Discussion: On legality of votes by resigned councillors

I propose we change the law to nullify any vote cast by a councillor who resigns before the proposal he/she voted on is ratified by the Duke/Duchess. This is in order to give the incoming replacement councillor (if any) the chance to vote on the proposal instead, as the incoming councillor is the one who has to live with the result. I will word something more formally after your input.
Should we allow the Duke/Duchess any discretion in this matter?
Should there be a requirement for, or the possibility of, a revote on something that was passed into/changed in the law within a certain time prior to the resignation? Or is this redundant since a revote on anything may be proposed at any time?

As long as the vote occurs while the counselor is legally seated during an ongoing vote the vote should count and the incoming counselor who replaces the outgoing counselor should not have a vote.

The incoming counselor will not have been there for the mandatory discussion prior and therefore would be voting blind.

HOP works on this procedure and they have 6 times as many members as we do in county council

It is not an arduous task to track the accounting of 12 registered votes.

and the replacement counselor is clearly marked as to who he or she is replacing in the mail that the in game mechanics sends to every counselor on the resignation of a fellow counselor so there is no question even in multiple resignations concurrently as to who is in for whom so if the outgoing counselor has NOT voted then the incoming counselor would have opportunity to exercise that available vote.

So the vote is nullified, then we would have to start the discussions all over again. 4 more days of talk and voting? So then I and one other counselor on my slate can nullify council but resigning every three days? Or you support uninformed voting along party lines. Don't give the new counselor a chance to learn what is going on and demand they vote without a chance to form an opinion.

There is a rule in place. There is precedent and we have more important issues.

In response to Greg saying we have more important issues: I actually think this is a very important issue. There are certainly a ton of other important issues, but I think this one has validity. And I know that, unfortunately, my intentions will be misinterpreted as self (or party) interested, which they are not.

If there is a rule and precedent, that is great and we can learn from it. It is not always a good thing to always follow a precedent, it is always a good thing to learn from it (this could mean keep it, adapt it, etc.).

The reason why I find this particular discussion so important is because we have made it a campaign of ours to hold each other, as councilors, accountable and responsible for our actions and to the People we represent, which I will again state is praiseworthy. Ellsbeth, you have, in large part, been the spearhead of this campaign, so I figure you believe strongly in accountability.

I fail to see how we can possibly hold a Councilor accountable if they leave during a vote. I see your fears that if the new Councilor is not part of the discussion then they may be voting on party lines; this is a valid concern.

I think it could be useful that if a Councilor resigns in the middle of a vote that we temporarily extend the alloted time for voting so that s/he may freely form an opinion.



For Somerset!
Rebo

I would be amiable Counselor Rebo to the extension of the vote to allow the incoming counselor the same 2 days of discussion and query of his or her own into the matter before the council for vote before he or she is required to vote on the issue.

That is an acceptable compromise that assures the incoming counselor is not rushed to place a vote in haste without examining all of the facts and voting am informed opinion.

Extending the 2 day vote for 48 more hours from the time of the appointment of a new counselor would address my concern of a counselor coming and missing pertinent discussion and voting in the blind.

A very accpeptable and responsible compromise. I like it

I so vote and resign. Then the new councilor is given 2 to 4 days to vote and then resigns. Then the next and so on until the council is dissolved and NOTHING has been done. There by one minority party can ham string a council forever, never allowing them to complete a vote.

Legally elected representatives have cast their vote, there is nothing in the legal corpus to invalidate their legally cast vote. Nor should their be. They were properly voted in, we must assume carried out their duties with the best of their ability while on council. No multiple votes were cast. Those that had the time to make a well informed decision made it and made it known.

Resignation is already a tool for making a council ineffective. This proposal does not change that.

It can make it ineffective, but if you make it law that a new councilor has to have time to vote and the resigned councilor is not to count then a party can resign in rounds and ensure no vote ever counts and that is patently ridiculous.

And I doubt any council member has ever resigned as a tool to try and make a council ineffective. But give them this law and it may become a plan used in the future.

