Framing the Code of Laws - Citizen Discussion and Debate

Current working copy of the 3 Books:
Constitution C, et al, v2.0

This link will be updated as new versions are uploaded.

Laws Section A
A-3-c:

Citizens may create discussion threads on any topic.

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We should bind citizens to the citizen-subforum here. A citizen is not allowed to open a discussion in the other forums. He can participate there, but not open a new thread there (for example government-forum or main-forum. he also is not allowed to open a discussion in the poll forum, because only polls go there).

A-3-D:
We should state here that polls must be put in the polls-subforum.

A-7-C:
we should add that registration of multiple names for the same citizen is a major crime which will result in not only expelling the offender from the game but also in a request to the forum mods to expell him from the forum in total.

Laws Section B
i would add that the players during chat have to do their best for not loosing the save-file and for not having to replay things.

Laws Section D
* first of the point should be that the president has to take care as good as possible that all actions of the executive branch comply to will of citizenry. i know that this is in the constitution already, but it should also be in there as 1st paragraph to state this clear.
* leave out "the president" in all articles or put it in. reads very difficult if this changes from article to article
* one is missing: the vice is obliged to take over the presidents duties if he resigns or is absent for a longer time. if the vice president declines, immediate reelections take place for the position (or something like that. we will also have to discuss what happens then with the vice-position, as this will be vacant in the case)

Point8:

Point 8 As leader of the Executive branch, the President can veto a Legislative Council Vote.

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We did not comply on the veto. This item should be polled, as this is one of the main controversies of our latest discussions.

a question:
the president can not take part in cabinet votes?
he can only cast a tie-breaking vote, but has no normal vote in it as i read the constitution now.

Section E
* again, we should add that the deputy takes over. and again we have to discuss what happens with the deputy position then.

Point 3
add: ... and not in the forums. this will state clearly that chat-rep powers only apply to the chat.

Point 4
where are the other responsibilities? bring up plans for citizen discussion, make policies for the department and put them to vote, encourage citizen discussion... organize the department
you can then leave out the "organize" in the next points... and only state the area of responsibility.

To 4F:
* Where does this override of the leader for council-votes suddenly come from?
To 4F+G:
* What is the Council? This term is defined nowhere.

Section E

* we should also add here that all decisions have to be based on the wished of citizenry at best effort.
* we still have to discuss cutting together some of the departments with almost equal responsibilities
* we will have to discuss responsibilites in detail. but i think we should first do the "surroundings" to fit.
* how will the overriding of a queue be ratified? or is it just the leader who dictates this?

Point 10
We should add his possibility to run a CAP with citizen approval. He should then also be able to override build queues

Section F
this has to be synchronized with striders "my idea" thread. maybe we could also implement some part of his idea in here

2-B
The pro-tems should immediately give back power if the original holder of the office demands this.

3-B
Delete, as we dont need it if we use presidential election. Instead, force him to post the vote-counts needed for valid polls in the 1st post of his department-thread ;-)

3-C
What the hell is the judical log?

4+5
Who will organize the investigation thread to be on-topic? Who will have all non-usefull or wrong / false / whatever posts deleted? (well, ask the mods to do so)

Section G
Will a citizen poll be enough? We did a cabinet-poll last time for ratification

G-2
not "they may", they must(!) or at least should be defined far before expansion

Section H

2-a-1
What is a administrative council vote? Nowhere defined.

5
Not appointed. Elected. If appointed someone sais: this is him. We should let citizenry vote here. Or maybe another concept:
We should have a spare-governor. This position will be elected for and he waits till a) a governor leaves or b) a new province is created. to gain practice he may govern all not-governed cities. if he gets work after this, they are governed by domestic deputy

Section I

we should add: are not eligable for any official position except governor, as all other position would gain too much power in one hand.

Section J
* the term "spot vote" is not defined yet

4
where does the council-vote on the first position come from and what does this mean?!?

naming rights
we have a citizen decison poll that honoured citizens should be granted naming rights. i would prefer to handle this in a seperate section (honoured citizens), but this may need a tweaking in here too.
we also should clarify the naming-rights in detail not here, but in a seperate article.
maybe we should even cut this part out of J and open a new one with reference to the COC for naming.

Section K

5
should we implement one? maybe 6 terms? or just state that this can be defined by a standard?

6-c

Each citizen may run for 1 position in each election cycle

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Where did we decide this? ;-)
Im opposed to this one and i would prefer cutting running-limit out totally. We now are able to run for 2 positions and it is bad, why worsen it?

6-d-1

If a sitting leader wins an election they must vacate their current office in favor of the new one.

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This should read that he can decide wheter to take his new position or stay with the old one. Or at least we should vote about this.

10
Maybe we should introduce a 1 day delay after nomination, where no new nominations can take place but candidates can still accept/decline

Section L
So put some of my earlier comments and change them to "add a cross reference". You notice we should put additional redundancy to some points, as reading a part of the laws out of context or even sequentially reading it will be improoved.

my points to this:
* what happens if the appointed candidate is not approved?
* we should additionally accept citizen nominations in a short-nomination procedure (1 day nomination phase). remember the chat-rep was also not elected and will be leader!

Section M
What is the council?!?
OH! you mean the congress! So change all council to congress ;-)

4-B

An affirmative result amends the Code of Standards.
(1) The President can veto a legislative vote.
(2) The Presidential veto can be overruled by an Override Vote.

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So why do we have the veto? The council should not vote this way if they dont like it. The president should state his opinion before the council-vote.
I oppose the veto-right of anyone without a poll as base for it.

general
This whole section is a mess. This has to be stated clearer. Which poll for what, who participates, which quorum rules are needed.
It is very confusing like it is now.

