Constitutional Overhaul

[Haor Chall]

So, this is a further amendment of the constitutional proposal originating here.



Constitution of The North Pacific

Article I- The Executive

All Executive Authority shall be vested in the Delegate of The North Pacific.

1.The Delegate shall have the authority to expel, at will, any nation that exceeds 66% of the Delegate's endorsement count and do so with impunity and at will.
2.The Delegate will be elected from the members of the Regional Assembly and shall serve for a six month term.
3.The Delegate may veto bills passed through the Assembly that do not attain at least 60% supermajority in favor, the veto must be exercised within 5 days of the bill passing the Assembly, otherwise it will be enacted into law.
4.The Delegate shall appoint a cabinet of executive officers to co-ordinate policy. These shall include, but are not limited to, officers to oversee foreign affairs, regional defence and internal affairs.
5.There shall also be an elected Vice Delegate who shall maintain the second highest endorsement count in the region.
6. The Vice Delegate will be elected from the members of the Regional Assembly and shall serve for a six month term.
7.In any instance where the Delegate is absent, incapacitated, unwilling or unable to carry out his duties the Vice Delegate shall exercise the powers of the Delegate.


Article II – The Regional Assembly

All Legislative Authority shall be vested in the Regional Assembly.

1.The Regional Assembly shall have the authority to create it's own rules of procedure, consistent with the principles of the Bill of Rights and this constitution.
2.The Regional Assembly shall consist of all nations who seek to participate and have registered their intent to join the Assembly on the Regional Forum.
3.The Assembly is led by the Speaker, who shall be elected from the Regional Assembly and shall serve a three month term.
4. The speaker is responsible for opening and closing each vote, according to the procedures of the Regional Assembly.
5.The Assembly is granted the power to legislate rules and institutions necessary and proper to carry out the mandates of this Constitution.
6.Voting by the RA will be conducted within a 5 day period after posting of a Bill and 50% +1 of participating RA members shall be sufficient to pass said bill.
7.The Assembly may remove any holder of any elected or appointed office or position by a motion of recall approved by a two-thirds supermajority of the Regional Assembly.


Article III - Court of The North Pacific

All Judicial Authority shall be vested in the Court of The North Pacific.

1.The Court shall follow judicial rules of procedure defined in the legal code, consistent with the principles of the Bill of Rights and this constitution.
2.The Court shall consist of a Chief Justice and two Associate Justices, who shall be elected from the Regional Assembly and shall serve a six month term.
3. The Judiciary is vested with the responsibility to oversee all trial proceedings.
4.The Judiciary is vested with the responsibility to conduct all matters of judicial review to examine the constitutionality of Government policies, actions, and laws.
5.The official opinions crafted as a result of judicial review are to be binding upon all agents, officers, agencies, and Government bodies of The North Pacific.
6.An Attorney General appointed by the Delegate shall oversee prosecutions on behalf of the state.


Article IV

1.The Bill of Rights will remain in force with the adoption of this Constitution. Citizens who refuse to participate in government abjure and vacate those rights and are subject to the will of the Delegate upon approval of a simple majority of the RA and provided the Delegate does not veto the RA.
2.All elections shall be held on the region's official off-site forum and shall be held immediately following the adoption of this constitution and as required by the constitution after. Elections shall last for a nomination period of 2 days, followed by a voting period of 5 days.
3.Election of the Speaker of the Assembly and Judiciary officials shall require a plurality vote of the Assembly,
4.Election of the Delegate and Vice Delegate shall require a majority of the votes cast by the Assembly.
5.The removal or resignation of an elected official shall result in a special election to fulfil the remainder of the term of office.


Article V – Constitutional Amendments

1. This Constitution may be amended with the approval of three quarters of votes cast in the Assembly in a vote lasting seven days. This vote will not be subject to a Delegate veto.

 

[Gulliver]

I'm going to use this thread to reply to your replies made in the old thread for the sake of keeping everything in one spot. If that makes any sense.

4. Election of the Speaker of the Assembly and Judiciary officials shall require a plurality vote of the Assembly

Plurality voting is not a great system, and it's not great for the legitimacy of an office if it's possible for the person holding it to have been elected with a majority voting against them. There's no reason to believe that these positions couldn't also require a majority vote, just like elections for delegate and vice delegate.

