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To the Right Honourable Founder, Nassau-Windsor, LSM:
I hereby request a second seat in Parliament. I do not believe there is a statute against it, and the seat is uncontested as of now. Furthermore, I recommend to my Honourable and Right Honourable colleagues that they too request a second seat so that Parliament is able to dutifully execute the powers and functions vested in it by our Constitution and Laws.
To my Rt. Hon. Friend, Lord Libertarian democracy, Greeting!
I write this message in response to your earlier correspondence regarding the request of another Seat in Parliament.
I am afraid that I cannot determine your request favourably. Please allow me to elaborate on the reasons why.
First, it may well be true that there is no express statute law that prevents the cumulation of an office in this manner. I have looked at the statutes I thought could be relevant (such as the Parliamentary Elections Act and the Electoral Notifications Act). However, I still think that there are some rules that presuppose the rule that no member can hold more than one Seats in a single Session of Parliament.
Section D of Article I of the Constitution reads as follows: "All Members have the right to run of Union Offices". In my interpretation, the office is that of "Member of Parliament". At this moment in time, you already hold the said office, as you were already elected and appointed to serve as MP in this Session. It would be a contradictio in terminis to argue that one could run for an office that one already holds. It is also worth explaining, I think, why it would not be such a contradictio if one candidates oneself for the next Session of Parliament. The office that we now both hold, could be more specifically described as "Member of Parliament for the fifteenth Parliamentary Session". Therefore, we would not already hold that of Member of Parliament for the sixteenth Session, and thus we can be enrolled on the ballot paper for such subsequent terms.
Another point I would like to make is that under the current electoral statute law, a Member of the Region (which, in my eyes should be read as "player" or at the very least "account") cannot be placed on the ballot paper as both an individual candidate and a candidate for a party. Furthermore, if a party receives sufficient votes to hold more seats than it has candidates to fill them, the remaining seats will be distributed amongst others. In other words, they will not be allocated to the party that - some might say - ought to receive them.
I think it is only proper to extend these provisions by analogy to individual members who receive more entitlements to seats than they can fill. Please bear also in mind that if this rule is not accepted, it could theoretically be possible for a single member (player) to hold all Seats in Parliament by himself as an individual candidate.
I understand that there is a serious concern regarding the number of members within the region and the activity of some of them. That is why I have asked questions about this to the Prime Minister. I think I might be able to say that I am as concerned for this region as you are yourself. But changing our constitutional conventions and practices in a way proposed in your request, is in my view not a proper response to the current situation, nor is it a solution for our troubles in the mean time.
If you have any further questions or points regarding this issue, please let me know, and I will do my absolute best to work things out for all of us.
[Signed]
I thank my Rt. Hon. friend for their thoughtful response to my request, but I would ask that they reconsider imposing such a strict interpretation of vague Law for the time being. Such an interpretation, in my opinion, only prevents our progress and our revival.
I disagree with the given interpretation of Article I, Section D of the Constitution. The Hon. Founder interprets "Union Offices" to only apply to a single seat in Parliament. I do not agree that the cited statute applies as stated. It's purpose and spirit is that no member of the PUSN shall be denied the right to run in elections. It does not limit the number of such offices, nor does it have any meaning beyond what I've previous stated. Moreover, the Rt. Hon. Founder says it would be contradictio to hold two seats in Parliament. While I agree that the "Office" of each seat is "Member of Parliament for the ____ Session", I would argue that there are 9 such offices, not nine nations sharing one office. Each Office acts independently of the other. Thus, I do not see it as contradictio if a Senator were to hold two such offices. Furthermore, the rights guaranteed in Article I, Section D of the Constitution would not be infringed as there are presently not enough nations to fill all seats, so no one is being precluded from exercising their right to run for office
My Rt. Hon. friend cites party law, however that is not applicable in this instance, in which I am not running under any Party List, as there are not enough members to necessitate an election. You are correct in that the remaining seats from a party list would be distributed to the others, but in this case, there are no such 'others' to distribute the seats to. Furthermore, I would argue that the Rt. Hon. Founders concerns of a single nation holding all seats in Parliament are not valid. If a single nation garners a unanimous vote to hold all seats in Parliament, should they not be awarded such? Should the democratic institution be overruled? In the even that only one member runs for Parliament, I think it would be much more improper to leave an empty and dysfunctional Parliament, then to deny that nation their rightful seats.
As the Founder, you have the right to manage elections within the scope of law. I believe a balanced policy would be to allow each member to hold a maximum of two seats. Then, when Parliament has the requisite amount of members, we can properly change our system from quorum to majority, and prohibit the holding of multiple seats of Parliament. But this will not possible unless the Rt. Hon. Founder permits a second seat to be held. This would not violate any existing statute of Law or of the Constitution, and would only be temporary. I remind you that we are presently still under a State of Emergency, and while I agree with you that we cannot break our Laws to achieve our goals, this is merely a case of changing our current interpretation of them, and during a time of emergency such may be required.
