Article: Government Changes

[Pedrunn]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article: Government Changes


1) Elections

(a) The Court is empowered to oversee all elections and is empowered to resolve any election disputes according to what is written in the constitution.
(b) The elections are started if the term of a determined government position has ended or the person who is in a certain government position can no longer practice his function.
(c) In case the reason for an election is the end of a term, the election process must start nine days before the end of the given government position term.
(d) If the reason is the impossibility of the person in the government position to practice his functions. The election process have to start immediately after the decision of ungovernability of the person in the government position.
(e) The election process starts when all candidates for office must publicly express their candidacy, which he has two days to do so. No candidate may be a candidate for more than one elected office.
(f) Once the candidate expressed their candidacy with, a poll to decide which candidate is the best for the function he applied is create by the court. The poll shall expire in three days. If a member is elected three times into the same government office, that member may not run for that government office the fourth consecutive term. After the fourth term he may run for any government office that is available.
(g) If a candidate receives more than 50% of the votes and the election thread expires, he is declared the new officer for the government position he candidate for.
(h) If no candidate for office receives more than 50% of the vote, there shall be a run-off election with the two most voted candidates.
(i) The Court shall immediately to the end of the first turn of the election create a run-off poll with the two candidates who received the most votes. This thread will confirm the winner for the government position in question and shall expire in three days.
(j) In case of a tie the Court should count the number of times each candidate was part of the government. The candidate with lesser number of times in the government is chosen. If the tie persists the candidate with most number of posts in the apolyton forum community is chosen.
(k) If there is no candidate for an executive branch position if not president, the President, upon being elected must appoint someone to serve as the unelected minister. The appointed minister must be confirmed by a majority of the citizens in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.
(l) In the event that there is no candidate for President, the Court must immediately elect a President. The appointed minister must be confirmed by a majority of the citizens in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.
(m) In the event that there is no candidate for a judiciary branch position, the Court must immediately elect a person for this office. The appointed minister must be confirmed by a majority of the citizens in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.

2) Impeachment, Resignations or Assassination.

(a) The impeachment of an officer in a government position is decided with a resolution type of poll accordingly to the rules for it in the polling article.
(b) If confirmed by the court that an officer was killed or an impeachment resolution is confirmed, the officer in question can no longer practice its function.
(c) If an officer resigns it will be asked to him to keep in his function until the end of the new election to decide who will replace him making the law 2-(d) of this article unuseful. The court declares that the officer may no longer practice its function.
(d) If an officer may no longer practice its function, the Court will choose a citizen to takes its place. The Court shall give preference for one of its member or the citizen who disputed the office with the impeached person in the last election. This chosen will have the name temporary before the name of the government position.
(e) If the officer term that no longer can practice its function, was going to end in less than two weeks. The temporary officer will keep in the power until the end of the government position term. Otherwise a new election process for the position in question shall start and the temporary officer will be in power only until a new officer for the position is not chosen.
(f) The temporary officer will not start a new term. So it shall not be considered a new governemnt. Therefore the temporary officer government wont be added to the count explained in law 1-(f) and 1-(j) of this article.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Any comments?

[Locutus]

Looks good Pedrunn. I don't have time to read it all, let alone respond, but I'll do so later today or tomorrow.

[mapfi]

It's different...
I am kind of uncomfortable with the court appointing people as new minister without a No/Yes Poll. You did include it in the first part, so why not in the second. Apart from that - I actually like it being a different approach than the other DGs have!

[Locutus]

As usual, I've rewritten the Article (well, the Election part, will get to the Impeachment part later) to include my own suggestions for improvement. Changes are in bold. Most are just grammatical or other minor changes, I may not even have highlighted them all. The most notable changes/additions/comments:
- what to do when there's only one candidate for an office: yes/no poll
- when there are no suitable candidates for an office, ANY Citizen may be appointed for this position (implies 2 things: (1) must be a Citizen; (2) usual restrictions (# of terms, etc) don't apply)
- while elections take place, old members of government stay in power; if none available, game is halted (anyone know a better solution?)
- is 3 days long enough for elections? maybe 5 is better?
- as staff member I have to interfere in the tie rules: the number of posts may never be an argument for anything, this encourages spam. I went for registration date, but I'm open to suggestions