Personally disagree, if you have a lot of candidates, it means run offs, etc. We’ve had this problem before, and the decision of the RA at the time was for plurality voting for elections (except Del/V. Del).

If the extra time that a runoff would require is the worry, preferential systems like Condorcet voting or instant runoff voting make it perfectly to ensure a majority winner without multiple rounds of voting.

2. All elections shall be held on the region's official off-site forum and shall be held immediately following the adoption of this constitution and as required by the constitution after. Elections shall last for a nomination period of 2 days, followed by a voting period of 5 days.

Procedural matters like this should be left for regular laws, not the constitution.

Hmm, I suppose. I think that some basic principles for how elections must be run could be in the constitution.

Basic principles, yes, but the exact number of days for nominations and voting is something very detailed. Remember, if you put that in the Constitution and it turns out it's now working and it needs to be tweaked, it'll require a constitutional amendment, which is relatively difficult, and we'd be in danger of finding ourselves in the same stagnant situation we're in now.

The Delegate shall appoint a cabinet of executive officers to co-ordinate policy. These shall include, but are not limited to, officers to oversee foreign affairs, regional defence and internal affairs.

I see no reason to require specific ministries in the Constitution. It would be better to say that the ministries of the cabinet may be regulated by simply everyday law.

Again, as per your original point this could go either way. The intention of having it in the constitution is to strike a balance between ensuring certain executive positions are filled but giving the Delegate the flexibility to create the cabinet as he wants to. Inevitably something written into the legal code will end up being more restrictive.

You're right, if you want to have them defined by law the text is going to have to be somewhere. The difference is if you put it in the Constitution, it's harder to change, which'll reduce flexibility and again risk stagnation.

Oh god so many nested quotes.

Anyway, the current proposal, initial impressions, again in no particular order and not equally important to me:

1.The Delegate shall have the authority to expel, at will, any nation that exceeds 66% of the Delegate's endorsement count and do so with impunity and at will.

Not absolutely important for me, but this seems like something that could be handled by the legal code.

2.The Delegate will be elected from the members of the Regional Assembly and shall serve for a six month term.

6 months is too long of a term for my taste, unless there's some kind of semi-presidential system in place and still opportunities for changes in the meantime.

3.The Delegate may veto bills passed through the Assembly that do not attain at least 60% supermajority in favor, the veto must be exercised within 5 days of the bill passing the Assembly, otherwise it will be enacted into law.

Minor grammar point. "[...]in favor, the veto must be[...]" should be "[...]in favor. The veto must be[...]" or something like it, else it doesn't read well.

4. The speaker is responsible for opening and closing each vote, according to the procedures of the Regional Assembly.

I'd suggest changing this to a more generic "administer the procedures of the Regional Assembly" since they are responsible for things beyond opening and closing votes.

6.Voting by the RA will be conducted within a 5 day period after posting of a Bill and 50% +1 of participating RA members shall be sufficient to pass said bill.

From a strictly mathematical standpoint, a majority can be less than 51%. True, it would require there being over 100 members in the RA for it to every come up, but just saying "a majority" would be better. Also, "RA" should be replaced with "Regional Assembly" since the acronym is never defined or used anywhere else in the article.

5.The removal or resignation of an elected official shall result in a special election to fulfil the remainder of the term of office.

It may be prudent to include an exception for if the next normal elections are really close. Alternatively, you could have a prematurely triggered election be a full normal one which resets the election calendar for that office, with the elected replacement serving out a full term, though that would necessarily mean the the dates of elections wouldn't be fixed and elections for different offices wouldn't necessarily by in sync.

Finally, minor style point with no legal consequences. This proposal alternates between "shall" and "will". It should consistently use one or the other. Personally, I prefer the modern and less aloof "will" but whichever we end up using doesn't matter to me.

That's all I can see right now at the moment. I haven't tried to think of things that are missing that I'd like to be included, so I'll probably be back after I consult and compare with my own proposal I was messing around with.

 

[Romanoffia]

Run-off elections are like a 'none of the above' vote, but given the democratic nature involved, one should always have a delegate or other position in which at least a majority of voters vote for a given candidate.

Suppose you have a highly contentious situation where several people run for delegate and the highest vote-getter only receives 20% of the votes. It's recipe for a revolt given that 80% of the people voting go for someone other than the person elected given that they will join forces and fall behind whichever candidate decides to run a revolt at the behest of those who support someone other than the 20% winner.

