[Discussion] Governmental Reform

[im_a_waffle1]

How much have you changed in five years? I've changed a lot. The League has, too. It changed its name- from the League of Conservative Nations to simply the League. It added a new region in the form of Concord, showing the world that our community, our region, can hold its ground in multiple places at once while still being able to have one of if not the largest defender military on NS. It has grown from hovering just around 100 nations to over 1300! It went from being a GP pariah to one of the most influential regions in all of GP. It underwent huge moderation reforms, purging bad actors and making the region shine cleaner than ever. It has a massively active community, challenging even feeders in the number of people who choose to call our community their home.

Why, then, has our Constitution not changed? By my count, the Constitution has been amended only once by a Council vote, and it was just for the regional move from LCN to the League (Also the addition of Concord and the removal of the Court(?), but these appear to have not been voted on by the Council). This is compounded by the fact that our Constitution is incredibly short and leaves many things up for interpretation- for example, the Speaker has no real powers, only being granted the vague role of "encouraging and facilitating improvements in regional legislation" which makes the position of Speaker seem more ceremonial than anything. It seems to me that this was more of a transitional Constitution, and that the government of the League for the last five years has just been transitional.

I'm not arguing for the full democratization of the League. Instead, what I envision is similar to a semi-constitutional monarchy like Monaco, where the monarch- in this case, the Consulate- retains some government power, but other power is delegated to other bodies and the legislature. I, personally, do not like investing too much power into a small group of people- it creates too much risk for disaster, especially if one or more people in the group are volatile- so I may be more inclined to give less power to the Consulate and more power to an elected head of government and legislature. Although, that's all up for discussion- everything is, that's why I made this thread.

I'd like to put out some major points of discussion and my opinions:

The Consulate

The Consulate should remain as it is- a group of three, led by a Chief Consul. However, my idea is to strip away some of its powers. Currently, the Consulate receives virtually unchecked power under Article 2, Section 2.I of the current Constitution which states, "The Consulate shall use their authority to facilitate regional development and progress." What "regional development and progress" is isn't defined, meaning the Consulate can do virtually anything under the guise of regional development. This is made worse by the fact that the Council has no way to stop the Consulate from doing something, as the Consulate could simply veto anything the Council passes under Article 2, Section 2.IV- "The Consulate maintains veto rights over the Council of the Republic in dire situations..." What are "dire situations?" The Constitution does go on to provide examples, like "Constitutional questionability" and "regional security," but those are just examples and "dire situations" could mean anything, such as the perpetual state of war we are in. After all, the reasoning is as simple as "we are in war, we need to commandeer the region and rule by decree."

Instead, the Consulate should have limited veto powers. The Council should be able to override Consulate veto. In addition, I would propose adding "Consulate Orders" or some other, better name which are immediately effective orders issued by the Consulate that can be struck down by the Council at any time.

The Speaker

The Speaker has barely any legal definition other than what I mentioned earlier. Instead of what we have now, I propose having an elected Speaker that serves as a head of government. They share the executive with the Consulate. The Speaker appoints cabinet members or ministers or whatever we want to call them to run departments or ministries, like we have now. So, instead of having a law defining the Department of Culture like we have now, a Speaker will choose if they want to have a Department of Culture and then appoints whoever they see fit for the job.

The Council

Nominations are stupid and bad and we should get rid of them. What I propose instead is an application system, similar to citizenship, where someone applies to be a Council Delegate and then they are either approved or not. Instead of using the nominations as a kind of de facto activity check, we could instead have an actual activity check at the end of every month or every other month and anyone who hasn't voted in at least half the votes in an activity check period (or CTEs or left or any other thing that would cause them to be ineligible) gets removed and will have to reapply.

