By-elections .. the best way to chose?

[Shep]

The SC has given us the task of finding the fairest , quickest and most popular way of carrying out By-Elections .. below is the text from the SC as we the RA received it ..

Requests to the RA from the SC

Postby Callipygian » Fri Jan 03, 2014 8:13 pm
Requests from the SC:

Item 1) Regarding byelections:

The Constitution currently reads:

"Vacancies in RA positions will be filled by by-election administered on a schedule set by the Scientific Council consistent with other applicable CDS law."

A by-election requires a timeframe of from 4 to 6 weeks, depending on when the vacancy occurs, to ensure that the process is performed consistent with applicable CDS laws: the citizenry must have a reasonable amount of time to be notified of the census and byelection, to declare to run, to challenge the candidate or Citizen lists, to campaign and to place polls and conduct the voting. This timeframe for byelection can mean a seat is empty for 2 or 3 meetings of the RA; with a RA of only 5 seats this can seriously impair the function of government.

Therefore, the SC requests that the RA consider a law that addresses filling vacant seats on RA in a more timely fashion, whether it be automatic appointment of a candidate in the previous election cycle, based on the voting of that election, or by specifying shorter timeframes for the steps in a byelection cycle, or by some other method that the RA identifies."

[Pip Torok]

I'd like to suggest one thing we can do :

Citizens wishing to be considered by-election candidates to apply to the SC from the start of any given term to say they would be willing to stand. If they've already said so, and no longer wish to for that term, they then tell the SC. The SC could publish this list of by-election candidates from time to time.

This list would give voters a chance to assess candidates over a longer period.

Pip Torok

[Rosie Gray]

Perhaps we should consider the time left for the elected RA mandate. By this I mean:

1) Within the first two months of an election, if there are candidates that ran but were not elected, that we accept the next-in-line candidate from the vote count. If there are no other candidates, that we hold a 'simple' (1 vote per citizen) by-election. That candidates be given 1 week to campaign, and citizens 1 week to vote from there.

2) From 3 months of an election to 5 months; hold a 'simple' (1 vote per citizen) by-election, parameters same as #2

3) The final (sixth) month before next election; that the RA function with the existing RA members.

[cleopatraxigalia]

I agree with Gwyn that the faction system was a way to eliminate this issue, or at least mitigate it some. ( I do recall a time when an entire faction pulled out and a bye election was then called ) . Nonetheless, it is unlikely that a formal return to the faction system will happen at this time.

One thing that strikes me is how as we approach a population of 90 citizens and have a RA size of 5.. how the issue of going back to a larger RA would also be something that would greatly help the issue of an absent RA seat leaving us without quorum. Personally, as I read the law on quorum is 1/2 + 1.. as I read it , then with an RA of 5 quorum is 4. 2.5 plus one is 3.5 my interpretation is that it is 4. Because to have half a person present requires a whole person to be there. Nonetheless, As we would have 7 citizens in RA now if we had followed the older law allowing the RA to rise in number with the population size. This would be a better way to go allowing then for more representation and less of an issue when 1 or 2 RA members are absent. Let's discuss this again too.

I do not like to see a situation where when quorum is 3 people, two citizens' votes make law for the close to 90 other citizens of CDS. This is dangerous in my opinion.

I am not immediately opposed to stage 1. and 2. of rosies plan, but would drop point 3. and extend 2. til the end of the term. .. The glaring omission in all of this is also the CLEAR and transparent process for dropping out and calling a by election in the first place, and then what happens if you change your mind. We saw this last term with Ranma and with Nolligan . This seemed to point to a missing piece of the legislation that says how a person who is on the RA drops out and when it is official. Ranma dropped out, stayed out, came back .. etc. over a time or two as i recall. Nolligan told someone he wanted to drop out, but then it wasn't accepted or something, I don't know for sure the facts of these in detail, but do know we need a more definite process for resigning and coming back to a position.

How one drops out should be public, and so should under what circumstances and for how long one can change their mind.

I am completely opposed to people being appointed by the RA or SC .. . And in a perfect world I would not even want the stage one part of rosies suggestion, but would see that as a compromise. Just running out the list of candidates slated in the first place seems inappropriate especially with our "ranking " system of voting. Things can change on the political arena between the time of the first election and the by election and the citizens true wishes may no longer be reflected in the last vote. certainly not by someone far down the list.

I would like to also allow a recount of the voter list for the by election. So that newer citizens than the original voter list would be allowed to run. Months into a term for example, we have a different landscape of voters and potential candidates in CDS . this should update with by elections in my opinion.

cleo

[Patroklus Murakami]

Cross-posting from the thread hereas the debate properly belongs in this thread.

