I've been thinking lately about ways to make our permanent offices more responsive to public concerns and also give people greater confidence in their internal workings. Right now, once appointed and confirmed a CRS member, Justice, LegComm member, or General holds office in perpetuity, essentially unless their inactivity hits a point of obviously compromising the function of their institution or in the event of some kind of scandal. Recall is a good accountability mechanism, but these officials are sitting there with both job responsibilities and power and are not really subject to any kind of meaningful oversight or needing to report back to the public.

My proposal is that once a year on a relatively arbitrary date (say: May 1), all permanent appointees will be subject to a "reconfirmation vote" by the Assembly. People can vote "yes" or "no" and if more than 50%+1 votes to keep someone, they keep their position. If less than 50% votes to keep someone, they lose their position unless they're reappointed and then reconfirmed. It's not a super complicated system. Just an annual check in on "does the Assembly still have confidence in this person's ability to do their job?"

From my perspective, there's not a lot of downsides. It requires a bit of administrative overhead, but by running all votes on the same date once a year (instead of one year from appointment date), that is heavily mitigated. Arguably, it overly politicizes the positions. From my perspective, there are two answers to that: (1) recalls already present a risk of overly politicizing a given position/issue, arguably moreso, and (2) if an official cannot carry support of a majority of the Assembly, they simply aren't maintaining the trust of the public to a sufficient extent to keep their job. And, really, how much should we trust a LegComm member to make important decisions about admitting new Legislators if a majority of the current ones don't trust them? If a General can't convince a majority of the Assembly that they're still active in SPSF administration, should they really retain their commission? If a CRS member doesn't have the trust of half of the Assembly, can they really command respect in a crisis situation?

Meanwhile, there's considerable upside. It creates a natural, gradual, and less adversarial accountability system for our appointed officials and results in more engagement and communication with these institutions which are otherwise often somewhat hidden from view. When officials pass these votes (which I imagine will be far more common than officials not passing them), then it'll be a clear show of continued trust in them by the Assembly, which enhances their perceived authority and confidence in conducting their functions.

Thoughts?

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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I've been thinking lately about ways to make our permanent offices more responsive to public concerns and also give people greater confidence in their internal workings. Right now, once appointed and confirmed a CRS member, Justice, LegComm member, or General holds office in perpetuity, essentially unless their inactivity hits a point of obviously compromising the function of their institution or in the event of some kind of scandal. Recall is a good accountability mechanism, but these officials are sitting there with both job responsibilities and power and are not really subject to any kind of meaningful oversight or needing to report back to the public.

My proposal is that once a year on a relatively arbitrary date (say: May 1), all permanent appointees will be subject to a "reconfirmation vote" by the Assembly. People can vote "yes" or "no" and if more than 50%+1 votes to keep someone, they keep their position. If less than 50% votes to keep someone, they lose their position unless they're reappointed and then reconfirmed. It's not a super complicated system. Just an annual check in on "does the Assembly still have confidence in this person's ability to do their job?"

From my perspective, there's not a lot of downsides. It requires a bit of administrative overhead, but by running all votes on the same date once a year (instead of one year from appointment date), that is heavily mitigated. Arguably, it overly politicizes the positions. From my perspective, there are two answers to that: (1) recalls already present a risk of overly politicizing a given position/issue, arguably moreso, and (2) if an official cannot carry support of a majority of the Assembly, they simply aren't maintaining the trust of the public to a sufficient extent to keep their job. And, really, how much should we trust a LegComm member to make important decisions about admitting new Legislators if a majority of the current ones don't trust them? If a General can't convince a majority of the Assembly that they're still active in SPSF administration, should they really retain their commission? If a CRS member doesn't have the trust of half of the Assembly, can they really command respect in a crisis situation?

Meanwhile, there's considerable upside. It creates a natural, gradual, and less adversarial accountability system for our appointed officials and results in more engagement and communication with these institutions which are otherwise often somewhat hidden from view. When officials pass these votes (which I imagine will be far more common than officials not passing them), then it'll be a clear show of continued trust in them by the Assembly, which enhances their perceived authority and confidence in conducting their functions.