In addition, we need to have some kind of Council clerk or something who updates the law archive on the forums and on the wiki and runs votes. In general, they would just manage the day-to-day operations of the Council instead of just tacking that responsibility onto the Consulate. I'm thinking something like what TSP has where the clerk would be voted in and then would serve until resignation or ineligibility, and they could appoint deputies who would help with their duties. The clerk could also manage Council Delegate applications as anyone who goes that far should have already been thoroughly vetted during their citizen application.

---

Some minor points I'd also like to address in a potential new Constitution (and associated new laws):

• Defining the DSB as a legal institution. Right now it just kind of "exists" with no legal basis and it would be nice to fix that.
  
• WA Delegates. I think the best way to handle this is to have the Delegate of the League be a specific Consul and the Delegate of Concord just be anyone on the DSB. We could always have appointed Delegates for Concord, but I think with the nature of the frontier it may just be easier to allow either Spode, Fandom, or Neo to be Delegate at any given time. The status quo works too, though.
  
• Generally we just need to elaborate on more things and give specifics. The current Constitution feels incredibly rushed.
  
• We should have a Criminal Code.
  
• The judiciary: No. Although that doesn't necessarily mean the status quo is good, either. An idea I came up with was the concept of the "legislative court," where the Speaker, a Consul, or perhaps a Chief Justice (although I don't like this) appoints three Council Delegates (who are willing to participate and do not have a conflict of interest) to a jury, which hears the case and then comes up with an opinion. This seems to me as the best way to take the responsibility off of the Consulate while not having an actual court.
  
• The Council should be perpetually convened, and there should be a specific way to bring a proposed bill to a vote, e.g. a seconded motion after a bit of time.
  
• A motion of no confidence by the Council against the Speaker, the Consulate, or a specific Consul could also be added. We could also add a way to recall the clerk or whatever we decide to call it.
  
• New Consuls should be approved by the Council.
  
• Anything else I'm forgetting.
  

[Quebecshire]

There's a few things here I can see happening, and a few things here I'm just going to say are probably a hard no.

We aren't Europeia, the South Pacific, or The North Pacific. No offense to those regions, but we aren't a political/legislative focused region.

The Constitution is deliberately vague in a lot of ways - it's meant to be a guide, not a detailed map of every potential scenario.

Consulate orders exist already. They're functionally proclamations. I also don't see any reason to infringe on Consulate veto power - it's never been abused in any citable example, and has only ever been exercised to limit frivilous nominations of people who are simply way too inactive to be on the Council.

The Speaker being a functional prime minister makes little sense to me - we appoint people to roles based on contribution and merit, and the Consulate being three people to weigh candidates and options (frequently doing brief interviews) is vastly preferable to post-electoral political appointments. It also needlessly bureacratizes things.

I actually like your idea for reforming the process by which people serve on the Council, and I've mulled over if it's worth pursuing before. This is doable, I think. 

I also think the Council clerk idea isn't awful, and that this might be a better role for the Speaker than attempting to make them a Prime Minister.

On the other bullets,

• I am not opposed to defining the DSB legally but only if this is done so with great care.
  
• I am entirely opposed to connecting Consulship to WAD roles. The current Consul lineup is convenient for that, but there's no reason to force locking people or transitions when Consul turnover inevitably happens.
  
• Not convinced on a criminal code. People who rules lawyer are not going to have the regions' best interest in mind and I don't think it's productive. Status quo works here.
  
• The Consulate doesn't need judicial responsibility taken away. It rarely comes up. Besides, the Consulate was originally more judicial than anything when conceived, it's hardly a burden.
  
• I don't mind the idea of perpetual convention for the Council.
  
• Under no circumstances will we ever implement a recall mechanism or approval vote for the Consulate. While I don't think this is your intent, the majority of people who have ever proposed this (Agereus, Nexus) have always been driven by spite. There's also no way to enforce it meaningfully versus game mechanics so it seems silly to me. I also don't like the idea of this for executive office in general. Peoples' positions will be determined by their conduct and performance, not by vost casting.
  

[Creeperopolis]

I'll go through this in the order of things I feel most strongly about from most to least.

