Neualtenburg Constitution 2

Believe it or not, the RA will require secret voting, when it must protect itself and its citizens against conflicting interests. For instance, imagine that a bill is ratified stating that the city will expand into open territory two sims West. How would you like it if some player snapped up all that land after reading our logs and then doubled the price? How would our citizens feel if the government allowed them to be exploited due to a Pollyanna truth clause in our Constitution? Let's not pretend we won't be gamed and exploited at every turn and protect ourselves from the beginning. People will thank us later.

Naturally, the Philosophic branch will verify that all secret items are for the benefit of the society and have a concrete time limit (remind me to add that to the Constitution).

I agree! I'll add this to the Constitution (remind me).

First, only a 2/3 vote can be used when ejecting members, otherwise it's a simple majority. Second, with respect to the Philosophic branch both the Artisanal and the Representative branch are equal (all branches are equal) and must share in the confirmation process. I would agree to changing the wording to say that the member must be confirmed by simple majority by both branches.

The Artisanal branch is loosely modeled after the Executive branch in the U.S. which has all these powers. Additionally, if you remove all these, you remove all the power that the Artisanal branch has over the Representative branch. The branches must be equal. The branches must be equal. From now on, every time someone suggests throwing out a power they must suggest a replacement.

~Ulrika~

I solved this problem by creating two names for each branch body! The first name is the official name and the second is what we call the group in this city. So:

Representative branch -> Representative Assembly -> "Senate"
Artisanal branch      -> Artisanal Collective    -> "Gilde"
Philosophic branch    -> Scientific Council      -> "Universitaet"

~Ulrika~

My theory is that all impeachments should be executed within the Philosophic branch.

~Ulrika~

Version 1.1 of the Constitution is in place. I've incorporated most of your ideas and questions into the document, including expanding the faction section and adding a citizen section. I think we're 90% of the way there.

If there's anything that you feel we've been glossing over or that you're not 100% clear on, now is the time to bring it up.

~Ulrika~

Ulrika, why do you make such statement? I feel sad It is not nice thing have to read my name singled out and presented as potential crook. I don't think you post this intentionally, you are good person, probably just followed one habbit that has kinda become favorite sport for some on this forum. But it does not make it less wrong or less hurting for the human being that, believe or not, I still am.

So, maybe I should make some thing clear before misunderstanding further deepens.

I think Neualtenburg project is one great idea. I have much respect for people who have brought it to the stage it is now, particularily you, Ulrika. You have put much energy into something that not only stands for your convictions, but that I also consider a beneficial experiment that all of Second Life community can learn from.

But even if this would not be the case, I ask you to take break and reflect for one moment: What makes you think that I may be capable or willing of taking advantage of one situation in such selfish way? Have you ever seen me do something even remotely similar? I have had thousands of customers for land, store rental, animations, fashion and entertainment services. No business or individual has ever been watched even remotely as thoroughly and with even remotely as much attention as I have been since August. How much effort! Please show me one person I unfairly took advantage of.

Please let me offer my friendship, respect and spiritual support to Neualtenburg project and its members here. As one member of Second Life community I am thrilled to see projects like this happen. I am especially looking forward to see player institutions emerge that promote truth, justice and protect individual rights and dignity of residents. So I wish you have nice feeling and relaxed heart when you spot one business girl passing Neualtenburg on her way to work, always with curious glance in her eyes

In this case we would just state we are expanding and the the land which we seek to expand to will be noted once purchased. Anything that could require us to protect our interests could be omitted until a time that its appropriate to let the information out...but it needs to be posted otherwise people will get the idea that things are being kept from them.




I can agree to this as long as its a simple majority..but what happens if the two houses split the vote? Is the person then out of the process?



I would much rather see a system where any financial matters relating to the artisinal branch be handled by them. They might introduce bills to the RA and then we would send them back for revision or we would vote . They know much better what the tax base should be and how it relates to the artists and the citizens. Instead of the RA pushing a bill through and having them vote on it then being vetoed.... perhaps sending a proposed bill related to financial matters to them first to discuss and and revise and then the RA votes might work too.

Anshe I dont think any disrespect was meant. Ulrika was just pointing out that anyone intersted in land could then see we wanted land and hold us over the fire for it. Unfortunately you are the biggest land trader and the best at what you do so when someone makes a point in such matters your name gets put in as an example just for the mere fact you are the most noted and people get the connection faster.

