Proposal for Citizens' Bill of Rights

We do not currently detail the rights of Citizens in the Constitution. This proposal spells out the rights and puts them in one place. This would be the first or second section of the Constitution.

Proposal:

1. All people playing the Democracy game are citizens of Phoenatica. Some citizens are elected or appointed to positions with additional duties, responsibilities and powers.
2. Citizens are encouraged to vote in polls and elections and offer their views and opinions in discussions.
3. Citizens may start discussion threads and post in all threads, including departmental threads.
4. Citizens are welcome in the chat room when the game turn is played.
5. Citizens may vote in Citizen Polls in the chat room to determine game decisions.
6. Citizens may not post polls that deal with topics specifically under the jurisdiction of an official but may post opinion polls and game-play related polls.
7. Citizens may request that an official post a poll related to the official’s area of jurisdiction. If two other citizens agree with the request (motion seconded and carried) the official must post the poll.

This poll will run for 48 hours, ending at 16:35 GMT on Thursday, May 30.

This proposal was discussed and designed here.

you should also add that citizens are allowed to fully take part in polls and decisions in the chat. not only that they are welcome

i still voted yes though

I thought you were against restricting polls in any sense of the word, Shaitan. Number 6 would severely hinder the citizenry in their polling. Besides being a judgement call, (and now we know who the judge will be), it limits the citizens polls to those approved by the government.

That one 'no' vote is from me. I think citizens should be allowed to post polls.

Same here. The 'no' is because the citizen poll clause is ambiguous. Anything 'game related' would most likely FALL within a cabinet jurisdiction. Citizens should have a say and be allowed to create polls without worrying about if their poll falls within a jurisdiction. 99% of 'game related polls' will most likely fall into most, if not all of the cabinet posistions.

I would also think citizens would have the right to post any poll they want. Whether that poll would be binding or not is another matter entirely.

Did all of you not bother to read nr.7 It gives citizens extremely power over polls. All you need is 2 other people to support you on having a poll and then the elected official MUST post the poll in the related government thread.

6 and 7 are parts of the current Constitution. 6 was original. We added 7 ourselves. Duck and Duke explained that with free polling came massive confusion as citizens didn't know what was "real" and not real. There were duplicate binding and non-binding polls, poorly set up polls, etc. The object is to allow the citizens to call whatever poll they want but for the Council Members to do the actual posting for their departments in order to keep things neat and tidy.

Point #6 does not seem to inhibit the posting of polls. Let's say some citizen wants a wonder built in Washington. He can't post a poll on it because wonder building falls within the domain of the domestic department. But he can post an opinion poll on whether to build a wonder in Washington. What's the difference? The opinion poll isn't binding - which means government officials can ignore it without fear of impeachment. Since an opinion poll can be written about anything the only reason not to post one is that it doesn't count!

Point #7 seemingly makes it easy to get a poll posted but in reality it leaves the actual writing of the poll in the hands of the government official! The citizens calling for the poll don't get to write the question or possible answers to be voted on. If this is supposed to be a mechanism to get a recalcitrant official to post a poll on an issue he or she disagrees with then it is certainly an uphill battle for the citizens since the power remains with the official.
I do not like the idea of binding and non-binding polls. A poll is a poll is a poll. Taking power away from the citizens because they wouldn't exercise that power in a tidy fashion is not a tenet of democracy.
While we should try to learn from the Civ 2 Demo game experience we must be careful to ferret out the real lesson to be learned. Did they cut back on polls in that game because of untidyness? If so, did they lose citizens due to lack of interest?
Sure, letting anyone post polls will lead to conflicting, duplicate and even poorly written polls. The answer to this is not to take the power from the people but to come up with standards by which all polls can be judged so that citizens and government officials alike can decide for themselves the value of each individual poll.
Finally, I think we need to rethink our impeachment clause. Officials can be impeached only for not following citizen's polls. There's nothing in the constitution that says ignoring the constitution is impeachable. An official can break the constitution but not go against a poll...

All citizen created polls are non-binding. #6 specifies that Citizens have the right to post opinion polls that do not deal with topics specifically under the jurisdiction of a Department.

For #7 there is nothing that would prevent the citizen from designing the poll to be posted. If citizen A designs the poll question and responses and citizens B and C agree, the Department head must post the poll.

Discussion on poll standards/procedures should be mentioned in this thread.

I think the original intent was for the Mods to smack down a Leader that violated the Constitution itself. I would definitely support modifying the impeachment clause to specify Constitutional violations as well as ignoring polls as impeachable offenses.

Maybe it would help to clarify the definitions. Donsig said it correctly with "a poll is a poll is a poll". A poll is a guage of opinion. However, certain things are more than polls, such as the elections. I think "poll" should be reserved for opinion polls. And if we want a binding vote of the public, ask for a "referendum", which could be set up by any council minister, or maybe our council-member-at-large if they are petitioned by enough citizens.

I see that this gives us only basic... pathetic rights. We need to be able to post polls and begin impeachment proceedings

CONSPIRACY! Placate the citizens and then enslave them.

