Would you care to share who?
I will not until I get permission.
It disturbs me that someone can influence one of the most extreme checks and balances that is available to the Delegate through backrooms conversations without being accountable to the public. However, I am less concerned with the lack of transparency and inclusivity in the Executive’s internal conversations than I am with the faulty logic of the veto.
I don’t see an issue with this but I also don’t like the idea of trying to appease an Executive government that fundamentally misunderstands what we’re doing here. I still think we should go through once more with the same proposal and show the Delegate that the Magisterium stands by our decisions and centers our legislation in logic and truth. I’m also not the bill’s sponsor so I’m not qualified to accept an amendment.
I just had a nice conversation with @American-Cascadia, who suggested 12 hours as an alternative to 48 hours. While I’d obviously prefer instantaneous removal, I can understand some of the points made regarding delegates / citizens who have accidentally resigned from the WA / accidentally moved regions, and can reluctantly accept 12 hours as an alternative to 48.
Logic aside, it is the Delegate’s prerogative to veto any amendment. There is no constitutional expectation that reasoning even be provided. While I obviously don’t agree with the decision to veto, being the author / sponsor, and by nature see a veto as “unpopular”, it remains a mechanism that exists between the legislature and executive and must be respected and worked through / around. The amendment will not pass as written if an override is attempted.
Opening the floor to discussion of a 12 hour window (this will essentially entail the reversion of section 4), with keeping all of the other proposed edits re: allowing the use of dispatches.
With reducing the 48 hour period to 12 hours, does this mean the original 4.2 would no longer be removed?
Would this follow the original procedure or Aster’s procedure? In other words, is a warning necessary to kick off the 12 hour grace period (thereby extending the grace period to often ridiculous levels) or is it a flat grace period whether or not the Praesidium notices?
I’d like to again assert that the Delegate’s veto is completely unjustified considering every single point it makes is wrong. I would still simply like to see this veto overturned and the existing proposal go through.
RE: Ladona: at this point it behooves me to rewrite the amendment to section 4 (proposed amendments to sections 5 and 6 remain the same).
We can consider this something in-between the vetoed proposal and the original leniency of the Act, which will still remove some of the onus from Cit Office to chase / hassle / constantly notify people then track their timeline, but doesn’t allow for instant removal of citizenship for a mistake that someone can correct by rejoining the WA or moving back to TEP within a reasonable timeframe.
Also, to remove some confusion, I’m getting rid of “discovery by the Office of”; I’d like for it to be 12 hours after the occurrence, not 12 hours after “discovery”. I don’t think that was worded properly.
Please discuss:
SECTION IV: CITIZENSHIP AUDIT
…4.1. A Citizenship shall may be invalidated by the Office 48 12 hours after they are publicly notified in the Thread by the Office to either (as listed alphabetically):
…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. within the aforementioned 12-hour timeframe.…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 12 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 12 hour period, following Section 3 procedures.…4.3. Exceptions to Section 4.1 and its subsections may be established by additional law. Any Citizen may reapply for Citizenship upon removal.
…4.4. Any Resident may renounce their Citizenship by notifying the Office in the Thread.
My question was immediately, tangentially answered by the proposed wording. I apologize for my impatience.
Although I guess the question still stands as to whether Dead prefers it be “after announcement” / Office can do it after discovery of this lapse. Again, the whole point of the amendment, in my opinion, is to remove some of this silly goose chase activity from the Cit App thread. If someone has an “oh shit” moment that they can’t correct within 12 hours, it was probably intentional, or they’re just done playing Nationstates and have CTE’d and will stay CTE’d.
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Also, to remove some confusion, I’m getting rid of “discovery by the Office of”; I’d like for it to be 12 hours after the occurrence, not 12 hours after “discovery”. I don’t think that was worded properly.
Sort of a self-correction here: it wasn’t “worded properly” because it wasn’t worded at all; the original diction of the amendment was just instantaneous removal. So now I had to rethink how to achieve a wording as well as an intended result that was in-between the original law and the intention of the amendment.
I will come out as one of the people that Dead contacted. They asked my opinion (which I did not disclose anywhere before as I did not participate in the debate on the matter). I shared my support for a veto (and I take blame for misreading majority - not Dead).