Section N
Same as M. What are those polls for? What can be decided with it? Section M+N are just confusing at the moment (or at least, they confuse me as they are right now).

Section O
What happens if someone is missing? All polls will be stopped, since nothing passes them then.

2-C
Who posts the poll? Sponsor?

4
Ahh! Here the log is. You again see the need for cross-reference.

Section P
How is it done?

General Comments
So this was it. I already found some flaws in the standards, but we should finish off our laws first.

1) more cross-reference. if something is mentioned in the beginning, the reader should be able to see what it means. so a glossary or a cross-reference is needed (mainly at 2 points i noticed)
2) voting must be more precisely defined. not so vague and in simple words
3) wording is sometimes a bit hard-english. always think that we have many non-english-speaking citizens
4) at the beginning and in the constitution there was a kind of "red line" thru the document. im missing this in the laws as they seem to me a kind of "out of the order". Maybe exchanging some sections would do it, but i did not find a better way.
5) naming-rights should be more precisely defined in the laws. this can and must not be defined in the standards.
naming rights could be defined vaguely, like:
* naming of cities captured or founded is done after the order of the coc
* each governor has the right to name one of his existing cities
* honoured citizens have the right to rename one existing city
* any city can only be renamed if it was not named by a citizen, except the citizen was expelled from the game.
...
the way how it is decided (citizen poll quorum rules, how many,...) can then be defined by standards.

* what about the other officials? historian, census etc... they are appointed, but never mentioned in the rules. did u notice they even cant be put out of their office?
* citizen-honouring should also vaguely be handled by the laws and detailed in standards

we should also state somewhere that the standards only detail the laws, so no standard can exist on an area which is not defined by a law.

A-3-C: Part of the Standards

A-3-D: Part of the Standards

A-7-C: Part of the Forum rules

B: Is this really necessary? Seems sort of insulting, like we don't trust them to do that unless we specify it.

D - note on Pres responsibility: Agreed.

D - clarity with "president": Agreed.

D - VP ascending: Already part of the laws under filling vacant offices

D-8: This is for Legislative Council votes. The pres can't veto a law or article, just the standards (as they are the province of the Executive branch).

D - pres voting: Correct. This is the same as we've had from the start. The Pres is a tie-breaker vote. The department leaders are the voting body. Personally, I've got no problem letting the Pres vote. If it ends in a tie the VP can be the tie breaker. Thoughts?

E - ascension: Already part of the laws under filling vacant offices

E-3: Agreed.

E-4: Not sure what you mean here. Everything you mentioned is in there.

E-4-F: The Override Council Vote applies only to Presidential Vetos. All Council Votes are detailed in the Council Vote section.

E-4-F+G: Defined in article D of the Constitution.

E-will of the citizens: Already in the Constitution.

E-putting together departments: Highly unlikely as this has shown very little support. I'd suggest a poll to confirm.

E-override: Each override is specific to a circumstance except the President's general override power. No ratification is needed except for the presidential override. This is the same as our current system.

E-10: CAP programs fall under the guidelines of the culture override. There's no case where a city would be a CAP candidate and not fall under one of the 2 override criteria.

F-"my idea": Link away my friend!

F-2-B: Agreed.

F-3-B: Good catch.

F-3-C: Log of Judicial Review items of interpretation and clarification. Defined under Judicial Review section.

F-4&5: Good point. I added that to Chief Justice responsibilities.

G-approval requirement: It's a Congressional poll now! Yes, this will be fine. In all cases the Council Vote matched the citizen vote anyway.

G-3 (not 2): Changed to "shall" and added responsibility to Domestic Leader.

H-2-a-1: Defined under "Council Vote" section.

H-5-a: Handled under section L. All appointments must be ratified.

I: Aren't Mods excluded from all positions already by their own charter?

J-4: That was a left-over. I've removed it.

J-naming rights: Handled by Standards. If there is a decision to bump honored citizens up the naming rights chain we'll modify this.

K-5: Actually, 2 consecutive terms seems to have been accepted as a standard. I'm comfortable with adding this. Perhaps a poll is needed for this one.

K-6-C: With cyclical elections we will have a smaller pool of offices with a proportionately larger pool of candidates. There will also be 3 times as many opportunities to be elected per month.

K-6-d-1: If he does not intend to take the new office then he should not meddle in that election.

K-10: I agree but the vast majority wanted to keep the status quo when this was discussed.

L-cross references: Agreed. I'll work on adding these.

L-candidate not approved: A new candidate would need to be presented.

L-chat rep appointed: Must also be confirmed so will have citizen approval.

M-Council: The Council is comprised of the 6 Department Heads. Defined in the Constitution.

M-4-B: The numbers are wrong. A unanimous Council should be required to override the Presidential Veto.

M-General: They're all specified under the individual department positions. Any specific changes you can recommend?

N: Covers polls for the Legislative branch (articles and laws). I'll see what I can do to make it more clear.

O-absenteeism: Only dismissing an investigation requires all 3. Only polls for new laws, articles and standards are subject to Judicial Review.

O-2-c: A member of the Judiciary. I added this and also put it in the Judiciary section.

P: Default. Discussion and polling.

K-6-d-1

I agree with your idea Shaitan, as I read it as your intention to keep people from running in every cycle election and then not taking an office, but influencing votes in the process.

We may want to address wording here though, as I don't think your intention is to keep someone from running for two offices (one in which they are the incumbent) during their normal 30 day election period.

Is that correct interpretation?