An amendment for at-large election of Senators

[King Txec]

I'm not happy that this debate got derailed onto "schemes for increasing activity", btw. That's the problem with political conservatism - there can never be a problem with the institutions, the question has to be how do we recruit to structures that people objectively aren't interested in.

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm a bit salty today.

-Txec R

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

I'm not happy that this debate got derailed onto "schemes for increasing activity", btw. That's the problem with political conservatism - there can never be a problem with the institutions, the question has to be how do we recruit to structures that people objectively aren't interested in.

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm a bit salty today.

You're not the one who started it, and your points are excellent ones; make them in another thread, please :D

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

Talossa isn't just the Clark and the endless cycle of politics.

Is this a symphony? Music to my ears.

[þerxh Sant-Enogat]

Well, that's just a repetition of a theme we got from the monarchy debates. "A defense against changes happening" is political conservatism. Many of us aren't political conservatives, so that argument means nothing to us.

I wrote about damaging changes, not changes in general. People against change in general are political conservatives. People in favour of good, carefully crafted changes are progressives.

I'm not happy that this debate got derailed onto "schemes for increasing activity", btw. That's the problem with political conservatism - there can never be a problem with the institutions, the question has to be how do we recruit to structures that people objectively aren't interested in.

hence my ideas to transform the legislative work into something people could objectively be more interested in - rather than lowering the number of people doing something we won't change.

[Munditenens Tresplet]

Would this amendment actually end the push to dissolve the Senate and/or force the merger of provinces over their will? It seems like it would, and that would be a strong reason to favor it, given the political push in the other direction. (This isn't to say I'm in support of the amendment at this time, just that I continue to keep an open mind.)

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

That's the problem with political conservatism - there can never be a problem with the institutions, the question has to be how do we recruit to structures that people objectively aren't interested in.

Of course, institutions can have problems and need reform.  I didn't rework our disparate body of laws into a legal code for the fun of it!  Instead, people -- such as yourself! -- identified a serious issue that needed to be fixed, and I agreed with your reasoning.  We lost a little -- there was some charm and a lot of history to those forty years of laws! -- but the benefits were far greater.

But just because some reforms are necessary doesn't mean all reforms are a good idea.  That's why I'm asking to discuss the merits of this one in detail.  And we just saw last election that the voters do not want this stuff shoved down their throat.  There was a historic rejection of a referendum, something that has almost never happened in our history, and so you should maybe take my concerns seriously.  Every province would need to vote in favor of a bill like this, so you need pretty broad agreement.

Again: my concern is that we're contemplating a permanent loss to deal with temporary lower levels of activity.  That seems short-sighted to me.

If we switch to an at-large Senats, then we're divorcing provinces from their only meaningful connection with the national legislature.  That's what this bill would do.  That puts the provinces in danger, since there's no one who's assigned in the Ziu to care about any particular province.

We're also making the Senats function more like a smaller Cosa, eliminating one of the fundamental differences between the two chambers. If the two function similarly and one of the main virtues of the Senats is eliminated, then it makes it a lot easier to eliminate the Senats entirely.  It's hard to mix oil and water, but easy to mix saltwater and freshwater.

If we're going to do this, we'll be abandoning some old traditions and history, we'll be endangering the provinces, we'll be endangering the Senats, and we'll be losing some of the benefits of the current Senats.  Given all of that, we need pretty compelling benefits.  So can we focus a little more on that side of the balance sheet?

Would this amendment actually end the push to dissolve the Senate and/or force the merger of provinces over their will? It seems like it would, and that would be a strong reason to favor it, given the political push in the other direction. (This isn't to say I'm in support of the amendment at this time, just that I continue to keep an open mind.)

I also continue to keep an open mind, but there's no reason to think clearing the path for someone is going to discourage them from continuing on their way.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

If we switch to an at-large Senats, then we're divorcing provinces from their only meaningful connection with the national legislature.  That's what this bill would do.  That puts the provinces in danger,

No they're not. Before 1997, when there was no Senäts, the provinces were intermittently active when anyone took an interest in them (usually to annoy the Kingdom government). Since 1997, the provinces have been... intermittently active when anyone takes an interest in them. It has NO relation to the Senäts seat. I would love Fiova's delightful direct-democracy constitution to get more interest, but whether it does or not has no relation to whether we keep giving GV an uncontested legislative seat every 2 years or not.