We are not democratizing the consulate: no Council votes on consular successors and no Council votes of no confidence on consuls. What Quebec said earlier explains it well: "there's also no way to enforce it meaningfully versus game mechanics". Additionally, the "Consulate Orders" already exist (it's not just a meme), and the consular veto has never been abused (or used much at all for that matter). In my opinion, the Consulate is fine as it is. Meanwhile, the position of Speaker of the Council was previously an elected office. Two elections occurred in the early months of the office (March 2021 and May 2021); neither vote was a close competition, and it was a hassle to get the whole process organized. The democratic Speaker of the Council was done away with in the first place because it was impractical and unnecessarily decisive. There are no political parties because, because prior to the current constitution, partisan politics got in the way of effective community building and led to unnecessary animosity between region members. I oppose making the Speaker of the Council an elected position again.

I'm ok with making the Speaker of the Council have more of a standing position in comparison to other Council Delegates, as as it stands right now, the "Speaker of the Council" feels like a glorified title that doesn't do much. You proposed forming a "Council clerk" to update the law archive on the forums, article on the wiki regarding laws, and manage the Council votes. This would be a great way to devolve a power from the consulate while granting relevance to a Council position which is intended to have some legislative powers; I would support and recommend this proposal.

After being in this region for almost 5 years now, I have witnessed first-hand the downfall of the nomination system. Back then, when I was nominated for the first time to the 2nd session of the Council of the Republic, being nominated actually meant something, and those who nominate someone give a reason as to why they are nominating the individual (ie: "I believe that so-and-so deserves to be on the Council because X, Y, and Z."). Now, the nomination system is basically a participation award for someone who is already on the Council, for someone who is historically important to the region, or for someone who just recently became a citizen. I'd support either reforming nominations or getting rid of them entirely, as you suggested. An application system would be a good way to see who actually wants to be a Council Delegate instead of the office being merely a gimme title.

If I recall correctly, the Consulate already does activity checks after every vote, with individuals who have not voted and had not advised the Consulate in advance are warned or kicked off the Council (but as far as I can remember, we have not yet kicked someone off of the Council for inactivity). As I say this however, I would be open to having scheduled activity checks so that we can always have such an activity check system as votes don't occur every month (or every session for that matter).

Adding a "Criminal Code" sounds redundant and I can't see it ever being used in a meaningful way. If I recall correctly, there once was something akin to a "Criminal Code" over 4 or 5 years ago where individuals who had committed "crimes" against the Republic were taken to court. Of those, all of them were OOC issued which (in hindsight) should have been handled differently (without an IC trial), and the one (I think) which occurred IC was a frivolous court case between Gagium and the Consulate after he purchased 3,000,002 Council Delegate Estates with the bank bot. This is unnecessary as it never comes up. And on the topic of judiciary, devolving this power from the Consulate is not necessary as, once again, this issue hardly ever comes up.
Correction: As per Gagium, this case was not over the purchase of Council Delegate Estates, but was over the use of a warn command regarding the purchase, thus it was an OOC court case.

I'm unsure about having the Council be perpetual. I could be convinced of changing it, but right now, I lean towards the status quo.

I don't see the need to codify which consuls are the regions' World Assembly Delegates. It is unnecessarily restrictive.

I'm ok with codifying the DSB as a legal institution. This can be done with a Council vote.

I think this should address most to all the points made.

[im_a_waffle1]

Looking back with fresh eyes, I do see now that some of the more radical changes I proposed may have been unnecessary, and I generally agree with everything said in the previous two posts. That being said, there are a couple things I'd like to comment on.

I still insist on some kind of legislative check on the Consulate's ability to issue Consulate Orders. The system could be something like, the Consulate issues a Consulate Order, it immediately goes into effect, and then a week or so later it gets voted on by the Council. This way, in emergency situations, the Consulate can act unilaterally, but the Council still has the ability to stop any Orders that many people in the region have issues with.

