How many seats in the 13th RA?

[Arria Perreault]

Delia Lake has asked for candidacies for the 13th RA based:

http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php? ... 029#p14125

April 30: Deadline for announcing Candidacy (via note to SC Dean)
May 15: Polls open

We already know that candidates don't have to be member of a faction, but it doesnt mean that factions don't have a role anymore to play. In many rl countries, you can be candidate without being member of a party. The silly 10% rules is gone (a faction must have an number of members corresponding to the 10% of total number of citizen). The factions will still play a role in our political life.

The other 10% rule remains:

The number of representative seats in the RA is equal to the odd whole number nearest to 10% of the population, rounded down, with a minimum of five seats and a maximum of forty seats.

It could be helpful to know how many sits we have to fill and who has the right to vote. The list of citizen has to be update. The current list in the portal is from the 8 January.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key= ... utput=html

Can the Scientific Council publish following datas:

- On which date the citizen census will be made?
- How many we are?

[Patroklus Murakami]

I agree that this would be helpful Arria.

If I understand things correctly, the size of the next RA will be determined by the number of citizens we have when the polls open. This is an unhelpful rule which I have proposed elsewhere that we change. I think the size should be determined when the census is taken for the purpose of determining who can vote (which I think is about a month before the polls open, so round about now!)

We could also take the opportunity to revise our rules on the size of the RA. Currently, it is about 10% of the citizenship so that the size of the RA scales with the size of the population. I think the RA becomes more and more unwieldy the more members it has and would prefer to reform that also. I posted some thought on this elsewhere on the forums. I will develop some legislative proposals for the next RA meeting (a week on Sunday?) to consider.

[Arria Perreault]

I add your point in the agenda of the next RA meeting.

[Claude Desmoulins]

The when of the census comes from the Census Scheduling Act passed 16 Dec 2006

NL 5-17 Census Scheduling Act

The number of seats in the RA shall be based upon the number of citizens as of the deadline for voting in the election that will elect that RA (per Article V) or the number of citizens as of the date the polls open in the aforementioned election, whichever is greater.

While it is good that the arrival of campaign season draws our attention twice a year to what changes we may wish to make in how the election process works, please keep in mind that trying to rapidly enact those changes in time for the upcoming election (which happens not infrequently) does make things more difficult on all those tasked with implementing the procedures, not to mention everyone's needing to process the change to single transferable vote this cycle.