Minor Error Correction Amendment

St George

St George

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Deputy Speaker
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Article 2 The Regional Assembly of the Constitution is Amended as follows:
Article 2. The Regional Assembly

1. Resident means any person with a nation in the region of The North Pacific or one of its territories.
2. A territory is any region that is recognized by the Regional Assembly as a part of The North Pacific.
3. The Regional Assembly will consist of all citizens.
4. Requirements for citizenship will be determined by law.
5. The Regional Assembly may enact, amend or repeal laws by a majority vote.
6. The Regional Assembly may remove a government official from office by a two-thirds majority vote.
7. The number of votes required to achieve quorum for any vote of the Regional Assembly except elections will be determined by law.
8. The Regional Assembly will elect a Speaker no sooner than three months and no later than six months since the last regularly scheduled election.
9. The Speaker will administer the rules of the Regional Assembly. Where no rules exist, the Speaker may use their discretion.
10. The Speaker will correct typographical or formatting errors within the laws enacted or amended by the Regional Assembly, provided that such corrections do not alter the substantive meaning of the text. Any such corrections must be reported to the Regional Assembly.
11. Abstentions cast in the Regional Assembly will not be used to determine the result of any vote, but may be used for quorum and all other purposes.
12. The Speaker may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law and the rules of the Regional Assembly.
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Article 2 The Regional Assembly of the Constitution is Amended as follows:
Article 2. The Regional Assembly

1. Resident means any person with a nation in the region of The North Pacific or one of its territories.
2. A territory is any region that is recognized by the Regional Assembly as a part of The North Pacific.
3. The Regional Assembly will consist of all citizens.
4. Requirements for citizenship will be determined by law.
5. The Regional Assembly may enact, amend or repeal laws by a majority vote.
6. The Regional Assembly may remove a government official from office by a two-thirds majority vote.
7. The number of votes required to achieve quorum for any vote of the Regional Assembly except elections will be determined by law.
8. The Regional Assembly will elect a Speaker no sooner than three months and no later than six months since the last regularly scheduled election.
9. The Speaker will administer the rules of the Regional Assembly. Where no rules exist, the Speaker may use their discretion.
10. The Speaker will correct typographical or formatting errors within the laws enacted or amended by the Regional Assembly, provided that such corrections do not alter the substantive meaning of the text. Any such corrections must be reported to the Regional Assembly.
1011. Abstentions cast in the Regional Assembly will not be used to determine the result of any vote, but may be used for quorum and all other purposes.
1112. The Speaker may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law and the rules of the Regional Assembly.
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It's been pointed out that it's been well over a decade since we've been able to fix minor errors like typos without having a vote of the Regional Assembly, which often means errors may go uncorrected for some time. This would, I think, be a reasonable change to allow the Speaker to correct those errors, with the proper reporting to the RA.

Questions to consider:
1. Whether it should be a "will" or "may" wording - after asking on Discord, I'm inclined to go with "will" to make a requirement of the Speaker to do so.
2. Whether Article 3 Clause 5 about the delegate's veto also needs to be amended. That clause, as a reminder, says:
5. When a proposal of the Regional Assembly to enact, amend or repeal a law is passed, the Speaker shall promptly present it to the Delegate, and it shall take effect immediately upon their signature.
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It was part of the original case and I could see an argument for amending that as well in some way, but we'd need to have a discussion on what we want from that.

I'm also pretty easy on alternative wording of this amendment, and would welcome suggestions.
 
I'd be hesitant to support this without a mechanism for the RA to override the Speaker's decision, because sometimes what counts as "substantive meaning" is ambiguous.

For the same reason I think it is better to say "may" rather than "will," because I think there are cases where reasonable people could disagree over what changes to the legal text should be made, and it would be silly to resolve those by having people file an R4R in Court to try to force the Speaker to make a change.
 
I am obviously in full support. Thank you MJ for drafting this. I think "will" is fine although I do agree that there is a "reasonable minds differ" edge case where "may" could better serve a minor element of the speaker's discretion which at least in my opinion is crucial to the functioning of such a provision.

