Citizen Discussion - Adjust Quorum/Census Levels?

[Shaitan]

Donsig & Cyc - You're both correct. donsig is also partially wrong. I used that particular wording that donsig pointed out so we could take a monthly census OR a cyclical census. This thread was indeed started because of the difficulty that disorganizer had with his park law bill but that item only brought into the clear how bad our census determination is. The root cause (the bad census figure) is what this thread is about fixing.

Cyc's second paragraph above says it perfectly.

 

[Eklektikos]

This does actually bring up a question... would we want one census per cycle, or one census per group of elections? If the latter, or if we don't make the move to cyclical elections at all, then I see no problem with the wording of Shaitan's proposed ammendment whatsoever. If, however, the former option is what is wanted, then this wording is too vague, to the point of being wildly misleading.
If we must write the mechanics of the census into the big C, then I think we should wait until we've figured out what system we're going to be running with in the next game and word it accordingly at that point. This game finishes tonight, there is no pressing need for this change to be rushed through, so why not wait until we can be 100% sure of wording it correctly?

 

[Shaitan]

The wording can be interpreted either way, depending on which way we wish to go if/when we move to cyclical elections.

 

[Cyc]

I agree with Shaitan. The wording cover the most recently contested elections since the last census. That's the cycle. If more extreme or precise wording is needed, then it should be written into a law or standard.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Shaitan
This thread was indeed started because of the difficulty that disorganizer had with his park law bill but that item only brought into the clear how bad our census determination is.

The census figure in the constitution is the basis for changing the constitution. We wanted it to be difficult to do so. We've not tested it yet because there have been no proposed constitutional amendments. We do not know if it is too difficult or too easy now to change the constitution so (IMHO) we should leave it as is.

This whole thread is about it being too difficult to pass laws. There is nothing in the constitution that says the census has to be used as the basis for passing laws. If you want to make laws easier to pass then make the needed changes in the CoL and CoS.

If we are to have a constitution that takes a great deal of effort to change and a system of laws that can be changed with a reasonable effort then we must face the fact that we need two seperate systems for making the changes. It is a great idea to have one census and base everything on that but as long as constitutional amendments and lawmaking are tied together one or the other will be too difficult or too easy to pass.

 

[Octavian X]

Changes to the CoS are very simple at this point in time. A legislative council vote is all that is needed.

I recently had my own problems with the current census. My poll to approve Toasty failed due to lack of votes. It probably is my fault it did so.

Perhaps we could set up two different quroums for amending the constitution and changing the CoL, and approving officials for office. I would suggest keeping the current system for changing the Constitution, to keep it difficult, but using the poll averaging system (the current proposed change) for changing the CoL and approving new appointees.

 

[Daaraa]

I agree with the Doughnut God (I love your avatar and title )

We should have different levels for constitutional changes, passing of laws and appointment ratification. All three carry different reprecutions.

For the constitutional changes I'd say 3/4 or 2/3 of the quorum.
Laws should be 2/3 to 1/2. (Unfortunatly I feel laws are getting passed too easily and almost anyone can ram a law through if they really wanted to.)
Appointment Ratifications should be like 1/3. I didn't even look at the toasty vote (see above post) as I didn't have any feelings on the issue. I would have abstained because I didn't know toasty well enough.

I think quorums should be defined as (3/4, 2/3, 1/2 and 1/3) of the average total votes in the last monthly elections.
I think census should be defined as the total of people who are registered. A census is just a count of people who are able to participte.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am) wasn't congress defined as the number of people participating in the Pres election? I think it should be re-defined as the average of the total votes cast in the elections for ministers. (ie - Trade but not governors)

I think a change should be made, but not quite as sweeping as people are proposing.

 

[disorganizer]

1) using the registered people is awfull, as many left. regular reregistration would be the consequence
2) laws must be easy to change as long as standards are not defined by citizen vote. at the moment standards are passed by citizen vote and not by edict of the upper class, the laws can be made harder to change. the sense of the laws at the moment is also a counter-measure for standards not in the will of citizenry
3) we should really urgently make a proposal for having appointed officialy (including mayors and the office people [census etc]) being going thru an acceptance poll with a 1/3 minimum acceptance level.

 

[donsig]

Argghh!!!!!!

 

[disorganizer]

oh. donsig! heart attack?

 

[Shaitan]

There's a lot of confusion here. The point of this thread is simply and solely that our census is incorrect. It does not reflect, in any way, the actual number of participating citizens. This affects everything that is based from the census. We need to correct how the census is determined. Everything else comes after that. We need a correct starting point. Basing the census on only the Presidential election has been conclusively shown to be a bad idea. It is far too likely to put our census high or low due to the popularity of candidates and progression of the vote (how close the race is). The only thing that the proposal I put forward does is correct this dangerous census form by taking the average of elections instead of basing the number on a single election.

There is no quorum for changing the Constitution. There are two requirements for changing the constitution. The first is approval of at least half of ALL citizens. The second is approval of 2/3 of the Senate (governors). As you can see, there is no need for a quorum as the requirements themselves require participation in excess of the normal quorum.

