Vaes graschiăs à Sieu Maxhestà per acest þonör.

Winging that one, don't skewer me please S:reu Tafial

-Foxmouth

Mr. Secretary, please add the Opposition Redefinition Act to the Clark.

Mr. Secretary, please move this to the CRL at your convenience.
@Sir Lüc

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on May 27, 2025, 10:20:21 PM

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on May 27, 2025, 04:22:50 PMI apologise to the Baron for a sharp reaction, but the questions that he posed - that, outwith "the first step on a slippery slope to abolition", what is the point of at-large rather than provincialised Senäts elections - have been raised many time previously, firstly by @Sir Lüc .

I accept your apology, and I understand your annoyance.  For my own part, I am sorry if we do have to retread the same ground a bit.  My party has pledged to work to preserve the Senats, though, so we have a vested interest in knowing if this plan would just be step #1 in that process.  I'm really not trying to be difficult.  I'm just a little slow and trying to understand why we would possibly want to do this.

For my part, I have accepted that the Senats is here to stay in some form or another for the foreseeable future, so I'm not pushing for abolition if that's your concern.

I do, however, believe that fewer Senators is a preferable change to make Talossa work better for Talossans, and regardless of whether we reduce them now or at some point in the future, decoupling them from provincial representation would be necessary to do that.

However, it may interest you to know that you and I agree on the issue of needing some form of provincial representation in the Ziu overall. (basing my understanding of your position off this quote:)

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on September 25, 2024, 10:59:02 AM-From the look of things, in Option 1 we'd expect Fiova to have as many seats as Maritiimi-Maxhestic and Florencia combined.  And Maricopa would have twice as many seats as Vuode.  That seems like a problem.  Likewise, it also seems like a problem that Option 2 gives no reason for anyone to care about Vuode's interests as a province.

Granted, both of the apportionment methods I'd previously proposed do just that, so at that point, pick your favorite.

I believe we have a link here on Witt, no?

Estimat Tuischac'h,

I thank the Member for this question; the Ministry is working on getting the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue access to the team on DigitalOcean. While we likely could get by on having everything registered under the Ministry's email address, having people use personal funds to pay, and then reimbursing them from the Treasury, it seems to me a much cleaner option for the future to simply set up direct payment now and cut out the middleman.

Unrelated to the Member's question, but if he will forgive me for using this thread to inform the Cosă of a similar piece of (crucial!) Ministry business that has been recently completed, then I would like to take the opportunity to notify the chamber and the nation at large that the talossa.com domain's registration has been successfully renewed for the coming year. It was set to expire before the end of the month.

Quote from: Iason Taiwos on May 23, 2025, 02:14:45 PM

Quote from: Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be on May 23, 2025, 02:02:57 PMI have updated the list to show that many, many moons ago, Consul Taiwos asked to be assigned to Locust.

I do not remember why I chose Locust. Would it be possible for me to pick elsewhere? If so, I would like to be assigned to Garibaldi/Prospect now. (I understand there is a comic book store in that area. 😁)

Consider it done! It's been well over a year since you requested the Locust assignment, haha

I have updated the list to show that many, many moons ago, Consul Taiwos asked to be assigned to Locust.

There are at least a few things I think we should address in an omnibus bill to amend the BUS:

• We never actually changed the provincial motto to one of the corrections suggested by S:reu Tafial.
• We could, if we want, consider other provincial symbols, holidays, etc., as well as any emblem designs for the Assembly or Council (similar to how the Fiovans do it), or consider asking the College of Arms for a grant.
• We should amend BUS.E.2 to reflect whatever method we decide on for handling undervotes. My personal preference remains to leave vacant choices for the leading preferences, but let's worry about the constitutional amendment first before finalizing this one.
• The Honourable Member, Justice Perþonest raised a good point about broadening the ability to have false claims of Order of Belacostă membership adjudicated by any legal system with jurisdiction in the Province, so we should address that as well.
• What about the droid attack on the Wookiees?

Anyone else have any further thoughts on this? Otherwise I'll put it into an official proposal.

For clarification, this needs at approval from at least one of either @þerxh Sant-Enogat or @Dr. Pôl dal Nordselvă to proceed. Whether or not Tuischac'h Tresplet's approval is still valid after he has appointed a surrogate to the CRL is also not a point on which I am clear...

Azul Belacostaes!

Pursuant to our recently-enacted Belacostan Unified Statute, all Belacostan citizens are entitled to choose a canton to which they are assigned, as well as a sextieir within that canton.

To be perfectly honest, this has no effect on how the province functions overall, but I thought it would be something fun. Take a look at the map below, check out where the province sits on Google Maps, get a feel for any landmarks that strike your fancy, and then let me know! (Alternatively, if you actually live within Belacostan territory, let me know that too, because then your decision is made for you...).

If you decide your assignment no longer suits you in the future, you can change it once a year.

