 The First Chamber is not one of two chambers in a bicameral system. It is Lovian Congress' room for proposing and debating bills, which then go to the Second Chamber for a vote. |
| National Archives of the Congressional debates and votes: 1. First series 2. Second series 3. Third series 4. Fourth series 5. Fifth series 6. Sixth series 7. Seventh series 8. Eighth series 9. Ninth series 10. Tenth series 11. Eleventh series 12. Twelfth series 13. Thirteenth series 14. Fourteenth series 15. Fifteenth series 16. Sixteenth series 17. Seventeenth series |
In Lovia, Congress is the national legislative body and the most powerful branch of government. The First Chamber is one of the two chambers of Congress, in which the Members of the Congress propose bills and debate them. The Second Chamber is where they are eventually voted. Despite the two-chamber system, Lovia does not have a bicameral parliament: there is only one group of MOTCs that both debates and votes the proposals. For the current composition of Congress, see this.
As prescribed by Article 6 of the Constitution, all Lovian citizens "may write and propose motions to the Federal Law", that "are presented to the Members of the Congress in the First Chamber." The MOTCs' duty is to "read the motion and form a personal opinion about it. In order to obtain the support of a majority of Members of the Congress, changes may be proposed in the First Chamber." If a majority is likely to be found, the proposer will move the bill to the Second Chamber for a vote. If they do not move it within a month, the Speaker can require that it is moved within two days or withdrawn.
The First Chamber is not a popular assembly where all citizens can express their personal interests. Polling the population ought to happen outside of Congress.
001. Regarding Congresspersons' inactivity[]
I believe we have made a major, daring step with Kunarian's reform. To a point, the party lists prevent long-term inactivity due to seats going away from an inactive user to other users on the same party list. The major downside of the medal is the fact that it has been shown that we are not all too eager to run for a party list. The bonus seats have proven to be not as much insentive for people to join in. It is not my will to increase people's will to create party lists, it is my will to prevent Congress from getting inactive due to a select few number of people leaving this site. Therefore I propose to expand our regulations.
I propose a system which:
- Retains the party lists and bonus seats
- Adds a new feature called combined lists, these are basically a bond between two (or more) political parties. Such a combined list is to be treated as separate party lists during an election, but in Congress, they are treated as one party. It might sound vague, so I give you guys an example in which the difference between party lists and combined lists becomes more clear:
- Party lists: User:A and User:B run together under the single party list of PLP. They receive a large portion of votes and as such as entitled to bonus seats. When User:B becomes inactive, his seats are allocated to User:A.
- Combined lists: User:C runs for CLA; User:D runs for BPCL. They can vote for each other, but separately, their parties are too small for bonus seats; their votes are treated as two separate lists. However, in Congress User:D becomes inactive. To prevent his votes becoming useless, he has made a combined list with CLA. Basically it means that when User:D becomes inactive, his Congresspeople go to User:C, even though he belongs to a different political party.
- This system would also work in case of temporary inactivity.
Bart K (talk) 12:22, April 2, 2017 (UTC)
Comments[]
:o —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 06:04, April 10, 2017 (UTC)
- CNP+KNPO combine the lists? MyOwnBadSelf (talk) 06:35, April 10, 2017 (UTC)
002. Undo most of Kunarian's changes to the Constitution[]
The changes to the elections and the short terms are quite takaviki. I propose a retroactive undo and changing the 2017 elections to be in characterly based on the old system. If that isn't acceptable, a non-retroactive undo would be acceptable as well. —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 12:39, September 21, 2017 (UTC)
- No. :o --OuWTB 15:07, September 21, 2017 (UTC)
- I would agree to a repeal. We (mostly) agreed to his changes so we gotta live with our consequences of doing so over simply undoing our bad choices and pretending it didn't happen. horton11 15:16, September 21, 2017 (UTC)
If it only makes sense OOC, then it would make more sense to retcon it. But if everyone else insists on not retconning things, a non-retroactive undo is better than nothing. @Oos: Why not? If you get more CCPL members you get penalized :'( —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 22:35, September 21, 2017 (UTC)
- Yeah, Kunarian's system was rather strange, and it didn't seem to work. All it did was cause arguments, like that whole 'candidacy edit warring' fiasco. MyOwnBadSelf (talk · stalk) 22:54, September 21, 2017 (UTC)
So, can we please retcon this? The results make no in character sense and the entire system is incredibly takaviki. I propose we nerf it to only include the minor changes, and make that be retroactively the fourteenth amendment, as a compromise between pro-retcon and contra-retcon. —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 14:42, October 12, 2017 (UTC)
- Why are you so insistent on retcon rather than repeal? :P I would definitely agree with repealing some parts of Kunarian's system (such as the extremely fast election cycle) but I'm not sure a retcon is necessary; I try to avoid those as much as possible. 77topaz (talk) 20:42, October 12, 2017 (UTC)
As I said, because it creates unrealistic in character results (MCP randomly gains 15 seats? KNPO gets 8 seats? what?) plus the system itself doesn't make any sense in character (penalties for being in government? The list system that strongly penalizes combining lists between users? though to be fair, other things in the constitution were also nonsense IC, though to a much lesser extent). —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 22:04, October 12, 2017 (UTC)
- I think the point of the list system was to stop parties with multiple users gaining an unfair advantage from voting only for themselves, and thereby encouraging users to give their minor and support votes to other parties instead; I think that this in itself may be a useful aspect, encouraging cooperation between parties.
