I'm generally skeptical of a requirement based (purely) on posting, considering it's been done before... and threads like this aren't exactly the pinnacle of democratic participation.

It's not like just clicking "Abstain" every other time a vote comes up is the pinnacle of democratic participation either.

Legislators are also the only ones allowed to vote for the Cabinet, and in the first round of Delegate elections, and in the confirmations of Justices and Generals.

And those are all done on the forums. The confirmation votes are done in the same chamber as the legislation votes, so why can't you just click "Abstain" and be done with it?

It is perfectly reasonable to want to be able to vote in forum elections for government officials, or to vote in some critical legislation that impacts you (like a certain recent Assembly resolution), but otherwise be uninvolved with the forum.

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Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

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Many people don't want to bother checking the Assembly forum because they don't care about legislation - it's silly to make them lodge their existence in the Assembly to retain the right to vote when they are contributing to TSP in other ways.

We are a legislature, so not caring about legislation seems a tad bit silly when applying.

Their point seems to lie more with the fact that the right to vote in a forum-based election is dependent on legislatorship - it doesn't seem to make sense that to vote in an election requires one to keep up with voting on laws.

For that, this proposal is essentially bring us back to having a Citizen Rank (as we did before the 2016 Great Council) in all but name. I can't speak for what the old Citizen rank was like, but I can imagine this new one will be significantly easier to keep than legislatorship (especially since it includes discord, where you can meet the 3 post threshold for your entire month practically accidentally).

Now, ideally (at least in my opinion) we'd be able to seperate voting and running in an election from being a legislator, so that anyone can run for office or vote without having to worry about if they've voted on enough laws, but we still need to do background checks and we still don't want people who haven't been here for 2 years suddenly showing up to vote for the next MoFA. The current system of using legislative activity means that only those who consistently check the forums practically every couple of days can keep the status - fine if you're someone who is actively involved with the legislature, but not so much if you're, say, a member of the executive who needs legislatorship just so they can choose who their boss is going to be (or keep their jobs, despite the fact that a Minister doesn't need to be involved in making laws).

However, I do agree with HumanSanity's point that this will only work if we can find a way to automate this. To that end, if this proposal is popular enough, I'd suggest gathering a commission of people who are willing and able to work on such a system to see if it's feasible and, if so, make a prototype system.

(This post was last modified: 04-30-2022, 07:36 PM by Jebediah.)

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One idea I've come up with is allowing people who voted in the previous election open only to legislators for whatever - Cabinet, first-round Delegate - could also maintain legislator status even if they don't meet the Assembly voting requirement.

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Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

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I'm generally skeptical of a requirement based (purely) on posting, considering it's been done before... and threads like this aren't exactly the pinnacle of democratic participation.

It's not like just clicking "Abstain" every other time a vote comes up is the pinnacle of democratic participation either.

It's not — but at least it requires more genuine attention to activity in the region (at least, to when votes are opened) than opening Discord once a month to send a few messages.

As for legislation affecting RMB users, we already have some level of protection for this in Article III, Section 5 of the Charter:

III. RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS

…

(5) No law may be passed by the Assembly that directly affects the activities of the in-game community without the consent of the in-game community.

If your concern is that this isn't sufficient for giving RMB users a voice on legislation affecting them, that's certainly an issue we should explore. But I think it's going a bit far to argue these amendments "enfranchise people such as RMBers who may not be very interested in most legislation, but might be interested in … certain Assembly acts that affect their interests."

More generally speaking, our Cabinet is detached from the RMB community in more ways than just the issue of who's eligible to vote in Cabinet elections. In particular, as established in the Charter, the Local Council serves as "the local government of the in-game community" and is tasked with "administrat[ing] itself on issues unique to the in-game community." Meanwhile "the Assembly may not enact any law, nor the Cabinet deliver any directive, that is solely related to an issue local to the in-game community" except under the terms of the Charter (i.e. with the consent of the RMB community).

I'm not opposed in principle to increasing access to votes currently open to legislators, but the issue is not so simply solved just by adopting looser and more flexible requirements for legislatorship. Doing so opens up more fundamental questions not only about whose voices are heard in Cabinet elections, but also how effectively the Cabinet can represent those voices, when there is a separate government institution specifically tasked with managing issues relating to the RMB community. To be clear here, I am not arguing for the abolition of the Local Council — regardless of what others may advocate for — but I am opposed to the false binary between 'on-site' and 'off-site' communities cemented in our current Charter. Ultimately, voter eligibility for Cabinet elections and confirmation votes are only one manifestation of this. We should all strive for more inclusive government, but inclusive government requires both inclusive elections and inclusive institutions. It makes sense to make our elections more inclusive, but it doesn't make sense to only make our elections more inclusive when there's these closely related issues at play.