IIII think having 2 cycles might create more bugs...as soon as the first elected body is just getting comfortable with what they are doing its time to start again ...some may be re elected but new members would come in making it a situation where some have to be brought up to speed before work can be done then before you know it that term ends.

Yes, I fully understand what is meant. But my point is that I don't "hold people over the fire". I have business ethics.

Anshe, I have bought quite abit of land from you --one reason is simply --you choose very nice locations

I've bought from you all the way from Kaili to Belmondo, have always thot your prices fair and I hope to continue buying from you in the future -- Now --make me a special deal on the property surrounding my Steampunk Centre in Belmondo? Pretty Pleeeeeeeze?

I apologize, Anshe! I was using your name in my example only because you're a notable land reseller. However, I agree that I was wrong to link your name to the hypothetical bad behavior.

I have removed your name from the example above. I'll be more sensitive in the future.

~Ulrika~

Thanks for making those changes, it helps clear things up. Oh, in the future, can you underline or highlight changes to the constitution post? That would help me find changes without having to re-read the entire thing...

Yes! I'll do that. Do you know if tags like "" still work within the "

CODE

" tags?  If not I'll put stars by deleted or added entries.

~Ulrika~

I have a few comments after reading over the draft Constitution:

Firstly, the word "impeachment" implies illgality, and should be discussed seprately from
the issue of whether someone is doing a good job or not. Perhaps a "Recall election" or "Vote of No Confidence" would be better in that regard. And by all means, "impeachment" IS the correct term if someone is suspected of doing something illegal!

Also, I think it might be a good idea to have one of the responsibilities of the AC to be to have a blalanced budget, and also be required somehow to report its financials back to the citizenry & governing segment so they can make up their own minds as to whether or not they are doing a good job. It would make it easier in that case to decide if someone should be removed from their position for lack of adequate competence in their job because then there is some concrete evidence to back up the "Recall Election" or "Vote of No Confidence".

My 2 cents!

Artillo

The first few words of the second to last sentence don't make sense, though the idea and context are still clear. Just need to remove, "are," from the sentence.

"Citizens are may not issue departure ultimatums to members of
the government. In return the government will not issue discharge
ultimatums to citizens."

Speaking of which, what exactly *IS* a departure ultimatum? As in "Do this or I leave", or "Leave or we will impeach you"?

A departure ultamatim is essentially a temper tantrum where a citizen might say, "Either [whatever it is] changes to fit my needs or I'm outta here!" Or the government might say, "All who disagree with this decree are hereby banned from citizenship." It's just stating that this will be a collective effort, and that people shouldn't get caught up into their own egos too much.

This is exactly correct.

The main reason it's in there is to prevent individuals or groups of individuals from influencing city policy through blackmail and to prevent officials from influencing voting by threatening citizens.

I was wrestling with whether or not this belonged in the constitution or should instead be a law that would be passed at a later date. In the end I felt that departure ultimatums are so prevalent in SL, especially the forums, that they warranted special attention up front.

~Ulrika~

I agree with this addition to the constitution. I think it is important as a foundation in this government and project as a whole. My reasoning being that in order for this government and town to work, we have to have 1) reasons for people to want to join and stay and 2) something to lose if they do not use the system for things such as: changing laws, grieviences(sp), city protests!! etc. and instead resort to slandering the group in an outside public setting when they get upset with something.

Yes I want people to have fun. But I also want people to take the project seriously. Anyone coming in saying my way or the highway, just doesn't really want to be a part of the project I think. However, if they come in and say I'm going to work within the structure to get my ideas in place, then more power to them I say!!

EDIT: Because I had 5 thoughts overlap and it all looked wierd! And I hope it now makes sense...

I was just thinking about this issue of departure ultimatums again, and I went back and re-read that section. That section says that they are not allowed to be issued to member of government. I was just thinking about what the consequence of such action would be. I'm trying to resolve in my head how you punish a person for issuing an ultimatum who's ready to leave anyway.

There are two scenarios that I can theorize with an individual who would issue a departure ultimatum:

1. The person is sensible, and is just throwing out this ultimatum because they don't know that there are better methods available. For these people all that would need to happen is to encourage them to find a political party to be a part of so that his/her voice can be heard.