If we organize activity checks for Council Delegates and citizens at the same time, then that could eliminate some unnecessary hassle. This would require some good documentation of everything but that's more of an administrative thing than a legislative thing (outside of the scope of this thread). This makes a perpetual Council better because inactive Council Delegates can be removed without grinding the entire Council to a halt for a week.

[The New Fandom Republic]

I'm going to keep it blunt here, this proposal doesn't take into account of our history all that much.
Also Judicial action is best left with the consulate as to make sure actions in that manner are swift and effective. Also there's no need for a check on the Consulate as they have proven to self regulate without need of the legislature in any Republic. 
I do have to give you credit when it comes to reforming the position of speaker and would love to see where that gets taken for sure, however I don't think the council application system is the best of ideas but I do like the energy and intent of that and the rest of the proposal. 
I also think the duties of a Council Clerk could just be the Speaker's job rather these two positions being separate.
To keep my statement short(very tired at time of writing,I'm sure you can tell.), This statement leaves much to be desired and some of these solutions would slow down our bureaucracy which we can't really afford when it comes to R/D which is now a big part of the region.

[Spode]

Howdy! Thank you for posting this, it made me thonk.

How much have you changed in five years? I've changed a lot. The League has, too. It changed its name- from the League of Conservative Nations to simply the League. It added a new region in the form of Concord, showing the world that our community, our region, can hold its ground in multiple places at once while still being able to have one of if not the largest defender military on NS. It has grown from hovering just around 100 nations to over 1300! It went from being a GP pariah to one of the most influential regions in all of GP. It underwent huge moderation reforms, purging bad actors and making the region shine cleaner than ever. It has a massively active community, challenging even feeders in the number of people who choose to call our community their home.

Why, then, has our Constitution not changed? By my count, the Constitution has been amended only once by a Council vote, and it was just for the regional move from LCN to the League (Also the addition of Concord and the removal of the Court(?), but these appear to have not been voted on by the Council). This is compounded by the fact that our Constitution is incredibly short and leaves many things up for interpretation- for example, the Speaker has no real powers, only being granted the vague role of "encouraging and facilitating improvements in regional legislation" which makes the position of Speaker seem more ceremonial than anything. It seems to me that this was more of a transitional Constitution, and that the government of the League for the last five years has just been transitional.

It bears mentioning that the fourth and current Constitution of the Republic has been modified.

• May 2019’s Council Plebiscite, which had the Consulate abolish the Regional Senate and establish the Council of the Republic in its stay.
  
• July 2019’s Secularism amendment, which codified the Republic’s government as a secular institution in the constitution.
  
• August 2019’s Rewording of the Consulate Impartiality clause.
  
• October 2019’s Court of Appeals Autonomy amendment, which was pursued by the capital (unclear if implemented?)
  
• November 2020’s Stayer Redefinition /Consulate Legal Interpretations / Council Bills, Motions, and Laws omnibus amendment, which changed wording in the constitution to recognize areas under League jurisdiction that were not the League. This was during the integration of the Monarchist and Democratic Alliance into the League. It also codified the publishing and storage of Consulate legal opinions, and established legal definitions for bills, motions, and laws.
  
• March 2021’s IX, X, XI amendments, by Greater Sacramento, which created the position of Council Speaker.
  
• June 2021’s Speaker amendment by Terranihil, which changed the nomination process of the Council Speaker to a Consulate nomination as opposed to the previous election system.
  
• August 2022’s Consulate Political Neutrality Amendment, which permits the Consulate to engage in promotion of civic involvement.
  
• 15 August 2022's Dismantlement of the Court of the Republic
  
• November 2022’s A Motion to Amend the Constitution, proposed by Jackson Empire, which set out a legal definition for the Speaker of the Council’s term, and permitted the Consulate to remove a Speaker failing to perform their duties as expected.
  