1. Elections:

(a) The Court is empowered to oversee all elections and is empowered to resolve any election disputes according to the rules in this Constitution.
(b) The elections are started if the term of a determined government position has ended or the person who is in a certain government position can no longer practice his function.
(c) In case the reason for an election is the end of a term, the Election process must start nine days before the end of the given government position term. Until the end of the term or as long after that as it takes to elect a new candidate, the previous official will remain in office.
(d) If the reason is the impossibility of the person in the government position to practice his functions. The election process has to start immediately after the decision of ungovernability of the person in the government position. Until a new candidate has been elected, the game will be halted.
(e) At the start of the election process, all candidates for an office must publicly express their candidacy. For this they have two days. No candidate may be a candidate for more than one elected office.
(f) Once the candidates have expressed their candidacy, the Court will create an Election poll (see Article 3, section 4.I) for each elected office, with the names of the candidates as options. The poll shall expire in three days.
(g) If a person has been elected into the same government office for three consecutive terms, that person may not run for that specific office for a fourth time. After this fourth term, he or she may run for that office again.
(h) If only one candidate is available for an office, a Yes/No poll shall be held to decide if this person may serve in this office. This poll shall expire in three days.
(i) If a candidate receives more than 50% of the votes and the election thread expires, this person will be declared the new holder of the office for which he or she was a candidate.
(j) If no candidate for office receives more than 50% of the vote, there shall be a run-off election between the two candidates who received the most votes.
(k) The Court shall immediately at the end of the first turn of the election create a run-off poll between the two candidates who received the most votes. This thread will confirm the winner for the government position in question and shall expire in three days.
(l) In case of a tie the Court should count the number of times each candidate was part of the government. The candidate with lesser number of times in the government is chosen. If the tie persists the candidate who has been registered on Apolyton for the longest period of time will be chosen. If the tie still persists, the Court will decide which candidate is chosen.
(m) If there is no candidate for an executive branch position if not president, the President, upon being elected must appoint any Citizen to serve as the unelected minister. The appointed minister must be confirmed by a majority of the citizens in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.
(n) In the event that there is no candidate for President, the Court must immediately appoint any of the Citizens as President. The appointed minister must be confirmed by a majority of the citizens in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.
(o) In the event that there is no candidate for a judiciary branch position, the Court must immediately elect any of the Citizens for this office. The appointed minister must be confirmed by a majority of the citizens in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.

[mapfi]

Why would in a tie the one being newer to governmental jobs be chosen? It should be the other way, even if you want to give newbies a chance - for a DG office we need the experienced ones. In any case an exact tie is rather unlickely. Because of that and also because of it not making any sense scrap the part about being member for longer or having more posts. Have the court decide. This will likely never take place anyway and if, I rather have a court decision than a rule, ok you've been here longer... bah!
Furthermore I'm also for 5 days for the lection, 3 seems to be very short and since the old government will stay in place the game can continue.
Again something about abstaining. Where and when to put it? I'd say always, but never counting to the percentage neededthat is stated in the constitution, only if the con specifically requires a percentage of the citizens to vote should it count - but that might be a bad idea too, since after a while we'll end up with people who registered but rarely or never turn up.

[mapfi]

by a majority of the citizens

see reasons above why this should be 50% of the vote instead - it'd just wont work - in the beginning yes, but this game will last quite a while probably.
Furthermore, I'd say we scrap the part about cases where no candidat turns up - because the court appointing someone and then have a yes/no poll is exactly the same thing as the one citizen running for office - only that he might be appointed against his will - not my choice!
Which brings me to a new line that I'd like in the impeachment part. The court may not appoint a citizen for an office against his will. That won't make sense in a game.

[Pedrunn]

Locutus, i see you mostly mad the stuff clear and some changes i totally agree with you, except:

Until a new candidate has been elected, the game will be halted.

An ellection takes almost 1/3 of an government postion term. It is just too much time. So the game should not stop at all!!

