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Bill: Equal Representation Bill
Details
Submitted by[?]: Nationalist Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This bill asks for an amendement to the Constitution. It will require two-thirds of the legislature to vote in favor. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: March 2130
Description[?]:
| Representation should be equal, one man, one vote, not this current system we have in place. Currently, Meria, population 6,979,725 has the same number of seats as Sorbanika, population 13,503,840. So each vote in Meria is worth two Sorbanikan votes. That is unfair and hardly democratic, so we propose a much more equal system. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change The method used to determine the number of seats each region receives in the national legislature.
Old value:: Equal representation, regardless of region population.
Current: A proportional algorithm that gives a very small advantage to larger regions.
Proposed: A pseudo-proportional algorithm that gives considerable advantage to smaller regions.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 19:18:09, October 21, 2005 CET | From | Front for State Prosperity | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | We're unitarist, so we agree with this. We believe that Likatonia's parties should be representing the country at large instead of representing 5 separate areas of a country. |
| Date | 19:18:40, October 21, 2005 CET | From | Front for State Prosperity | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | (OOC: Guh, how is "separate" spelled?) |
| Date | 19:46:03, October 21, 2005 CET | From | Nationalist Party | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | seperate, I think |
| Date | 03:44:37, October 22, 2005 CET | From | Progressive Party | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | Even though I think this will hurt our party, it is the democratic thing to do. We'll support. |
| Date | 04:40:20, October 22, 2005 CET | From | Commonwealth Workers Army | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | If we are speaking in terms of how 'representation' affects voting, we should ACTUALLY be going the other way - since a vote is far more likely to polarise a small region. For example - if one assumes that each of the 5 provinces has (roughly) equal numbers of representatives to send to the Senate, it will actually take a much SMALLER number of votes to tip the balance in any given 'small province' seat. So - to be fair - the current model is most 'democratic' (since it equates roughly to a per capita vote), and the 'favouring small regions' model is most 'realistic'. |
| Date | 14:45:16, October 22, 2005 CET | From | Nationalist Party | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | That makes no sense, how can a system whereby a small region has the same number of votes as a region twice its size be fair? |
| Date | 14:46:39, October 22, 2005 CET | From | Nationalist Party | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | made changes, smaller regions with still be slightly overrepresented, but not by as much as currently |
| Date | 14:50:21, October 22, 2005 CET | From | Liberal Party for Equality | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | AAP - the flaw in your rather odd argument is that this is proposing to change the number of representatives given to each region, so your initial assumption is invalid. |
| Date | 22:51:10, October 22, 2005 CET | From | Commonwealth Workers Army | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | To respond to both the Nationalists and the LPE, the AAP conception is ONLY flawed if you ignore how most 'real world' political boundaries are drawn... usually divided along fairly arbitrary lines (like historic borders), with no necessity for representation to correspond to EITHER per capita, OR geographic area. Despite idealised versions of how it 'should' be, most real-word political boundaries are defined by parties to maximise votes in given areas, which usually leads to a 'feudal barony' model, with small population clusters forming the hearts of political areas. |
| Date | 23:06:23, October 22, 2005 CET | From | Nationalist Party | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | That still makes no sense, surely the basis of democracy should be equal representation, which I am trying to provide. I understand your points referring to the gerrymandering of constituencies, but if that is what you are talking about, then surely the current system in Likatonia is gerrymandered as Meria has a disproportionally high representation. However it is practically impossible to gerrymander a PR electoral system. |
| Date | 00:27:21, October 23, 2005 CET | From | Commonwealth Workers Army | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | Well, it depends on what you are expecting from your model. Are you looking for a realistic (OOC) 'mechanism'? In which case, the small constituency option is probably the most 'real world' realistic, since it reflects the more volatile and capricious nature of polarised politics. Or, are you looking for realistic IN GAME 'democracy'? Because that becomes the cause of division... there IS no actual proportional representation option, because we are based on prefectures - which ALWAYS adds a filter to PR. The AAP addressed the 'proportionality' issue, somewhat, by making the number of seats at least SOMEWHAT related to the number of constituents... but, while you still insist (or, in this case, have no choice) on voting by area, there can BE no direct democracy. The idea behind making EACH prefecture equal, in term of representation, was to give SOME equality to the relevence of the vote in EACH prefecture - which is non-PR, but more 'democratic' than other models, when one considers you MUST apply regionality. Of the options currently available, 'prefectures given a bonus for being bigger' is perhaps the least realistic, and least representational, in terms of real world politics of Proportional Representation, and makes democracy the pet of the largest regions, and increasingly irrelevent with decreasing scale of areas. Personally, the AAP preferred model, if it had been available, would have been to ignore prefectures altogether in the voting procedure, and allow direct per capita representation. Failing that, a system that allows for the numerous constituencies BELOW prefectures, which would allow synthesis of the ACTUAL process of electing 500 local delegates. But - neither of those options are available, now, are they? |
| Date | 00:29:00, October 23, 2005 CET | From | Commonwealth Workers Army | To | Debating the Equal Representation Bill |
| Message | As a (perhaps) final comment... during AAP tenure, we have TRIED the 'all regions are equal' model, AND the 'bonus for being big' model. The 'advantage to smaller regions' model has yet to be seen... and we figure we might as well see it in action, and base a decision on how it is SEEN to work. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 305 | |||||
| no |
Total Seats: 37 | |||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 158 |
| Random fact: In Culturally Protected nations, it is the responsibility of players to ensure the candidate boxes on their Party Overview screens are filled in with appropriate names. If a player is allotted seats in a Cabinet bill and has not filled in names for the relevant candidate position, then the program will automatically fill in the positions with names which might not necessarily be appropriate for the Cultural Protocols. |
| Random quote: "Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river." Nikita Khrushchev (1894 - 1971) |