Quote from: Françal I. Lux on May 06, 2026, 10:19:08 AMJust to be clear, I'm not arguing against party politics at all, I'm just not a fan of lists in principle because, in my view, it robs the voters choice. As I stated previously, it forces voters to elect their representatives as a block and prevents them from scrutinizing individual candidates. Let's say I ideologically align with Party A, but there's one or two individuals on their party list I disagree with for whatever reason, why should I be forced to elect them into office? What if I want to split my vote because there's someone in Party B who I actually know will be a good MC despite some political disagreements we might have?

Again, with a 20-seat Cosa, I would argue it's even more important that voters get to scrutinize individual candidates and ascertain whether they'd be good, responsible and serious public servants. Having to rely on a party list prevents that from happening because the party itself can pave over whatever flaws their candidates may have. If someone running for office can't stand on their own two feet and articulate why they should be in the Cosa, or if they lack the commitment or time to truly be present and active enough, I'd argue they have no business running for office.

I appreciate you going into further detail! In addition to the SPAV system Sir Marcel is a fan of, you may also be interested in panachage, at least based on that bit I've bolded.

@Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP , could you maybe elaborate a bit on what happens in the event there are fewer than 20 candidates on the ballot? Would everyone end up getting a seat and then we cycle around to the beginning and do the whole thing again until all 20 seats are allocated? My concern there is that in such a scenario, larger parties may unduly benefit by virtue of being able to field more candidates. It becomes less about your share of the vote and more about how many names you can put on the ballot, if that makes sense. Alternatively, could we rework the system to give someone a second seat if they've earned it before everyone else has been given one?

I'm also wondering if there's an easy way to work in a "disapproval vote" into an open-list method. That may technically also fall under the panachage umbrella, now that I think about it.
- Vote for party of preference
- Give a +1/0/-1 to every candidate on said list.
- Party gets seats proportional to list vote.
- Candidates with negative totals are not granted seats.
- Everyone else receives seats in order of total score, cycling back around to "top" of party list as necessary.

Quote from: Françal I. Lux on May 05, 2026, 10:58:21 AM

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on May 01, 2026, 09:21:30 PMIt's even less democratic when the party leader just picks the MCs, unrestricted by any list.

Isn't this, in practice, the current system we have now?

As Miestra pointed out, this is not quite the system we have; party lists do provide restriction on who the leader may appoint to seats in the Cosa. Granted, at least one party leader seems to disagree, but that's a job for the judiciary at the moment.

QuoteSince we're moving to a 20-seat Cosa, I would argue that individual candidates' ideas and principles should be scrutinized more during an election and voters should have a direct say in who's representing them instead of being forced to pick lists of people.

This is just my two bence, but I would argue that the provincial seats in an MMP setup could satisfy this preference, no? Yes, it does still factor into a partisan distribution of seats, but hear me out:

* Talossa as a country does have a fair amount of its activity revolve around politics, regardless of what one may think of this.
* Quite a few Talossans prefer a political system that actually features, well, politics. Discussion, debate, and organization based on ideological and ethical stances, as opposed to politics-as-a-popularity contest. (Some Talossans, to be fair, clearly do not share this preference.)
* An electoral system that seeks to balance the evaluation of individual candidates and evaluation of ideological groupings would, to my eyes, function as a compromise between these two approaches to Talossan politics.
* If we have an MMP system and the party list seats are also chosen via an open-list system, that would be a massive shift towards an individualized approach to politics, but it doesn't completely abandon modern, ideology-based partisan politics, either.

@Sir Lüc , please forgive the early tag; as I will be travelling tomorrow for a funeral I may not be on Witt much. However, in the event the CRL does not inappropriately delay the Freedom of Conscience Act outside their limited scope of responsibility, I would ask that you add it to the Clark once it receives the requisite approval.

I'm going to give the Government the benefit of the doubt here for a second and discuss this under the assumption that their issue with this bill is based on an appallingly-severe lack of reading comprehension, as opposed to the sort of blatant misrepresentation that has become common on their part. So let me start at the beginning.

His Majesty is a constitutional monarch. He is by leaps and bounds the most scrupulous monarch this country has ever had when it comes to respecting his constitutional boundaries and duties. I do not believe he is a strongman.

