Our Gallagher index is low owing to our voting system, correct? Essentially we award seats to parties by using their percentage of total valid votes and using that percentage to get as close as possible to dividing up the 200 seats accordingly. If I'm correct, and I admit my knowledge is scant on voting systems, then using a 200 seat Cosa achieves the will of the voter much better than perhaps reducing the size of it?

-Txec R

Quote from: Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be on Yesterday at 09:42:07 PMMic'haglh Autofil and Sir Marcel Tafial are proud to announce l'Institüt del Agroïcismeu Political (the Institute for Political Nerdery). What we want to do here is basically "nerd out" about a subject we enjoy -- the various ways to analyze elections, look at different systems of voting, etc. More serious atmospheres might call this psephology, but we're pretty sure the Talossan name is actually easier to pronounce!

Congratulations!!!!  It's always wonderful when someone starts something new, and I wish you the best of luck!

For most people, a new initiative can seem pretty steep, but you guys are both high-achieving and well-organized people with a lot of institutional knowledge already, so I bet you don't need much assistance.  However, I'd love to pick your brains about support you can imagine a newbie needing.  This is exactly the kind of thing we want to help make happen.

I was thinking that in instances like these, some of the following might be helpful to offer:

• Promotional announcements via the Kingdom's social media accounts.
• Guidance on what BBCode might be helpful.
• Advice on what services exist, like special forums, wiki entries, and the like.
• Image resources with common colors and symbols.

Again, you guys personally probably don't need much of this, but I'd love your feedback about what you imagine might be helpful for a less experience or savvy citizen.

I don't want to derail your interesting conversation any further, though, so please feel free to just private message me if you'd prefer.  And congratulations again on your new effort!

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Quote from: Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be on Yesterday at 09:45:17 PMIt's worth looking at the Senate as well, just for curiosity, using the numbers from the four Senate races in the most recent election:

Party	% Vote (1st Rd.)	Seats	% Seats	Diff.	Sq. Diff.
PA	40.43	3	75.00	-34.57	1195.08490
URL	36.17	1	25.00	11.17	124.76890
Green	4.26	0	0.00	4.26	18.14760
Ind.	19.15	0	0.00	19.15	366.72250
				TOTAL	1704.72390
				TOTAL/2	852.36195
				GI	29.19524

As we can see, the Senate is significantly more disproportionate than even a 20-seat Cosa. This calls into question the motives and reasoning of those who may support keeping the Senate as-is, while opposing decreasing the size of the Cosa as "less representative".

I don't actually have any views on the size of the Cosa, but this insinuation doesn't follow. One could desire one house to be popularly representative and another wholly unrepresentative, or representative of a different set of bodies; therefore, one would object to the reduction in proportionality in the popular house, even as one objected to an increase in proportionality in the other house. In fact, this was the mainstream Anglophone theory into the late 20th century, pretty much!

It does, but in a clunky and kind of temporary way. The old method of a web form that fires off an email was easily broken, as we know because it broke last year. It required server-side dependencies that made it hard to manage since one person was operating each side of the system. And the way it would output a chunk of text that would then have to be manually edited in a bunch of places in order to post was also clunky. It all worked for years, but it also caused problems and limited our options.

This ministry has the most sizable workload of any, as you well know. Making it more manageable is going to save us hours and days of time in the years to come.

Looking forward to how this works in practice re: processing and posting.

Actually, the website *does* keep records of all applications already - that's how I found all the "lost" applications for those two months the forwarder went down

During the general elections, the following persons wanted to claim a seat in the Cabana:
@Eovart Xhorxh , @Tariqzubair , Gilberto Martinez  , Béneditsch Ardpresteir , Chilsă Indrüt , @Danihel Txechescu , @Carlüs Éovart Vilaçafat , Pôl dal Nordselvă, @Françal I. Lux , Dien Tresplet , Txoteu Davinescu

But I find that many have still not claimed a seat. They may be urged to do the same.

I wish to nominate Béneditsch Ardpresteir under the given circumstances.

Quote from: King Txec on Yesterday at 08:38:27 AM

Quote from: Carlüs Éovart Vilaçafat on Yesterday at 08:23:42 AMI don't see how Article 1.6 of the Maricopa constitution is not a blanket ban, but I'm also no lawyer.

With that being said, I have no problem kicking the nomination of @Béneditsch Ardpresteir over to the Cabana to decide.

I thought BenArd was talking about your nomination not getting a vote. Our laws do indeed bar him from being Premieir.

-Txec R

oui et non

Carlüs Éovart Vilaçafat's final declaration early this month was not valid on two counts -

First, I wasn't disqualified for election in Maricopa, before the Senate votes were verified by the Election Commission, and the fees being paid for taking up the Senate Seat which occured much later, after many a days. So, its my pleasure to say that the Maricopan Parliamentarian and the King of the Nation was wrong in his understanding of the law as it stands.

Second, since there were two candidates in the fray at that point of time, there should have been a vote. Maybe during the process I would have withdrawn, or maybe I could have withdrawn from the Senate race, but the present Maricopan Provincial Head didn't leave me with many options.

However, at present, the discussion is moot, but it may be a point that may be taken heed of in future elections, or the laws may be modified/ amended to take care of such circumstances in the future.