I think this record of change shows that the Constitution has been allowed to be a living document that has adapted to the situation the Republic finds itself in.

I'm not arguing for the full democratization of the League. Instead, what I envision is similar to a semi-constitutional monarchy like Monaco, where the monarch- in this case, the Consulate- retains some government power, but other power is delegated to other bodies and the legislature. I, personally, do not like investing too much power into a small group of people- it creates too much risk for disaster, especially if one or more people in the group are volatile- so I may be more inclined to give less power to the Consulate and more power to an elected head of government and legislature. Although, that's all up for discussion- everything is, that's why I made this thread.

I think it’s worth recalling why and how we got to an unelected executive in the first place. Turning back the clock to early February 2018, voters during the opinion polling for the presidential election had a frankly dismal pool of candidates to select from. There was Quebec and Lyoa, and then two other candidates who did not even have Vice President picks and had basically no chance at winning, voter turnout to opinion polling in this very noncompetitive race was at a catastrophically low <13% of residents. This followed an election in which Nexus was elected with no competition following their opposition agreeing to withdraw from the race. The population wasn’t engaged with democracy, the elections were uncompetitive and stagnant, and the region was quite obviously suffering as a result.

And how democratic was the presidential system anyhow? Even with the people’s mandate (and in retrospect, there was fraud in a some of those presidential elections, which somewhat undermines the legitimacy of that people’s mandate), the position was quite firmly bounded in its abilities by the constitution. It also, as I recall, created a system in which the people who got power were the people who pursued it, for better or worse, and those stakes of power meant political infighting and partisanship was a dangerous and divisive issue for the Republic.

Moreover, governments in this context have the ultimate democratic freedom of people just doing what they want to do. The consulate cannot compel or coerce the rest of the government in the same ways as “real” executive bodies because, fortunately I might add, we don’t have police, control of currency*, or control of resources needed for members to live.

*And never again so long as I am a consul will there be a (non-contested) reopening of the Consulate Central Bank or any similar reincarnation because it was, despite rose-tinted glasses surrounding that period, a corrosive force.

… All that said about why we originally discarded executive democracy, and the dangers we faced during that period, I must admit that I am somewhat dissatisfied with the current institutions of the Republic in some areas (which I believe relate to democracy!). Namely, we (as you mentioned) have a massively increased population of newer players who are notably divorced from our offsite platforms and thus most Republic politics. That’s fine to an extent, and I’m not looking to try to implement something like TEP’s RMB cafeteria or something akin to The South Pacific’s now defunct Local Council. I think both of those systems try (or tried to) accommodate delusions that the RMB should constitute a separate community from its host region. Here, we are all Republicans. That said, to avoid having a community split between those in the region onsite, and our offsite culture, there must be a continue and sustained effort to unify them through the transfer of information out, and the communication of our ideals and ideology to the public.

I'd like to put out some major points of discussion and my opinions:

The Consulate

The Consulate should remain as it is- a group of three, led by a Chief Consul. However, my idea is to strip away some of its powers. Currently, the Consulate receives virtually unchecked power under Article 2, Section 2.I of the current Constitution which states, "The Consulate shall use their authority to facilitate regional development and progress." What "regional development and progress" is isn't defined, meaning the Consulate can do virtually anything under the guise of regional development. This is made worse by the fact that the Council has no way to stop the Consulate from doing something, as the Consulate could simply veto anything the Council passes under Article 2, Section 2.IV- "The Consulate maintains veto rights over the Council of the Republic in dire situations..." What are "dire situations?" The Constitution does go on to provide examples, like "Constitutional questionability" and "regional security," but those are just examples and "dire situations" could mean anything, such as the perpetual state of war we are in. After all, the reasoning is as simple as "we are in war, we need to commandeer the region and rule by decree."

Instead, the Consulate should have limited veto powers. The Council should be able to override Consulate veto. In addition, I would propose adding "Consulate Orders" or some other, better name which are immediately effective orders issued by the Consulate that can be struck down by the Council at any time.

