24-12-2003 13:22									#1
	Official Polls Suffering from ads?

There has some debate on what is an "official poll" and what is not.

I'd like to start the discussion whether we want to have these kinds of polls in the first place.

This is part of our Constitution:

quote: G2. The Senate has the power to create law, which the Consuls must follow. a. A Bill must be proposed by a Senator, and clearly state the purpose in the first post, and have the following options for a poll: yea or nay. b. The Bill must be passed by a simple majority, 50% plus 1, to become a law. c. All bills must be open for at least 48 hours.

I'm not quite clear on the "consuls must follow" part. I think we have a good system of government as it is, with 3 Consuls responsible for "everything", a number of Ministers to whom certain tasks are delegated, and a 'checks and balance' system (elections, CoCs) to keep everything in place.

Now, the rule above states that the people (senate), by polling on a subject, can temporarily and/or partly take over the Consuls' responsability in a certain area. They enfoce by poll what the Consuls might not have done otherwise, thus possibly causing some kind of conflict between interests, actions and/or views.

I myself have a problem with this possibility of conflict happening. We haven't seen examples yet in which the situation went horribly wrong, but we'd better avoid the problem rather that solving it when it comes by.

I say we delete this passage. Please discuss!

	24-12-2003 13:48									#2
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If we delete this passage then the senate pretty much loses all of its power. There should be an alternative. Like you I am not too fond of the plethora of polls which have sprung up today since they were very poorly timed. Sadly since the poll starter said they were "official" then we must go through with them as stated by the constitution.

With that in mind my suggestion for a possible constitutional amendment is for a citizen who starts an "official" poll, must get an endorsement by at least X number of other citizens for the poll to be officially valid. This will prevent a lone citizen from saturating the forum with official polls which we must constitutionaly abide by and only leave out those polls which more than one person feel the need to start. Given that most polls end up tallying about 30-40 votes, I would suggest the minimun number of endorsements to be 5 citizens.

This of course should only be limited to official polls (i.e. Bills). Any citizen should be free to start any opinion poll as he wants.

	24-12-2003 13:52									#3
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Btw, one other point.

I think that any amendment to this part of the constitution should remove the "yea or nay" limitation and allow as many options as necessary. This should be more than obvious given that the Eq4 poll would have eventually necessitated TWO polls which is more time-consuming and tedious.

	24-12-2003 13:53									#4
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If people don't like a bill, then they vote no. There's no need to strip the power from the people.

Hmm, "plethora".....2 is a plethora? :middlefinger:

	24-12-2003 14:01									#5
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If we have an 'Official' poll posted by a Senetor, I would like the Requirement that there is atleat 24 hours of debate on the subject before they can post the official poll. And the poll must provide a link to the discussion thread and allow for a couple of additional options:
Voting Option 1) An issue needs more debate/refining vote - If the majority of the voters feel that an issue needs to be further discussed before it is voted on AND/OR also feel that the way that the poll is currently worded (or some other reason), then they should have the option on sending it back for discussion.

2) Abstain vote.

these additional voting options would allow for further participation of people who lurk but don't want to vote on a straight black and white/yes and no poll, especially if they think it might need to be run back to the senate for further debate.

E_T


[EDIT] It's 4 AM and I just posted this after being asleep and just getting read to go back to sleep (woke from a terrible dream), so some if this isn;t too cohearant and I'll clean it up after work tomorrow [/edit]

[Second Edit] cleaned this up now [/edit]

Last edited by E_T on 24-12-2003 at 21:55

	24-12-2003 14:02									#6
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It's not that simple. It's the fact that if a poll springs out, out of the blue, it can very much hamper diplomatic procedures since until a poll is through we cannot give a straight answer to another team. If it is a lone person or a very very small minority asking for this bill then all it does is delay our actions since by constituation we must abide by that bill and must wait at least 48 hours until the bill can be passed or not. If it is a complex issue like the Eq4 with multiple options this will necessitate multiple polls which will take even more time (the Eq4 issue will require 2 polls of 96 total minimum hours)

By agreeing to a limited number of endorsments we assure that official polls are limited to issues where there is considerable debate and where different positions are backed by a sizeable number of people. This does not strip power from the people, issues with major senatiorial support will STILL pass, all it does is avoid any outlyers from temporarily delaying ministerial or consular actions.

	24-12-2003 14:08									#7
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Btw, E_T is right also that an abstain vote is necessary.

