Universal Suffrage Act

plembobria

plembobria

TNPer
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This bill will make some tweaks to the citizenship law, to provide for fairer access to elections.

Universal Suffrage Act 2017

1. Section 6.2 of the Codified Law of The North Pacific is hereby amended to read as follows,

Section 6.2: Administration and Loss of Citizenship
11. Upon being granted citizenship, a citizen’s declared nation will be the nation they declared in their latest successful citizenship application.
12. A citizen may change their declared nation by posting in a thread designated by the Speaker.
13. The Speaker will maintain a publicly viewable roster of citizens and their corresponding declared nations.
14. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens whose removal is ordered by the Court, or whose declared nations does not reside in The North Pacific, or whose declared nations ceases to exist.
13. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens who do not log onto the regional forum for over 30 consecutive days.
14. Citizens that have submitted a notice of absence, in accordance with any regulations set by the Speaker, shall be exempt from the provisions of the above clause for the stated duration of their absence.
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Annotation of changes

Section 6.2: Administration and Loss of Citizenship
11. Upon being granted citizenship, a citizen’s declared nation will be the nation they declared in their latest successful citizenship application.
12. A citizen may change their declared nation by posting in a thread designated by the speaker
13. The Speaker will maintain a publicly viewable roster of citizens and their corresponding declared nations.
14. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens whose removal is ordered by the Court, or whose declared nations does not reside in The North Pacific, or whose declared nations ceases to exist.
13. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens who fail to post in The North Pacific do not log onto the regional forum for over 30 consecutive days.
14. Citizens that have submitted a notice of absence, in accordance with any regulations set by the Speaker, shall be exempt from the provisions of the above clause for the stated duration of their absence.
Click to expand...
 
Good re-write.

Perhaps a modification of : "13. The Speaker's office will promptly remove any citizens who fail to post in The North Pacific do not log onto the regional forum for over 30 consecutive days" to reflect exemptions for extenuating curcumstances (such as prior notice for 'sabbatical' leaves of absence for certain reasons that puts a nation "on hold" for a maximum specific time?
 
What does 'in accordance with any regulations by the Speaker' mean? I'd think it would be more sensible to be in accordance with regulations set in some way or form. This could be stretched to mean something they said in a random Discord post late at night. I think this should be defined better.
 
13. The Speaker's office will promptly remove any citizens who fail to post in The North Pacific do not log onto the regional forum for over 30 consecutive days.
Click to expand...

Just wanted to point out that this sentence makes little sense. But looking at the annotated version, it appears that this bill would change the 30 day posting requirement to just logging in within 30 days.

I do not think altering the requirements to maintain citizenship is the proper way to boost election turnouts. Citizenship is more than just voting in elections. It provides residents of TNP with the ability to take part in our legislative body and gives them the ability to run for office. In order to be successful in either of these capacities, posting on the forum is a necessity. So by creating more lenient requirements for voters, you are also creating more lenient requirements for government officials and members of our legislative body.

Secondly, is posting once a month that much harder than logging in? Anyone can easily post in an out-of-character thread. It takes 2 seconds of your time and shows us that a person is actually there, not just some program automatically logging the account in to meet the requirement.

Lastly, the majority of elections are for forumside positions. The only exceptions would be the Delegate and Vice Delegate. Do individuals who never post on the forum really care who our Justices, Attorney General, and Speaker are?
 
The speaker's office is not a defined term in our law and should be avoided. I've been meaning to propose a bill replacing all references to the speaker's office with references to the speaker. Deputy speakers can assist with any duties that the speaker delegates to them, so referencing the speaker in the law is not an issue. Referencing the speaker's office, however, is problematic, for reasons I can go into if it's important.

I'm not necessarily opposed to relaxing the standards for retaining citizenship, but I question the benefit of it. Is there a large contingent of forum lurkers who are only on the forum to vote in elections, and if so, isn't that kind of suspicious?

Also, I would replace "using their regional forum account" with "in a thread designated by the speaker." Otherwise, we'd have to look through someone's entire post history since their most recent citizenship application every time we remove someone for moving or cteing, to be sure we have to most up to date nation in our records.
 
You could keep the existing language for not posting in x days, and create a sign in thread for the regional assembly.

That would also have the added benefit of being a supplementary active citizenship record.
 
If I may make a comment on the language of the Bill, it would seem to me that "declared nation" is preferable to "registered nation", as the term "declared nation" is already in use in the law (Chapter 6, clause 4).

I would also say that, while I appreciate the endeavour to change clause 14 (that is, the first clause 14 in the Bill) so that it is not a mix of singular and plural terms, it would seem to me that it would be better to change all terms to be singular rather than to be plural. The reasoning being that the clause 14 presently contained in the Bill seems to suggest that one could have more than one registered nation (which is against the grain of the rest of the Chapter). Made singular it would be:

14. The Speaker's Office[note]I will say also, that I agree with COE that simply referring to "the Speaker" would do, as this includes their Deputies for they can, essentially, do anything the Speaker can[/note] will promptly remove any citizen whose removal is ordered by the Court, or whose registered nation does not reside in The North Pacific, or whose registered nation ceases to exist.
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I would also make a similar change to the subsequent clause (the second clause 13).
 