Vàna Rúndóttir wrote:

I propose we change the law to nullify any vote cast by a councillor who resigns before the proposal he/she voted on is ratified by the Duke/Duchess. This is in order to give the incoming replacement councillor (if any) the chance to vote on the proposal instead, as the incoming councillor is the one who has to live with the result. I will word something more formally after your input.
Should we allow the Duke/Duchess any discretion in this matter?
Should there be a requirement for, or the possibility of, a revote on something that was passed into/changed in the law within a certain time prior to the resignation? Or is this redundant since a revote on anything may be proposed at any time?

I think that would cause too many problems, it is better to disallow any replacing counselor from voting on that same issue.

I can't understand the logic of how resigning would help any party get their own way in the long run, since councillors can only resign once in a term (in spite of the recently discovered failing of the in game replacement system). What it can do is benefit councillors as individuals in the short term.
The other side of this (and the current status) is that the incoming councillor could call for a revote on any issue he missed out on. The disadvantage of this is that in the meantime the resigned councillors vote may have caused an unwanted law to be passed. If this were an old law being repealed it may not matter so much since the county will have lived with the old law for some time already. But I am concerned that bad laws can in principle currently be proposed by and passed by councillors who resign (and perhaps leave the country) before their effects are felt. We currently have no mechanism to prevent this in our codex other than a possible veto by the Duke who could himself be one of the resignees. So I feel that those remaining on council after this kind of action do need some legal recourse to prevent such actions from being technically legal.

Example 1. Hypthetical situation. Councillors 1 to 6 propose and pass a law offering an unlimited amount of very cheap supplies to anyone in their own party who asks for it. Then councillors 1 to 5 all immediately resign and take up the offer which is managed by councillor 6, depleting the county's inventory. Under present law they could not be prosecuted. I think that's wrong.

Example 2. The Duke and councillors 1-5 pass a law authorising private armies to invade a neighbouring county's capital or towns. They then resign and go lead those armies to plunder their neighbours and share the spoils, starting a war with a neighbouring county. Legally the incoming Duke would have no recourse to prosecute the warring ex-Duke.

And that is the intrinsic weakness of democracy Vana. It depends on the electorate to be educated and knowledgable of the people they chose to lead them. The councilors that you speak off are legal representatives of the people. If the people elect such unscrupulous individuals then they get the government that they deserve.

Because something can be hypothetically abused does not mean it has to be changed. Any system can be abused. The system we have now is easy to administer and it gives the people the voice that they elect.

This term has been an anomaly. We will not see mass exodus like this again any time soon I shouldn't think.

The people elected council. Until the day they retire they have the legal and moral right and duty to vote for the people. We have no right to take that away from them.

Vàna Rúndóttir wrote:

Example 1. Hypthetical situation. Councillors 1 to 6 propose and pass a law offering an unlimited amount of very cheap supplies to anyone in their own party who asks for it. Then councillors 1 to 5 all immediately resign and take up the offer which is managed by councillor 6, depleting the county's inventory. Under present law they could not be prosecuted. I think that's wrong.

They could be prosecuted for that under several sections of extant law, especially this one:

Quote :

Art. 2.4.5. : An act of abuse of public goods is defined as the use of a public position by a person to make himself/herself or an accomplice richer.
An act of economical nuisance is defined as any speculative act the goal of which is personal economical gain to the detriment of the public economy.
The act of abuse of public goods and act of economical nuisance are serious crimes, and the sentences associated with these crimes are set in Article 2.1.3.

As it stands now, a vote from a councilor who subsequently resigns is counted. That person's replacement has no vote on that issue. However, any councilor can call for a reconsideration of any vote, thus making the resignation strategy rather a self-defeating one. Too, I think this an aberrant series of actions, not one that would soon be repeated, and would hesitate to make a law based on the actions of my former party members.

I believe the situation we have just experienced was an isolated incident not likely to happen repeatedly.
I see no reason to change the current procedure unless we determine that there is an abuse of the system in function.

I accept the consensus of my fellow councillors and I withdraw this proposal.