also be noted that Ryccia and Chanku proposed procedures, here and here. I appreciate their efforts, but I think the above procedures are simpler and more in line with the Mandate. I did incorporate Ryccia's ideas for tiered discussion periods into these procedures though.

Please feel free to contribute feedback so we can make these the best they can be.

[Wymondham]

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

[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.

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[Wymondham]

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I fundamentally disagree with your argument that the propose format is needlessly restrictive. I argue that Cormac's proposed format would mean that all laws maintain a uniform standard which would make laws much easier for newcomers to understand as all laws would then have the same format and as such be easier to follow.

[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.

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I fundamentally disagree with your argument that the propose format is needlessly restrictive. I argue that Cormac's proposed format would mean that all laws maintain a uniform standard which would make laws much easier for newcomers to understand as all laws would then have the same format and as such be easier to follow. 

Not really, it requires needless additions and repetitions of the same thing, in addition to forcibly having to include Articles, which don't really work well for many kinds of bills. Additionally the layout I have used is simple to understand at a first glance and is easy to fit into many different kinds of bills.

[Phantasus]

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.

[Cormac]

I'll catch up with the above comments in a bit. In the meantime, I've revised Article II, Section 6 as follows:

(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.

[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]

[McChimp]

This proposal ought to contain a section preventing malicious abuse of voter fatigue. Given the nuances of whether a lightly edited proposal is in fact meaningfully different or not, I suggest judgement regarding this ought to be left to the discretion of the court. I'd like to suggest you add a section similar to:

"laws resulting from a proposal insubstantially different from another made less than one month before shall be struck down by the Court of Lazarus in accordance with the constitution."

Which allows the court to strike down any laws that pass in this manner by two thirds vote if petitioned, as permitted by Article V Section 4 of the constitution:

"The Court has the power, upon being petitioned by a citizen, to strike down any general law, treaty, or policy. in whole or in part, and restrain any government action, by two-thirds vote, if such violates this Mandate or any constitutional law."

[Cormac]

This proposal ought to contain a section preventing malicious abuse of voter fatigue. Given the nuances of whether a lightly edited proposal is in fact meaningfully different or not, I suggest judgement regarding this ought to be left to the discretion of the court. I'd like to suggest you add a section similar to:

"laws resulting from a proposal insubstantially different from another made less than one month before shall be struck down by the Court of Lazarus in accordance with the constitution."

Which allows the court to strike down any laws that pass in this manner by two thirds vote if petitioned, as permitted by Article V section 4 of the constitution:

"The Court has the power, upon being petitioned by a citizen, to strike down any general law, treaty, or policy. in whole or in part, and restrain any government action, by two-thirds vote, if such violates this Mandate or any constitutional law."

I'll just copy and paste what I said on Discord:

[10:30 AM] Cormac: Tbh I simply hadn't considered the possibility that someone would continually submit rejected legislation, though yes, I could see that happening now that you mention it (and that I haven't already seen it happen somewhere is fairly remarkable).
[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.