The quorum affects all polls. This is good and right. It is supposed to be a yardstick of participation. It defines the minimum number of people who we demand be involved in an issue before that issue can achieve validity. Quorums are not supposed to be used to make things difficult. They are there only to force validity.

The way to make something more difficult is to change the approval ratio required for a measure to pass. Let's fix the census, which also fixes the quorum. Then we can raise the approval requirements through the roof if that is what is desired.

 

[Cyc]

And yes, it's that easy.

 

[Octavian X]

This makes quantum mechanics a walk in the park...

My personal opinion is that we will never get a correct count of all active citizens. Elections will always draw extra attention.

The only way to get a correct census of the active citizenry is if we could get a number of individual visitors to the demogame forum from TF, or to simply count count each citizen of whether or not they posted on an indivdual day.

 

[disorganizer]

well, the pres-election showed to be the wrong measure for the quorum (26 now i believe). the average proposal is good, as it would have set the quorum to 20 (i think) which was at any time a usable approach (almost all poll got 20)

 

[Eklektikos]

I was about 3/4 of the way through typing out a lengthy post in opposition to the wording of the proposal when enlightenment dawned. Cyc and Shaitan are right, this ammendment will be fine as it is for the current system, and will only need a law or standard to further define the meaning of "most recent elections" to work under a cyclical system. If anyone wishes to slap me around with a large trout for being so slow on the uptake, now's your chance

 

[disorganizer]

/me slaps elektikos around with a secret installation hidden in the constitutional books

 

[Daaraa]

Originally posted by disorganizer
1) using the registered people is awfull, as many left. regular reregistration would be the consequence
2) laws must be easy to change as long as standards are not defined by citizen vote. at the moment standards are passed by citizen vote and not by edict of the upper class, the laws can be made harder to change. the sense of the laws at the moment is also a counter-measure for standards not in the will of citizenry
3) we should really urgently make a proposal for having appointed officialy (including mayors and the office people [census etc]) being going thru an acceptance poll with a 1/3 minimum acceptance level.

1) I did not say anything about using registered people. I just don't like the way the word "census" is being used.

2)Laws should never be easy to change. That is why most legitimate governments in RL have it difficult to change laws. I just don't feel comfortable with lowering quorum levels to allow a select few people to pass laws. Yes, it will not be a "select few" but if the quorum were lowered to say 10% (extreme case being used to make a point) I could come up with 10% of the quorum to vote for some stupid, trolling law that might say all cities can never be named "Grey Fox". By lowering the quorum rules, you will create a quazi-upper class and people who don't frequent the demo game every day could miss the passing of a law or two. (two day polls of laws???? ) Disorganizer, I mean no offense, sometimes you can come across as a dictator who "knows the will of the citizens" It is just an impression I get sometimes. I hope it is just the bad way I am reading the post.

3)I agree that appointed officials need to be made quicker.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Shaitan
There's a lot of confusion here. The point of this thread is simply and solely that our census is incorrect....
There is no quorum for changing the Constitution. There are two requirements for changing the constitution. The first is approval of at least half of ALL citizens. The second is approval of 2/3 of the Senate (governors). As you can see, there is no need for a quorum as the requirements themselves require participation in excess of the normal quorum.

No it's not confusion Shaitan. It is your desire to have a single basis for constitutional amendments, lawmaking, the passage of standards and validating polls. It is a great idea in theory but not in practice.
Yes, there are no quorum levels for constitutional amendments. But as you say at least half of ALL citizens must approve an amendment. In order to do that we had to define what was meant by ALL citizens. After much debate we settled on the census and based that on the votes in the presidential election. As I said earlier, this set up for changing the constitution hasn't even been tested yet so how do we know it doesn't work?

As for everything coming from the census that is because the CoL and CoS define it to be so. Go ahead and change the CoL and CoS so that changes to them are based on the average of the elections. But please leave the census/constitutional changes article in place.

 

[disorganizer]

2) to point is: the citizens have no influence on standards the way they are defined now. they are done as edict of government over people without any citizen inclusion (except, of course, the department leaders). the sense of laws as the ruleset is layed out now was and is that bad standards which the executive does not want to change can be superseeded by the citizenry by passing a law against the standard, which will invalidate it.
if we have a too high quorum level for laws, then we make the citizenry inable to change any standards being put up by the government.
not more, not less. btw: we dont want to lower quorum levels, just to make it "fairer" as only using the presidential election as calculation base is a rather single-sided measure.

A census is counting citizens. A active citizen census is calculating the active citizens. Which other interpretations are there?

Another point:
Nobody said real life is a democracy.

 

[Eklektikos]

@Daaraa

The idea behind this change is not to lower the quorum to make it easier for the debataholics here to pass laws, but to make sure that the "census" gives a more realistic view of the number of active citizens. It won't make it easy to push through unwanted legislation, because the requirements for a 2/3 majority ensure that a change to the laws always needs an overwhelming majority for it to be implemented.