Thoughts?

I like the idea, there should be some accountability in all positions.

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I'm opposed to this for good reason: reconfirmation votes are an incredibly imperfect way of ensuring accountability. If you can control what everybody is allowed to base their vote on, so that they're not voting for or against a reconfirmation for unrelated political reasons, that would be an ideal world. But we can't. If I'm subject to a regular reconfirmation vote as a CRS member or LegComm commissioner, I'm doing the exact opposite of increasing engagement-- I'm retreating from anything unrelated to my office, lest I be punished for my unrelated political activities.

Recalls circumvent this by creating the expectation that the Assembly only removes somebody from office for misconduct or dereliction of duties actually related to their office.

(This post was last modified: 08-21-2022, 02:29 PM by sandaoguo.)

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I don't really think recalls solve the issue the way you're saying it does. If the reason why reconfirmation votes can be abused is, as you put it, about whether or not people are voting on legitimate vs illegitimate basis, then recalls can be too. In the same way recalls are understood to be about misconduct or dereliction of duty, we can frame reconfirmation votes to be focused on that as well.

From my point of view, the level of neglect required to trigger a recall is simply too high to ever actually review officials' activity or decision-making. Something scandalous generally has to happen. I think this is pretty clearly proven by the extreme lulls in LegComm activity or Generals who have sat on the General Corps for years doing only two or three missions.

I also don't think it would cause officials to retreat in the way that you say it would. For starters, in most of our positions of trust, there seems to be a general understanding that high levels of engagement with the region's political process is a desirable and encouraged thing, and doing so respectfully over a prolonged period of time is honestly a way to build trust with other South Pacificans. Furthermore, a lot happens in a year, which creates distance between any individual political incident and the reconfirmation vote. And finally, I think I would trust voters to tell the difference, and to the extent they can't, officials have to have the trust of the Assembly to be effective at their jobs, regardless of what exactly caused them to lose it.

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

Reply

California has retention elections for its judges, and I always like to vote no on some judges for political reasons. However, I don't know if we need the same in this region. Unlike in California, where there is a clear distinction between the State Legislature and ordinary citizens, and only 120 people in the state can serve as a state legislator at one time, an indefinite number of ordinary citizens in this region can become a legislator and initiate a recall against any official they think is being neglectful.

From my point of view, the level of neglect required to trigger a recall is simply too high to ever actually review officials' activity or decision-making. Something scandalous generally has to happen. I think this is pretty clearly proven by the extreme lulls in LegComm activity or Generals who have sat on the General Corps for years doing only two or three missions.

I cannot agree with you on this. There is an established history of recalling officials who didn't commit anything particularly scandalous other than simply going inactive (see Feirmont in 2018, Awesomiasa in 2019, and Wizard Ferret this year). Each of those recalls were respectively initiated against a LegComm member, associate justice, and cabinet minister.

4× Cabinet minister /// 1× OWL director /// CRS member /// SPSF

My History

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I don't really think recalls solve the issue the way you're saying it does. If the reason why reconfirmation votes can be abused is, as you put it, about whether or not people are voting on legitimate vs illegitimate basis, then recalls can be too.

We have legal protections in our recall laws that restrict them solely to misconduct or dereliction of duty. A valid case has to be presented when motioning the recall. If somebody also happens to vote to recall for politically motivated reasons, that’s parallel to the actual case made for the recall.

The same can’t be done for reconfirmation votes.

There’s a reason why we restricted the valid reasons to motion a recall. People *did* use recalls as a way to politically punish an official they disagreed with, even sometimes when it personal beef unrelated to government at all. We only have a culture of these officials being politically active *because* we protect them against frivolous recalls. I wouldn’t be eager to return to what we had before we restricted when somebody could be subject to recall. Reconfirmation votes are in effect the same thing.

(This post was last modified: 08-22-2022, 10:30 AM by sandaoguo.)

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