And Mic'haglh keeps talking to you about his MMP Cosa idea, which IMHO makes the provincial connection stronger. Adopting it along with an at-large Senäts seems a fine tradeoff.

If we're going to do this, we'll be abandoning some old traditions and history,

Or going back to even older ones? Talossan history didn't start in 1997.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Would this amendment actually end the push to dissolve the Senate and/or force the merger of provinces over their will? It seems like it would, and that would be a strong reason to favor it, given the political push in the other direction. (This isn't to say I'm in support of the amendment at this time, just that I continue to keep an open mind.)

I can personally say that the at-large Senäts would end the interest in provincial mergers on my part, or at least, the interest in any mergers which weren't initiated by the provinces themselves.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

If we switch to an at-large Senats, then we're divorcing provinces from their only meaningful connection with the national legislature.  That's what this bill would do.  That puts the provinces in danger,

No they're not. Before 1997, when there was no Senäts, the provinces were intermittently active when anyone took an interest in them (usually to annoy the Kingdom government). Since 1997, the provinces have been... intermittently active when anyone takes an interest in them. It has NO relation to the Senäts seat. I would love Fiova's delightful direct-democracy constitution to get more interest, but whether it does or not has no relation to whether we keep giving GV an uncontested legislative seat every 2 years or not.

I certainly didn't claim that the existence of the Senats promotes activity in the provinces, lol.  Instead, the existence of the Senats helps protect the sheer continued existence of the provinces.  There is someone whose job it is to represent their province, and they run for election regularly.  I don't know that it's a hugely strong influence, but it's definitely there.  If we asked our senators whether or not it's part of their job to look out for the well-being of their provinces in particular, I hope they'd agree.

And Mic'haglh keeps talking to you about his MMP Cosa idea, which IMHO makes the provincial connection stronger. Adopting it along with an at-large Senäts seems a fine tradeoff.

Party seats would still be in the gift of the party leader.  There'd be zero reason to care about your province.  In fact, there would be heavy incentive for party leaders to assign seats to those who were more loyal to their party than their province!  Why choose someone who's going to kick up a fuss just because you want to mess with their province?

If we're going to do this, we'll be abandoning some old traditions and history,

Or going back to even older ones? Talossan history didn't start in 1997.

Talossa has had the Senats in its current form for most of her history... and that's even counting the earliest years when the government was just "whatever Robert I decided that week!"  If we go from when the Kingdom started to become a nation of laws in like 1988, with the Constituziun, then we have had the current Senats format for 81% of our history -- including all of our modern history and the entire time everyone involved in this discussion has been a Talossan.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

And Mic'haglh keeps talking to you about his MMP Cosa idea, which IMHO makes the provincial connection stronger. Adopting it along with an at-large Senäts seems a fine tradeoff.

Party seats would still be in the gift of the party leader.  There'd be zero reason to care about your province.  In fact, there would be heavy incentive for party leaders to assign seats to those who were more loyal to their party than their province!  Why choose someone who's going to kick up a fuss just because you want to mess with their province?

Candidates who are elected for constituency seats are not "assigned" by the party leadership. They are directly elected by their province. Unless you mean to say that being assigned by a party leader to run in a specific constituency in the first place would lead to the incentive to prioritise party loyalty over province loyalty you spoke of, but in that case, parties already have that kind of influence over senatorial candidates in the current system, whether we continue to pretend that Senators are above party politics or not. What am I missing here?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Deleted a post because it made my point inexpertly, let's see if this is better:

the existence of the Senats helps protect the sheer continued existence of the provinces... If we asked our senators whether or not it's part of their job to look out for the well-being of their provinces in particular, I hope they'd agree.

You're doing that thing again where you act like the purpose of democratic elections is to preserve the institutions, rather than the institutions serving a democratic function.

The provinces existed before the Senäts and were just as lively (or not).

whether we continue to pretend that Senators are above party politics or not.