If the tie persists the candidate who has been registered on Apolyton for the longest period of time will be chosen.

This was going to be the third un-tie reason if the differece of posts between the candidate was too smaller than 10. But i was afraid i was going to deep into it. Still how is that condition better than the number of posts. Since the more the number of posts do actually means more apolyton experience what is something to look for in a candidate.

Mapfi,

Why would in a tie the one being newer to governmental jobs be chosen? It should be the other way, even if you want to give newbies a chance - for a DG office we need the experienced ones.

I am not doing this for the newbie but for the empire and to have more new fresh meat in the government. Wich means a more dynamic democracy.
After all we should do everything not to have an oligarchy.

Because of that and also because of it not making any sense scrap the part about being member for longer or having more posts. Have the court decide

And how the court should decide then. For the avatars looks. It has to have a reason. Or the court will just say candidate A is the best, and candidate B is the worst among the two. This could we could create ressents wich personally i dont like. We should avoid the Court to have too personal decisions

Furthermore I'm also for 5 days for the lection, 3 seems to be very short and since the old government will stay in place the game can continue.

I agree with you but this means 11 days of election. Isnt this just too much

Again something about abstaining. Where and when to put it? I'd say always, but never counting to the percentage neededthat is stated in the constitution,

thats trick since some may say that abstaining is the same as not vote. Not too mention it will just be extra math. I would agree with you but but under the circustances i believe abstaining should count in the percentage. Still it id trick snd i feel a bit divided.

by a majority of the citizens

I agree with you this is wrong.
AMENDMENT: It should be written more than 50% of the voters.
Dont be hard on me, ok. It was almost 2:00 AM when i finished this article
[quote]
Furthermore, I'd say we scrap the part about cases where no candidat turns up - because the court appointing someone and then have a yes/no poll is exactly the same thing as the one citizen running for office [quote] We could fuse section 1.n and 1.o and i am for this. Still those are different stuff and should be in tdifferent threads

only that he might be appointed against his will - not my choice!

Anyone should be in a position against his will.
We should add an "if accepted" line not to have flaws in the constitution.

I am kind of uncomfortable with the court appointing people as new minister without a No/Yes Poll. You did include it in the first part, so why not in the second.

The temporary officer is in power only while a new ellection dont finishs so having an election for him (almost) means wasted time. Thats my opinion though.

It's different...

It trully is pretty much my stuff but i have got to addmit that it has influence form the Civ3DG, a small bit from the ACDG and some RunsWithDwarf comments in another thread.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
AMENDMENT: It should be written more than 50% of the voters.

Do you mean more than half the voters, or more than half the yes/no voters? If the former, then saying abstain is exactly the same as saying no, which doesn't seem right. Further, you'd better make it very clear whether you mean strictly more than half, or at least half (I'm assuming the former).

And I'd make some (mostly grammatical) changes to Locutus's version, which I think clarify things, and make them more consistent (but feel free to disagree ):

