Thanks to all who keep the tiny gears of our democracy well-oiled and operational And take the time to explain it to the rest of us
Almut Brunswick wrote:Next time, we should do it better, and ideally have (more than) enough candidates for the regular election to avoid a by-election at all.
Hear, hear! That would obviously be the best-case scenario. I understand that a few newer citizens were eagerly asking how they could vote (they were not eligible yet) — I certainly hope that, after a few months being around, they will do so much more than vote, but actually run as candidates!
Almut Brunswick wrote:Actually, I don't see responsibility for information tasks so much with Tor as our top PR officer, but primarily with the Scientific Council. Since the elections are always carried out according to the same pattern, we should supplement the New Citizen Guide with a concise election regulation section.
Ah... aye, you're right on that. Curious how you weren't the first person saying so, but possibly the first saying it publically.
Traditionally, the job of informing citizens about the elections was one of the many duties of the Scientific Council, mostly because it was thought that, as a non-elected body, they would remain reasonably neutral and fair when explaining how our democracy works to the citizens: since they couldn't benefit directly from any, uh, "evangelisation" of the citizens — i.e., telling them in who they should vote! — in theory, they would be "above politics" in a certain sense of the word, and not show any preferences towards any candidates in their explanations.
(In practice, of course, every person is different, and everybody has different style of saying things that could be a form of persuasion, but it's impossible to have "completely unbiased people" — the best you can aim to is to get together a sufficiently diverse and inclusive number of people, each with their own bias, and sort of averaging these biases out. But I digress.)
Historically, when the Chancellor role was created to deal with purely administrative tasks — delegated by the Representative Assembly to a staff of Public Servants, headed by a Chancellor appointed by the RA — such promotional chores were left to the Chancellor as well. It made sense, since, back then, the Chancellor was merely a public servant, in the dependence of the RA, and, as such, could be fired by a simple plurality of votes, if the RA members thought that the Executive was not being "neutral enough". So, the question didn't really arise; who acted upon any perceived bias by the Chancellor was the RA, and it was the RA themselves who set the boundaries and rules of such informative events, leaving all details for the Executive to implement.
According to my broken and very fragmented memory, this was the scenario for a very short period of time (just a couple of term or three, I believe), because the Executive, soon afterwards, became a separate branch by itself, modeled loosely on the presidential democratic systems of the Americas (but used elsewhere!), and its head of office, the Chancellor, became a political (not administrative!) role, elected by universal suffrage, just as the members of the RA.
As a consequence of that "branch split", the new Chancellor role as Head of the Executive inherited all the tasks and chores and duties that the previous "administrative" role already had, but with added duties and privileges as it became a directly democratically elected branch on its own. Such tasks were not listed in minute detail, of course, but just vaguely referenced as "anything that the Old Guild had to do", plus whatever else the role acquired under the "administrative phase". And, of course, the Chancellor, being a duly elected official by universal suffrage, is not bound to the RA's rule anymore — with two important restrictions (I think there are just these two):
The Power of the Purse — The Chancellor makes the budget for the term, aye, but that budget requires majority approval in the RA; the Chancellor cannot spend anything if and until the RA approves it.
The Duty to Report — The RA has the right to demand that the Chancellor appears before the elected representatives and give an on-going report on the Executive's action.
Beyond that, there are just two ways of removing a Chancellor from office: vote them out at the end of the term (the normal way for any democracy worth its name!), or impeach them (an event which is deliberately used except in extreme cases).
That said... and I digress and digress like an old lady...
We have Government Hours!
Let me explain. The point is that... well, nobody was entirely sure which branch was responsible for, uh, "explaining how the government works". Naturally, we could go to the RA and ask. But the RA only convenes every other week or so, so... we might ask... the Chancellor perhaps, who is always around? But ultimately, the task of "explaining laws and the constitution" would be the province of the Scientific Council, also known as the Academic Branch, because originally it was meant to give explanations about our democracy?
Sooooo why don't we simply get them all to explain — in their own way, of course! — how the government works, since each of the three branches are, indeed, "The Government of the CDS".
That's at the root of the idea of having them "rotating duties" in holding the Government Hours, i.e., over a period of a term, each branch should hold one session each. Which, uh, some terms it even works out rather nicely.
But beyond that — I would claim that anyone can host whatever event they want, and if it's an "explaining event", sure, why not? So long as it's clear that such spontaneous events are not representative of the government — I don't see any problem whatsoever.
In fact, unless someone presents any reason against that, I'd certainly love to host a semi-regular event talking about the CDS Government from an historic perspective. In fact, the last time I checked, I was the sole remaining active member of the CDS Historical Society (but I have no "privileges" in that group) and was recently made aware of the similarly-named CDS Historic Society, of which I know next to nothing. But that's not important(IMHO)! What matters is that I'm considering to do a "History of the Oldest Democracy in a Virtual World" series of events (possibly alternating with the not-that-so-regular Tuesday Thinkers event). What do you think?