There is still the question of dealing with RA members who resign mid-term with an STV system. There are several ways we could tackle this:

• 1) Do nothing. We already have a way of dealing with this, we run a by-election. If the problem is that sometimes people resign then change their minds, we should amend the RA Rules of Procedure to make this a 'one shot' deal. I would make it so that resignation only takes place when an RA member sends a notecard to that effect to the LRA (or the Dean or some other suitable official) and that such a resignation cannot be taken back. The only problem would be if someone resigns close to the end of term. In those circumstances I say, let's not get too upset. We can live without one member at the end of a term. This solution would be my preference.

  2) Let factions control seats. This is what we used to do. People vote for factions, not individuals, and factions control the seats. If someone resigned, they would be replaced by the faction with someone with a similar ideological frame of mind. Problem was, this meant you had to be a member of a faction to get elected and some factions were, ahem, less than democratic in their mode of operation. To go back to this way of working, we would need to institute rules so that factions behaved themselves better and we would have to accept that individuals who do not want to join a faction would never be represented. I think we have left this kind of politics behind so it would not be my first choice.

  3) Do what other systems do. There are three other options here (apart from by-elections which are also what other people do). They are described here.

  3a) Go back to the original ballot papers and work out what would have happened if the resigning candidate had been eliminated and the votes they gained reallocated. This can work but it can turn out that none of the original candidates is available to serve.

  3b) Have the RA or some other body (SC or Chancellor) appoint someone. This does not really respect the voters' choice so perhaps not the best solution for us.

  3c) Replacement list. We could make it so that, when an individual gets elected they nominate a list of people who would replace them if they resigned. Factions could list other faction members but it would also allow individuals to stand and to say who would replace them if they were to resign. This way, everyone knows what they are voting for and there should be no surprises. If we had to make a change, I would go for this option but I have some worries about people 'playing the system'.

First of all though we should think about whether this is really necessary and, for whichever option is favoured, we should work out what the options are for 'gaming' the system.

[cleopatraxigalia]

Bylections are the best solution to filling a vacant RA seat. Shortening the time frames seem appropriate for a by election. The problem of resignation procedures still needs to be addressed. The only part I disagree with is using a notecard to the LRA as the form of notification. I would prefer the notice to be PUBLIC, i.e. posted on the forums and/or an Inworld "notice" via the group. I would also prefer a Public statement that has a very limited ( maybe 24 hours) time that it can be recanted.

Also if we had more than five people in RA losing one might not be so drastic. But in a four member RA .. quorum becomes what ? 2 ? I find that unacceptable. Even if quorum stays 3 with a four member RA .. does that mean 2 people voting can change law. I also find that unacceptable. I highly recommend we reinstate raising the size of the RA with the growth of the population. This term would have had 7 people in RA .. if that was the case now the ongoing concern of a RA that doesn't function becomes less of an issue.. cleo

[cleopatraxigalia]

Having a system where a seat can be controlled by either a faction or an individual is an option we might explore.

[cleopatraxigalia]

Allowing the RA to increase as the population size increases does a few things :

I believe 12 people ran for the 20th RA and only 5 seats were awarded. Prior to the passing of the law restricting RA to five, The 20th RA term would have 7 members not the five we have now.

With the population of CDS growing I believe we really need to address the issue of RA size as well as the by election process.. they go hand in hand in my opinion and the reason the latter is of such concern is affected by the size of the RA being so limited.

Allowing the RA to increase as the population size increases would do a few positive things :

1. More citizens would be able to fully participate in the RA and the process of running CDS.

2. A larger RA gives more citizens a "voice" in what happens. More groups of opinion holders are represented. If there are only two or three opinions on an issue that is fine, but with a larger RA opinion groups more can be represented. The more "opinion groups" we have the more likely we get the best results, in my opinion.

3. Making the RA grow to a size larger than five does not mean it has to be so large as to be uncontrollable or inefficient. Please do not limit us to five because fifty or twenty is too big. We can grow with the population and have a maximum number of seats as well. I would suggest the max be 12. A RA of size 12 under the past system would only occur when our population is over 120 members. close to double the typical population of the past few years.

6. Having more, 7 or even 9 RA members means that we can be quorum more easily, and have less of an issue in operating when someone is absent or even needs to drop out.

5. Having more RA members in proportion to the population, means more RA members are available to do the work of establishing and running committees which will in turn allow for more citizens to be directly involved in the day to day and legal implementation of life in CDS.

6. Now that we have no term limits for RA and that the population has grown and we see participation desires by citizens it seems appropriate to increase the size of the RA.

7. If the restriction to 5 was lifted and only five people ran for RA nothing really would change. We would have five RA members, so why would we be limiting the size whether people are eager to volunteer to be in RA or not ? I do not understand.