I do encourage my Honourable and Right Honourable colleagues in Parliament and the Government to opine on this matter.
In closing, I thank the my Right Honourable friend for their time and consideration.
Sincerely,
The Right Honourable Minister of Jurisprudence Lord Libertarian democracy, RO MP LSM GSM
(Boy did I miss typing out my outrageously long title lol)
Thank you for asking. I apologize if my answer doesn't really help at all, but this is sort of how I see things. I will also reply to my Hon. friend's point in the General Debate Topic soon.
Several points:
-I would contend that the main clinching factor of whether a particular nation can hold multiple seats in Parliament relies on whether we consider a Nation to be capable of standing more than one candidates. This may sound odd, but see SO 2016-18 ("Parliamentary Elections Act") http://parliamentaryunion.forumotion.org/t164-so-2016-18-parliamentary-elections-act-amended:
"An ELECTORAL LIST is a list of candidates for the Senate submitted to the Founder before the election. A list is composed of at least one candidate, but if it has more, they must be ranked. [...]
1) The Founder will open the candidatures no less than one week before the election. Anyone may declare their intention to form an electoral list, alone or with specified others. [...]
5) The Founder will then ascertain, from the Seats per party according to Sainte-Lague method line in the Resulting table, the number of seats to award to each electoral list.
6) If a certain list should be awarded more seats than they have candidates, all its candidates are elected, and a by-election, run under these same rules, is scheduled for within two weeks to fill the vacancy/ies.
7) A: Whenever a number of independents have equal votes, and are competing for a smaller number of seats than the number of candidates concerned, a runoff election will be called between the drawn candidates."
What does this tell us?
1- That the intention was always for nations to act as unitary entities (incapable of splitting their sovereignty as members of the Union, as citizens if you will, a necessary logical prerequisite under the constitutional "9 Senators rule" for considering members of holding different independent offices as Senators). The language is ambiguous and unhelpful.
2- Who can declare themselves as a candidate? Well, "anyone" may form an electoral list, "alone or with specified others." The use of "or" is clearly intended to mean that you can either run as an independent (a 1 candidate list) for one seat (no matter how many votes you get, you only get one seat), or as a list, "with others" implying that a list of more than one candidate requires another nation (from which we infer members cannot present several candidacies).
3- However, while this is the main interpretation, it is worth noting that the definition of "candidate" is never fully defined. We come back to the problem of whether members hold several Senatorial offices simultaneously. If so, then the whole candidate limitation part of the electoral list law becomes moot, because we would be able to consider Nation1's first candidacy distinct from that same Nation1's second or third etc candidacy.
Basically, I think it comes down to whether the constitution considers nations as divisible. The constitution is helpful, but not too much. Throughout, it talks of "Members." Never "nations"-- a concept which lends itself more to divisibility. A member is considered (though never explicitly stated) to be a unitary construct, defined in NationStates by a nation, but transferable elsewhere (the forum, where nations become users). The filiation (again, not stated) from member to candidate in Article IV would rule against a member being able to stand several candidates, but in the end, there seems to be no concrete, irrefutable grounds for this interpretation. All the various documents are vacuous enough in their meaning to prohibit any definitive ruling.
In the end, I would take this to mean that it is at the Founder's discretion, taking into account circumstances, to rule the interpretation relative to election law.
And yet, this poses the question: can the Founder rule on basic constitutional concepts? I would tend to say no (nowhere does it explicitly say that), and there seem to be strong fundamental constitutional implications against treating a member as being able to hold two seats simultaneously while keeping them separate. We aren't, in the end, a typical NationStates RP government region: we don't play at parties that determine fictional laws in imitation of RW politics, we make the actual laws that we rule our region with. In the end, I don't think that's in the Founder's power to rule on, because the Constitution is written so strongly that way, that it would have to perhaps be a higher judicial authority (which we don't really seem to have, maybe Parliament?) to rule on that question.
One last point: the puppets law (SO 2016-06). Basically, it criminalizes voter fraud, taken (vacuously of course) to mean using puppets to run several candidacies and/or inflate the vote of one candidacy. The underlying concept is to prevent more than one nations under the control of a same actor to control more than one seat. This written law can ultimately be implied by extension to this case, which is substantially (in its essence) the same.
And yet again, there is a way out. A high judicial authority (again, Parliament?) could rule, given the written ambiguity of the law, that SO 2016-06 does not apply to multiple candidacies, only to inflating votes for one main candidate. I think that's a dangerous road to go down though.
