[AMENDMENT] Citizenship Act

Codex Memorial Garden The Magisterium
1

By apparent necessity, I’ve taken on the role of approving citizenship applications / enforcing lapses in status / maintaining citizenship records. Aside from having to extensively repair and combine records, I’ve found this to be a needlessly onerous and poorly-followed procedure, both by citizenship officials and by numerous citizens making changes to resident / WA nation status.

Right now, the onus is heavily on the Office to monitor and accommodate individuals playing fast and loose with their residency and WA status. People are changing their nations and not announcing it, changing their nations and not sending telegrams as required by the statute, CTE’ing and refounding, raiding with foreign organizations & not announcing these changes in WA status, and the Office seems expected to offer leniency, chaperone people and chase them down when they’re in violation, and is obligated to grant a 48-hour grace period while people fool around at our expense. While I could choose austerity and have the legal authority right now to purge multiple citizens who have not followed the law in regards to updating the Office in the Thread and telegramming an Official, I’d prefer to amend the law, change things and put a stop to all this in the future. This is ridiculous and I don’t have time for it, and it puts strain on people and resources that could be better focused elsewhere.

For those who don’t know exactly what I’m talking about, please observe all updates to the records thread beginning here.

Also eliminating the dispatch option for recordkeeping. This is what the forum is for. Things go poorly when dispatches are used for government business like this. Same for proscription.

SECTION I: CITATION

…1.1. This Act shall be known and cited as the “Citizenship Act.”

SECTION II: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CITIZENSHIP OFFICE AND THE APPLICATION THREAD

…2.1. The Citizenship Office (“Office”) is hereby established to oversee the process of naturalization. It shall be composed of the Viziers, the Eastern Pacific Police Service Commissioner, and other Citizenship Officials as confirmed by the Magisterium. The Delegate cannot serve concurrently as a Commissioner.

…2.2. The Grand Vizier shall lead and set out the procedures of the Office.

…2.3. The Magisterium shall confirm Citizenship Officials nominated by the Grand Vizier via a 2/3 majority vote for an indefinite term. The Magisterium may remove Citizenship Officials by the same majority.

…2.4. The Office shall establish an official forum thread (“Thread”) that can be utilized for official records, inquiries, the posting of applications, acceptance or denial of applications, acceptance of requests, and other purposes as seen proper by the Office or this law.

SECTION III: NATURALIZATION

…3.1. Residents seeking to become Citizens must (as listed alphabetically):
…3.1.1. State within their application one of their valid Resident nations and their World Assembly (“WA”) nation, and post said application in the medium designated by the Office,
…3.1.2. Respond in confirmation to a telegram sent to both their nations from a Citizenship Official, and
…3.1.3. Have their application accepted by the Office.

…3.2. All applications must list a valid WA nation and all nations listed in an application must be operated by their respective applicants. Applications not meeting these criteria shall be denied.

…3.3. A Citizenship Official shall notify a Resident, via an in-game telegram, on whether their application for Citizenship was accepted or denied.

…3.4. The Office may deny any Citizenship application for reasons of regional security concerns, incomplete application, provision of falsified information and/or ejection from the WA. Said denial may be appealed to the Conclave within two weeks of denial.
…3.4.1. The Praesidium may vote to overrule the Office’s decision to grant Citizenship for reasons of regional security.
…3.4.2. If a telegram from the Citizenship Office is not replied to within fourteen days, the associated citizenship application shall automatically expire, in which case a new citizenship application must be submitted in order to be accepted.

…3.5. Upon becoming a Citizen, a Resident is required to maintain continuous residency with the Resident nation they stated their application (“recorded Resident nation”). They shall also, maintain continuous WA membership with the nation they stated as their WA nation in their application (“recorded WA nation”).

…3.6. In the event a Citizen wishes to change what nation the Office has noted as their recorded Resident nation or recorded WA nation, they shall request the Office , within the designated Thread, to change one of their recorded nations to a new nation they own. A telegram from the new nation shall be sent to a Citizenship Official.
…3.6.1. A Citizen does not need to send such a telegram if their new nation is their current recorded Resident nation or recorded WA nation.
…3.6.2. A Citizenship Official shall notify a Citizen, via an in-game telegram, once their request for a change is granted by the Office in the Thread.