Rule by decree, as previously mentioned, has natural limits - the consulate ultimately needs public consensus to do things, even from positions that on paper have unchecked power.

That rule-by-decree matter applies as much if not more so to bills proposed by the council. The Council cannot forcibly compel the Consulate do things, overriding its veto or not. Ideally, vetoes are not needed, because something that isn’t able to get buy-in from the necessary stake-holders isn’t going to function correctly anyway once it passes. The Republic is run by a consensus driven government by necessity, with its most autocratic elements (the Domestic Security Bureau, and control of the founder account in The League) being a result of mechanical realities regarding the platforms it exists on. Unless those realities change, those autocratic elements will remain.

The Speaker

The Speaker has barely any legal definition other than what I mentioned earlier. Instead of what we have now, I propose having an elected Speaker that serves as a head of government. They share the executive with the Consulate. The Speaker appoints cabinet members or ministers or whatever we want to call them to run departments or ministries, like we have now. So, instead of having a law defining the Department of Culture like we have now, a Speaker will choose if they want to have a Department of Culture and then appoints whoever they see fit for the job.

The role of speaker was introduced during a period when the council was rather aimless, to serve as a means to try and direct its energies to legislation once again. Maybe. It’s been somewhat ill-defined and not particularly successful, potentially owing to the fact that we’ve resolved many of the problems that once drove the Republic’s legislature to act.

I’m not entirely sold on the speaker being able to create whole institutions that then need to be staffed and maintained like the Department of Culture without putting it to vote, but I could see the position having a more flexible ability to establish limited scope committees with authority to resolve specific issues as a potentially good space to expand the authority of the Speaker.

The Council

Nominations are stupid and bad and we should get rid of them. What I propose instead is an application system, similar to citizenship, where someone applies to be a Council Delegate and then they are either approved or not. Instead of using the nominations as a kind of de facto activity check, we could instead have an actual activity check at the end of every month or every other month and anyone who hasn't voted in at least half the votes in an activity check period (or CTEs or left or any other thing that would cause them to be ineligible) gets removed and will have to reapply.

In addition, we need to have some kind of Council clerk or something who updates the law archive on the forums and on the wiki and runs votes. In general, they would just manage the day-to-day operations of the Council instead of just tacking that responsibility onto the Consulate. I'm thinking something like what TSP has where the clerk would be voted in and then would serve until resignation or ineligibility, and they could appoint deputies who would help with their duties. The clerk could also manage Council Delegate applications as anyone who goes that far should have already been thoroughly vetted during their citizen application.

Are nominations stupid though? I believe they do serve a purpose, though perhaps a more obtuse one- It gatekeeps (mostly effectively, though with some annoying exceptions in recent memory) the Council Delegacy position to people with the reputation and social intelligence to convince three citizens to nominate them.

I would be remiss to not mention that we already have a clerk position charged with documenting our laws, the Archivist of the Republic, a position whose banner Creeperopolis and occasionally I work under.

Some minor points I'd also like to address in a potential new Constitution (and associated new laws):
Defining the DSB as a legal institution. Right now it just kind of "exists" with no legal basis and it would be nice to fix that.

Hmmm, okay? I would not be opposed to legislation further outlining its authorities and responsibilities so long as they do not conflict with its mechanically enforced responsibilities.

WA Delegates.
I think the best way to handle this is to have the Delegate of the League be a specific Consul and the Delegate of Concord just be anyone on the DSB. We could always have appointed Delegates for Concord, but I think with the nature of the frontier it may just be easier to allow either Spode, Fandom, or Neo to be Delegate at any given time. The status quo works too, though.

I, as Mechanocracy, serve as the delegate of Concord because I’m (mostly) trustworthy … and also because I’m terminally online, which is the primary reason that I’m a delegate rather than a Vice-Delegate. In a interregional environment where GA bills increasingly are subject to Republic interest (and where those bills themselves are becoming hyper-optimized by authors to carry as much of the vote as possible on bill name alone), and where we still need to remain vigilant in getting our bills to vote and passed in the SC, response time is a necessity.

