DG6: Complete constitution proposal

[Cyc]

I am completely against having any non-office holding people play as DP, appointed by the President or not. The Vice President holds an office an can be held accountable for their actions. Joe Blow from OT can come in and screw thinbgs up and leave. Only people elected to an Office by the people should run the game in a Turn Chat.

 

[Chieftess]

Citizens that could play could be based on how long they've been in the game, and their contribution.

 

[Black_Hole]

Citizens that could play could be based on how long they've been in the game, and their contribution.

no, if a citizen wants to be DP, have them run for Pres, vice pres, or something high on the CoC list

 

[DaveShack]

[pre]
Article P Freedom of Information

1. All officials, elected and appointed, are responsible for making information
about the game, in areas for which they have responsibility, available to
all citizens. Such information must be sufficient for a citizen who does
not have the ability to open the game to make an informed decision
on any matter which requires the will of the people to be determined.
2. Officials may delegate the task of providing information to the populace
but responsibility for the information remains with the official
[/pre]

@Strider, pre tags are making everything double spaced, do you know how to make it single spaced?

 

[Ashburnham]

Such information must be sufficient for a citizen who does
not have the ability to open the game to make an informed decision

That's a mighty hard definition to put into practice. I agree that the idea of making sure officials post information on their government sites is a good idea; I wish it was simply the case without having to implement it into law. However, I think this particular wording is too open to interpretation, and too open to abuse by citizens who may be dissatisfied with an official for other reasons. Perhaps this would be better..

Such information but provide a clear description of the
current situation in all the official's areas of responsibility.

 

[Donovan Zoi]

no, if a citizen wants to be DP, have them run for Pres, vice pres, or something high on the CoC list

This is why I'd like to see the President/Vice-President run on one ticket. It eliminates the possibility of fierce competitors sharing the DP duties, and also allows for a less active player who wants to be DP to take on the VP role.

 

[Strider]

This is why I'd like to see the President/Vice-President run on one ticket. It eliminates the possibility of fierce competitors sharing the DP duties, and also allows for a less active player who wants to be DP to take on the VP role.

I'll have to agree with this, and take it a step further, why not every poistions leader/deputy run on one ticket?

 

[DaveShack]

I'll have to agree with this, and take it a step further, why not every poistions leader/deputy run on one ticket?

Unfortunately that would make it even harder to get contested elections, since we don't have twice the number of really active citizens as we have positions.

 

[GenMarshall]

I'll have to agree with this, and take it a step further, why not every poistions leader/deputy run on one ticket?

I would be against that idea. I perfer the system that was inplace with the current deputy situations of having the person whom obtains the 2nd highest total of votes to become the deputy. I would also agree with Mr. Dave Shack on that it would create a smaller canidate pool for witch to get contested elections.

 

[Octavian X]

[pre]
Article P Freedom of Information

1. All officials, elected and appointed, are responsible for making information
about the game, in areas for which they have responsibility, available to
all citizens. Such information must be sufficient for a citizen who does
not have the ability to open the game to make an informed decision
on any matter which requires the will of the people to be determined.
2. Officials may delegate the task of providing information to the populace
but responsibility for the information remains with the official
[/pre]

I really like this. It's a great idea, especially as we move toward C3C. I might add specifically, though, a bit requiring a turn-by-turn summary of the game play by the DP, to be provided in a reasonably soon after turn play actually occurs. This has been something of a chronic problem, especially when turn chat logs have been expected to be the only record of play.

 

[Octavian X]

This is why I'd like to see the President/Vice-President run on one ticket. It eliminates the possibility of fierce competitors sharing the DP duties, and also allows for a less active player who wants to be DP to take on the VP role.

I've always preferred a system by which Deputies are appointed by elected officials, rather than the other whereby the runner up gets the nod. As this game as displayed for us, while useful for bringing in a dissenting voice in government, some teams don't work well together (Provolution and Epimethius in the MSAV being one rather infamous example).

I like the idea of running a ticket, and I think it could work. Candidates would have the option of running as one ticket in an election. It would be optional, and would simply be a system where a nominee of a position declared the intention to appoint another individual to the position of deputy should the nominee win.

 

[Black_Hole]

I too like the idea of having a leader basically choose his deputy beforehand. however if no deputy is appointed beforehand, I believe the leader should be able to choose his deputy after the election not having the runner up be deputy.

 

[classical_hero]

I'll have to agree with this, and take it a step further, why not every poistions leader/deputy run on one ticket?

That could require the creation of Political parties.