…3.7. Continuous World Assembly membership requirements shall not apply to any active soldier of the Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army (“EPSA”) as verified by the Overseeing Officer. The active EPSA soldier must notify the Citizenship office within one week of joining EPSA.
…3.7.1. If an EPSA soldier ceases active duty, they have one week within which to declare a World Assembly nation they own to the Office in the designated medium to serve as their recorded WA nation following said declaration. Failure to do so in said time-frame shall invalidate their Citizenship.

…3.8 The Overseeing Officer is mandated to upkeep an updated list of EPSA soldiers for the Citizenship Office to review. If the Overseeing Officer does not keep an updated list, they shall be in dereliction of duty.

SECTION IV: CITIZENSHIP AUDIT

…4.1. A Citizenship shall be immediately invalid 48 hours after they are publicly notified in the Thread by the Office to either (as listed alphabetically) upon discovery by the Office of:
…4.1.1. No longer Failure to maintain residency with their recorded Resident nation at the time of notification,
…4.1.2. No longer Failure to maintain WA membership in their recorded WA nation at the time of notification.
…4.1.3. Failure to comply with the process detailed in Section 3.6.

…4.2. If the Citizen returns their recorded Resident nation to the region or their WA membership to their recorded WA nation and issues a notification of such return within the Thread before the 48 hour period established in Section 4.1 expires, their Citizenship shall remain valid.
…4.2.1 The Citizen may also keep their Citizenship valid if they successfully change their recorded Resident nation or recorded WA nation to another nation with valid citizenship or WA membership within the same 48 hour period, following Section 3 procedures.

…4.32. Exceptions to Section 4.1 and its subsections may be established by additional law. Any Citizen may reapply for Citizenship upon removal.

…4.43. Any Resident may renounce their Citizenship by notifying the Office in the Thread.

SECTION V: CITIZENSHIP RECORDS

…5.1. The Office shall maintain an official list of all Citizens. Said list shall remain publicly viewable on The East Pacific forums or in an in-game dispatch. The list may be posted in another forum thread besides the Thread if the forums are utilized for this purpose.

…5.2. Approval or denial of a Citizenship application or change of a Citizen’s nations shall be the moment when the Office states within the Thread that an application has been denied or accepted or that a change of nation was accepted.

…5.3. Removal of Citizenship shall be the moment when the Office marks, within the Thread, that a Citizen’s Citizenship is invalid or a Citizen has renounced their registration.

SECTION VI: PROSCRIPTION

…6.1. Proscription shall be a status which confers banishment from the region for reasons of regional security based on actions committed abroad or against The East Pacific. No proscription may be issued against any resident for reason of summary or indictable offense; all such instances must be tried by Conclave.

…6.2. Individuals with no known resident nation may be proscribed by the Praesidium through any process dictated by the Standing Orders of the Praesidium.

…6.3. Non-citizen residents may be proscribed by the Praesidium through a 3/4 majority vote, the administration of which shall be defined by the Standing Orders of the Praesidium.

…6.4. No Citizen may be proscribed by the Praesidium.

…6.5. The Grand Vizier shall maintain a public record of proscribed groups and nations on the forums or in a dispatch, as well as the reasons behind proscription…

…6.6. The Delegate must be informed upon the beginning of a proscription process, as well as once a decision is made. The Grand Vizier must announce each proscription, or consign such a task to the Delegate. This announcement must adequately justify the proscription.

…6.7. The maintenance of a resident nation by an individual proscribed by the Praesidium shall be considered a summary offense with a sentence of banishment for as long as the proscription lasts.

…6.8. The Praesidium may alter or lift any proscription by the process in which it was established, or establish a time limit or terms within the initial proscription decision.

…6.9. Any proscribed nation may appeal to the Conclave, in which the length or terms of proscription may be altered, including an exception to group proscriptions, or the proscription may be fully lifted, if it is determined to be unreasonable or unjustified.

