Let's think about factions

Since we're looking at everything else in the constitution, I'd like to start a discussion about factions. Article IV currently requires a faction to have a number of declared members equal to a simple majority of RA seats to be viable. Since this number is at the moment three (coincidentally, the same number of members as are necessary to keep an SL group alive) it works well for now. There are several reasons it may not scale well.

1. Currently with 29 citizens in Neualtenburg, a minimally sized faction is equal to 10% of the population. As the city grows and the ratios in Article I, section 2 come into force, this will drop to just over 5%. In many RL democracies, getting 5% of the vote will earn a party seats in a PR system. In Naualtenburg, you must have that proportion of the population as registered faction members in order to exist.

2. A significant portion of the population stays out of politics. They vote, but don't want to declare a faction. This feeds into a broader difficulty in maintaining a sufficiently large political class to keep the government populated.

3. Having members does not mean being able to fill RA seats, I'm not sure all of the factions in the last election would have been able to fill 3 RA seats had they won them. Also, the Saint-Lague method essentially guarantees that, barring a very lopsided election victory by one faction, the winning faction will have one more seat in the RA than a losing faction. This is not the stuff of which majority governments are made. However, Article IV seems to suggest that parties should be prepared (have enough candidates) to form a majority government. Saint-Lague makes a coalition situation much more likely,

I'm not making a proposal here, just wanting to open up some discussion on why the faction floors are as they are

I think I see your point. However, I also think that the combined number of members of all parties have to be at least 10% of the population (to fill all seats at the RA). I would agree with a wording to that effect on a forthcoming amendment.

On the other hand, the Government is not just the RA. The idea behind having 10% of the active population on parties is to allow the other two branches drawing from the pool of faction members Yes, the whole of Government gets 'politized' that way, and there was a definite intention on doing things like that. For instance, it's not secret that the SDF tries to keep a balance of power having members spread among all three branches in positions perceived as having 'power' This is deliberate, and part of the party's intentions, the idea being that a 'loss of power' on one branch can be 'compensated' by a 'gain of power' on other branches.

But I understand that others feel that while the RA may be necessarily 'politized', the other two branches are not so fundamentally so — and eventually, if this is a growing trend of the current citizen base, I think that we should adapt to the new circunstances. That is, after all, the whole purpose of Neualtenburg: not to remain 'static' with 'rigid' concepts, but adapt them over time to what the current citizens feel to be better for them.

So, speaking strictly for myself, I think that if the majority of the current citizens feel that 'partidirization' (does that word exist at all??) is too strong in Neualtenburg, and that most current citizens feel 'burdened' by too demanding requirements for forming parties (which will focus on RA only, and not on other branches of Government), I'll agree with that change, if it reflects better the expectations of citizens.

But the existing system doesn't guarantee that. Membership in a faction does not equal willingness to serve on RA. If it did, why did we all answer that question about RA willingness when we voted? What about something like this:

Minimum faction size is LL minimum group size. 15 days before the opening of the polls, faction leaders (or founders, in the case of new factions) report to the SC dean the number of faction members willing to serve on RA. If there are enough to fill all the seats.Nothing happens, If not, the lack of candidates is made public in attempt to drum up a few more. At no time are the identities of willing or unwilling citizens made public.

I would also propose that the leader of the faction with the highest score become LRA. A recent SC ruling established that a faction unable to fill all the seats it wins would lose them. This raises a possibility of a faction polling well but having a short list and not having the most seats. Tying the LRA to the borda counts directly ensure that the faction with the most popular support sets the agenda in the new RA.