This is one of the problems that has never been solved in TNP - how to have a democratic system that is also a representative system in terms of a "republic" (in terms of representing the largest constituency in TNP, including those who don't actually become RA members). But then again, if you don't participate, then you have nothing to complain about. This latter item is why we should look more towards a republic based system.

While I basically believe in as pure of a democracy as possible, a pure democracy is impossible and impractical because you cannot always (if ever) rely upon 100% participation.

My basic view is that even if one doesn't participate, one still has rights, but one has no legitimate right to complain about the results should one choose not to participate.

 

[Felasia]

1.The Delegate shall have the authority to expel, at will, any nation that exceeds 66% of the Delegate's endorsement count and do so with impunity and at will.
.
.
5.There shall also be an elected Vice Delegate who shall maintain the second highest endorsement count in the region.

I think it should be added that the Vice Delegate is allow to exceed 66%, but no more then 80% of the Delegate's endorsement count. The Vice Del would needs to have some gap from the rest of the region and also close enough to the Delegate on endorsement counts in case of emergency.

 

[Romanoffia]

Hmm. Actually, in terms of practicality, I think that a specific number of endorsements should be used rather than a percentage of endorsements when differentiating between Delegate and Vice Delegate.

For instance, it would be more practical to have constant 50-75 endorsement difference between Delegate, Vice Delegate and all others in the line of succession rather than a strict percentage. I worked out the stats involved in methods of gaining and reducing endorsements a number of years ago, and general attrition of endorsements. 75 endorsements between the Delegate and Vice Delegate is a good range because it takes a while to get those endorsements under most conditions.

 

[Eluvatar]

I don't think endorsement limits should be in the constitution at all.

Clearing up the laws on endorsements but having them as laws makes much more sense to me.

In addition, I am not remotely comfortable with a permanent 66% cap. Looking at this handy page that would make the cap 203 endorsements, 104 behind the Delegate. This language also clearly applies the cap to the Security Council, stating the Delegate may eject any nation over that arbitrarily permanent cap with impunity and at will.

And what in the world is:

Citizens who refuse to participate in government abjure and vacate those rights and are subject to the will of the Delegate upon approval of a simple majority of the RA and provided the Delegate does not veto the RA.

How are "Citizens who refuse to participate in government" defined, exactly?

 

[Romanoffia]

I agree 100%, Elu.

n addition, I am not remotely comfortable with a permanent 66% cap. Looking at this handy page that would make the cap 203 endorsements, 104 behind the Delegate. This language also clearly applies the cap to the Security Council, stating the Delegate may eject any nation over that arbitrarily permanent cap with impunity and at will.

This, of course, needs to be changed for a number of practical reasons. The first is that if a Delegate cannot maintain his endorsement count for any arbitrary or legitimate reason the Delegate can then, eject a nation from the region without any due process of law (such as a trial or prior warning) in a truly dictatorial fashion. A dangerous authority to give any Delegate except during an invasion or war.

The better course would be to require the Delegate to maintain a certain level of endorsements and then set the caps on that required level. If the Delegate loses endorsements through inactivity, then the order of succession comes into play until the Delegate can regain a proper number of endorsements. It would be an incentive for the Delegate to actually seek endorsements and maintain endorsements rather than coast along willy-nilly.

 

[Hileville]

The better course would be to require the Delegate to maintain a certain level of endorsements and then set the caps on that required level. If the Delegate loses endorsements through inactivity, then the order of succession comes into play until the Delegate can regain a proper number of endorsements. It would be an incentive for the Delegate to actually seek endorsements and maintain endorsements rather than coast along willy-nilly.

Requiring a Delegate to maintain x amount of endorsements is a very very bad idea.

 

[Eluvatar]

The better course would be to require the Delegate to maintain a certain level of endorsements and then set the caps on that required level. If the Delegate loses endorsements through inactivity, then the order of succession comes into play until the Delegate can regain a proper number of endorsements. It would be an incentive for the Delegate to actually seek endorsements and maintain endorsements rather than coast along willy-nilly.

Requiring a Delegate to maintain x amount of endorsements is a very very bad idea.

 

[Grosseschnauzer]

Requiring a Delegate to maintain x amount of endorsements is a very very bad idea.

Thirded on bad idea.