I still stand. It’s a big change and the majority was almost non-existant. And the amount of threats we face with this amendment outweights the value it brings. I just want to remind you that Atlae would stop being Delegate legally or Marrabuk would stop being Grand Vizier and Vizier. That’s just two examples, but there were more. I see the point in this amendment - we want more security. But history proves that this exact way of achieving it would only cause more danger and instability.
What’re your thoughts on the revision
A lot to comment on here, and a lot of my comments have been posted to Discord. I’ll try to recompile them here for the record.
As to the veto and it’s justification:
(see here)
(see here)
(see here)
As to the legal nature of a veto and its remedies:
(see here)
Now, going over that veto, I’ll clarify a few of my positions, because I’d prefer this to be on the record.
This is a decision I’ve made as Delegate, with the advice and feedback of members of the region. To help you understand why I’ve made this decision, I’ve laid out my rationale below.
Good. We have a decision by the Delegate, which is an action reviewable under Article C, Section 4, 1 of the Concordat ("The Conclave may rule on the actions of the Delegate … "). The Concordat doesn’t require an explanation, but here we have a rationale that is explicitly added to the decision (see here).
Just to get that out of the way.
- The amendment (A-2025-16) or ‘Amendment to the Citizenship Act’ met a legal majority by one vote. I was wrong to state that it didn’t, and this was due to my lack of understanding of the voting process. I do believe that because of this slim majority
This read differently before, and has been changed. I can’t find the previous version. I greatly object to changing this without including the previous version, as it hides from further debate and destroys part of our record.
I refer though to the Discord-post I added above.
What the Delegate does here is not only vetoing, and vetoing on any consideration whatsoever, what the Delegate does is vetoing because a certain majority, as determined by the Delegate, was not achieved. That is not in any way, shape or form the prerogative of the Delegate to determine, and runs counter to the Concordat.
The instantaneous removal of citizenship is a great inconvenience laid on the residents of The East Pacific. The justification is that it takes work off the shoulders of the citizenship office; however, this only places a great burden on the residents of TEP, many of whom will be unjustly and immediately punished for actions they may not have yet even realised they had taken.
This actually fails to state why this would be an inconvience.
Importantly, this amendment is, by definition, incredibly hostile to foreign military cosmos of TEP, that being members who participate in more than one region and in a military different from TEPs. It essentially forces these soldiers with a mobile WA membership to either permanently move their WA to TEP, which many will undoubtedly be uncomfortable with, or enlist in the EPSA, lest they lose the various benefits their citizenship provides them. Although they can inform the office of their moving WA nation to keep their citizenship, this is a tedious process, especially for people who may be moving their WA often and only for a few hours at a time.
This claims a hostility exists because it would be either permanent WA in TEP or joining EPSA (the horror?). But next states a third alternative anyway, being informing the Citizenship Office. Why sending a telegram would be “tedious” is not explained.
While the amendment has good intentions, being the strengthening of our regional security, this amendment simply does not accomplish enough to warrant the alienating of a large portion of our region’s active community. This amendment will not prevent foreign enemies from infiltrating our region, if they are so determined, and unjustly punish those in our region who simply want to experience what TEP has to offer.
The first part is not explained, unless not preventing foreign enemies from infiltrating is why it’s not enough. But that’s not the goal of this legislation. Never was. Someone who would have read the debate on it, would know that. So this is a strawmans argument if I ever saw one. What part of this is “punishing” isn’t explained either.
And that’s it. That’s all we got.
Not only is the Delegate unilaterally employing and enforcing majority requirements against the Concordat, the rest of the decision is either unexplained, a fundamental misunderstanding of the amendment, self-contradictory or just plainly a strawmans argument.
Bravo.
Now, in a side note to this, I had a very productive discussion with @EvanRikuta on how Section 4 of the amended law would apply, and how it fits with Section 3.6.
Basically, anyone complying with the notification requirement under 3.6, can not be removed in an audit under Section 4.
@EvanRikuta and I came to the following amendment to clarify this:
(see here)
I see AMOM has found a compromise with our Delegate, and is amending the law in another direction. That’s of course his prerogative, and shows a lot more grace than I could give this … decision.
