Three Suggested OrgLaw Amendments

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The Organic Law Small Amendment #1 (Cosa Seats) Act

WHEREAS it is good for there to be some kind of flexibility in the size of the Cosa, within limits:

BE IT ENACTED by the King, Senäts and Cosa of Talossan in Ziu assembled that the Organic Law IV.1 be amended by the addition of the following underlined text:

The Cosa is the national legislative assembly, and is composed of 200 seats apportioned among political parties based on their performance in the General Election. It may administer itself as it sees fit. The number of seats in the Cosa may be changed by law, with the provisos that any such change will not take effect until the next general election of the Cosa; and that the number of seats in the Cosa may never be less than twice the number of Senators minus one.

The Organic Law Small Amendment #2 (Seneschál's Rights in the Hopper) Act

WHEREAS when the Comità da Redacziun Legislatïu was set up, there were complaints that the combination of the new system with Organic Law VII.6 gave the Government too much power to bypass the system with its bills, compared to those of private MZs:

BE IT ENACTED by the King, Senäts and Cosa of Talossan in Ziu assembled that Organic Law VII.6:

The Seneschál shall have the right at his discretion to withdraw any legislative proposal from the Hopper and instruct the Secretary of State to treat it as a properly submitted bill.

is hereby deleted entirely.


The Organic Law Small Amendment #3 (Dignity of the Túischac'h) Act

WHEREAS the Chair of the Senäts, the Mençéi, is an Organic position, but the Chair of the Cosa, the Túischac'h is not;

and WHEREAS there appears to be no good reason for this;

BE IT ENACTED by the King, Senäts and Cosa of Talossan in Ziu assembled that a new section of the Organic Law, to be numbered IV.12, read as follows:

The Cosa shall elect one of its members to serve as Speaker of the Cosa (Talossan: el Túischac'h) for the upcoming term. The Speaker shall preside, direct and maintain order during Living Cosas and in the Hopper, in an unbiased fashion. Otherwise, his function will be to advise Members of the Cosa of appropriate decorum. He is considered the honourable President of the Cosâ and shall be awarded all due veneration when serving as such. In the absence of the Túischac'h from the Hopper, the Mençéi shall perform these duties.

and that El Lexhatx H.21, which has this identical text, is hereby deleted entirely.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

The Organic Law Small Amendment #1 (Cosa Seats) Act

WHEREAS it is good for there to be some kind of flexibility in the size of the Cosa, within limits:

What purpose could be served by the Cosa having the ability to shrink itself from 200 seats to a pocket-sized 15?  I tried to think of a good hypothetical, but I couldn't.  What's the for-instance here?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The arguments for and against a Real Cosa - as existed in Talossa from 1997 to 2003 - have been hashed out at length. This bill only gives future Zius flexibility to experiment with various configurations. There is no reason why 200 is a magic number apart from a kind of reflexive conservativism.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Well, I know this has been a goal of yours for a long time, so you probably feel like it's been discussed enough.  And I know that since it's your bill, it might as well already be a law at this point.  But I hope you'll humour me and go through your reasoning?

So yes, I think you're right about all three statements you made.  This has been discussed before many times; this bill would allow the Ziu to change the size of the Cosa; and 200 isn't a magic number.  But none of that actually addresses my question: what's the reasoning, here?  Why would we do this?

[GV]

So yes, I think you're right about all three statements you made.  This has been discussed before many times; this bill would allow the Ziu to change the size of the Cosa; and 200 isn't a magic number.  But none of that actually addresses my question: what's the reasoning, here?  Why would we do this?

Future-proofing.  Should Talossa ever experience the sort of growth we've always wanted (and which Ben-Talossa should have had in the late 1990s), we will need to expand the size of the Cosa.

There is nothing in this law to change your precious 200-seat Cosa.  And I actually agree with you: we don't need to change the size of the Cosa...at this time.

GV

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

[W]e don't need to change the size of the Cosa...at this time.

Great   Like I said, there's nothing magic about the number 200.  It just works pretty well, since it allows for our history of very small parties and it's very representative of the vote totals.  If we get large enough, we might want to expand to more seats, so we can keep those virtues.

Of course, our number of voters has plunged down 42% the last few years from their peak, so those factors are actually less significant.  But I like to think that's a temporary trend!  If we can revive things a bit from their current doldrums, we can get back up on voter interest.

[mpf]

I am one of the main authors of the EM200 as it currently stands.

The reason for EM200 was the inability to fill all 20 of the RC20 seats.

Back then, a variable size Cosa was unthinkable.

But putting it into law instead of the organic law could allow us to try both EM and RC options, and various numbers.

[mpf]

Just in case it's not fresh in memory:

EM Cosas allow multiple seats per Cosa members. 200 seats mean one seat per 0.5% of the vote.

RC is real Cosa: each member of the Cosa gets exactly 1 seat.

I also proposed DC which is Direct Cosa: 1 vote gives 1 seat, but with a minimum of votes to qualify, so the number of seats is variable from Cosa to Cosa.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The ability to experiment, and to retract failed experiments, is indeed the central point of Amendment 1.