1. Elections:

(a) The Court is empowered to oversee all elections and is empowered to resolve any election disputes according to the rules in this Constitution.
(b) An election for a given government position is started if the term of the position has ended or the person in the position can no longer perfom his duties.
(c) If the reason for an election is the end of a term, the election process must start nine days before the end of the given government position term. The previous official will remain in office until the end of the term or until a new candidate is elected, whichever is the later.
(d) If the reason is the decision that the person in the government position can no longer perfom his duties. The election process must start immediately after this decision is made. Until a new candidate has been elected, the game will be halted.
(e) At the start of the election process, all citizens who wish to be candidates for an office must publicly express their candidacy. For this they have two days. No citizen may be a candidate for an elected office if such candidacy might cause him to be in more than one elected office simultaneously.
(f) Once the time in which citizens may express their candidacy for a given elected office has expired, the Court will create an Election poll (see Article 3, section 4.I) for the office, with the names of the candidates as options. The poll shall expire in three days.
(g) If a person has been elected into the same government office for three consecutive terms, that person may not run for that specific office for a fourth time. After this fourth term, he or she may run for that office again.
(h) If only one candidate is available for an office, a Yes/No poll shall be held to decide if this person may serve in this office. This poll shall expire in three days.
(i) If a candidate receives more than 50% of the votes and the election thread expires, this person will be declared the new holder of the office for which he was a candidate.
(j) If no candidate for office receives more than 50% of the vote, there shall be a run-off election between the two candidates who received the most votes.
(k) The Court shall, immediately the first election poll expires, create a run-off poll between the two candidates who received the most votes. The winner of this poll will be declared the new holder of the office for which he was a candidate.
(l) In case of a tie in polls at either the first or second stage the Court should count the number of times each candidate was previously part of the government. The candidate with fewer prior terms in the government is chosen. If the tie persists the candidate who has been registered on Apolyton for the longest period of time will be chosen. If the tie still persists, the Court will decide which candidate is chosen.
(m) If there is no candidate for an executive branch position other than that of president, the President, upon being elected, must appoint any (willing?) Citizen to serve as the unelected minister. The appointed citizen must be confirmed by a majority of the voters in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.
(n) In the event that there is no candidate for President, the Court must immediately appoint any (willing?) Citizen as President. The appointed citizen must be confirmed by a majority of the voters in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.
(o) In the event that there is no candidate for a judiciary branch position, the Court must immediately elect any (willing?) Citizens for this office. The appointed citizen must be confirmed by a majority of the voters in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.

[RunsWithDwarf]

Okay Pedrunn, But remember you asked for it!
Article 1, section (k); why not just do it all this way anyway the candidate still has to be approved by vote. I mean the article is nice and everything and after editing I think is worded rather eloquently in the latest draft "My Compliments!, to J Bytheway, marvelous job IMHO" but, overall to me it all looks a bit redundant and minces words to make a few simple points. I mean I understand you don't want it to be missinterpreted and for the Article to be perfectly clear to the reader it just sounds Ah! I don't know, Too Political. I just feel it could all be covered in that one section including impeachments or assassination if your looking at it from a broader perspective I mean you still achieve the same result, if the President appoints his ministers or cabinet or what have you they still must be approved first by the voters so in any case they are still at the mercy of the voter and in the case of more than one candidate ther still must be a vote . and if by chance ther is ever a posistion that no one seems to want although I don't see that happening, or ther is one citizen "willing" to fill that posistion let him have it! what else can you do, make someone take it.
I could elaborate on this more for you if you would like, but I just think it could be somehow simpler than it is now.
I must agree with Locutus on the time frame to get the election results I would say 5 days minimal, at least to start, we could see where things go from there.
Also! I still think ther should be a chain of command, to have a elected official in office ready to step into the leaders shoes, if ther ever is an emergency, and should be included in this Artical as it stands, he could step in immeadiatly and take over the responsibilities and serve out the rest of the term if need be, we never know when someone may be sick, or have a real emergency to deal with, in this way we keep the game moving smoothly, but thats just me.
I also agree on limits on how many terms can be served, except for as I said above in the case of an emergency when someone has to step in, Who knows the official may do an excellent job, I feel if this is the case than this official should still be eligible to serve his full two terms if elected as president despite time served during the emergency. Yes! I understand this allows for a President or an Apolyton or whatever we call him to serve more than 2 terms, it could be argued that your own article makes provision for this from a legal standpoint, although I'm sure that was intended (We have to have something to put in the history books, Eh! "I can see the headlines now PRESIDENT SERVING THIRD TERM, IS IT LEGAL") Which by the way, I know this is off the subject, Locutus or someone I'm not quite sure who it was brought up the idea of an official historian I think it was, and somebody else mentioned news or media coverage for our future Democracy, I think both of these are outstanding ideas and it would be really nice to see them both implemented, I really think it would brighten add flavor and help add a lot of life to our otherwise so far small community and make it a wonderful place to come visit, at least from my perspective.
But Honestly, I don't know, let me chew on this a day or so and I'll get back to you!..