( fyi, for new citizens : An increasing size of R A as the population grew used to be the case in CDS. We had a system that allowed for the RA to increase in size as the population grew. This was changed because CDS had shrunk and participation had decreased so dramatically in the past three years, that the government decided to make the R A have no term limits and decrease its size to five permanently. This is the way I understand what happened, anyway. If the former system had remained in place, The 20th RA at the moment would have 7 members. Not five. It would go up to 9 at the time we had over 90 citizens eligible to vote in CDS.)

The only benefit I see to a really small RA of 5 is that the power is more concentrated in the hands of a very few individuals. I do not think this benefits CDS.

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It seems to me that a " replacement list" from pat's link.. is not different from having a faction system for the purposes of filling vacated seats. That is what the faction system provided essentially. That would allow us to have individuals or "factions" hold seats. As well as individuals. No matter how you identify yourself at the time of elections, the result seems essentially the same.

This would mean that a person can run for office with or without the endorsement of a faction. The replacement list for both would be identified at the time of the elections. I suppose if someone runs with no replacement then that's up to the citizens and we will still need a mechanism for a by election.

[Rosie Gray]

Factions as political party: I'm not opposed to having factions, if they are treated like a political party.

Factions with automatic RA replacement: I would absolutely oppose allowing factions to replace elected officials from faction ranks if that elected official couldn't make it to a meeting or decided to drop out. People could be a part of the same faction but have quite different approaches to governance. This would not be democratic.

RA Size: Revisiting the expansion of the RA size to coincide with a larger citizenry makes sense to me. I think we should discuss this further, and I agree with CLEO that it would benefit the CDS with more involvement and broader views.

RA withdrawal procedure: I think that a notecard to the LRA and a posting on this forum would work for a member wishing to withdraw. I think once a withdrawal is made, there should be no option to withdraw the withdrawal. This would disallow withdrawing from RA to be used as 'drama'. RA members should be above that kind of silliness - if someone needs to or wants to withdraw from RA that is fair enough, but it shouldn't be used as a ploy.

[cleopatraxigalia]

What do you see as the differences between a faction and a political party, rosie?

Having members of a faction hold a seat means that the members would all agree on the issues and have a common style etc. I do think that the list of people in the faction or political party. who are eligible to hold a seat and can be replacements should be revealed at the time of election not to change. And the number of times a replacement can be used limited to two or three.

For example. Faction A. Runs with candidate z standing for office. Replacement list is determined candidates. M C. And F. Are the replacements for the term and in that order. If Candidate Z Leaves The Seat And M cannot take it then M is out the rest of the term. Only M foregos that right for the rest of the term. C takes the seat. If several weeks later C has to quit then the only alternate they have is F. If they all quit a by election is called as a last resort I think then the faction could even lose its right to run that term in a by election.

This has happened in the past where a whole faction pulled out. Causing disruption to the government. Fortunately there were 7 seats at the time and even with 2 vacant seats we had enough ra members to be quorate. Interestingly it was during that time we purchased locus ..... Someone should write a book. )) ♡

[cleopatraxigalia]

I agree with rosie no way could a faction just send any member of a faction to a meeting. At any given time there would need to be a specific person assigned to the seat and it could only change with proper notice not just whoever shows up from the faction takes the seat.

[Tor Karlsvalt]

I do think the RA should increase with the size of the population. Indeed, I originally expected the size of the RA to increase but found that the law had changed while I was on a break from SL over a year ago. Under our old rule, the RA increased when the population increased at intervals of 20 members. This seemed reasonable.

I really think factions hand too much power to a small group. Appointment by the RA would be far better than a small inner circle of faction leaders or a faction leader, picking a person for RA. Not to mention, Delia pointed out some of the egregious problems with factions where people who were not citizens were seated as replacement RA members.

Perhaps by-elections could be held unless more then two thirds of the term has expired. If less than a third of the term is left, I think we could probably manage without the missing member. If the RA were larger, loss of a single member would not be so critical.

Limiting the number of RA members to five was intended to force the need for elections. I remember protests the last time RA members were acclaimed without an actual vote. Some thought their rights had been usurped. The acclamation was necessary because under STV, all candidates would win immediately. The vote became unnecessary. Perhaps in such a situations we should not vote for particular candidates, but against them. In Illinois we often vote to retain judges. Here, if we the number of standing candidates equals the number of seats, then voters could vote to approve or disapprove any particular candidate. I don't actually favor this idea as it would probably cause some confusion and if anyone didn't want a particular person on RA then they should have stood for election. It would also mean a by-election would have to be called immediately. Still, if people find seating an RA of seven members by acclimation undemocratic, then we need to consider that we may need to keep the limit on RA or slow the rate at which it increases in size.