SECTION VII: VOTE FRAUD

…8.1. Nothing in this Act permits an individual to maintain multiple Citizenships, which shall constitute an indictable offense with a maximum sentence of permanent banishment.

…8.2. Any individual who attempts to vote during Delegate Elections and regional referenda without valid Citizenship shall be committing an indictable offense with a maximum sentence of one year banishment.

2

While I could choose austerity and have the legal authority right now to purge multiple citizens who have not followed the law in regards to updating the Office in the Thread and telegramming an Official…

Who’s to say you shouldn’t?

Full support. I’m sick of the bullshit.

3

Despite me being in LOA, I’m still gonna comment

I don’t like this. What it’s doing is removing a period of grace for people who may have forgotten, like “hey, just so you know” and replacing it with “boom, you’re off the list”.

I would like some reasoning behind the removal of IV.2 (admittedly, I did skim through the initial explanation, so just quoting will be fine).

4

They can just reapply. Putting all of this work on the Cit Office is unreasonable. 4.2 just doubles the checks that Cit Office has to do within 48 hours, and I don’t always have time to work within 48 hours like this. And it seems like no one else is willing to do this right now if I don’t handle it.

The vast majority of citizens aren’t delinquent when it comes to reporting, but the few who consistently are are making a lot of work and a lot of possible problems - potentially even frivolous legal challenges - for people who are actually willing to put the time and effort into making this place function on a basic, fundamental level. Please let me just nix citizenship when our process is not respected; people can reapply later with updated credentials, although I may eventually recommend repeat offenders to the Praesidium for denial.

5

I would say the problem here is that citizen office needs to be expanded, for example assigning more Viziers to the task. We have double digit viziers, and if they aren’t doing work, you all need to sit down and have a good talk to split work. Handling everything by yourself is not healthy.

The first time cit official checks - say 20 citizens, and then finds 3 in noncompliance, the second time after the notification should just be zero-ing on those 3 which another official can do.

6

Full support. Grace periods have been argued for a lot in the past, but I don’t see the need for it. I can’t think of a single reason why someone would need the time. So far, the only people who I have (in my long tenure being the sole active citizenship officer until I burnt out) notified that needed to correct are:

  1. People who corrected but then continued to not use voting rights anyway (the only thing citizenship confers, since residents are protected by the Concordat)
  2. People who just don’t notice/correct anyway
  3. One singular person who did notice and then refused to correct out of spite and then also tried to sue me

Our grace period is currently not bringing any positive community benefit. It’s extra red tape, extra burden on an understaffed, overworked, underappreciated, over-relied-upon office. Which brings me to this:

Yeah, I definitely agree. One of the main things I tried to do as GV was get Viziers more active and another one of my main things was expanding the Office. I managed to get 2-3 more Viziers roped in and 3-5 new Officers working on it. I even appointed someone to take over duties to encourage action. Most recently, we’ve gotten some bot development in that supports the office.

However, I think at some point we have to accept that there is little interest in a time-consuming, dispassionate, thankless job like citizenship applications. We also need to keep in mind that, while there’s no official distinction (something I wish I had pursued more before I burnt out) but there is an unofficial distinction between Viziers who are more proactive vs reactive. Many retire into the office to be more like security reserves – waiting to be called into service in crisis, when they leap to action like no one you’ve seen before – while some elect to serve as more active duty guardians – keeping a close eye on different stats and tasks.

Due to our status as a feeder, particularly in a post-F/S stage where we have so many enemies, we need shields as much as we need swords. It’s not like these Viziers are doing nothing – they still endotart, they still talk when we need to, and they’ve acted on high alert situations from Fedele’s coup to the false flag del bump to the ConCrisis to Jo. And they have lives outside of NS, where they cannot contribute a lot of time to things that just aren’t fun.

So the reality is, we’ve tried a lot to reach this ideal of every Vizier lending a hand in citizenship applications, but the problem is it’s unattainable as long as we both have and need reactive Viziers alongside our proactive ones, and as long as who we add to the office is limited by who is actually interested (a necessary assumption and an incredibly limited pool).