2. The person is an extremist with a minority opinion. The government should handle these people according to the way the person acts. If the person is peaceable, and is not out to harrass anyone then they should be allowed to be a sole voice of dissent, and be allowed to stay or leave as they please. If the person is disruptive and harrasses people, then the government should step in to protect it's citizens (under a law regarding harrassment), and banning the person should be an option put on the table during the hearing.

That's my two cents.

My apologies for only taking a look at the revised constitution today. Well, the past days have been more fun and less hard work, SL-wise I mean (I was missing the fun of hanging around in clubs with newbies )

Ok, excellent work, Ulrika! After going through it the first time, I said to myself, "Finished! This one is ok, we can work with it!" But after reading it twice or three times, I have some doubts:


How will this work if the RA members are elected by STV? You'll be only able to replace it with the next person on the list, right? So it's not really "as they see fit".

Ouch. Now I have a maths question...

Let's assume the following scenario:
We have currently 6 parties. Since each one has to fill at least 1/2 of the RA (7 members), they'll have to have at least 4 members. Since the current population is 40, this means that, if every party member votes for its own party, each party will, at the very least, have 10% of votes, so, each party gets at least 1 faction seat, which will be occupied by the faction leader (SL group officer).

The remaining RA seat is a Representative Seat, and it goes to the party with more votes (in this case it's simple to figure out...). To select that member, you consult the person with highest ranking in the STV election. So far, so good.

So, what this means is, the best way for a party to get more seats - at least at the beginning - is to create split-off parties! This means it doesn't make any sense to have a 10-person party, you won't get more seats this way. Rather, you split it in two 5-person parties. If you make a simple calculation, this will hold true for any population of Neualtenburg, since all ratios hold correctly.

The 5% threshold simply doesn't work with a 7-seat RA It's easy to see that, if you had 10 parties (maximum possible in Neualtenburg right now - since you need 4 people per party!), and all votes spread among them evenly, each would have 10% of the votes, and a right to a Faction Seat - but there are only 7 available (total)!

Dang. So this doesn't work. Now, one solution would be raising the threshold to (100/number of seats), ie. in our case around 14% or so. Unfortunately, the alternative is getting rid of the automatic attribution of faction seats (ie. all seats are simply determined by the Sainte-Laguë method; the first seat awarded to each faction this way, is a Faction Seat; the remaining seats are Representative Seats). The problem is making sure you get representation from the minority parties (beyond what is accomplished already by the Sainte-Laguë method).

I think this is just me not understanding the meaning of the wording on that sentence. If there is a tie between the two factions, how can be "a largest score of the two"? Does it mean "the largest score of citizen votes"?

So this means that citizens at the election will vote first on the party they wish, and separately submit a list of which members they want in the RA? Will it be possible to select members of different parties? (note: in that particular case, this wouldn't be party-voting at all )

Ah. Actually I don't like this very much, unless I'm not understanding the wording.

On some countries, you have the "party leader" and the "party speaker" which may not be the same person. What this means is that the party leader represents the overall party (on most non-presidentialist systems, where the winning party designates the Prime Minister, this is usually the party leader). The "party speaker" is the leader of the members in the legislature, ie. the official spokesperson in the legislature for the group of elected officials (there can be other official spokespersons outside the legislature, of course, they'll deal with PR and such, but this is not regulated by the Constitution, but by the party's own internal ruling).

Now I assumed that the Officer(s) of the Faction are the Faction Leaders - meaning that they are the ones responsible for proper conduct and behaviour of all faction members, they would probably set up the faction's policites, and be the "visible head" of the faction itself. And then you get the "highest ranking" from a STV election. This would be the Faction Speaker, ie. the one holding the Faction Seat in the RA, and speaking for that party in the RA.

Ulrika, since you use the same designation - "Faction Leader" - for both roles, I'd like to understand which one do you mean. Because for me it doesn't make sense that the "Faction Leader" (ie. the one who put the fcation up and going) doesn't lead the faction at all, and can even be voted out by the citizens!

Personally, I'd prefer to have all these rules in a body of laws, to be able to change the campaigning rules with time more easily, but I understand that this makes it hard for the first elections. So if the rules are too restrictive and everybody agrees with them, the RA can simply change the Constitution. That's also ok for me!

