Shouldn’t the organic law be the highest law in Talossa? Shouldn’t it be the most respected legislation of our Kingdom?
This is exactly the thought I had when I wrote my new proposed amendment: “The Election Mega-Constitutional Amendment."
My bill is there to make the Organic law more consistent to how we operate the Cosa, fix a few errors, and make it easier for citizens to make a wise choice when voting, because I think that Voters should be reassured that their votes are protected by the constitution and that the constitution is respected.
Yet, the organic law is violated during almost every Cosa, for every time a party reassigns seats amongst its Cosa members to say, welcome a new Cosa member, the Chancery doesn’t always get explicit resignation of seats by all of the affected Cosa members.
Should this practice be banned altogether even if in reality, losing a seat or two to welcome a new members is often expected of party members? My amendment addresses that problem and many others!
For example, Cosa members are supposed to represent specific geographic areas but in reality, we never got around to pass laws about that and as such, we have been violating that article of the Organic law for over 14 years! Isn’t it time to fix it once and for all? The bill sat in the hopper for a few months, and I have diligently addressed all of the concerns.
The free-for-all reassignment of seats from the first version which gave party leaders full control over the seats of their party was reduced to giving the power to the party as whole. I even added protection for Cosa members who were in the candidate lists for the parties, all with the voters in mind!
My bill could have easily be named “The Voter Protection Amendment.” For example, most parties publish on Wittenberg a candidate list. I am proposing to print such lists on the ballots, so that voters can know who whom they are voting specifically for the first time in the history of Talossa in probably the biggest voter information bill in the history of the Kingdom! For parties who don’t want do, I made the practice optional, so parties can ignore the candidate lists and they can also assign seats to people not on the list. But the voters will know.
I even fixed the broken Hopper! In my amendment, I open the doors to the Hopper to anyone who reasonably believes (such as he was promised seats) he will qualify to submit legislation for the next Clark.
Can this be abused? Perhaps, but we can always fix it later. The Organic Law isn’t set in stone and during almost every election, we have one or more referendums to improve it.
Yes, my bill does a lot. It fixes the timing of the first Clark, and it removes an embarrassing typo that has been lurking for God knows how many Cosa (a "t" inserted for no reason). More importantly, it solves the chicken and the egg dilemma of party registration: when is a party registered? What if they paid their $20, but didn’t notify the SoS? What if they notified the SoS but haven’t paid yet?
I also once again reform the Senate. You might not know it, but I am the Cosa Member who re-wrote 80% of the Organic law regarding the Senate over 12 years ago in my Senate Mega-Constitutional Amendment!
What are the two changes? First of all, under the reform you can only vote for a citizen of your province in the Senate. It’s absurd, but in the current organic law, a senator living in another province can be elected to represent that province! Secondly, if you vote in the Cosa election and don’t specify a vote for the Senate, you can now later record a vote for the Senate.
I have personally seen during the last election this situation occur when a voter submitted a vote for the Cosa in a Witt message and then realized he had forgotten to type his vote for the Senate, which legally meant he was abstaining! Sadly, it was already too late and I had to reject his Senate vote, an action which violated every fiber in my moral constitution which says that every vote should count!
Yes, my bill is massive. Yes, there might be a part or two which might make you wonder you personally. But I still think that my bill deserves its chance. I still think that with these changes, Talossa will be a better place. At worse, we can amend what ends up not working.
Some people have wondered why I am so adamant in passing it as a single bill. I think of this as a single reform, as a massive undertaking I decided to do to help improve Talossa. In a way, it’s a legacy I am trying to give to Talossans. I want to finish what I had started in 2001-2004: fixing the Organic Law so that it reflected better how we, as Talossans, conduct our affairs.
When el Lexhatx was posted, did anyone complain that the order of two sections should be reversed? That the bill was too long? That it should be smaller sections and passed as individual bills?
My vision for this reform is that it will bring us closer to a better democracy, that it will enable a simpler voting ballot with more information relevant to the voters. I also think it will increase the trust that voters give to parties.
So I ask parties to listen to the voters have their interest at heart, and I ask the voters to petition their Cosa members to vote in favor of a reform which, for once, has their interest at heart.
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