The “Reform” Plan

Crown Reform

• King regains the right to nominate the Seneschal.
• King loses Royal Veto on amendments
• Threshold to override Royal Veto of normal legislation drops to 3/5

Ziu Reform

• Senäts is abolished with the general election following ratification of this amendment

• The five remaining incumbent Senators are each grandfathered into the Cosă by granting them half of their province’s assigned Cosă seats for the duration of their elected Senäts term as compensation.

• Alternative Idea: if we do not apportion seats between provinces, each remaining incumbent Senator receives 10 Cosa seats for the duration of their elected Senäts term (on top of the 200 that are apportioned as usual).

• If they appear on a party’s list during their “grandfathered” period, they will count towards that party’s won seats in that province

• Cosă moves to a system where provinces are apportioned seats based on number of votes cast in the last election, with a minimum of 5% of all seats and a maximum of ⅓

• This is done to keep a vague sense of “provincial representation” à la the Senäts, but the Cosă ultimately retains a proportional character.
• Seats are apportioned between provinces using the Webster method, with ties going to the province with more adult (i.e. non-Dandelion) citizens.
• Each province’s seats are awarded (also using Webster) based on the proportional vote within that province.

• If multiple parties are tied for a seat(s) within a given province, those seats will instead be awarded on a nationwide “topping off” once all provincial seats have been otherwise allocated.

• Cosă term is now fixed

• Elections are “held” in February (balloting runs January 15 - February 1)
• Nine Clarks per term (March - November)

• Seneschal able to declare a single month of recess per term
• Month of recess NO LONGER pushes successive Clarks down the road, in order to keep December clear for the SoS (holidays + election prep)

• VoC votes become “constructive”

• Failure of a VoC no longer dissolves Cosă
• MCs voting Non on VoC are asked to nominate a replacement Seneschal
• King can review nominees, meet with party leads and nominate a new Seneschal

• MCs may register new parties during a Cosă term for recognition of “parliamentary” status from the Chancery. However, any resigned seats still return to the originally-assigned party.

• Should we have some sort of limit on this to prevent abuse? Maybe you forfeit half your assigned seats to break off?

Provincial Reform

• Provincial Merger Convention to coordinate mergers down to four or five provinces
• Likely candidates for mergers are MM (7), Florencia (8), and Vuode (8) (the provinces with the fewest votes cast in the last election, every other province returned double digits)
• Can look at tweaking catchment areas if desired, but ultimately only important if mergers happen.

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Examples

This table shows the number of seats each province would be granted in the July 2024 general election, based on the number of votes cast in the October 2023 general election. It also shows the seats each province would be granted in the eventual election to the 61st Cosă, based on the number of votes cast in July 2024. As is to be expected, as the number of total votes nationwide hovers just shy of 100, with 200 seats in the Cosă, every vote gained or lost results in two seats gained or lost.

Also note the tie in votes cast between Fiovă and Belacostă (then d.b.a. Benito) in October 2023. Because Fiovă has more adult citizens per the Database, they are granted the 200th Cosă seat.

Why Webster?

The Webster Method (sometimes called the Sainte-Laguë method) is preferred because it is one of the family of “highest averages” methods. Unlike largest-remainder methods, highest-averages methods tend to produce more proportional results and avoid apportionment paradoxes (as an example, in largest-remainder methods, voting for a party can actually cause it to lose seats, which is counterintuitive).

It is for this reason that both province’s seats and party’s seats within a given province are also apportioned using Webster. Admittedly, the vote was distributed based on partial data – I don’t know how everyone voted in July, but I can make a few guesses. Based on these assumptions, above is how the vote would have come out in each province in July. Note three seats for which at least two parties were tied (shown in pink here). These seats are then distributed to each party based on the nationwide vote to “top off” parties based on the same formula. (Specifically, in KA the last seat was tied between the FreeDems, IND, and DIEN; in FL the last seat was tied between DIEN and PdR, and in MM the last seat was tied between the FreeDems and PROG.)

In the case of the actual July 2024 election, everything worked out nicely because there was a mathematically straightforward division of votes, but going forward I would still prefer to see the “percentile dice” system scrapped as it seems to be both unduly biased in favor of larger parties and overly reliant on RNG.

As an example of an election that had less-straightforward numbers, in the election to the 58th Cosa, swapping to this Provincial / Webster system would have resulted in only a single seat being swapped (moving from the TNC to Dien).