Yeah, this is part of what I'm getting at. AD is pretending (or, as he says, "hoping") that current Senators are "loyal to their province" - i.e. he would prefer that they act if that was the case. Because if they're not, if - for example - the Senäts is just as partisan as the Cosa only not elected on a proportionally representative basis - then his argument about the incentives the Senäts provides are inoperative.

It's actually a wider issue of pretending that Talossa is a federation. It's not, even though the 1997 OrgLaw was copied from that of an actual federation (Australia, thank you Evan). Again: provinces were created top-down by the Kingdom. They're analogous to maybe English counties, which have pomp and tradition and value but not a guaranteed seat in Parliament.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

And Mic'haglh keeps talking to you about his MMP Cosa idea, which IMHO makes the provincial connection stronger. Adopting it along with an at-large Senäts seems a fine tradeoff.

Party seats would still be in the gift of the party leader.  There'd be zero reason to care about your province.  In fact, there would be heavy incentive for party leaders to assign seats to those who were more loyal to their party than their province!  Why choose someone who's going to kick up a fuss just because you want to mess with their province?

Candidates who are elected for constituency seats are not "assigned" by the party leadership. They are directly elected by their province. Unless you mean to say that being assigned by a party leader to run in a specific constituency in the first place would lead to the incentive to prioritise party loyalty over province loyalty you spoke of, but in that case, parties already have that kind of influence over senatorial candidates in the current system, whether we continue to pretend that Senators are above party politics or not. What am I missing here?

If we're talking about a specific bill (I guess the one in the Hopper?) where each province gets to pick specific individuals who represent that province, then we can probably make that easier by just keeping the Senats.

Deleted a post because it made my point inexpertly, let's see if this is better:

the existence of the Senats helps protect the sheer continued existence of the provinces... If we asked our senators whether or not it's part of their job to look out for the well-being of their provinces in particular, I hope they'd agree.

You're doing that thing again where you act like the purpose of democratic elections is to preserve the institutions, rather than the institutions serving a democratic function.

The provinces existed before the Senäts and were just as lively (or not).

I think that our institutions have value beyond the needs of the moment, and shouldn't be sold like secondhand chairs at a fire sale.  And as proof, I present to you an active and engaged monarch, helping others and promoting our culture.  That would be impossible if the monarchy had been eliminated -- if people like me hadn't fought for to protect it.

We need to think about tomorrow's Talossa, not just today.  Let's plan for a vibrant and growing country.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

I present to you an active and engaged monarch, helping others and promoting our culture.  That would be impossible if the monarchy had been eliminated

Can we go to the alternate universe where President Nordselvă took office 10 years ago and is on his third term of doing an excellent job? In that alternate universe, I can also imagine that Talossa has 200 active citizens who are all fluent conversationalist in ár glheþ, because I'm not wedded to status-quo bias.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I present to you an active and engaged monarch, helping others and promoting our culture.  That would be impossible if the monarchy had been eliminated

Can we go to the alternate universe where President Nordselvă took office 10 years ago and is on his third term of doing an excellent job? In that alternate universe, I can also imagine that Talossa has 200 active citizens who are all fluent conversationalist in ár glheþ, because I'm not wedded to status-quo bias.

If we're allowed to submit alternate universes as proof that we're right, then we should all be libertarians since Atlas Shrugged exists, or socialists since News from Nowhere exists, or... well, I don't know what lesson we'd learn from the Butlerian Jihad of Dune.

Listen, actual reality is pretty good evidence that there's real merit to preserving institutions and traditions.  It's not the only thing that's important: when I remade the Zuavs, we discarded all that they had been, and I think Talossa is the better for it.  But this stuff is important as we weigh the costs and benefits of any change.

It's actually especially important in a country like our own, since there's no brick-and-mortar Ziu building to act as a physical symbol.  For as long as all of us discussing this have known Talossa, and for four-fifths of her existence as a nation of laws, the Senats has served to allow for individual representation of the interests of each province.  That's not everything, but it's not nothing.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

If we're talking about a specific bill (I guess the one in the Hopper?) where each province gets to pick specific individuals who represent that province, then we can probably make that easier by just keeping the Senats.

...what? I'm not talking about a specific bill, I'm talking about how constituency seats under MMP work.