As for The League, I think that it could have a stronger WA culture, but I’m not sure that tying Consulship to the delegate seat is a good idea. Currently one of the Consuls (Quebec) needs to be WA mobile for military affairs, and should Creeperopolis ever seek to retire from their position as Consul, its possible that their successor would, like Quebec, be in the active LDF and thus be unsuited for the delegacy.

Generally we just need to elaborate on more things and give specifics. The current Constitution feels incredibly rushed.

What makes it feel rushed?

We should have a Criminal Code.

Why? Republicans are not criminals and do not engage in criminality, so there is no reason to establish a criminal code.

The judiciary: No. Although that doesn't necessarily mean the status quo is good, either. An idea I came up with was the concept of the "legislative court," where the Speaker, a Consul, or perhaps a Chief Justice (although I don't like this) appoints three Council Delegates (who are willing to participate and do not have a conflict of interest) to a jury, which hears the case and then comes up with an opinion. This seems to me as the best way to take the responsibility off of the Consulate while not having an actual court.

…But what would they hear? The responsibility is not on the Consulate in this case, because the Court of the Republic, where the Consulate once heard cases, has been gone for nearly two years.

The Council should be perpetually convened, and there should be a specific way to bring a proposed bill to a vote, e.g. a seconded motion after a bit of time.

Honestly not opposed. There should be some mechanism to disregard junk proposals though, as a prolific author of them myself.

A motion of no confidence by the Council against the Speaker, the Consulate, or a specific Consul could also be added. We could also add a way to recall the clerk or whatever we decide to call it.

That’s a hard sell. “Wow the consul is against a system that could remove them from power” yes yes, but frankly if the Consulate has so sullied the public mandate, there is no real recourse, with or without a vote of no confidence. We accepted under the adoption of our new constitution back in 2018 that the region’s broadest trajectory, buoying to success- or hurtling toward failure- was in the responsibly of the Consulate. It is the solid and rarely changing core, the foundation, of the Republic, and starting over realistic constitutes going somewhere else.

We’ve had bad Consuls before, but we haven’t yet had a Consul whose badness was specifically due to their abuse of office and the therein responsibilities (that still exist post efforts towards OOC-IC disentanglement). I unfortunately cannot believe having in-character mechanisms for the public to remove a Consul would’ve prevented the incidents of the past, or will prevent incidents in the future.

[im_a_waffle1]

Agree with quite a bit of what Fandom said and disagree with others though. I will say for the record that if our history was more well-recorded then some of the factual inaccuracies in my original post wouldn't have been there. This might be a good idea as a law in the future- some kind of task force organized to catalog the history of TL&C for future reference. But, that's a topic for later.

Also, Spode mentioned the Archivist of the Republic. This position isn't defined in any law I can find (and there's not much archiving going on anyways) so I would be fine with doing away with it in favor of a Clerk.

I'd like to propose a bill for the changes discussed above and on Discord. This is, of course, a very rough draft and is subject to change depending on where the discussion goes.

CRB 30-A – An Act to Reform the Council

Preamble
Recognizing the lack of activity in the Council of the Republic and noting the inefficient process currently used for the accession of citizens into the Council, the Council seeks to amend and repeal prior legislation on the matter.

THE LEAGUE GOVERNMENT DECLARES:

The Constitution of the Republic shall be amended with the following changes:

1. Article 3, Section 1.III through Article 3, Section 1.VI and Article 3, Section 1.VIII through Article 3, Section 1.X shall be struck out.
   
2. Article 2, Section 2.VI shall be struck out.
   
3. The following shall be appended to the end of Article 3, Section 1:
   
   1. The position of Delegate to the Council of the Republic shall be granted to citizens after an application for the position is approved by the Consulate.
      