This remains a ridiculous metric for deciding a veto. If you think our procedures for passing legislation are bad for the region, change the procedures. The fact is that TEP – and every other legislature in the world – uses majorities to make decisions. Just because the Delegate and his cabinet want a supermajority (although they are still unwilling to make that legislative change and would rather obstruct every other one) doesn’t mean that this perfectly valid vote should be overturned.
Once again, I remind my fellow citizens that this is not a “security vs access” issue, like many who oppose it on ridiculous grounds would hope to frame it as. This is about enforcing the laws we already have and making everyone’s life easier in the process. When someone no longer meets the requirements for being a citizen, the law demands that they are not a citizen (as does logic). All this amendment does is allow that.
Marrabuk was not a Grand Vizier when he resigned, but I’m glad you brought him up, because he did stop being a Vizier. He had to be renominated and reconfirmed and face the full judgment of this body for CTEing. Your examples support the points I’ve made and will continue to make.
Clearly you don’t see the point, because you are saying it’s about “more security.” That’s not what it’s about. It’s about “a needlessly onerous and poorly-followed procedure” that gets in the way of security measures that are already in place and are agreed upon by all parties here. I am shocked and appalled that the Executive government would base such a gigantic decision on such a complete and utter misunderstanding of this legislation.
In-between long arguments over the veto, can I get some feedback on the revision before I try to rerun the vote on this amendment?
Thanks for the clarification. 
While I voted for the amendment previously, I think this is much more palatable and would give my support for it again.
Support.
The way I’m reading this, the cit office has the discretion to take longer than 12 hours if they want with no upper limit. Is this intentional? Not necessarily opposed to that, to be clear.
Also, how do you see “failure to” applying in 2 cases: lawful ejection and unlawful ejection? It would be problematic if someone lawfully removed from the region could still be a citizen indefinitely unless loss of citizenship is a specific part of the punishment, or if a rogue player ejecting someone causes them to lose cit. Conclave could of course step in via judicial review if it ever comes up in practice, but ideally the law isn’t ambiguous. I apologize if this is a moot point; I haven’t had time to read every legal document yet.
Perhaps something like this:
…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. All applicants must be evaluated by forum administration to verify that they are not evading a lawful penalty or administrative ban, or otherwise concealing their IP. Applicants not meeting these criteria shall be denied.
…3.4. A Citizenship Official shall notify a Resident, via an in-game telegram, on whether their application for Citizenship was accepted or denied.
This would be agnostic to whether or not “forum administration” is a cit official. But I agree that it isn’t necessary to codify right now in this amendment meant to do something else.
I will respond to Aiv at some point.
As for the amendment, I will vote against any amendment that doesn’t maintain the current system of 1. Office discovers bad Cit, 2. Office posts a forum notif, 3. Office waits X amount of time from notif for the situation to be rectified before removal.
I do not mind shortening the time from 48h to 12h if that specidic system is kept. Changing it so the timer starts upon the discrepancy’s occurence is not keeping that system.
The reason is because while it was unintentional, the current system allows R/Drs to keep Citizenship to TEP. I do not subscribe to the idea that one must have their WA or EPSA here to prove some form of loyalty or prioritization to TEP - WA is not always a good indicator of that, and individuals who are non-EPSA R/Ders have the potential to contribute to TEP more than 99% of its other Citizens. Aster, for example, is a person whose contributions to TEP already probably outnumber 50% of current Citizens by just being a Magister and Exec staff - yet this amendment would remove their right to vote (by making it impossible for ghem to keep citizenship without moving their wa here or joining epsa) even though they contribute more to TEP than a lot of “traditional” WA cits. The same holds true for Jo, or Altys in the past, or Catiana in the past, or Libertanny in the past, and so on and so forth.
Please name one example of someone accidentally resigning WA or moving regions and not noticing right away.
This makes no sense to me. You don’t like a provision of the law so instead of changing that provision, you want to break the system in a different part of the law (or rather, keep it broken) so that said provision can’t be enforced.
It also sounds to me that you are admitting this is an unintentional loophole that is being abused – but that you’re just in favor of that abuse because, again, you wish the law was different even though you’re doing nothing to change it.
This is a tricky situation because IC law can’t mandate that admin do anything, so we kinda have to rely on an unofficial agreement. We can mandate that CitiOffice asks though.