- Those election results are somewhat strange, but we could explain them by remembering that, thanks to the National Congressperson Order system, specific users won seats rather than parties, having some of Bart and Martijn's seats go to other minor parties, and some of MOBS' to CNP proper. 77topaz (talk) 22:52, October 12, 2017 (UTC)
In that case it's an unacceptable mixing of IC parties and OOC users. All it did in practice was heavily penalize a party having more than one OOC member, encouraging people to tactically split up into multiple parties. —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 22:55, October 12, 2017 (UTC)
- @Mixing: I suppose that's true. There's always been a bit of a weird IC-OOC relationship with elections in Lovia, what with the election cycle only lasting one year even before Kunarian's reforms.
- @Lists: No, you see, the system prior to Kunarian's reforms incentivised recruiting more people to your party just so you could give your minor and support votes to your party as well. With the list system, you can only give your major vote to your party, and your minor and support votes must be given to other parties. This encourages cooperation between parties rather than just self-voting, which I think is a good thing. 77topaz (talk) 23:11, October 12, 2017 (UTC)
No, it just encouraged things like "CPL.nm 2" and "CPL.nm 3" (which he blocked since they were late candidacies, but would have worked if we put them up earlier) and running KNPO as a separate list. —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 00:29, October 13, 2017 (UTC)
- Well, if you ban gaming the system like that (which Kunarian opposed anyway) the system should work. 77topaz (talk) 08:24, October 13, 2017 (UTC)
- Maybe, but you couldn't ban making similar parties that are still legitimately different parties and force people to merge into larger parties. —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 12:03, October 13, 2017 (UTC)
I don't think a retcon is necessary. But I think it should be repealed, because all it's led to is confusion. But what about Kunarian's other changes, like the 'additional residences' thing? MyOwnBadSelf (talk · stalk) 09:38, October 13, 2017 (UTC)
- We haven't really had the chance to test out how well that works yet, because there was only one contested state election this year. 77topaz (talk) 10:09, October 13, 2017 (UTC)
A retcon is necessary, due to the unrealistic IC results and unrealisticness of having 3 federal and 3 state elections in one year. —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 12:03, October 13, 2017 (UTC)
Retcon it is one option. Time is wrong about the way the system works, compared to the old system it tipped the balance just into favour of those who formed large lists. However I feel we should definitely just work to change Lovia into a hobby site, make the elections correctly spaced, make things that happen in Lovia not actual elections but rather RP that the community agrees upon. That way we focus on making Lovia a great project if we do work on it anymore rather than a political competition. I for instance think that all of us working to make events in Lovia interesting rather than working against each other is best. KunarianTALK 23:34, October 15, 2017 (UTC)
If CCPL could have run as two different lists, they would have won more seats. The only time you might win less seats is if you're losing a lot of bonus seats, but you could easily win bonus seats with multiple lists as you will have five sixths of the old votes, plus both lists instead of just one could earn them. Agree @everything else. —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 13:31, October 16, 2017 (UTC)
- I support a total repeal of the law, nothing more. horton11 16:04, October 16, 2017 (UTC)
Then you're getting really authoritarian though. The system doesn't work with multiple votes, which are in general unrealistic but necessary for Lovia. Let's instead support a total retcon of the law, nothing less. —TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 21:21, October 16, 2017 (UTC)