So if there’s a situation where we can loosen the burden of this boring, thankless job that we need for our government to survive, I say go for it. In my experience, it’ll bring no harm. Besides, reclaiming citizenship afterwards anyway isn’t very difficult due to a lot of reforms we’ve made in the past, reforms that are younger than the clauses AMOM wants to edit. I see this as necessary but unfortunately delayed adjustment to the new reality.

7

Something else that’s unwritten and thus far unspoken is that forum admins should be doing IP checks on new citizens to make sure they’re not alts of banned accounts and / or hiding their IP and geo behind VPNs. There doesn’t seem to be any way that this has been legally reconciled besides loose references to fraud, but it should also be mentioned that there are only a small handful of Viziers who are able to do this (that will probably not be expanded). Provisions exist for admin to do it retroactively and for the Praesidium to “overrule the Office’s decision to grant Citizenship for reasons of regional security”, but it’s likely to be missed retrospectively like this.

I’m not saying we try to codify this right now, but it’s something else to consider.

8

As I understand, Citizenship can nearly immediately be regranted. So I don’t really see a lot of downside to good-faith Citizens.

9

I move to vote.

10

I second.

14

Do you believe in life after love veto?

15

Today, the Delegate of The East Pacific has made the decision to exercise the first veto we’ve seen in five years, to shoot down an amendment that would close a dangerous loophole and save time and effort for our dedicated public officials. The Delegate made this decision supposedly with “the advice and feedback of members of the region.” However, it is clear that the Delegate did not listen to both sides of the debate, did not seek or heed the advice of anyone who disagreed with him, and pushed ahead with the support of his Cabinet echo chamber to undo Magisterium legislation with little to no logic.

So far only one Vizier has stepped forward and said he was contacted. This Vizier, notably, has no experience in the Citizenship Office, despite over six months as a Vizier. With no hands on experience and no qualifications other than agreeing with the Delegate, that Vizier served as the only known consultant on this issue, despite not being affected by it. Meanwhile, I myself, a former Grand Vizier, currently one of three Viziers who has actively worked on citizenship applications in the past few years, and one of only two that is still active, was never consulted, nor was the bill’s sponsor, who is the second. Because the Delegate already made up his mind.

The first argument – and the first lie – that our Delegate sets forth is that the amendment was not passed with a majority. He claims it was only passed with 47% of the vote. This is incorrect. The amendment passed with 53% in favor. The Delegate derives this erroneous claim from the Magisterium poll, which counts abstentions. Our Standing Orders, as well as the parliamentary procedures of many real life corporations and governments (including the U.S. Congress) do not count abstentions in the passage percentage. To do so is contrary to all logic and law.

Particularly, I’d like to note the recent failure of a Praesidium proposal to lower the endorsement cap to 200. This amendment failed with 52% of Magisters voting against – a difference of one vote just like this vetoed proposal and a similar percentage. Two Magisters, however, abstained. If we took this the way our Delegate did, that those abstentions mean whatever we’d like, then this proposal should have passed because only 47% opposed the proposal. However, we do not live in this fantasy world. We live in one where our rules mean something even when our Delegate wishes they did not.

The Delegate then goes on to describe instantaneous removal of citizenship as a “great inconvenience,” stating that residents will be “unjustly and immediately punished for actions they may not have yet even realised they had taken.” This is untrue as well. There is no justified reason why anyone would not realize that they have Ceased to Exist, Moved Regions, or Resigned from the WA. Either they are neglecting TEP for months on end or they are making an active choice. We should not be bending over backwards for people who can’t bother to spend five minutes every two months on logging in and we should not be bothering ourselves with people choosing to forfeit citizenship.

As I noted in the amendment thread, which is public and ought to be influential in any decision made on this topic, there are two main types of people who I’ve notified of impeding loss of citizenship in my years in the Praesidium: (1) Those who corrected course but don’t vote in elections, which is the only right conferred by Citizenship and (2) Those who don’t correct anyway. Exceptions tend to include people who were heavily criticized by the public for their actions or inactions and already had to jump through extraordinary hurdles to get back to their initial position, since their number only includes Delegates and Viziers. No one’s rights are being preserved by vetoing this amendment. All it does is make life more difficult for the Citizenship Office and keep open a useless loophole.