I think on your concerns, Lucien, the challenge is in fact best served by the Court as opposed to the RA. The reason I pointed this out in the first place is that it's a little ridiculous for us to have to do a whole debate and amendment procedure every time a typographical error makes it through the RA. That's just an unreasonable amount of administrative bloat compared to the hypothetical, and likely extraordinarily rare, possibility that a Speaker goes too far in correcting typos. I'm also a little concerned about politicization of something which, in my mind, should not be political but purely clerical. If someone thinks the Speaker went too far they should challenge the correction in the Court.
 
If the RA has to vote to override the Speaker's correction, then it is no different from passing a new amendment. We would go back to square one.

I don't really believe typographical or formatting errors are major enough to potentially affect the meaning of the text when corrected. A typo here, a repeated word there, or misnumbered clauses when fixed don't change the substantive meaning of the clauses themselves. So I'm fine with the Speaker being allowed to unilaterally fix the errors and report it to the RA. Any misconduct in the correction of typos should ideally be solved by a recall, then a prosecution.

If we absolutely need an oversight mechanism, I think the old system of the Speaker correcting errors (but without the Court being involved this time) and giving the RA a period of time to object works best as a compromise between unilateral Speaker correction and the RA voting on new amendments. Perhaps we should increase the threshold of objections so that one person can't obstruct the correction of typos (you never know who would want to be that one).
 
Lucien Mounier:
I'd be hesitant to support this without a mechanism for the RA to override the Speaker's decision, because sometimes what counts as "substantive meaning" is ambiguous.

For the same reason I think it is better to say "may" rather than "will," because I think there are cases where reasonable people could disagree over what changes to the legal text should be made, and it would be silly to resolve those by having people file an R4R in Court to try to force the Speaker to make a change.
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As Picairn points out, I'm not sure what the point of having this would be if it were subject to RA vote over just passing an amendment bill.
logicalstimulus:
I am obviously in full support. Thank you MJ for drafting this. I think "will" is fine although I do agree that there is a "reasonable minds differ" edge case where "may" could better serve a minor element of the speaker's discretion which at least in my opinion is crucial to the functioning of such a provision.

I think on your concerns, Lucien, the challenge is in fact best served by the Court as opposed to the RA. The reason I pointed this out in the first place is that it's a little ridiculous for us to have to do a whole debate and amendment procedure every time a typographical error makes it through the RA. That's just an unreasonable amount of administrative bloat compared to the hypothetical, and likely extraordinarily rare, possibility that a Speaker goes too far in correcting typos. I'm also a little concerned about politicization of something which, in my mind, should not be political but purely clerical. If someone thinks the Speaker went too far they should challenge the correction in the Court.
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I think this is where I'm settling - will is my preferred wording and challenging in the Courts is probably the better way to go. And as always, if a citizen believes a Speaker has abused the process, there's always recall mechanisms or passing a motion of censure too.
Picairn:
If the RA has to vote to override the Speaker's correction, then it is no different from passing a new amendment. We would go back to square one.

I don't really believe typographical or formatting errors are major enough to potentially affect the meaning of the text when corrected. A typo here, a repeated word there, or misnumbered clauses when fixed don't change the substantive meaning of the clauses themselves. So I'm fine with the Speaker being allowed to unilaterally fix the errors and report it to the RA. Any misconduct in the correction of typos should ideally be solved by a recall, then a prosecution.

If we absolutely need an oversight mechanism, I think the old system of the Speaker correcting errors (but without the Court being involved this time) and giving the RA a period of time to object works best as a compromise between unilateral Speaker correction and the RA voting on new amendments. Perhaps we should increase the threshold of objections so that one person can't obstruct the correction of typos (you never know who would want to be that one).
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If we wanted to bake in an oversight mechanism I'd absolutely prefer a period of objection over an RA vote. Objections could be similar to the process used to object to the scheduling of a vote - 3 citizens, which that objection being overridden by 1/3rd of however many citizens it is that quorum is at the time.
 
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