I'm in favour of moving forward on this, as long as it also deals with the other issue of the Seneschalsqåb falling vacant between elections and there might not be a Distáin. I.e., if the "nomination mechanism" can be triggered at other times than after a general election.

In addition: how about we put the election procedure into statute law so it can be tweaked when necessary? The process would be:

- delete OrgLaw IV.5 in its entireity;
- tweak OrgLaw IV.2 as follows:

QuoteThe Seneschál shall be elected directly by the Cosâ in accordance with law, and his term shall expire upon the installation of his successor. The candidate chosen shall be appointed subsequently and forthwith by the King to serve as Seneschál. He shall maintain the confidence of a majority of the Cosâ alone in order to hold the office.

If this approach can get 2/3 of the Cosa, then I don't have a problem with it.

I have to reiterate that, in a situation where there were only 2 parties in the Cosa (it's happened before, I'm sure it'll happen again), we'd have the same issue here that people who're not familiar with Ranked Choice voting will find it violates their conscience to have to give an (effectively meaningless) preference to "the other guy".

My previous suggestion for a minimal tweak was simply deleting:

QuoteNo member of the Cosâ may abstain in the election of a Seneschál, and shall rank on his ballot at least two distinct preferences, which itself shall be made public.

But Açafat don't like that, so how about:

QuoteNo member of the Cosâ may abstain in the election of a Seneschál, and shall rank on his ballot at least two distinct preferences, which itself shall be made public. If there are two or fewer nominations for Seneschal, a single preference shall constitute a valid ballot.

But I prefer the first version. The question is: which can get 2/3 of the Cosa? Would TNC MCs like to express a preference? Because AD's "let the King pick the Seneschal, lol we know who he'll pick if it's at all ambiguous" is a no-go.

We might also consider language which would clear up any ambiguity about whether parties could make more than one nomination. I would err on the side of explicitly forbidding it.

Aaanyway.... back on topic.

Quote from: Mic'haglh Autófil, MoFA on May 02, 2022, 11:32:24 AM
Alternatively, to fix the issue of "too few candidates", we could make it so that every listed party leader is up for election as Seneschal unless they either decline or nominate someone else in their stead (for example, if one such leader is also serving as the SoS). Then you presumably have at least three candidates and have to name two on your ballot anyway.

The problem would still exist, though, if - for example - there were a 2-party election. It happens in Talossa very occasionally. And - as Tric'hard has helpfully pointed out for us - if, for example, the minority party refused to nominate, and there was only one candidate, we'd be in trouble. Unless the ruling party/coalition named a second candidate for show, but the question of whether the current law allows one party to name more than one candidate seems ambiguous.

Look, all sniping aside, we need a solution which has both Coalition and TNC support. Is the sole contributor to the debate so far from the TNC representative in his contention that we should just abolish the Seneschal election altogether and go back to letting the King pick the Seneschal? Because that's not going to happen and we'd be at an impasse.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on May 02, 2022, 04:30:24 PM
lol, I was going to quote back to you what you'd written about defections, but -- amazingly -- you've gone back and deleted it all!

Because I was wrong on the legality of it. Aside from that I endorse everything that my Coalition colleagues said.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on May 02, 2022, 04:01:21 PM
You just spent last week making a big deal about how this shouldn't be allowed and was not legitimate in a parliamentary democracy...  much ado has been made about how this is wrong and should never happen.

I'm just going to copypaste this until you stop lying.

QuoteDefections are legitimate. The way the TNC went about trying to get a vulnerable, inexperienced Coalition MC to defect was sleazy, cynical and unprincipled.

If you are serious that you don't think it necessary that MCs should actually have to vote - that party leaders should be entitled to vote for them - then why do we have VoCs at all?

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on May 02, 2022, 12:23:30 PM
there's no point to a vote at all, since the real decision was made by party leaders when they agreed on a coalition. 

The genius of the system is: what happens if there is no coalition deal? In Belgium, for example, it sometimes takes 9 months for the feuding parties from 3 different ethnic communities to sign on the dotted line. In the Talossan system, if 1 month after the election there's no coalition deal, it goes to a vote in the Cosa rather than indefinitely drawn-out negotiations. That's where the ranked-choice ballot proves its worth.

Quote from: Tric'hard Lenxheir on May 02, 2022, 12:53:56 PM
If people like this idea then they might as well just allow the majority party to name a Seneschal.