The Delegate goes on to describe the amendment as “incredibly hostile to cosmo members of TEP.” As a cosmo myself, speaking about a Delegate who holds citizenship only here and in a nine nation start-up, I can confidently say that this is incorrect as well. Nothing about this bill makes it any harder for cosmos to acquire citizenship. What he describes, with these cosmopolitans either needing to WA lock or contact the office each time they change their WA, is already how our system works. Vetoing this amendment does not change that, nor does this amendment passing. All it does is prevent people that don’t follow our laws from having any immediate consequences.

As a side note, I have served as a member of the Free Nations Federation’s government for nearly five years and the Alstroemerian Commonwealth’s government for over three. I served in Thaecia’s government for almost two years, and I have held citizenship in nine separate prominent gameplay regions across my 5+ years of East Pacifican citizenship. As a cosmopolitan and a prolific one at that, I am offended by a Delegate who says he speaks for people like me while suggesting that I am hostile to myself for supporting this legislation. It makes no sense and is disrespectful.

The Delegate further claims this amendment will not “prevent foreign enemies from infiltrating our region” – this, notably, is not the goal. The goal is to fix a loophole that allows someone who still holds citizenship to not meet the requirements of citizenship. The goal is to ease the burden on one of the most thankless and tedious jobs our region has to offer – and one of the most necessary. It does not “unjustly punish” anyone. It simply enforces the law. The Delegate claims to appreciate the hard work of the Magisterium, but he vetoes our proposals, twists our Standing Orders, and rails against our existing legal systems under the facade of concern for populations who are not truly vulnerable.

This is a quality of life improvement. It is an amendment which simply and sensibly updates our legal code to account for the fact that we Citizenship Officers are human beings – human beings who have lives, classes, jobs, friends, other positions in TEP, and little free time to devote to the mindless task of approving and auditing citizenships. And yet we do so, without glory or thanks from the Delegate or anyone else. We sink our energy into this task because we know it’s important, and we came to the Magisterium with an inefficiency we wanted to correct. The Magisterium agreed with us, but the Delegate did not.

It is the responsibility of every citizen of The East Pacific to reject the Delegate’s arguments, which are based more in the vibes of the proposal than the actual concrete provisions of it. It is our responsibility to see the plain facts for what they are – this amendment is and does none of the things that the Delegate claims. We must come together in logic and solidarity to reinforce the value of truth and democracy in our region. We must not bow down to exaggerated fearmongering. I call on my fellow Magisters to pass this proposal as is, without any changes. This amendment is necessary. Let’s show the Executive government that the Magisterium does not make decisions based on vibes and vague misinterpretations but rather on truth, logic, and a commitment to bettering our region.

16

As a note, I was also contacted by Dead about this amendment and shared to him my thoughts. While I have not worked in the CitOffice for many years I HAVE worked in the Citoffice in the past - notably when it was under the Viceroy, and did audits as such - and a little bit more recently at the start when it swapped to WA/tg requirements (though I never did audits in then, and by that point we had swapped to the suspension system this amendment is trying to do away with).

Based on that I will say that, while the Delegate’s veto is too generalizing and is mistruthful (probably from misunderstanding of the legislative process) in terms of Magi majorities, there are some truths to this core.

  1. This bill WILL inconvenience some TEPers. That’s just a fact. In the past five years we saw 2 Delegates loose their WA which - if Im understanding this amendment right - would force them to loose citizenship and thus the Delegacy. I myself have moved out of TEP accidentally once or twice, and if this amendment had been in effect then, then I would’ve lost my citizenship and then theoretically been forced to undergo the renomination process for an Arbiter or Vizier (i say theoretically cuz I cant remember what positions I had when that happened). While this is anecdotal, I do recall Libertanny - literally one of our greatest recent delegates - got disenfranchised because of a system like this amendment that did an audit right before elections began (back when nom period stopped new cits from voting).

