Quote from: xpb on April 10, 2021, 10:27:02 AM
accomplished by the same techniques outlined in http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html (see "some electoral suprises" ) while a simple "do you want a hereditary King or Queen - yes or no" was diluted by shaded options to confuse the issue and split the vote.
Fait accompli.

This characterisation of the referendum is just as disingenuous and fallacious as the first time you brought it up. No vote was split, nothing was diluted. The pro-hereditary camp lost, end of story.

I have another question actually:

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on February 14, 2021, 01:24:34 PM
-Eight MCs, chosen by the parties in proportion to their Cosa seats (plus the Seneschal if not an MC or Senator)
-The eight Senators
-The Justices of the UC
-The eight provincial executives
-The eight officers of the Royal Civil Service
-All Talossans who have been a citizen for at least ten years

Which eight officers? There are more than eight offices associated with or adjacent to the Civil Service, so which ones are meant by that? Or is it because there happen to be eight different people in charge of all these aforementioned offices as of now?

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on February 15, 2021, 02:07:09 PM
The alternative is to hold a vote in the Cosa using some kind of multiple-member system; I didn't look into that very much, but I'd love to hear your ideas given you are the resident expert on this stuff.

Some methods that come to mind:

• simply scaling down from 200 to 8 as mentioned earlier, maybe using the Sainte-Laguë method as to not disadvantage small parties too much,
• some sort of STV thing, with all the pros and cons that come with it, or
• something really exotic like Proportional Approval Voting, specifically MSPAV with best ordering which would be the best choice by far if it werent so hard to calculate.

It's mostly a matter of personal preference, and convenience of calculation vs. quality of the result at the end of the day. I'd say all three of these would be equally fine.

Quote from: GV on February 14, 2021, 11:38:55 PM

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on February 14, 2021, 01:24:34 PM
-Eight MCs, chosen by the parties in proportion to their Cosa seats (plus the Seneschal if not an MC or Senator)

Apportioning the MCs will be a close thing with close decimals.

Converting the 200 seat Cosă arrangement into an 8 seat arrangement would be pretty simple on paper, it's just that parties with less than 15 seats could end up with no representation in the 8 seat arrangement because of how the math turns out and there'd have to be a discussion beforehand whether that's acceptable or not.

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on February 09, 2021, 05:49:13 PM
His Majesty King John was elected.  His successor will also be elected.  So this seems to describe what we have.  ;)

It's true, the Talossan Monarchy has been elective from the very beginning. It is weird that there are so many conservatives then who, considering the constitutional status quo and tradition, openly ask(ed) for a hereditary one -- hell, some even accidentally asked to abolish the Seneschalsqåb three days ago!! -- but who am I to judge.

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But more seriously, this is just semantics -- just arguing over labels.  We can call any office the king, if we so choose.  We could decide that we'd start calling the Archivist the second king, for example.  It wouldn't mean that we had a king appointed by the Seneschal in any way that would be meaningful in terms of governmental continuity.  I'm prepared to argue semantics, but it seems wildly beside the point and tedious.

Like, why can't we have a king who is elected every month and can be dismissed by the town dogcatcher?  There's no reason we can't call such an office the "monarchy," but that's sort of sidestepping any actual discussion of the merits.

Let's not indulge in such a tangential and tedious argument then, as you put it. More to the actual point, the link I provided lists a bunch of historical and contemporary examples of time-limited tradition-rich elective monarchies, so I have no idea why the mere concept of having something like that in Talossa is treated as some kind of obvious paradox by some people here.

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Such a role would not be above partisan politics, it couldn't act as a meaningful counterweight to the increasingly centralized power of the Seneschal, etc.

Now I'm by no means an expert, but I'm not sure if the current Monarch is really all that above partisan politics either, you know? Especially when the Monarch himself is the center of so much partisan policy nowadays, perhaps due to the lack of other things to legislate? What I'm saying is, I'm aware that vetoing bills for personally partisan reasons is within His Majesty's right, but it's not something an apolitical counterweight to the elected Government ought to do. As a side note, if federal power is too centralised (not sure what that means in Talossan terms), maybe it would be in order to empower the provinces somehow instead of propping up a monarch for life to do the meaningful counterbalance.

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Having a monarch has both tangible symbolic and tangible governmental benefits.  The value of the former will be somewhat eroded if the office becomes a partisan prize, since we already vote ourselves all kinds of awards and postnominals.  The value of the latter will be drastically eroded in the same circumstance.

Firstly, you've already said that the Talossan Monarch is elected, which by that logic would mean he already is a partisan prize. The fact that this symbolically and governmentally important post is only up for grabs once every few decades (I refuse to believe that anyone would actually hold on to the office for life) instead of once every seven years doesnt make it less of a prize, quite the opposite, that's just my personal opinion though.
Secondly, did you know that the Federal President of Germany is elected by federal and state legislatures and still manages to be a non-partisan figurehead? The office is so apolitical and inoffensive that you only ever get reminded of its existence when the incumbent manages to find himself implicated in a scandal of gargantuan proportions. Which is to say once in a lifetime or so. How's that for an idea?

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on February 09, 2021, 05:32:05 PM

Quote from: GV on February 08, 2021, 05:23:00 PMWhy can't we have the benefits of election along with the tradition of monarchy, Alexander?  What's wrong with that?

Probably the same reason you can't have hot ice cream.