Siwale:
13. The Speaker's office will promptly remove any citizens who fail to post in The North Pacific do not log onto the regional forum for over 30 consecutive days.
Click to expand...

Just wanted to point out that this sentence makes little sense. But looking at the annotated version, it appears that this bill would change the 30 day posting requirement to just logging in within 30 days.
Click to expand...
Sorry, the annotated version got mixed up with the ordinary one. I've fixed this typo.

Siwale:
I do not think altering the requirements to maintain citizenship is the proper way to boost election turnouts. Citizenship is more than just voting in elections. It provides residents of TNP with the ability to take part in our legislative body and gives them the ability to run for office. In order to be successful in either of these capacities, posting on the forum is a necessity. So by creating more lenient requirements for voters, you are also creating more lenient requirements for government officials and members of our legislative body.

Secondly, is posting once a month that much harder than logging in? Anyone can easily post in an out-of-character thread. It takes 2 seconds of your time and shows us that a person is actually there, not just some program automatically logging the account in to meet the requirement.

Lastly, the majority of elections are for forumside positions. The only exceptions would be the Delegate and Vice Delegate. Do individuals who never post on the forum really care who our Justices, Attorney General, and Speaker are?
Click to expand...
[/quote]Quite a few nations are incredibly active onsite but not forumside. Simply because they have little interest in discussing legislation or participating in RP most of the time doesn't mean they should be precluded from participating in elections. Most of these folks effectively get around the requirement just by posting once a month in a spam thread or something.

Crushing Our Enemies:
The speaker's office is not a defined term in our law and should be avoided. I've been meaning to propose a bill replacing all references to the speaker's office with references to the speaker. Deputy speakers can assist with any duties that the speaker delegates to them, so referencing the speaker in the law is not an issue. Referencing the speaker's office, however, is problematic, for reasons I can go into if it's important.
Click to expand...
I've edited the bill.

Crushing Our Enemies:
I'm not necessarily opposed to relaxing the standards for retaining citizenship, but I question the benefit of it. Is there a large contingent of forum lurkers who are only on the forum to vote in elections, and if so, isn't that kind of suspicious?
Click to expand...
See above.

Crushing Our Enemies:
Also, I would replace "using their regional forum account" with "in a thread designated by the speaker." Otherwise, we'd have to look through someone's entire post history since their most recent citizenship application every time we remove someone for moving or cteing, to be sure we have to most up to date nation in our records.
Click to expand...
I have edited the bill.

Zyvetskistaahn:
If I may make a comment on the language of the Bill, it would seem to me that "declared nation" is preferable to "registered nation", as the term "declared nation" is already in use in the law (Chapter 6, clause 4).
Click to expand...
I've edited the bill for this as well.
 
Quite a few nations are incredibly active onsite but not forumside. Simply because they have little interest in discussing legislation or participating in RP most of the time doesn't mean they should be precluded from participating in elections.
Click to expand...
So why not change the election laws? Citizenship is more than just voting in elections.

Most of these folks effectively get around the requirement just by posting once a month in a spam thread or something.
Click to expand...
If most people are able to post once a month like you said, what exactly is the problem?
 
Siwale:
Quite a few nations are incredibly active onsite but not forumside. Simply because they have little interest in discussing legislation or participating in RP most of the time doesn't mean they should be precluded from participating in elections.
Click to expand...
So why not change the election laws? Citizenship is more than just voting in elections.

Most of these folks effectively get around the requirement just by posting once a month in a spam thread or something.
Click to expand...
If most people are able to post once a month like you said, what exactly is the problem?
Click to expand...
I agree with changing election laws!
 
abc:
What does 'in accordance with any regulations by the Speaker' mean? I'd think it would be more sensible to be in accordance with regulations set in some way or form. This could be stretched to mean something they said in a random Discord post late at night. I think this should be defined better.
Click to expand...
Bump.

I'd like to see everyone's thoughts on this.
 
Section 6.2: Administration and Loss of Citizenship
11. Upon being granted citizenship, a citizen’s declared nation will be the nation they declared in their latest successful citizenship application.
12. A citizen may change their declared nation by posting in a thread designated by the Speaker.
13. The Speaker will maintain a publicly viewable roster of citizens and their corresponding declared nations.
14. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens whose removal is ordered by the Court, or whose declared nations does not reside in The North Pacific, or whose declared nations ceases to exist.
13. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens who do not log onto the regional forum for over 30 consecutive days.
14. Citizens that have submitted a notice of absence, in accordance with any regulations set by the Speaker, shall be exempt from the provisions of the above clause for the stated duration of their absence.
Click to expand...


yeah, not a great fan of this.

I am not keen on making the citizenship criteria even more lax. It is already absurd.

But mainly, there seems to be an internal confusion in this bill.

Clauses 11 and 12 imply that a citizen will have one declared nation at a time, running consecutively. "a citizen’s declared nation..."

Clauses 13 and 14. in using the plural, imply that a citizen can have more than one declared nation at a time: "corresponding declared nations" etc.

So which is it?
 
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