The Economist ~ A new and fair citizenship proposal

Day 1,819, 09:58 Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom by Spite313


Dear friends,


I’m writing to you today about citizenship in the UK, and my ideas about where it needs to go from here. For those of you who missed my ever-pleasant welcome back to the UK yesterday, I am resigning from the position of Citizenship Minister due to the intransigent attitude of some individuals, and I am fully backing the creation of a citizenship committee to replace me.

However the threat of PTO (Political Take Over) in the UK is very real due to our relatively small population. A mere forty or fifty votes can take control of a party, win congress seats and destroy the country. This has happened to countries our size, and those a lot bigger. The USA faces this threat right now, with many times our population, and in the past such mighty countries as Indonesia and Russia have faced it. There’s no such thing as being safe from PTO, but we need some regulation of citizenship to help keep the odds on our side.


Now as a bit of background to the situation, let me explain the main criticisms to the position as it stands now:

1. I am unelected, merely a representative of the President
2. An unelected minister could act in a biased fashion
3. Parties are not represented, nor are congress members


Therefore the pillars of any new committee must be that it is democratically selected, it represents all elected congressmen whatever their party and has enough members to prevent individual bias.


On the other hand, the committee must be more than an elected rubber-stamping organisation. It must have teeth, otherwise it’s completely useless to everyone. Therefore there must be consensus that whatever the committee agrees, all congress members agree to follow it. And if congressmen ignore it, parties must act to prevent them being re-elected.


Going from this rather sparse origin, I have added a few sections based on my own extensive experience of both citizenship procedure and party politics.





Citizenship Act

Purpose: The purpose of this act is to create a committee which will process applications for UK citizenship, providing a clear yes/no decision for each application which will then be followed by all congress members.


1. Membership

The Committee will have six members elected by congress. All members of the committee must be elected congress members themselves. The exception to this is if the UK elects less than twenty congress members, in which case membership is open to all UK citizens.


2. Election of members

Each congress member will have six votes. Each congress member can propose any other member for the committee. Proposals will be on the 26th of each month, congress have until midnight on the 27th of the month to propose. On the 28th of the month a vote is opened for 24 hours.

Each member can vote for the six candidates of their choice. Only two members from each party can be elected. If more than two members from one party reach the top six, only the first two are elected.


2.1 Election of chair

Immediately following the closure of the vote for members, a vote for the committee chair opens. The chair must be a committee member. The chair has no special powers, but instead will be figurehead of the committee for people to contact. They will be responsible for bringing citizenship applications to the committee, though each member of the committee shares that responsibility. Any member can be proposed, and a simple poll will be produced to decide who is chair.


3. Term of office

The committee shall serve for one calendar month from the first of each month to the last day of each month, whatever that may be. In exceptional circumstances the term may be extended to cover up to the first five days of the following month if, for example, an election has not finished.


4. Role

The role of the committee is to study applications for citizenship, research the background of each citizen, their previous affiliation, alliance membership, fighting history, political connections (if any) and any personal history they have. They then make a decision based on this information, then inform congress and the applicant of their decision.


5. Voting

At least five members must vote for the vote to be valid. At least three members must vote affirmative for a citizen to be accepted. In the event of a tie (3-3) the matter goes before a full congress vote. This is because a tie of that nature would likely be political in nature and needs a full discussion of congress.


5.1 Approval

Once the committee has voted affirmative, any citizen with the ingame power to do so may legally accept the citizen in question


5.2 Rejection

If the committee votes negative, any congressman who accepts that citizen will be judged to have done so illegally.


6. Punishment

All Party Presidents understand that illegally accepting a citizen rejected by a democratically elected and unbiased representation of congress is harmful to the UK as a whole, and will be moved to last place on the congress list for the following month, and another successive month for each illegal acceptance.


7. Removal of members

In the event a member:
1. Breaks the rules of the committee by accepting citizenship without approval.
2. Leaves congress
3. Is shown to have taken bribes in exchange for support

They will immediately be removed by the committee, and the congress forum group, and the next player on the election list (seventh place, then eighth place and so on) will replace them. In the event there are no players left on the list, a by-election will be called following the same procedure as mentioned above.


8. Enactment

This law comes into effect upon it passing. At the moment of passing, all previous decisions and actions become null and void. No person shall be retroactively punished for anything that happened before this act passed. Any applications will be considered under the new procedure.




As you can see, this proposal contains no mention of criteria for accepting citizens. I wanted to leave that as open as possible. It merely creates a situation which prevents single-party domination, allows congress a chance to choose its representatives and sets a timescale for doing it. I am sure nobody has any objection to the punishment section, as it is very mild considering the ever-present threat of PTO.

I’d be glad to hear your thoughts!


Iain