Behold, hot ice cream.

The Government offered to pay me up to $225 dollars for making a cultural magazine in Talossan back in November — it was part of the draft budget of this Cosă — because they hoped money would be enough of a motivation. I rejected the offer because 1) I'm not a journalist and 2) I dont need the money, I can do it for free, I have done it for free in the past (see Zoneu Auþorisat). Ever since then though, not one person actually came up to me to request my services, even though the Government would literally pay them real United States currency to do so. I don't get it.

So I'll reiterate:
if you need some text or article translated into Talossan, just ask me.
I don't demand payment assuming you don't get paid either.

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on January 30, 2021, 06:43:22 PM
most Talossans prefer the monarchy in some form.  [...]  I'd be especially hesitant to destroy the monarchy on the basis of a 51.5% majority!

The whole point of using STV this time is that you cant expect everyone who supports a purely ceremonial monarchy to also support the status quo monarchy. As the voting results have shown, a third of those people would rather have an elected head of state than the status quo. The monarchy as it stands now does not enjoy majority support no matter how you look at the numbers.

Tallying up option 3 and option 4 voters and pretending they form one block is either naive or disingenuous.

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on January 30, 2021, 01:36:41 PM
I am also exceedingly pleased with the outcome of the referendum.  Despite a 32% dropoff in turnout, the Talossan people have once again affirmed their preference for the continuation of the monarchy, although opinion remains divided as to the continued role of the monarch.

Excuse me S:reu Rexhaint, but Option 1: "the King of Talossa shall be replaced by an elected Head of State" won the referendum.

Quote from: xpb on January 26, 2021, 06:21:24 PM
3) King John, in my opinion, which can be overridden by a majority of Cézembreans that would choose to remove me from office, continues to be King of Cézembre until such time as he of his own volition abdicates or passes away.

I realise that this has nothing to do with the referendum result anymore, but are the titles of King of Talossa and King of Cézembre separate or is the King of Talossa automatically King of Cézembre ex officio? Was this ever brought up somewhere? In case that King John is forced to abdicate the Talossan throne, would the Cézembrean government then recognise two Kings (???) or would that violate the pledge of eternal allegiance to the Regipäts Talossan? But then again, would not doing so violate the pledge of eternal allegiance to the King?

...sorry for these wild tangents, everyone.

Y-yeah, I know what it means, I'm just saying it doesnt fit the Talossan language aesthetically or pragmatically.

Quote from: xpb on January 26, 2021, 12:03:16 PM
You are correct that a Head of State could be declared King or Queen (there could be an introduction into the CAG that the gender should be flexible for Kingdom or Queendom).  There was an election back in the day for King John, but only after there was an abdication.  I believe in the current thought process is that the Head of State would be elected on a periodic basis, rather than holding the title until abdication or death.

My idea for an elected Head of State without breaking too many other things was to basically automatically force the King to abdicate after a certain number of years (I believe it was five or so) and trigger a new election that way. Everything else would stay the same.

As for making the name of the country gender-dependent (Kingdom vs Queendom), I believe that this is unnecessary. Not just because no Romance language that I know of has a separate word for "queendom" so coining one in Talossan would be extra unnatural, but because theres a historical precedent for calling the Talossan monarch "King" regardless of gender.

Quote from: xpb on January 26, 2021, 10:57:46 AM
Both of those are certainly valid opinions, but do little to modify my stance which I have stated more clearly in Potential for a constitutional amendment referendum to the citizens of Cézembre.  It is entirely possible my opinion will also be repudiated at the local level, but until such time as I am replaced, I shall continue to support the Monarchy as my elected powers provide.

Whats interesting here is that, since its not specified anywhere in the Cézembrean constitution who the King is, or that the King must hold that office for life in order to be legitimate, there would be no need to change the Cézembrean constitution if the future elected Head of State retains the title of King and the country continues to call itself the Kingdom of Talossa, assuming the referendum results actually lead to any changes to the Organic Law of course.

I cant help but feel like youre being overly hasty here.

Quote from: xpb on January 26, 2021, 08:35:58 AM
The tiresome legerdemain of the referendum was predictable.  A simple vote on "Do You Want A King" Per/Non would result in a King.

http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html

1) Why was this only brought up after the results were announced?
2) How can you say that for certain? Wouldnt that depend on how the role of the King would be defined?

EDIT: As an example:
-- "Do you want to continue the Status Quo?" wouldve been rejected 23 - 49.
-- A vote between an Elected Head of State vs a Status Quo King as the only two options wouldve resulted in a win for the first option by 34 - 32.
-- Only if you phrase the question as "Do you want one or more Kings who may or may not hold that office for life, may or may not be subject to term limits and may or may not have the political powers granted by the current Organic Law?" the vote wouldve yielded a Per majority of at least 42 - 34. I say at least because that question wouldve included people who want a future elected Head of State to retain the title of King among the Per voters.

Here's my personal take on grefierïă:

While the parallel to cantzeleir ~ cantzelerïă is pretty convincing, I do have an objection to make, namely that there is already a Talossan word for "scribery" in use: scriuerïă. It is used in some TalossaWiki articles, which is what I chose for the L'Estat document. From a purely aesthetic point of view, grefierïă is the better choice, but from a descriptivist point of view, scriuerïă ought to be prefered.

I'm conflicted. What do you think?