It is true that the regular TEPer it inconveniences will be rare because people are generally good at staying put. But mistakes happen and history shows that they do, and in those Id say uncommon momments, this amendment definitely will inconvenience some TEPers - whether you think that inconvenience is great or small is personal opinion.

  1. While this bill doesnt really alienate cosmos as fhe Delegate claims, it DOES prevent from gaing citizenship those non-EPSA R/Ders. Yes, in our current system they weren’t supposed to hold citizenship anyways, so the suspension system is a loophole such people use OR is a happy little accident heh. Either way, closing this loophole formally shuts out a small minotiry of current and future TEPers from having a full voice (via votes in elections or referenda). Again, whether one thinks this is a big deal is personal preference, but this does alienate such individuals. Prime example is Aster.

  2. I don’t really see how this system is a major inconvenience since all it is is literally just one extra post then waiting 2 days. Thats it. It works perfectly well if audits are batched up like once a month or every two weeks or so, which to my knowledge is how it used to be done from 2020 all the way to 2023. If the Prae insists on constant day-by-day audits then sure I can see how this is a bit tiring, but again: just do an audit sweep every two weeks and suddenly this system just isnt so bad.

  3. I do not agree nor condone the phrasing of Delegate’s act as anti-Magisterial.

  4. Although it may appear to be executive overreach to some, it does not to me. The Delegate clearly has some deep concerns with this bill - which may or may not be true, but they are deep - and is not using this power frivously. Nor does the Delegate have any reason to vote against this amendment beyond the arguments hes stated, nor does his history in the past year show any anti-Magisterial resent that could explain this veto. Its very clear the Delegate believes in the arguments he sets out and thus believes this bill should be vetoed due to how it couod inconvenience some TEpers and alienatte cosmos (whixh as I said isnt true for tje modt part, but I digress).

17

@Mangegneithe If I may, may I suggest the ammendment of 4.1 to the following;

…4.1. A Citizenship shall be immediately invalid upon discovery by the Office of:
…4.1.1. Failure to maintain residency with their recorded Resident nation,
…4.1.2. Failure to maintain WA membership in their recorded WA nation, and;
…4.1.3. Failure to comply with the process detailed in Section 3.6 within one hour of the happenings detailed in articles 4.1.1 or 4.1.2 occuring

Or a variation of it, as it ensures 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 don’t mess with 4.1.3, this is the result of my convo with Bach

1 Like
18

I appreciate coming forward. The lack of transparency from the Delegate on who actually advised can only breed speculation, and the more information we hear, the more complete a picture we get. So far, though, I’m still not convinced that he didn’t just hear from those who agree with him already.

I would argue that they as much “lost” the Delegacy under the current system as the old, since they lost the Delegacy seat without appointing a successor. I would also add Marrabuk to the list of those who lost WA status – Marrabuk was rigorously interrogated by the Magisterium during his reconfirmation vote as Vizier, which was already required under the old system.

I would argue that any inconvenience can be measured and, more than that, compared to what the inconvenience would be under the current system. Is someone who already has to regain hundreds of endorsements that much more inconvenienced by an additional telegram? Is someone who already has to jump through the hurdle of renomination and reconfirmation that much more inconvenienced by the smaller hurdle of, again, a single telegram? It can be measured in the amount of time it takes – minimal – and the comparative impact – negligible.

I am honestly befuddled by this part of your argument. You admit it’s illegal for foreign R/Ders to hold citizenship and that this is a loophole that allows people to bypass the law, then seem to suggest that it’s a bad thing to close this loophole because those illegally holding citizenship would be held accountable?

Like you said, these people are already barred. Vetoing this amendment doesn’t change that. What would change it is another amendment, which neither you nor Dead have proposed. In fact, it is me, the supposed anti-cosmo despite being the most prolific cosmo delegate we’ve seen in the modern era, who is broaching the topic of making that expansion. Unfortunately, this truth makes the false framework of the veto and any opposition to this chiefly clerical alteration crumble, so it is inconvenient.