But how do you know who is the majority party without a vote on the floor of the Cosa? AD keeps telling you "defections are impossible", but that's a total lie. He's piqued because his party leader tried to get a defection in a sleazy, backhanded way. Votes in the Cosa have always depended on who actually turns up to vote. A Government fell because one MC didn't turn up and they lost their majority. The Seneschal election works exactly the same way. All votes in the Cosa are votes by real people, not "card votes" by party leaders. Defections or people forgetting is always a possibility. A Cosa majority has to not only win the election but make sure they get their MCs to vote, every single time. I think that's the beauty of our system.

This is not the first time AD has just made up an untruth for political advantage and repeated it over and over again, with the ring of confidence, to inexperienced citizens who don't think for a second that an experienced Talossan would just lie to them for political advantage. But it's up to the rest of us to rebut him, and he does it with such indefatigable (demonic?) energy that that is an unpleasant and demanding chore for the rest of us.

(I should not that Costanza's Law applies here - "it's not a lie if you believe it". I know that AD tells complete untruths with such absolutely verve and conviction that maybe he believes it, and really does believe he has a reputation for "unimpeachable honesty" rather than being Talossa's Roger Stone.)

It's amazing because it's also a defeatist attitude from the TNC. If the TNC were to round up not only Mximo, but Dien and the two new citizens (which won't happen, but they're entitled to give it a go), and if one FreeDem or PdR candidate failed to vote (or purposefully cast an invalid vote in a fit of pique), the TNC candidate would win and become Seneschal. I've been having nightmares about precisely that happening, but it would be utterly legitimate - just like it was legitimate that time our Government fell because one MC forgot to vote on the VOC and we had a 2-seat majority. Every single VoC during this Cosa will count, and I would have assumed the TNC would be hoping every month that this is the month they can get a defection, or some Coalition MC will fall asleep?

Quote from: Tric'hard Lenxheir on May 02, 2022, 01:39:14 PM
Based upon the rules set forth if only one candidate was available then the election would have to be thrown out completely as all votes would be invalid. The rules require each MC to select two candidates or their vote becomes invalid.

That's absolutely right, I was wondering whether someone else would notice that. So something needs fixing.

BTW, AD is just talking nonsense about "no-one's allowed to defect". Seneschal votes are just like any other votes, MCs can vote how they want. Our objection was the sleazy, cynical and manipulative way that the TNC leader tried to peel off an inexperienced Coalition MC who was having a bad time already, for unrelated reasons.

Perhaps Antalgha's suggestion that the second preference (but not the first) can be a "write-in" is an option?

Quote from: Açafat del Val on May 01, 2022, 11:41:12 PM
is there even a process in place for nomination?

Yes.

Quote from: Açafat del Val on May 01, 2022, 11:24:54 PM
For what it's worth, when I wrote the section at issue, it came with another clause that allowed MZs to vote for more than just the political leaders. That was changed one or two Cosas ago, where now the only candidates are the party leaders themselves.

... no. Your original clause ran thus:

QuoteThe candidates for each such election shall be only the recognized and commonly known leader of each political party which shall have earned representation in the Cosâ at the most recent general election.

So it was only the party leaders - but all the party leaders; no allowance for parties to nominate their own candidate or to not nominate a candidate at all.

The original language would not have even allowed the FreeDems to nominate a candidate in this election, as our "recognized and commonly known" party leader is the SoS.

No, we changed the system after the first go. The current law says that only the candidates actually nominated by the parties go forward to a vote. The PdR didn't nominate (neither did the LCR or Dien). Only 2 nominations. Sorry, that's the interpretation that the SoS is defending in Court.

It seems that @the author of the current system himself came up against the annoying "compulsory preferences" language. Given that, I wonder if that means he's happy with the proposals to remove that requirement?

Instead of trying for "the engine is coughing a bit so let's explode the car and go back to a horse-and-buggy" approach, I wish Opposition MCs would engage with these concepts:

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on May 01, 2022, 07:12:40 PM
If we were going for a minimal reform, I would simply say that this whole section:

QuoteNo member of the Cosâ may abstain in the election of a Seneschál, and shall rank on his ballot at least two distinct preferences, which itself shall be made public

should be deleted, because I've never seen the point of banning abstentions in the Seneschal election. (Since people have effectively abstained before, the SoS has simply treated it as "strike 1" for losing-your-seats-for-not-voting purposes.)

But what I would much prefer, however, is that this discussion be combined with this previous discussion, on what happens if we need a new Seneschal between elections. As I've mentioned, I've been down with a mild case of The Pandemic for a week so I haven't had the chance to flesh out my ideas on that - but I think it's the same topic.