Who is your puppet master *? the starter of this poll?

the point is: there is no change with the citizen polls. if you read the constitution, at the moment the citizenry IS NOT ALLOWED TO POST POLLS FALING INTO THE DECISION AREA OF A DEPARTMENT!!!
this was not changed.

CYC! you shoot at this proposals without any point in your arguments. and it was not the first time. there will be NO CHANGE AT ALL to the citizen rights with this proposal, its just they are kind of summarized.
And this part of the constitution will point out what citizens are allowed to do. not like now, as the constitution only points out what citizens are not allowed to do. The rights of the citizens are now kind of hidden in the constitution, which caused many citizens to leave the game.

OMG. Real citizens talking about poll procedures. Even our bow and arrow armed admiral wearing a mini-skirt is getting involved. No, i don't believe it. I'm going back to bed....

And Dis, I just reread my first post in this thread (just for you), and the point I make is very clear. If you want I can go find Shaitan's complaint of one of my earlier posts, in which he stated exactly what I said he did. If he is just "summarizing", why does it sound worse now than before? 5 posts back he clarifies his first statment in the thread, which substantiates my claim.

Originally posted by Shaitan
All citizen created polls are non-binding. #6 specifies that Citizens have the right to post opinion polls that do not deal with topics specifically under the jurisdiction of a Department.

For #7 there is nothing that would prevent the citizen from designing the poll to be posted. If citizen A designs the poll question and responses and citizens B and C agree, the Department head must post the poll.

Click to expand...

re #6: As Chieftess pointed out earlier, what poll can be posted that isn't covered by a department's jurisdiction? And no matter what topics citizens can post polls about, if their polls are inferior to 'government' polls why should a citizen post a poll to begin with?

re #7: While there is nothing that says a citizen can't call for a specific poll written by a citizen there is also nothing that requires the official being petitioned to use the citizen's poll verbatim. The official would be free to change the poll to make it better because of the underlying assumption that citizens can't post useful and proper polls whereas officials can. Officials become the judges of what are good polls.

Take it all one step further and we get:

Officials can only be impeached by not following citizen polls but the officials themselves control the citizen polls!

Conspiracy theories, indeed...

What is wrong with this Bill? I thought we were not "giving rights", just outlining the current rights, which weren't spelled out before.

About citizen polls. I think they should not be binding (current system). I can't see how an advisor would get re-elected based on going against many opinion polls, especially without good cause. Remember, these are the same people who won your votes earlier. I like the current system with the addition of the proposed bill. Terms are only a month, not forever.

Originally posted by Cyc
And Dis, I just reread my first post in this thread (just for you), and the point I make is very clear. If you want I can go find Shaitan's complaint of one of my earlier posts, in which he stated exactly what I said he did. If he is just "summarizing", why does it sound worse now than before? 5 posts back he clarifies his first statment in the thread, which substantiates my claim.

Click to expand...

Calm down, folks...please.

For the record, I am against restricting citizen rights, including polls. I am not saying that the current rules should be changed, only that I would campaign against anything more strict. To my knowledge I've never penned a statement contrary to that. If Cyc can produce one, I'd be interested to see it.

As I (and several others) have said, the rules in question are already part and parcel of our game. My clarifying these in my previous post in no way indicates that I want to restrict citizen polls.

The idea here is to promote Citizen Rights by making them clear and concise so that newbies (and even people who've been here a while) will know what they can do. People have left the game because they felt they couldn't do anything even though they could. This is not intended to be the last word on Citizen Rights, only the first step.

well, thats what i say cp. there was no change at all. i wonder how ppl see things different in this proposal as it is ONLY A SUMMARY. if you would have read the constitution more careful (well, abviously most ppl dont read it at all), you would have noticed all these things were stated before. we do not want to change anything, just summarize it. the missing summarization caused the situation that nobody at the moment knows how to post polls conforming the constitution, and most of our polls are obsolete if the take the constitution and slam it on them.

Originally posted by donsig


re #6: As Chieftess pointed out earlier, what poll can be posted that isn't covered by a department's jurisdiction? And no matter what topics citizens can post polls about, if their polls are inferior to 'government' polls why should a citizen post a poll to begin with?

re #7: While there is nothing that says a citizen can't call for a specific poll written by a citizen there is also nothing that requires the official being petitioned to use the citizen's poll verbatim. The official would be free to change the poll to make it better because of the underlying assumption that citizens can't post useful and proper polls whereas officials can. Officials become the judges of what are good polls.

Take it all one step further and we get:

Officials can only be impeached by not following citizen polls but the officials themselves control the citizen polls!

Conspiracy theories, indeed...

Click to expand...

#6 - Currently there are a couple out there from Disorganizer that fit the profile nicely. There are a slew of them for Honors and other topics.

#7 - "Citizens may request that an official post a poll related to the official’s area of jurisdiction. If two other citizens agree with the request (motion seconded and carried) the official must post the poll."

As this reads, it says the the official MUST post the poll. So if the citizen takes the time and effort to design the entire poll, and it gets seconded and carried, the official MUST post that poll.