Esfalsa | NationStates | Wiki | Roleplay | Discord

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The admins can check how many times some posts of the forms; Discord would be more difficult, I imagine.

We've done this in the past. The main problem, imo, is that by counting posts you don't guarantee quality exchanges as much as spam to keep up activity. This is why we switched to the voting requirement in the past, but I don't think it would be a problem to return, and might help with activity.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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It's not — but at least it requires more genuine attention to activity in the region (at least, to when votes are opened) than opening Discord once a month to send a few messages.

The problem is that that is one very specific criterion for activity in the region.

I'm not opposed in principle to increasing access to votes currently open to legislators, but the issue is not so simply solved just by adopting looser and more flexible requirements for legislatorship. Doing so opens up more fundamental questions not only about whose voices are heard in Cabinet elections, but also how effectively the Cabinet can represent those voices, when there is a separate government institution specifically tasked with managing issues relating to the RMB community. To be clear here, I am not arguing for the abolition of the Local Council — regardless of what others may advocate for — but I am opposed to the false binary between 'on-site' and 'off-site' communities cemented in our current Charter. Ultimately, voter eligibility for Cabinet elections and confirmation votes are only one manifestation of this. We should all strive for more inclusive government, but inclusive government requires both inclusive elections and inclusive institutions. It makes sense to make our elections more inclusive, but it doesn't make sense to only make our elections more inclusive when there's these closely related issues at play.

Well, I don't think I've suggested this as a silver bullet solution to the issues you bring up. The criterion for legislator status, in my mind, should be expanded, but I don't believe that doing so will just solve all of our problems with divisions between the gameside and the forum. That doesn't make a bill to make elections more inclusive a bad thing

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Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

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Making our elections more inclusive is absolutely not a bad thing per se. The issue arises when the portion of our regional population electing the Cabinet, is broader than the portion that the Cabinet can effectively represent. The Cabinet should serve those that elect it, and while I certainly welcome widening that demographic, as it currently stands, it would be difficult for the Cabinet to actually do so without stepping on the toes of an institution specifically tasked with and entitled to administrating itself on local RMB issues. There's a difference between searching for a silver bullet, and being concerned that we'd be implicitly asking the Cabinet to represent voters who chose them but who are primarily active in a part of our region for which a separate institution has already been specifically established.

Esfalsa | NationStates | Wiki | Roleplay | Discord

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Making our elections more inclusive is absolutely not a bad thing per se. The issue arises when the portion of our regional population electing the Cabinet, is broader than the portion that the Cabinet can effectively represent. The Cabinet should serve those that elect it, and while I certainly welcome widening that demographic, as it currently stands, it would be difficult for the Cabinet to actually do so without stepping on the toes of an institution specifically tasked with and entitled to administrating itself on local RMB issues. There's a difference between searching for a silver bullet, and being concerned that we'd be implicitly asking the Cabinet to represent voters who chose them but who are primarily active in a part of our region for which a separate institution has already been specifically established.

Well, two things. First, the first round of the Delegate election would also be made more inclusive by this bill, and I don't think it can be denied that the Delegate represents the gameside in a pretty important way. Second, the "forum government" is the effective government of the region - whatever we might say about the separation between gameside and forumside, the forumside is really the one doing most of the governing. Even if they have a hard time engaging with the gameside, that certainly shouldn't disqualify the gameside from voting for them.

Also, while this debate has mostly focused on gameside, there is another group in TSP I can identify within whom many don't hold legislator status - forum roleplayers, who are absolutely affected by the Cabinet even more than gameside people arguably.

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Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

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Okay, honestly, as I'm thinking this through — honestly, I see your points. I'm still a bit skeptical especially about whether the Cabinet could answer to RMBers' concerns, but I'm willing to chalk that up to me being a bit biased currently

I still think that activity-based requirements will foster more spam than our current system, but also maybe more activity, who knows — if people who've been active here for longer and have seen that system in practice are fine with returning to that system, I don't mind trying it out. That said, I do feel three posts is a bit low for the RMB and especially Discord, which by their nature tend to have more frequent posts.

With respect to workload, I'll just briefly mention, since it hasn't been brought up yet, that there is a separate roleplay Discord server that would probably also need to be checked.

Esfalsa | NationStates | Wiki | Roleplay | Discord

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I'm mulling over some of the broader philosophical points here, I just wanted to throw out:

I'm generally skeptical of a requirement based (purely) on posting, considering it's been done before... and threads like this aren't exactly the pinnacle of democratic participation.

I don't think this is a bad thing, per se. Encouraging engagement with the community more broadly, even if not legislative engagement, is a way of verifying that people are ... well ... invested to the point where their citizenship in the region more broadly is somewhat invested and interested. Sure, the "2 posts to stay a cit" thread is a bit of a meme, but most people would find other ways to engage, and in my opinion even 2 spam posts are community engagement.

Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces
Ambassador to Balder
Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

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