   2. Only citizens whose WA is in either the League, Concord, or active in the LDF may become a Delegate.
      
   3. Delegates will serve indefinitely unless removed from the Council.
      
   4. The Council is permanently convened.
      
   5. There shall be a legislative officer titled the Clerk of the Council of the Republic who shall be tasked with managing the day-to-day tasks and the maintenance of the Council.
      
   6. The Clerk of the Council shall be nominated by the Consulate and then confirmed by a Consulate-managed process which must include the consent of the majority of the Council. If a nomination does not gain the majority consent of the Council, the Consulate will nominate a different Delegate until one is approved.
      
   7. The Clerk of the Council's term shall be indefinite. The Consulate may remove the Clerk of the Council from office if there is a clear and present ineptitude in their duties.
      
   8. The Clerk of the Council will hold regular checks of activity for all Delegates. If a Delegate does not meet the requirements defined by the Clerk in consultation with the Consulate, then the Clerk may remove the Delegate from the Council with a provided reason.
      
   9. The Clerk of the Council shall make publicly available all Bills, Motions, and Laws of the Council, as well as a full amendment history for all three as well as this Constitution.
      
   10. All Laws, Motions, Bills, and this Constitution must be displayed as the most updated version, with historical versions displayed elsewhere.
       
   11. The Clerk of the Council shall be granted the authority to perform discretionary edits to Motions and Laws of the Council as well as this Constitution without Council approval, as long as the edits do not affect the meaning of the law or motion in any way.
       
   12. All executive officers are automatically granted Delegate status until their removal or resignation from their position.
       
4. Article 3, Section 2.II shall be struck out.
   
5. Following Article 3, Section 2.I, the following shall be added:
   
   1. Any citizen or Delegate to the Council may submit a Bill to the Council. A Delegate must sponsor a Bill before it can go to vote.
      
   2. When a Bill is sponsored and an adequate amount of time has passed for Delegates to make their opinions on the Bill known, the Clerk will open a vote for the Bill in a timely manner. The vote will last exactly 72 hours and the Bill may only pass if a majority of non-abstaining votes were for the passage of the Bill. Only Delegates may vote on Bills.
      

The following changes will be made in regards to the labeling of Bills, Laws, and Motions:

1. Bills will be labelled as such: CRB [Last two numbers of year]-[A letter in the sequence A1Z26].
   
2. Laws passed by the Council will be labelled as CRL # [CRB ID].
   
3. Motions, whether or not they pass, will be labelled as CRM #.
   

The following Laws and Motions will be declared obsolete and repealed:

1. CRL #9 – An Act To Establish a Labeling and Filing System for Council Bills, Laws and Motions
   
2. CRL #23 – An Act to Make WA Membership Mandatory for any Government Position
   
3. CRL #32 – An Act to End CRB 3
   
4. CRL #38 – Council Nomination Acceptance Act
   
5. CRM #5 – A Motion to Create the Position of Director of the Council
   

The current Speaker of the Council shall take the position of Clerk of the Council, effective immediately after the passage of this Bill.

This defines the Clerk and gets rid of the Speaker. It also incorporates all of the changes proposed by Quebec in #council-chambers except the former Consuls getting lifetime Delegateship- I'm a bit on the fence with this but if there is a consensus in favor I would be fine with adding it. In addition, I decided to define how bills, motions, and laws are filed away in this Bill and get rid of CRL #9 and #32. I had to change it anyway since we were doing away with Council cycles, and I wasn't sure if I should repeal #32 so I just repealed both of them and redefined it. In addition, I repealed CRM #5 as it defined a "Director of the Council" and it seemed to be still around. Other than that, there's nothing too bad here.

I opted to not put the DSB into law because I'm not aware of the full scope of the DSB and its day-to-day operations and I would rather not try to write something up for it without knowing exactly what it does.

Let me know anything I missed. Please!