Constitutional monarchs "reign, but do not rule", as the saying goes. Consequently, since I believe he respects his role, I do not believe HM "rules" over Talossa at all, in a strongman fashion or otherwise. (Though in the colloquial complimentary sense, I would absolutely agree that he "rules".)

It is baffling to me that someone could read this bill, see that it removes the reference to His Majesty's government from the oath of citizenship, and honestly conclude that the bill says His Majesty is the one guilty of strongman tactics.

Frankly, the fact that the current Government is hellbent on keeping new citizens bending the knee to them is all the more argument in favor of the bill's value. Instead of saying "yes, condemning autocracy and removing parts of Talossan law that smell of it, however small they may be, is something we are on board with", they decry this bill's pro-liberty values as inappropriate for legislation; "some political message". Where, exactly, is political messaging more appropriate than the nation's legislature?

I'm of the opinion that the former of the two methods (the one Miestra describes) is better. As much as Germany's newer method fixes the size of the legislature, and while I did mention that I like that sort of thing on principle, I don't like the idea of a constituency being represented by someone who didn't really win it.

An easier way to describe that method might be to say that the size of the Cosa is increased by a number of seats equal to the total number of overhang seats won. In this example, Party B wins one overhang seat, and is the only party to do so; the Cosa is therefore 21 seats for the term.

I should note that using ranked-choice voting for the provincial seats instead of first-past-the-post would also reduce the odds of overhang seats occurring. A candidate that secures a majority of the vote in a province is more likely to come from a party that has a broader base of support nationwide.

I do notice that in his most recent post, the Baron appears to have glossed over the issue of double-representing provinces in the Ziu. While I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this was an oversight on his part, in the event it was intentional, may I reiterate for the benefit of him and his caucus that the method proposed by Sir Luc does not eliminate the Senats' existence or even alter its powers, simply the method by which it is elected.

As someone who has advocated for MMP before, I'm certainly glad to see folks starting to soften to the idea. Even just discussing it is a good start.

I do agree that maintaining some sort of provincial representation is worth doing, but that having provincial representation in both houses goes too far. If we wanted to move the Cosa to an MMP setup, then I would agree that implementing something like Sir Luc's idea would be a good change for the Senats.

Overhang seats can of course be a concern, but as Miestra and Sir Marcel have both already pointed out, there are methods to reduce these. Though I would prefer a fixed size to the Cosa, I don't mind the method where seats are added to negate overhang seats. Especially if we take the German method of excluding party list votes for successful independent voters, that likely minimizes the number of overhang seats anyway, so one every few elections isn't objectionable.

One thing I don't really support is the majority bonus or majority jackpot system; yes, not using them makes government formation and stability a bit harder, but that just means you might have to actually negotiate things on occasion. C'e la vidă.

One of the nice things about MMP, in my opinion, is that it seems to be fairly flexible in the details of how you choose to implement it. As an example, there is nothing preventing us from still electing the party seats via an open-list method, or from using ranked-choice voting for provincial seats.

@Sir Lüc , please move this bill to the CRL.

Welcome back!

Given that Vice-Chair Carbonel has expressed an openness to someone else drafting something, and my own stated position that it is improper for me to play too active of a role in enacting a constitution for a province not my own, I think you drafting something for committee/public review seems like a reasonable path forward.

Quote from: King Txec on April 17, 2026, 03:00:02 PMI have the grant mostly written and it looks like the request from Moinul Moin  is complete but I'm not sure if Tåltind Furxheir (Ethan Smith) ever actually accepted his final product. Also, the image generated by Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be looks to be too small (it may be cropped).

-Txec R/REH

For the College's reference, S:reu Furxheir and I had a conversation over Discord prior to my posting the proposal, he said he liked the arms as they were.

Is the image not coming through correctly for Your Majesty? It's 1000 x 1198, I would hope that would be large enough...

- Foxmouth

Quote from: Glüc on April 06, 2026, 01:13:38 PMWell well well, so we meet again, Mic'haglh

So we do. It's looking so far like I'll need your prediction to come down some, but a lot can change between now and next Thursday...

Good evening all! The Directorate of STUFF, an office of the Royal Civil Service, is pleased to announce the formal re-opening of our TalossaWare store.

