Rosie,
The suspension of an election, which required amendment of the Constitution, is not adhering to or supporting the Constitution. It is suspending the Constitution to allow the suspension of the election. (Your logic strikes me as being of the "we must violate the Constitution in order to save it" variety -- which I find categorically specious.)
I don't think that we actually disagree on the importance of learning about the CDS before diving into it. Before I joined the CDS, I read everything that had been posted on these forums (over a thousand pages at that time) and read all available legal and formational documents. Then I joined, having already fully acquainted myself with the political and legal history and culture of the place. I joined with a bang -- with a forum post that changed the debate about the Judiciary and led (with help of others) to the creation of the Simplicity Party. My immediate participation in those discussions allowed me to quickly form connections, allegiances, friendships, rivalries -- personal connections -- and thereby participate in the living human culture as well. In other words, I hit the ground running -- and there was nothing wrong with or impossible about that.
(I do note that what I did involved a crazy amount of work. I don't think that is normal -- or normative. I don't expect anyone else to be like me in such things. I just don't want to rule out such a path to full and immediate participation.)
I also note that you appear to believe that the residency requirement (term of residency as opposed to mere fact of citizenship) was imposed to provide for an acculturation period. It was not. I participated in the debate that resulted in the requirement. As Gwyn pointed out in other posts, it was intended to address a problem I termed "the thousand friends and alts" problem. In essence, a CDS citizen, Michel Manen, appeared poised to steal an election by flooding the CDS with new citizens, many of whom appeared to be his own alts and others appeared to be ringers brought in for the express purpose of voting for him in that election rather than as legitimate citizens. Given the small size of our voting population, and the smaller size of the population that turns out for election, it would be easy to steal an election in this way. There appeared to be no easy way to verify the real identity of such toons, so we brought in the residency requirement as a messy and imperfect work-around.
That history is important here. First, the current election does not appear to have been threatened (despite some suspicion to the contrary) by the thousand friends and alts problem. I have personally met with the new citizens, and I know that they are not "friends and alts" of Cleo. Rather, they are new citizens who are truly excited by our project who were introduced to it by Cleo acting as a salesperson at the Chancellor's request. That is an entirely different situation. In fact, applying the residence rule in that situation has the unintended effect of subjecting legitimate citizens to government by people they oppose -- the very evil that the rule was trying to avoid.
The solution was to allow the proper Constitutional process to play out. Have the election on the published list. Challenge it. Unseat any improperly seated members of the RA. Have a by-election. Seat the people elected at the by-election. Any new citizen willing to stick around for such a process will have amply demonstrated their commitment to the culture and project of the CDS -- and will have been subjected to enough interaction to verify, for practical purposes, their real identity.
Beathan
Let's keep things simple enough to be fair, substantive enough to be effective, and insightful enough to be good.