[H Tower]

I believe that the pres should appoint someone to fill the position, you people are giving the court too much power here. power that has tradtionally been held by the execuitive branch in the real world.

with the possibility that no one wants to fill the space or the pres cannot find some one quickly, i think the VP should take over the duties of the minister who leaves. There is absolutely no reason to halt the game for four or five days to elect a new minister. Especially since the new minister would then most likely be required to get a copy of the game emailed to him, and then he would have to post a three day poll regarding his minitry. IT could very well take a week to get the game rolling again if a minister dissapears. Add on to that the few days of indecision of whether or not the minister has truly left or is just unavailable. Your talking about major pauses in the flow of the game, and if that happens, people lose interest and leave, and that's BAD

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any comments?

yes. lets get started!
finetuning of our constitution can happen during the game, through political campaigning, civil unrest, bloody military suppression and civil war. should be more historical correct and more fun this way (after all, its still a game, i have enough of civilized political debates in my real life)

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by Locutus
- while elections take place, old members of government stay in power; if none available, game is halted (anyone know a better solution?)

yes, ANARCHY!!!!

[Frozzy]

We must finetune our constitution pre-game. The list of loopholes is endless.

Also, during election time, I believe the game should be halted.

[Pedrunn]

So should we drop the second election with the two most voted citzes? And only have one poll to decide a gov position?
This will save time since the game will be halted and as RunsWithDwarf said it will spare the citzen patiente from endless voting. Not to mention that will make less complicated.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by redbull
We must finetune our constitution pre-game. The list of loopholes is endless.

i know, thats what will make fun later

Originally posted by redbull
Also, during election time, I believe the game should be halted.

i can't remember any state of the world halting the global timeline whilst their inside political problems. well, on theother hand their secret services department for experimental physics might just not have told us

[H Tower]

i have a beef with section 1(i) instead of the person with less experience getting the job. the other members of the incoming cabinet should vote on who should get the spot. At least that's what were doing in the civ2 game because the runoff for president ended in a tie.

[Locutus]

I like H Tower's idea of having the Ministers and President decide who will fill get a spot in case of a tie The idea of using the most experienced person was merely to avoid going by number of posts, which is in direct violation of Apolyton's anti-spam policy...

Rather than halting the game, this would be a good alternative in case of a disappearing Minister too: while new elections are being held, the President (with the support of his Minsters) appoints a temporary minister to keep the game going (assuming we don't have a VP to do so, otherwise the VP can do it).

Zaphod, if we don't make proper rules now that will no doubt be fun for some people later on, but it will quite probably frustrate others. We want to avoid that some people have fun at the expense of others...

Re: Abstaining. Abstaining should only count to the number of votes, not to yes/no or any other option. So if 1/3 of the population needs to vote to pass a resolution, abstain votes count towards reach that quotum, but they don't count towards the 50% yes vote to pass that resolution.

About the Court getting too much power: I disagree. The only time when the Court gets to decide is when there *is* no valid candidate (or when it's a tie and a deadlock on breaking it). In the real world, I don't think this ever happened...

RunsWithDwarf,
For the other articles I've written summaries to make clear in a few sentences what the essence of the article is. I (or someone else) will do this for article too. For day-to-day use, these summaries are probably adequate for most people, these detailed rules are needed to lay down the exact procedures and avoid misinterpretation and exploitation, however 'political' this may be. All other DGs have seen situations where the rules proved inadequate, we should learn from that and try to avoid it as much as possible in this game...

I agree that temporary appointments should not count as a full term when it comes to determining if someone can run for an office. So in 1(g) "consecutive terms" should IMHO be replaced with "consecutive full terms".

[H Tower]

I'm assuming that we'll have more than one judge, probablly three I'd say. What will the election poll look like? Does everyone just vote once and the top three vote getters become judges? Or do we break the candidates into three groups and elect one from each group? Hears what I think should be done though, mirroring what the AC demo game did, they put all the poential judges in one poll, and made it multiple choice, telling people to only vote for X number of candidates. I think that an interesting part of this could be people voting for FEWER people than they are supposed to, that way they could make sure their favorite candidate gets a better shot at being elected.

Anybody else got thoughts on how we'll elect judges?