The last several weeks have been spent going back-and-forth with Printify's support staff regarding a few technical issues -- several of which were solved using the tried-and-true "turn it off and then on again" method -- followed by bringing the design of several of our products up-to-date with the current official depictions of the national arms, etc. I have purchased one of the simple round flag stickers as a test run; it arrived fairly quickly from Illinois (production location is dependent on your location) and seems to be of good quality! I look forward to putting it on my Super Cub's fairing to carry a little piece of Talossa with me wherever I ride.

I should note that there are a few items that were previously listed for sale in our store that were removed via the reactivation, including Bicoloreu-branded t-shirts. I have not yet re-introduced these, but if someone expresses interest, it's a fairly straightforward process to add things to our catalog now that they are publishing properly.

I would also like to give a heads-up that our citizens in the European Union may still run into some difficulties ordering; there are some extra hoops we need to jump through that I will be looking into in the next week or so in order to ease the European sales process.

Happy shopping!

Vaes cünpartizaes es amíci:

May I begin by saying I'll keep this a bit more brief than my remarks to close our last Convention -- relevant though many of those remarks still are.

Our Union's convention has certainly been a productive one. While certainly not as much of a whirlwind of activity as our inaugural convention, I think it's fair to say this one has shown itself as more impactful. We have officially laid our party's foundation as the Party of Talossan Democracy. We have emphatically declared ourselves to be the Party Against Unrepentant Sexual Harassment (especially when the perpetrator of said sexual harassment dismisses descriptions of his misdeeds as "contrivances"). We have shown the Talossan people both what we are for, and what we are against, and I would think it safe to say both sets of views are ones the majority will find themselves agreeing with when they hear it straight from us, as opposed to hearing it from those who have a track record of misquoting us.

As our Convention ends, Talossa can now begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This Cosă term and its government are passing their halfway mark, and before long campaign season will be well and truly upon us. As Miestră has pointed out, a platform built on long-overdue reform is a very good thing to have, but given the nature of Talossan politics, it may not necessarily have folks lining up at the polling booth when the time comes. As a result, I think it wise for us to broaden our approach just a little bit. The next election will not just be about how big people think the Cosă should be, or what they think about the Senäts' role in Talossa. It ought to be an election about the direction Talossa will take in the future. It ought to be an election about principles.

Our principles, as it happens, are rather straightforward:

• Representative democracy is a good thing for Talossa.
• On that note, increasing the power of the electorate is also a good thing, including at the expense of party bosses.
• Political debate is healthy for Talossa, so long as it is kept polite. It's okay to think that things aren't working as well as they could. Parties that want to stifle talk of change should be viewed with suspicion.
• As much as Talossa should be fun and a little tongue-in-cheek, our political institutions should be sized appropriately for the country, instead of being farcically large.
• Immigration drives are all well and good; retention is what builds a stronger Talossa for the future. We should be trying to recruit from communities that would be interested in what we have to offer, including political simulationists.
• The government should not effectively consist of a single, clearly overworked person.
• Government busywork is not activity, but a veneer of activity over a crumbling foundation. The nation deserves something more substantial.
• Wronging your fellow citizen -- especially when sexually harassing them, but really generally -- ought to come with an apology.
• Doubling down on wronging someone and being not just unrepentant, but combatively so, should earn some ostracism until your antisocial ways are mended. What it should not earn are government jobs.

Over this term, we've reinforced our role as Talossa's Party of Principle. We've secured our role as Talossa's Party of Democracy. Later this summer, with your help and a solid campaign, we'll earn back our role as Talossa's Party of Leadership. I am humbled to be nominated to stand at the front of this group again. I'm proud of our team. I'm once again hopeful for Talossa's future. Thank you.

Yours in Liberty, Democracy, and Progress,

Mic'haglh

Vivadra Talossa Democrätic!

(This Convention is hereby adjourned.)

That was my thought as well. It's good that we draw a bright line.

With three votes in favor, none opposed, and no abstentions, the motion passes.

With five votes in favor, none opposed, and no abstentions, the motion passes.

With three votes in favor, none opposed, and no abstentions, the outgoing Comità has been re-elected.

With three votes in favor, none opposed, and no abstentions, the amendment passes.

With two votes in favor, none opposed, and no abstentions, the nomination is approved. I'll be putting a speech up later tonight, at which point the Convention will be adjourned.

Per on all!