 

[Black_Hole]

That could require the creation of Political parties.

how? when you accept your nomination you appoint someone else to run with you on your ticket(as deputy), of course the other person has to accept and will sometimes know even b4 elections. the type of political parties banned(actually were they even banned this dg?) were the ones that are called slate voting, where everyone in the group votes only for members of that group in elections...

 

[DaveShack]

On political parties, the thing we need to avoid is any appearance of impropriety. We already have case where certain individuals who happen to be more powerful than others have a perennial problem of being accused of stuffing ballot boxes, eliminating candidates they don't like by "special" means, and other nefarious acts which run counter to democracy. Political parties carry the danger of spreading these allegations to those they lend power to, which is probably a bad thing in this environment.

The suggestion of running mates doesn't really result in parties, since it would not imply several people running for separate offices on the same platform and with pledges of mutual support.

It's still a bad idea to require running mates, and I have doubts that it would work in practice due to the extremely small pool of people who are available for leadership positions.

 

[ravensfire]

Comments by section:

Preamble - Sure, sets the tone and background

Article A - Added "... and speedy ..." to the right to a trial section. Otherwise, straight forward.

Article B - Wordy - perhaps this:
"Governing rules shall consist of these Article of Constitution, as amended, and lower forms of law as needed. No law may be passed that contradicts these Articles except for an Amendment."

I understand the goal of the last line, but don't think it's needed. Make that a question for Judicial candidates.

Article C - Yup.

Article D - By office:
President - Would add that the President is responsible for all area not covered by another leader.
Domestic - Remove mention of workers - stick with the President only. Also, state that Dom runs all cities not in a province, and controls city placement.
Please, remove the "as prescribed by law"
Foreign - " ... foreign nations, trade embargoes, investigation, espionage and embassy missions,"
Defense - Yup.
Trade - Move the comment about gifting cities to a seperate sentance.
Science - Add the spaceship construction here. Might want to clarify the Science - Trade relationship some.
Culture - Yup
Overall - Might want to think about wording changes - not sure what though ...
Section 7 - Woah - somewhat overkill. One sentance, in the Article D main section, is plenty. The Judiciary part is implicit.
Section 8 - Again, somewhat overkill - should be implicit. I understand the purpose of both of these sections (7 and 8) is to be proactive, but they are just overkill.

Article E - Remove "Articles" - everything after the ratification is an amendment. I would also add "and approval" to the judicial review clause.

Article F - Remove "if any" and "as prescribed by law".

Article G - Slight rewrite might be useful. I would also add a clause about the election office overseeing all elections. Then, in the CoL, cover the EO.

Article J - Do we did the "outide the scope of the forums" section? Really? How about we add " on the DG forums on CivFanatics.com" to the second sentance.

Remove the "informal" - require that a leader be bound by a poll that they start, or that they agree to be bound by. Too easy for leaders to create polls that bind other leaders - that's rude.

Section 2 - require a second citizen making the request, otherwise I like it.

Article K - Require that the President create the TCIT.

Section 2 - just don't know about this, no comment.

Article L - Yup

Article M - Yup

Article N - Yup

Article O - Change the "well ahead of expansion" to "in a timely manner." Add "The Domestic Minister will be responsible for these discussions." Change cultural boundaries to "current cultural boundaries." Remove city placement (moved to Dom section).

Article P - OMG - YES!!! Absolutely I like this (having proposed something similar in DG4). Clear, covers the goals without being restricting.

In general, though, looks good. Nice work, DS, putting the JR's in here!

 

[ravensfire]

I'm hoping to get some time tonight and I'm going to toss out two proposals. The first is just a slightly rewritten version of DS's, using slightly more blunt language. The second is a more rewritten, with more emphasis given to Governors.

BTW - DS, I was hoping to see your proposal out here - I was really looking foward to seeing such a different proposal.

-- Ravensfire

 

[DaveShack]

I'm hoping to get some time tonight and I'm going to toss out two proposals. The first is just a slightly rewritten version of DS's, using slightly more blunt language. The second is a more rewritten, with more emphasis given to Governors.

BTW - DS, I was hoping to see your proposal out here - I was really looking foward to seeing such a different proposal.

-- Ravensfire

I think I'll post it, in plain language and with pictures.

 

[DaveShack]

We should keep a version of the original game rules as a backup plan. Any more work to be done on this one?

 

[Ashburnham]

I'd imagine a few more people need to sign off on this before we make it final, but from what I can see it looks good. I suggest we keep this as the alternative until we nail down whether or not we want to use the "alternative style".