[Frozzy]

I believe that the Assembly (Ministers + President) should vote for the judges, n (number of spots open) votes each. After all, they know more about whats going on than the average Beeble on the Forums

[Gilgamensch]

Why should we leave it to the assembly to vote for the judges, they are supposed to be our ones

Also, as we only will have ~4 position in the government, would make it quite hard for them to vote for three judges.

So I still stay with: we will vote for the judges.

We could leave it for the government to decide, who is gonna be the senior judge.

In case one of the ministers disappearing into a black hole (oh sorry wrong game ), the Grand Apolyton could nominate a 'replacement', which would be needed to be passed by the ministers and/or court. I think this would be the quickest way.

And hey, if we don't like it, we can appeal to the court for new elections

For the constitution:

We will always have holes in it, somebody might always find a 'backdoor' for something.........

And NO, during election we should continue the game. Only exception I see is in case of impeachment and similar. But this we could leave first to the court and/or poll.

[Frozzy]

Meh... 3 day By-election for disappearing ministers (should we blame that on the Finns too, in true OTF style? H Tower???)

The term must be longer than a month. It'll take a while to change the data, etc. 2 months minimum

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by H Tower
I'm assuming that we'll have more than one judge, probablly three I'd say.

from the Court Article from the constitution draft section 2-a "The Court is composed of 3 Judges..."

Originally posted by H Tower
What will the election poll look like? Does everyone just vote once and the top three vote getters become judges? Or do we break the candidates into three groups and elect one from each group?
...
Anybody else got thoughts on how we'll elect judges?

The locutus suggestion in the Court thread looks the best:

Originally posted by Locutus
It would IMHO make more sense to, rather than electing 3 Judges every 3 months, elect 1 Judge every month. Then 2 polls could be held: one for the new Judge, one for who of the other two should become Senior Justice (better let the n00b get used to the job before giving him such power ). I could be overlooking something, but this seems to solve all aforementioned problems...

This should be explained in the Court article since this article is just to say how general elections are held. Not when (end of the term is enough).

[Pedrunn]

UPDATE

1. Elections:

(a) The Court is empowered to oversee all elections and is empowered to resolve any election disputes according to the rules in this Constitution.
(b) An election for a given government position is started if the term of the position has ended or the person in the position can no longer perfom his duties.
(c) If the reason for an election is the end of a term, the election process must start seven days before the end of the given government position term. The previous official will remain in office until the end of the term or until a new candidate is elected, whichever is the later.
(d) If the reason is the decision that the person in the government position can no longer perfom his duties. The election process must start immediately after this decision is made. Until a new candidate has been elected, the other members of the branch of government in question will appoint a substitute to temporarily take over the open position, allowing the game to continue."
(e) At the start of the election process, all citizens who wish to be candidates for an office must publicly express their candidacy. For this they have two days. No citizen may be a candidate for an elected office if such candidacy might cause him to be in more than one elected office simultaneously.
(f) Once the time in which citizens may express their candidacy for a given elected office has expired, the Court will create an Election poll (see Article II, section 3.I) for the office, with the names of the candidates as options. The poll shall expire in five days.
(g) If a person has been elected into the same government office for two consecutive terms, that person may not run for that specific office for a third time. After this third term, he or she may run for that office again.
(h) If only one candidate is available for an office, a Yes/No poll shall be held to decide if this person may serve in this office. This poll shall expire in five days.
(i) The candidate who received the majority of the votes and the election thread expires, this person will be declared the new holder of the office for which he was a candidate.
(j) In case of a tie in the election poll, the Court should count the number of times each candidate was previously part of the government. The candidate with fewer prior terms in the government is chosen. If the tie persists the candidate who has been registered on Apolyton for the longest period of time will be chosen. If the tie still persists, the Court will decide which candidate is chosen.
(k) In the event that there is no candidate for any government position, the Court must immediately choose a willing Citizen for this office. The appointed citizen must be confirmed by a majority of the voters in a Yes/No poll that shall last three days.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sumary.

- The members of a the same branch which an office wich its officer can no longer perform its duty will choose a substitute. As sugested.
- The second stage of the election poll was totally removed from the article due to the votation of the citzens of the CTP2DG community.
- The election poll takes 5 days as requested.
- To The court was given the power to choose a willing citzen to run for a position which has no candidate for the election in all cases.
- A person can only run for a position two consecutive time oppose to three.