This is our map, updated to reflect current statute law:

Citizen	Canton	Sextieir
@Istefan Perþonest
@Flip Molinar
@Iason Taiwos	Garibaldi	Prospect
David Robert Levis
@Vitxalmour (Vitxalmour Conductour)
@Sir Lüc da Schir
@David Donofrio
@Erschéveþ da Schir
@paolo.mellere (Pôl dal Cräpscaßada)
@Massimiliano Sartorello
Lüc da Ragutxa
Mitchel Paul
@Francesco Manzella
@Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be
@e.iwuagwu (Emeka Iwuagwu)
@Pol dal Timă Lupulescu
@Dien Xhorxh

A few folks appear to be a bit harder to reach than simply tagging them on Witt, if you have a way I would appreciate it.

Reposting the Right Honourable Consul's thoughts on the matter here for expediency:

Quote from: Sir Lüc on May 08, 2025, 03:59:16 AMWhat Sir Glüc is pointing out is exactly what I meant with my comment on the proposal thread - after poring over provincial statutes while I was building the database, I noticed our constitution exactly mandates three preferences rather than "up to" three.

Sadly my comment was very rushed and unspecific and I also completely forgot to follow up on the changes you made. I am not entirely sure how to proceed except that:

- The points based voting system clearly would hinder other candidates if one could only give three points to their top choice - many editions of TMT20 are a helpful reminder - and so if the system is to stay, casting exactly three choices would be fairest;

- Conversely, strict rules lead to potential disenfranchisment. The database could help ensuring voters do rank three choices via software checks and hint texts, ALTHOUGH in the last election it did allow leaving choices blank; voting publicly on Witt could be a more serious disenfranchisment risk should someone undervote due to missing or misunderstanding the rules for the provincial vote.

I vaguely think the first concern is most important because undervoting would unfairly distort our current voting system. On the other hand, I'm not sure if our elections are going to be so hotly contested that we're going to fight over every ballot and throw out all undervotes. In my mind, we can:

- Allow undervotes but lower the points given to each vote, so your lead choice can only get three points if you fill out your ballot (something like: 1 choice = 1 point; 2 choices, 2 and 1; three choices, 3 and 2 and 1);

- Allow undervotes but switch to a different voting system altogether;

- Not allow undervotes: proclaim the BUS and immediately amend E.2, potentially switching it to instead allowing for curing undervotes in a certain time limit.

For my part, I would argue that a system that allows undervotes but treats the first (and if necessary, second) choice as vacant is preferable; it balances a desire to avoid disenfranchising Belacostan citizens with concerns about how a "top-choice first" method of counting undervotes could distort electoral results. It could look a little something like this:

QuotePrefatory text goes here

BE IT RESOLVED by the Best Provincial Assembly In The Land etc. that Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution of Belacosta, which currently reads as

QuoteThe Provincial Council will be elected from among the citizens of the Province at each Cosă election, via a positional vote. Voters will name their first-, second-, and third-choice candidates. For each first-choice vote, the candidate shall receive three points; for each second-choice vote, two points; and for each third-place vote, one point. The three candidates with the highest point totals shall be elected to the Provincial Council, with any ties being broken by the number of first-choice votes received (and if necessary, the number of second- and then third-choice votes, with a coin flip being used past this if necessary). Provincial Consuls may choose to ceremonially represent any canton or sexteir of the Province, or to represent the Province at-large.

is hereby amended to read:

QuoteThe Provincial Council will be elected from among the citizens of the Province at each Cosă election, via a positional vote. Voters may name up to three candidates, in order of their preference. For each first-choice vote, the candidate shall receive three points; for each second-choice vote, two points; and for each third-place vote, one point. The three candidates with the highest point totals shall be elected to the Provincial Council, with any ties being broken by the number of first-choice votes received (and if necessary, the number of second- and then third-choice votes, with a coin flip being used past this if necessary). Provincial Consuls may choose to ceremonially represent any canton or sexteir of the Province, or to represent the Province at-large.

There could probably be some way to better tinker with BUS.E.2 just to make sure it's doing what we want it to in a constitutional fashion, but I have a few things I've thought of since we moved the BUS to a vote that could probably be incorporated into an omni...bus...

Speaking for myself and not on behalf of the Assembly, this is a fair concern, though at least in the case of the last election, ballots cast for the Provincial Council that did not name three candidates ultimately did not affect the outcome of the race -- myself and Consuls da Schir and Taiwos would have still finished atop the count, albeit with slightly different point totals, and so the "harm" criterion in a lawsuit centered on this specific election would likely go nowhere (and the results themselves would not be invalidated or affected).

However, regarding the overall discrepancy, I would state that one, our provincial constitution itself states that as the province's supreme law, the order of precedence is clear, and thus this section of the BUS could be interpreted as being unenforceable without a constitutional amendment (not affecting the enforceability of the rest of the law); two, I am open to such an amendment; and three,  alternatively, could we allow people to cast votes for "present"? Interested to hear what other MPAs think.