ETA: the more I think about it, the more that MPF's "DC" proposal seems ideal for the current bicameral structure. It retains "granularity" while eliminating the rounding-error issue.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

If the drafting of the Reserved Seats for Newbies amendment goes ahead as it looks like it, Amendment #1 will no longer be needed.

Can I get opinions on whether there's still strong support for Amendment #2? I know some of my FreeDem colleagues oppose it because it's an escape hatch in case of a legislative logjam. But I do remember that good arguments were made that it gives the Government far too much leeway to push in rush legislation, bypassing the CRL process; and that emergencies can be better dealt with through Prime Dictates.

Amendment #3 seems uncontroversial.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I strongly support your second amendment, and don't see any problems with your third.

[C. M. Siervicül]

If the drafting of the Reserved Seats for Newbies amendment goes ahead as it looks like it, Amendment #1 will no longer be needed.

Is there some reason we can’t keep the issues separate? Just that both require amending OrgLaw IV.1 (raising the prospect of conflicting amendments)?

Also, is the seat number proposal to be understood to enable the restoration of the “Real Cosa” by statute? OrgLaw Article IV presupposes that MCs can hold more than one seat. Given that the OrgLaw now neither contains a cap on the number of seats that may be held by a single MC nor authorises the Ziu to enact such a cap by law, one wonders whether the existing statutory cap is even enforceable. But the first proposal could be tweaked to address that issue.

Finally, a quibble regarding the third proposal: will it be clear what “absent from the Hopper” means in the final sentence? Since the Hopper is a web forum, I could see the Mençei arguing that the Túischac’h is “absent from the Hopper” if the Mençei is logged on and the Túischac’h is not. I realise the language is already in el Lexhatx, but the stakes are higher if it is entrenched in the OrgLaw. Personally I would remove any reference to the Hopper from the duties of the Túischac’h, because it’s not specific to the Cosa and the OrgLaw assigns its administration to the SoS.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

is the seat number proposal to be understood to enable the restoration of the “Real Cosa” by statute?

Enable, should the Ziu want to give it a go, but not mandate. Personally I prefer MPF's DC proposal right now.

Given that the OrgLaw now neither contains a cap on the number of seats that may be held by a single MC nor authorises the Ziu to enact such a cap by law, one wonders whether the existing statutory cap is even enforceable.

If the seat cap (H.11) is unenforceable, so are party lists (B.2.3.1.1), which of course was the position taken by Dien once upon a time. But then, I find nothing in OrgLaw IV which deals with the process of how seats get from parties to individuals. The OrgLaw mandates that the SoS assign seats to parties (IV.2) and that seats are held by individuals (IV.4 and IV.5), but nothing that connects the two. If the OrgLaw is silent then statue law must be allowed to fill the gap, surely?

Personally I would remove any reference to the Hopper from the duties of the Túischac’h, because it’s not specific to the Cosa and the OrgLaw assigns its administration to the SoS.

Fine; howsabout:

The Cosa shall elect one of its members to serve as Speaker of the Cosa (Talossan: el Túischac'h) for the upcoming term. The Speaker shall preside, direct and maintain order during Living Cosas and in other Cosa debates, in an unbiased fashion. Otherwise, his function will be to advise Members of the Cosa of appropriate decorum. He is considered the honourable President of the Cosâ and shall be awarded all due veneration when serving as such.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

is the seat number proposal to be understood to enable the restoration of the “Real Cosa” by statute?

Enable, should the Ziu want to give it a go, but not mandate. Personally I prefer MPF's DC proposal right now.

Given that the OrgLaw now neither contains a cap on the number of seats that may be held by a single MC nor authorises the Ziu to enact such a cap by law, one wonders whether the existing statutory cap is even enforceable.

If the seat cap (H.11) is unenforceable, so are party lists (H.2.3.1.1), which of course was the position taken by Dien once upon a time. But then, I find nothing in OrgLaw IV which deals with the process of how seats get from parties to individuals. The OrgLaw mandates that the SoS assign seats to parties (IV.2) and that seats are held by individuals (IV.4 and IV.5), but nothing that connects the two. If the OrgLaw is silent then statue law must be allowed to fill the gap, surely?

No, this is a good point that has never really been litigated. The only things that statutes can be made about are listed specifically in the OrgLaw: Org.V.3. The Ziu has enumerated powers, and can't make laws about things that are not on the list.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

OrgLaw V authorises "election laws", even though they're not mentioned in OrgLaw VII.3, so OrgLaw VII.3 cannot be a definitive list. Since OrgLaw IV both mandates that parties win seats, but that individuals hold seats and vote in the Cosa, the question of how parties assign seats to individuals must come under election laws.

And that's excluding the whole question of whether OrgLaw VII.3 is a list of "permitted topics for legislation" or "topics on which only the Ziu may legislate, not the provinces". If you believe the former, it doesn't actually include (for example) criminal law. Half of El Lex would disappear overnight.