Hi. This is amendment to allow people who are active in other areas of TSP than Assembly voting to maintain legislator status. The effect of this amendment is that the voting requirement for Assembly members is gotten rid of and replaced by an activity requirement on a TSP platform (RMB, discord, forum). This amendment is intended to enfranchise people such as RMBers who may not be very interested in most legislation, but might be interested in Cabinet elections or certain Assembly acts that affect their interests for example. The current situation is people who don't vote on Assembly legislation but are active elsewhere in TSP do not have the right to vote for the Cabinet or in the first round of Delegate elections, nor do they have the right to vote on the confirmations of Justices on the High Court or SPSF Generals. That is nonsensical. These people are TSPers and have just as much a right to vote as forum-going frequent Assembly voters.

My apologies if there are any errors in the writing of this proposal - this is the first Assembly bill I've written.

The Legislator Committee Act is amended as follows:

Legislator Committee Act
An act to establish a commission to manage legislators

[...]

3. Legislator Checks

(1) Continued legislator status requires active membership and good behaviour.

(2) Within the first week of each calendar month, the Legislator Committee will remove legislator status from a legislator if they failed the voting activity requirement in the past month, if applicable, or otherwise no longer meet the eligibility requirements as described herein. If a legislator no longer meets the eligibility requirements (not including the voting activity requirement), and it would be impossible for them to meet the requirements before the first week of the following calendar month, the Legislator Committee may remove their legislator status at their discretion before the appointed week. The Legislator Committee may exercise discretion and not remove legislators under reasonable extenuating circumstances.

(3) A legislator fails the voting activity requirement if they are absent for more than half of all votes finished in the previous calendar month, if a minimum of two votes occurred have not posted on a public platform under the jurisdiction of the Coalition of the South Pacific at least thrice during the last calendar month. Legislators who have an approved leave of absence from the Chair lasting for more than the majority of a calendar month shall not be considered absent for votes in the given time frame be exempt from this requirement during the calendar month in question.

(4) The Chair of the Assembly may order the Legislator Committee to suspend legislator privileges for disruptive members. Frequent suspensions may be grounds for ineligibility, if found appropriate in a fair trial by the High Court.

[...]

Article IV, Section 4 of the Charter of the Coalition of The South Pacific is amended as follows:

Legislator Eligibility

(4) A standing commission of legislators will be tasked with granting and revoking legislator status. All residents of the Coalition are eligible to attain legislator status through an application that is processed by the government of in accordance with procedures established by law. Continued legislator status requires active membership and good behaviour. Legislator status may not require participation in the Assembly nor in any other government authority of the region.

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Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

(This post was last modified: 06-06-2022, 12:07 PM by The Haughtherlands.)

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Before considering the merits of this, do you have an idea of how the administrative component of this might work? Is there an easy way for the Chair to know about Discord, RMB; and forum posts? Or would this substantially increase the work burden of the Chair?

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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Before considering the merits of this, do you have an idea of how the administrative component of this might work? Is there an easy way for the Chair to know about Discord, RMB; and forum posts? Or would this substantially increase the work burden of the Chair?

Unless some sort of script was created to check, I imagine that this would unfortunately significantly increase the work burden of the Chair. The Chair is able to appoint deputies and would probably be able delegate some of that work to them, though. Also, I'm not married to a posting requirement. The idea behind it was to go along with the spirit of the bill but also ensure that Legislators remain reasonably active.

Edit: there are some ways I could think of that could speed up the process by quite a bit. The one that I think would be hardest to do without some sort of bot would be discord, because creating clickable links to view recent posts from discord accounts in servers is impossible as far as I know.

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Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

(This post was last modified: 04-30-2022, 05:23 PM by Comfed.)

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You did pretty good on formatting, though in the first line of §3 of LegComm Act, are should be struck through ("if they are have..." doesn't make sense). Though, why is "A standing commission of legislators will be tasked with granting and revoking legislator status" repealed? That seems pretty pointless to me.

To play devil's advocate, if they don't want to vote or don't care about the proposal, they can simply abstain rather than be absent. On the other hand, this could help encourage more people in the Assembly, and possibly debate and vote in due time.

As a note, the Chair can warn rather than remove legislators who are active and otherwise non-compliant.

Before considering the merits of this, do you have an idea of how the administrative component of this might work? Is there an easy way for the Chair to know about Discord, RMB; and forum posts? Or would this substantially increase the work burden of the Chair?

Having experience with this from the Briefings, the forums are much easier to go though (albeit it takes like an hour). Discord (and the RMB, I would presume) is too active over the fortnight, let alone a month. I typically have to note and record it in a Doc everyday and I do miss quite a bit.

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Before considering the merits of this, do you have an idea of how the administrative component of this might work? Is there an easy way for the Chair to know about Discord, RMB; and forum posts? Or would this substantially increase the work burden of the Chair?

Unless some sort of script was created to check, I imagine that this would unfortunately significantly increase the work burden of the Chair. The Chair is able to appoint deputies and would probably be able delegate some of that work to them, though. Also, I'm not married to a posting requirement. The idea behind it was to go along with the spirit of the bill but also ensure that Legislators remain reasonably active.

I am, in concept, okay with a posting activity rather than voting activity requirement. That said, I understand that there's a reason we have a voting activity requirement: historically, the region has had trouble with posting requirements.

However, unless this process can be automated on a comparable level to the current checks, it's a "no" from me. Manually checking 60+ legislators each and every month is more work than the Chair (even with a team of Deputies) can be expected to do.

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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You did pretty good on formatting, though in the first line of §3 of LegComm Act, are should be struck through ("if they are have..." doesn't make sense).

Fixed.

Though, why is "A standing commission of legislators will be tasked with granting and revoking legislator status" repealed? That seems pretty pointless to me.

That's an oversight on my part - I was working on an earlier, completely different bill in my forum drafts section and this bill was drafted using the same text which I had already done some formatting to. I've restored it.

To play devil's advocate, if they don't want to vote or don't care about the proposal, they can simply abstain rather than be absent.

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.

Spoiler

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.

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Before considering the merits of this, do you have an idea of how the administrative component of this might work? Is there an easy way for the Chair to know about Discord, RMB; and forum posts? Or would this substantially increase the work burden of the Chair?

Unless some sort of script was created to check, I imagine that this would unfortunately significantly increase the work burden of the Chair. The Chair is able to appoint deputies and would probably be able delegate some of that work to them, though. Also, I'm not married to a posting requirement. The idea behind it was to go along with the spirit of the bill but also ensure that Legislators remain reasonably active.

I am, in concept, okay with a posting activity rather than voting activity requirement. That said, I understand that there's a reason we have a voting activity requirement: historically, the region has had trouble with posting requirements.

However, unless this process can be automated on a comparable level to the current checks, it's a "no" from me. Manually checking 60+ legislators each and every month is more work than the Chair (even with a team of Deputies) can be expected to do.

It would certainly be an annoyance without a script, unless the Chair decided to recruit a large team and even then it would be a pain. One think I am considering is a different way to ensure that legislators are at least somewhat engaged with the region without making the Chair's office check every legislator's RMB, discord and forum posts.
Edit:

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.

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.

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Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

(This post was last modified: 04-30-2022, 05:45 PM by Comfed.)

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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.

Esfalsa | NationStates | Wiki | Roleplay | Discord

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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?

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