I think a notecard should be required for any resignation. Naturally, the LRA would be charged with making the NC public and the NC should be read into the RA minutes. I prefer the notecard for two reason. One I prefer t keep as much in world as possible. IMO, we are supposed to be living in a virtual world and that entails using the tools of the virtual world. Also, the notecard has a date and time stamp on it relative to the in-world time. This could be a critical point of contention if the issue of when a person actually resigned impacts on their ability to vote. I am not sure of how the date stamp on he forum is derived.

[Patroklus Murakami]

There were a number of reasons for moving from an RA which changed size each term as the population changed to something more stable. We should consider whether the current system is failing in some way before making yet another change to our electoral system and, in effect, reversing a decision that a previous RA took.

• Lack of competition. One issue we had was that the number of seats in the RA was about 10% of the population. There were several elections where we did not get that many people wanting to stand for election. That meant that we had 'the people who turned up' and the citizens did not get to choose between them. I don't think that legislators have any mandate if they have not been actively chosen by the electorate so we should avoid a similar situation occurring again.

  Large and unwieldy meetings. At one point the RA had 13 members if I recal correctly. It was a nightmare! There was never enough time to debate issues at RA meetings properly and provide time for RA members to speak. It also made it difficult to include other interested citizens in the debate as the LRA needs to give some precedence to the RA members to take the floor in meetings.

What issue are we trying to solve by contemplating a change?

Is 5 people really too few to represent the views of about 70 people? If so, let's set it at 7 but take into account that making the RA larger has tended to make the RA more difficult to manage and less effective.

is the concern that we want more participation? I would argue that there are many other avenues for participation and we should encourage people to get involved with those. We need people to publicise the CDS. We need people to organise events. We need people to rebuild and renovate the sims. We need peole to greet visitors. We need people to put our laws and codes in order. We need people to clean and tidy the sims and keep them in order. I don't think we need more RA members!

Our Government already requires a lot of people to serve on the SC, Chancellor, PIO and so on. Adding more government representatives does not help matters in my view.

[cleopatraxigalia]

I agree with Tor and Rosie and Gwyn about growing the size of the RA as the population grows. I do wonder what Shep thinks about this issue.

For us to have a RA with 13 members again we would need over a 130 citizens in CDS. hurray ! if thirteen is too many then maybe we cap it at 11. But I think certainly remaining at five, as my fellow RA members agree, is too small. I would rather put our efforts in continuing to grow and encouraging participation in the RA. Again, I think we make it an optimum size, not refusing to grow because if we grow too much that is not optimal. ( i.e. lets not stick to five because someone thinks thirteen is too big.)

As we grow there will certainly be more different points of view within the committee and it is important that all various views are recognized within our Representative Assembly. With the faction system, the various groups of "idea holders" or like minded people, gathered together with proportional representation of that idea via the Faction's number of seats. ..with a vote for just one person system. We need to be large enough that idea holders are all represented. Having a larger not a smaller RA would make that more possible. Having factions would make the smaller RA be more representative of the minority groups in CDS, but since that is not what people want. A larger RA might might help to make sure representation occurs.

The problem that increasing the size with population is solving is :

With an RA of five and a quorum of three only two votes can change law for the entirety of CDS for who knows how long. This situation would be avoided with a larger RA.

( I actually believe Quorum should be interpreted as four for a an RA of five members. As it is written half plus one. Has to equal 3.5 and to have the half of a person there would necessitate there being four. Several laws were passed with only three people present, and two votes would change law.)

I am not in agreement with tor about waiting until 2/3 rds of the term is over to go back to a list. A lot can change in CDS in six months. Another issue with the electoral system is that if we are five months into a term .. the original candidate eligibility list from six months ago will be the candidate list used. This seems to contradict the idea of "participation" and letting people be involved, and making sure citizens have choices. Would we really rather have a vacant seat in the RA than let someone who has been a citizen for three or four months be in the RA ? If I understand the law now , that is how it reads.

I think we need to look at who is going to be eligible to vote and run in the by elections also.

[Patroklus Murakami]

The problem that increasing the size with population is solving is :

With an RA of five and a quorum of three only two votes can change law for the entirety of CDS for who knows how long. This situation would be avoided with a larger RA.

( I actually believe Quorum should be interpreted as four for a an RA of five members. As it is written half plus one. Has to equal 3.5 and to have the half of a person there would necessitate there being four. Several laws were passed with only three people present, and two votes would change law.)

There's a misunderstanding here. The quorum is three so RA meetings can't make decisions unless at least three people attend. Two votes can't change the law though because you need a majority of seats voting in order for a law to pass. At least one person would need to use a seven-day vote to support the new law.

Constitutional Amendments require at least four out of the five seats to vote in favour. If only three vote in favour, the amendment is not made.