I agree on keeping the issue of departure ultimatums in the Constitution - or at the very least, on the Bill of Rights. I think that is was a very good afterthought and very much in line with our recent worries. Yes, citizens should not threaten the government, and the government should not threaten the citizens It makes lots of sense to me.

Rock, this is completely different from "sanctions". If people misbehave against the body of laws (or even the constitution), there will be hearings and trials. Revoking citizenship is the last resort (temporary bans and so will probably be set in place for minor offenses by the very creative RA when they hammer out the laws), and should never be used as a threat. People will simply know the laws, and know about the consequences of violating them. Actually, I imagine that the first laws passed will consider "departure ultimatums" a form of harassment which is punishable as well (similar to what happens with the abuse reports to the Lindens!)

Well, great work on the Constitution! Hooray for Neualtenburg! Uhm... I guess I'm letting myself carry away with the enthusiasm *hushes up and tries to become invisible*

The statement "as they see fit" was introduced when I was thinking that factions would organize however they wanted. Since then I believe I added that factions would rank representatives based on secret ballots using STVs. Thus the phrase "as they see fit" should be tossed out and replaced with "the next highest scoring member".

Note that this depends on the fact that members of a faction do a vote internally to determine ranking and then the population votes on factions (not members). The problem with this is what do we do if faction members all vote for themselves when they are trying to rank themselves internally? Should the population rank not just factions but individuals in factions during a vote? If so, won't that be an excessive amount of ranking required (150 for a full city) and if the population ranks faction members, won't members of opposing factions try to promote weak players in competing factions to positions of power?

I have no answers.

Yes. It doesn't work. By creating a second vote that favors a minority the majority factions simply have to split into small bodies that resemble a minority to scam the system. I see no solution to this. We'll have to scrap the second faction vote and rely on the Sainte-Laguë method to give minority factions a voice.

Now that we've brought it up, I'm not even sure if STV is compatible with the S-L method! I read up on it and it's different than the ranked-voting I thought it was.

Hmm.

~Ulrika~

I've been thinking that neither of these belong in the constitution and should be introduced as laws, although I put them in the constitution as I'm concerned that they will be circumvented. :/

I want to share a personal anecdote that lead me to insert the no-script clause into the campaign rules. I was running for President of SL (mock election) a few months ago against several players and I was well in the lead. My trick was, that I flew from person to person, introduced myself, gave my platform and asked for their vote. I thought for sure I was going to win! Suddenly, with a few days left in the election a competitor roared from behind, passed me, and went on to win by a good margin.

The trick was he was dropping altimeter scripts on newbies at telehubs that were completely functional but called out every 5 minutes "vote for X at URL, he gives new players free scripts". That's all it took! A little spamming, a simple script, and one hour of work on his part cancelled out twenty hours of aggressive campaigning on my part.

I added the campaign law and departure ultimatum sections as they were things that I had experienced in SL that had no real RL counterpart that could have a big effect on the democratic process. However, I recognize that they are out of place.

Given that we agree that they don't belong there, how do we implement them in such a way that they can't be reversed or circumvented?

Hmm.

~Ulrika~

Ouch. Now I feel discouraged, Ulrika I'm sorry to have messed things so up, and, worse than that, I have no alternative solution to present.

As I understand it, S-L is really incompatible with STV. It's either the one of the other. The best suggestion is reverting back to an early suggestion, which is splitting the RA, some seats being elected by S-L, some by STV. And having faction leaders being elected by S-L for faction seats (with some high threshold on that, ie. you have to have at least 20% of the votes or so), and the remainder using STV.

Well, you're right in sorting out STV for the whole population! I guess the only way to deal with that is with fully automated voting. Doing it manually will be too much trouble.

So I can only suggest that we start with S-L for all seats. There can still be faction seats (the faction leader) and representative seats (all of the rest) to be able to do the two-voting system for passing laws.

As for the campaigning rules in the Constitution, I understand very well your point... it makes me think that perhaps we should keep them there for the first elections, and have a general consensus that these should be changed on the first constitutional revision. I don't know how you can regulate campaigning in any other way.

Can you give me a link to a reference for STV/S-L?