Some issues which the people wish to delay for a later date necessitate some form of anullment (spelling?)

For example the Eq4 issue, assume that the voting ends up rather poorly, as in 6 in favor and 4 against. No more voting happened because most people were undecided or did not feel the need for it. But regardless the bill is passed. Perhaps if there had been an abstain vote of 10 then neither the yea or nay would have obtained the 50% + 1 necessary and the bill would be dropped. Remember that depending on the nature of the poll a nay vote will not necessarily be the same as an abstention, it may very well mean that a negative action will be taken.

I wholeheartedly agree in adding an abstain option.

	24-12-2003 14:24									#8
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quote: Originally posted by Master Zen If we delete this passage then the senate pretty much loses all of its power.

I do not agree with you on this point. The Senate has the Election and CoC instruments to officially make changes to the policies (to the people making the policies, rather). And they have the unofficial power to post ideas and arguments on this Forum.

	24-12-2003 14:34									#9
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quote: Originally posted by BigFurryMonster I do not agree with you on this point. The Senate has the Election and CoC instruments to officially make changes to the policies (to the people making the policies, rather). And they have the unofficial power to post ideas and arguments on this Forum.

I agree with BFM on this point. Furthermore, in our long history we've never used the poll = binding law power before, and we've done just find without it.

When people don't like what a leader is doing, they speak up about it. That's been our history. Despite the uncomfortable social feelings of doing CoCs they've been done and unpopular decisions or policies have been very vocally criticized.

--Togas

	24-12-2003 14:59									#10
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A CoC is an extreme measure taken when a citizen or group of citizens percieve a Consul to act in an inept manner. This does not resolve the issue here which is the polling problem, which in the past has not been used but that is no guarantee that it will remain that way in the future (as proven today).

	24-12-2003 18:47									#11
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I would like to note that if "No" wins in the polls in question, they are not binding. Only a "Yes" decision forces the consuls to do or not do anything. So in effect if you want to make an abstain that is counted towards voiding the poll you can just vote no (that's what I did in the tech parity poll).

I am against removing the "bill" clause, though some refinement would not be a bad idea. Perhaps if all of the consuls and two of the ministers agree they should be able to veto any law that did not get 2/3 support. Also, I think there should be an abstain option and the bill creator should have to specify whether it counts towards defeating the bill; if it doesn't then a "No" decision is not binding.

	24-12-2003 20:29									#12
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I don't want to remove the ability of the senate (us non-consule people that is) to override the consules if we strongly disagree, and I don't think CoC is a good alternative since its possible to have 3 good consules who are just wrong about 1 issue. Also over-riding the consules on 1 issue doesn't (or at least shouldn't) carry the same emotional impact of an outright CoC.

However, I am fine with ammending this part of our constitution so that it requires more than a 50% vote for either option to be binding. If the senate doesn't feel that strongly one way or the other then I don't see why it should overrule the consules.

	24-12-2003 20:59									#13
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The senate should retain the power to overrule the consuls through the use of a poll, should they wish to use that. Period.

On the USE of such polls, things are far more freeform. I have a funny feeling that if a senator goes nuts posting polls on every subject under the sun, the senators may eventually just stop supporting them and vote "no" to hand the decision back to the Consuls (a "no" vote to any poll merely means that the poll fails, since "official" polls in the ISDG system are BILLS, not opinions on issues).

	24-12-2003 21:51									#14
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Depending on the Issue at hand, a Solid No Vote could also be considered to be that everyone is against that issue, so it wouldn't be up to the Consuls to deside on that point, either.

E_T

	26-12-2003 21:33									#15
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quote: Originally posted by E_T Depending on the Issue at hand, a Solid No Vote could also be considered to be that everyone is against that issue, so it wouldn't be up to the Consuls to deside on that point, either. E_T

That's not my understanding of how the "bills" system was designed when we first introduced it in the SPDG and then carried it over to the ISDG. The system is that if you vote "no", you are merely striking down a specific suggestion. The author(s) of that suggestion are then free to come up with a new bill that rewords the issue or changes a few things so that they can obtain majority support.

Also, since later bills always trump earlier bills, conflicts are easy to resolve. If two passed bills conflict, all stipulations of the first bill are valid except those which conflict with the second bill. The second bill is valid on all counts until yet ANOTHER bill is passed that may conflict with it, etc.