All in all, I know I raised more questions than I answered, so sorry, but basically my main takeaway is that our laws aren't frankly that much help, because they never conceived this eventuality.
The Honourable Minister for Health, John Turia
"Apologies to the Union for the Empire's poor response to the "unexpected" yearly reanimation of the dead. Most Ministry personnel were out participating in festivities, and we were unable to establish any meaningful strategy to contain this year's outbreak. We would like to thank international and Union officials for limiting the scale of the disaster as much as they did while Ministry of Health staff struggled to reach work without attracting the attention of the living dead. We would also like to note that the reburial of misplaced bodies has begun, and efforts to coordinate the return of bodies stolen or relocated to unexpected locations is also underway. All other victims are being catalogued and identified by local health officials. However, donations of steel coffins would be greatly appreciated so that the yearly event cannot reach this scale again."
Like zombies, one day this region will rise again
Buteray, Unitedterran, Abdoa, and Hashkin
Hey, Guys, I am an older nation looking for a new region after The Democratic Republic has turned out to be anything but. I would love to become more active in this region.
Buteray, Nassau-windsor, and Libertarian democracy
We are an old region, originally founded in 2015. At our height, we had close to 90 members and our active Regional Government was pumping out over 100 bills a year. Unfortunately, around 2018, our activity died off, and we've struggled to organize a reboot since. But a few of us are still hear, awaiting the day. Nevertheless, welcome to our home.
Buteray and Nassau-windsor
Post self-deleted by Bergcornopolis.
Yes, I would love to run so that we can collectively begin rebuilding this region
If we went with the Constitutionally-defined date, that would be February 23rd....
There is precedent, however, for calling special elections. However, regardless, under SO#2017-32 the Presidential and PM elections take precedence over Parliamentary elections, so they must happen before any parliamentary elections.
http://parliamentaryunion.forumotion.org/t389-so-2017-32-electoral-precedence-act
Then let us get a special election called for.
Alright then, so either the Founder Nassau-windsor can call the vote, or the Cabinet can appoint a Temporary Elections Official under SO#2017-92 "Union Continuity Act" (http://parliamentaryunion.forumotion.org/t630-so-2017-92-union-continuity-act)
Tagging Abdoa, Leader of Parliament, and Aralunya, Minister without Portfolio
Electoral Notification - Presidential Election
I, Nassau-windsor, in my capacity as Founder and under the applicable provisions of the Electoral Notifications Act and the Presidential Elections Act, do hereby give notice that an election for the office of President is upcoming, since that office has become vacant.
Now know ye that all such persons willing to be put on the ballot paper for the said upcoming presidential election are required to notify me, either by telegram at NationStates or private message at our Forum in accordance with the applicable provisions in the aforementioned Acts.
And know ye that the notifications are to be send in no later than the thirtieth day of January next.
The vote for this election shall commence on the first day of February next, and shall last for 72-hours.
Electoral Notification - Prime Ministerial Election
I, Nassau-windsor, in my capacity as Founder and under the applicable provisions of the Electoral Notifications Act and the Prime Ministerial Elections Act, do hereby give notice that an election for the office of Prime Minister is upcoming, since that office has become vacant.
Now know ye that all such persons willing to be put on the ballot paper for the said upcoming prime ministerial election are required to notify me, either by telegram at NationStates or by private message at our Forum in accordance with the applicable provisions in the aforementioned Acts.
And know ye that the notifications are to be send in no later than the first day of February next.
The vote for this election shall commence on the third day of February next, immediately after the presidential election, and shall last for 72-hours.
Electoral Notification - Parliamentary Election
I, Nassau-windsor, in my capacity as Founder and under the applicable provisions of the Electoral Notifications Act and the Parliamentary Elections Act, do hereby give notice that an especial election for Parliament is upcoming.
Now know ye tjhat all such persons willing to be put on the ballot paper, either individually as an independent candidate or grouped as a party representative, are required to notify me, either by telegram at NationStates or by private message at our Forum in accordance with the applicable provisions in the aforementioned Acts.
And know ye that the notifications are to be send in no later than the fifth day of February next.
The vote for this election shall commence on the sixth day of February next, immediately after the prime ministerial election, and shall last for 72-hours.
Buteray, Bergcornopolis, and Libertarian democracy
Very well, as you might have seen in my 'Electoral Notification', our regional 'laws' require you to send me a message on either the forum, or a telegram through NationStates to be allowed on the ballot paper though. ;) If you send one of these two messages, you will be added to the list of candidates. :D
You will find that our body of laws, comprised of well over 100 individual documents, is rather complex xD
http://parliamentaryunion.forumotion.org/f27-the-legislative-archive
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