[Locutus]

I'd like to rephrase the last part of 1(d): "Until a new candidate has been elected, the other members of the branch of government in question will appoint a substitute to temporarily take over the open position, allowing the game can continue."

Why did you chane 1(g)? I thought it was just fine the way it was and I don't think anyone else had a problem with it either, or did I miss something? I fear we might get a problem filling all positions later on in the game, so we should be a bit flexible here...

1(h) and 1(l) should be changed from 3 to 5 days.

1(j) should be changed to take into account what has been discussed. I'll rewrite the whole thing:

(j) In case of a tie in an election poll where there are more than two candidates, there shall be a run-off election between the two candidates who received the most votes. This run-off poll shall last three days.
(k) In case of a tie in a run-off poll for a position in the Executive branch of government, the other members of the incoming cabinet shall vote on who should get the position. In case of a tie there, the newly appointed Senior Justice shall have the decisive vote.
(l) In case of a tie in a run-off poll for a position in the Judicial branch of government, the other members of the Court shall vote on who should get the position. In case of a tie there, the newly appointed President shall have the decisive vote.

[Pedrunn]

What was edited:

Originally posted by Locutus
I'd like to rephrase the last part of 1(d): "Until a new candidate has been elected, the other members of the branch of government in question will appoint a substitute to temporarily take over the open position, allowing the game can continue."

I hated to do that phrase. I knew it need some changes. Thanks.
I will edit it.

1(h) and 1(l) should be changed from 3 to 5 days.

Oops. I will edit the post. It should be written 5.

What to be discussed

Why did you chane 1(g)? I thought it was just fine the way it was and I don't think anyone else had a problem with it either, or did I miss something? I fear we might get a problem filling all positions later on in the game, so we should be a bit flexible here...

No specific reason. The idea of three max times was from the CIV3DG. But i really wanted to hear a comment on that since the beggining. So i managed this change to spice things up.
Note that two max times is more like real life democracy.

(j) In case of a tie in an election poll where there are more than two candidates, there shall be a run-off election between the two candidates who received the most votes. This run-off poll shall last three days.
(k) In case of a tie in a run-off poll for a position in the Executive branch of government, the other members of the incoming cabinet shall vote on who should get the position. In case of a tie there, the newly appointed Senior Justice shall have the decisive vote.
(l) In case of a tie in a run-off poll for a position in the Judicial branch of government, the other members of the Court shall vote on who should get the position. In case of a tie there, the newly appointed President shall have the decisive vote.

Actually, this was just mentioned. The dicussion about ties shall start now. I was just waiting someone to comment this.
I will post about it tommorrow.

[Locutus]

dp

[Locutus]

End of 1(d) should be "allowing the game to continue" BTW, couldn't choose between two formulations but this merger or the two isn't quite the solution either

@number of terms. 3 makes sense to me. Two is more like real life American democracy, not like real life democracy... (It's unlimited in the Netherlands and IIRC 3 in Belgium, don't know about the rest of the world but 2 is a typical American custom (used to be an informal law, until FDR came along and decided to ignore it ))

Actually, the discussion on ties has been raging for days But I'm looking forward to your thoughts on it

[Gilgamensch]

unlimited terms............ Why should we limit it?

We might want to limit the number of terms for the 'leader'

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
(g) If a person has been elected into the same government office for two consecutive terms, that person may not run for that specific office for a third time. After this fourth term, he or she may run for that office again.

This last 'fourth' should be a 'third' for consistency (although I agree that permitting 3 consecutive terms is preferable), I think you should also change this to full terms as Locutus recommended.

Lastly, I don't think it's necessary to write 'he or she' - just 'he' is not only gramatically correct, but also almost certainly accurate in all cases in this situation.

[Locutus]

I agree on the 'full' terms (obviously).

On the 'he or she' issue: I think that would be nice to keep - I don't wanna piss off present or future female players by a 'male-centric' Constittion... We should value the few women that we have in our community (although I fear that AFAIK we don't have any right now )