The problem with having a heavy schedule IRL, as I’m sure you know, is that schedule being unpredictable. At any given day, I might be able to devote some time to an audit or getting through a batch of telegrams, but I cannot often say with any certainty that I will be available two days later for a follow-up. This discourages audits and makes those who perform them make room in their schedule to do so, which could be damaging depending on the context – maybe I’m free right now to write textwalls but I know for a fact that I have a meeting on Monday with a friend/coworker and we’ll probably hang out afterwards, leaving little to no room for me currently to schedule anything two days from now.

The Delegate reversed a decision of the Magisterium. That means he is against the Magisterium in this issue. That is not something you can disagree with, it’s a simple fact – the Executive is taking a side against the Legislature on this issue. As many have pointed out, this is quite obvious to say, since any veto is inherently that. But I think it’s necessary to point out because a veto is a big deal, particularly in TEP, and here it is being used for reasons that make no sense.

If his concerns are not founded in truth, I would argue that this use is indeed frivolous. Of course, you are free to disagree, which I can obviously tell you do, but I wanted to remind everyone why I’m taking issue here – the dishonesty, intentional or mistaken, implicit or explicit.

Exactly my point. It isn’t true for the most part, and so we should not just let it stand. Just as the veto is a constitutionally valid action so too is the veto override, which I’m suggesting here. That we take a stand against this veto, not because it’s a veto, but because it’s being employed for all the wrong reasons.

19

I will say that I was wrong in saying that the vote was not a majority, as it was legally a majority, I counted the absentations, which I should not have done. The majority point was brought to me by one of the people I contacted for feedback, who was not on my side in this whole thing. I will also say that I was too generalized as well, and for that I apologize. But I will be standing by the other points I made.

20

@CyberiumShadow made an excellent point here that I’d like to address, lest the core principles behind my statement get befuddled by my poor execution. Cyberium stated the following:

if the Magi operated even under the rules of Plurality , the Aye vote would still be lower than the Nay in the context of the Endo Cap amendment to 200

This is true, but I will note that the Magisterium does not operate under the rules of plurality – this misinterpretation of our very clear Standing Orders belongs to the Delegate alone. And yes, it does mean that, still, a majority of all Magisters has not voted in favor, since that is not required for anything to pass and is very rare to find. So I will substitute this argument for another:

In this vote to admit Aster to the Magisterium, only 9/19 Magisters voted in favor. It passed, because our rules are not like the Delegate says, but if we took the Delegate’s word as law, Aster would not be a Magister, or at least shouldn’t. This logic is faulty and dangerous.

In Zuk’s reformatting of the Concordat , once again, only 9/19 Magisters voted in favor. Another victory because abstentions do not count, but one that the Delegate has claimed is indefensible. Despite this, it went on to be approved by Referendum, and now forms the law of the land as a part of our Concordat.

In my Proscription reforms, only half of the Magisters (8) voted in favor, equal to the sum of those voting against, abstaining, or not voting. Despite this, it reached a majority because, again, our procedures are clear that abstentions aren’t counted. This amendment was signed into law by then-Delegate Merlovich. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find any instance where a Delegate vetoes a proposal in part or in whole because of this flawed understanding of procedure. As far as I’m aware, it has never happened before – Marrabuk’s veto, the last one to be employed, targeted a bill that passed with a 90% majority.

Now on to my final point on this misinterpretation of procedure. If we take the Delegate’s premise as a given – that a decision is only valid if voted upon by a majority of the eligible voters – then he himself is not a valid Delegate. In February, he received 23 votes out of 80 citizens. By the Delegate’s math, that’s only 29% of the vote. He is therefore, by his own logic, not our democratically elected Delegate. Of course, the idea is absurd, because the logic behind it is absurd. We do not go by absolute majorities of a voting body in any part of TEP, and the Delegate is wrong to apply that logic here.

EDIT: I was writing this when the Delegate submitted his post admitting wrongdoing on this point. I apologize for wasting the time of anyone who read this after the Delegate realized his fault.