The Economist ~ A new and fair citizenship proposal
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
Comments
ñax
I think it looks good, if congress are up to it.
Some may say that's a big if.
KETIAGX
Looks pretty effective.
Comment?
Ah oui, c'est bein!
Very good article o7
I prefer the national team to be secure to enable us to have an un-hindered, free community to govern ourselves without internal problems. Congressmen are not put into their positions due to their knowledge of international communities (so many "WE LET NEWBIES RUN UNDER US!" lately meaning those players have no way of knowing how to do the same checks/unproven ability to do so) and so I would prefer to have the old system of asking an experienced player "is this guy safe?". I'll vote no to this.
The committe has to be the Top 5 PPs, Congressmen cannot enforce PPs changing the Congress Shortlist in Part 6.
I'm not refusing to cooperate or anything, this is just the game mechanics. Only PPs can enforce a system.
I'd rather you did it, but better this than a free for all : P
Why wouldn't you do that from the 5th to the 5th instead of the 1st?
And it'll probably take a day or two for every decision
It's a good idea, my main concern would be the time it takes for decisions to happen
I think we should lobby for game mechanics changes so that people with the power to accept citizenship are decided at the discretion of the president, before trying to make changes to the citizenship system. You can make it as wonderful as you like, but a determined threat to the eUK is always going to bend the rules. Not everybody is fully in to this 'forum game' when they're elected to congress; because let's be honest, the amount of crap new congress members have to read through is too much.
The reason I didn't choose PPs is because the job of the PP is to defend their parties interests. With this system you have a good spread of people from all parties without having bias.
So long as PPs agree to support the committee, and their members on it, there shouldn't be a problem.
Depends how Congress votes. Will they vote for just their own party or the best man for the job...see the Congress leader election thread for evidence of this.
One rep, each top 5 party that way you can not be deadlocked on the vote either where as 6 members could end up 3-3 in a worst case scenario
The way you wrote the system, looks like you could have only 3 parties on the committee. All that is going to happen is that a party won't get represented and get annoyed and not follow the system, you built in a failiure clause.
There is going to be parties interests invovled no matter what we do so why is that a reason to not have the only people capable of enforcing this in charge?
PTO is a real threat to eRep and admin won't look at it or the multi problems.
eSwitzerland is also facing such a threat. Many countries have been lost to these Machiavellian schemes.
Your committee concept is excellent, but one rogue congressman can ruin all your work.
It is also the responsibility of the Political Parties to ensure that no rogues are elected.
EVERYONE from each political party should candidate themselves for congress so that the PP is able to weed out the bad apples
Goku, most parties would be able to get at least one candidate on, and you're assuming that congress are so silly as to not realise that. Don't judge them too harshly.
Hugh I deliberately made it 6 because that way it's likely 3 new era/UKPP people would be elected. If it was just top 5, then they'd always be outnumbered by the 3 "old" parties. This way is more representative of the greater percentage in congress.
Hopefully congress would vote for the best people.
Having one representative of each of the top 5 parties ensures we don't get the best people for the job, and is not representative either. Why should the UKRP have as much say as UKPP when they have less than a third of the members? This system prevents citizenship-for-membership, as no one party can guarantee citizenship if they have only 2 of the 6 members on the board.
The only punishment that can be set is by the PP, and all he can do is put them in a unlikely to win seat. Congress will continue to accept those that send them a nice PM, or send a few gold. No committee or 'punishment' will deter this.
Congress and potential congress members need educating on not just how to check player history, but also what hazards to look out for, parties, MU's, countries. Start of a term send them out a fact sheet detailing this kind of information.
I'm more in favour of one party representative per congress party. Those parties with seats in congress are the only ones that can dictate who enters.
If people are moved to 20th place, they won't get elected.
Education is the job of the PP.
I already explained why that would be silly Wayne. A congressman should be able to nominate and vote for people from any party, based on merit. Otherwise it'll just be "let's blame the for accepting/rejecting citizens"
merit is better than just voting on party lines.
tbf Iain most PP's can barely tie shoelaces, let alone string together sentences that actually inform people. You and jamesw could do a decent little guide between you, with the history and reason why behind it all. As you said yourself, you don't check every player, you will often blank refuse them based on the country they are in/or affiliated with. A good history of PTO's is needed imo. I'm a 9 month old player and still have limited knowledge and experience of eRep PTO's.
also on merit of what? No one but you and CP's have had any real dealing with immigration, so they can't tout for the position based on experience. All the parties will do is select there own wo/men and vote based on party ties. Having the PP's from each congress seat winning party will give one vote per party. The PP will then be responsible for there parties actions.
Iain Keers ( I thinks it's your alias), you could have a special vote, a quality vote, or even be one permanent member.
And relax, nobody hates you and this is a game.
Good systems are able to get the best of anyone , and all of us have something good.
everyone* would be suitable too.
Iain if you want at least 1 from each party, just give one from each party. Make it top 6 if you don't want TUP dominating it, but this is quite shortsighted as alliances can change. What is happening when there is a tie though?
Danie UKRP are just as important when it comes to citizenship as they can let in the small group that grows into a PTO.
This seems like too much RP and UKPP have already ruled it out as it's in their constitution not to do this.
If you want a PTO expert for anything, I'm your guy. I've been part of 3 successful PTOs, 1 partially successful PTO and 1 successful ATO.
I don't think any eUKer has more experience in this field than me and I would be happy to share my experiences.
This all depends on parties following the rules because there is no effective remedy if a party decides to ignore this.
I agree with Wayne a history of PTOs is needed. As far as I can see, not much will change. People will still work/train/fight it will just be a different "closed shop" at the top.
Just don't ask Goku to invade Korea as he will fail 😛
I don't know if I'm in the minority on this one, but I thought the current system was working pretty well. Iain Keers has done an admirable job imo. I've messaged him in the past about CS applications (he even permitted my entry into the country a couple months back) & he has always been courteous & responded as fast as he possibly could.
That said, if he is serious about the possibility of stepping down from his current position, I would consider this proposal. I'd rather he stayed though.
Seems fair to be honest as long as the vote for the committee is fair, after this let's vote for the forum mod's then we have a eUK that is both legitimate and united.
lancer450, Keers has missed some good players that wanted to join. The system is far from perfect.
tbf the blame for that also lies on congress members not actively checking the request page in-game Alphabethis. Seeing as New Era like to hold up Eno Live (I doubt 5 members have even spoken to him personally) as the poster boy for the citizenship injustice, there members as well as others and Iain have failed in getting good, top talent into the country.
I don't think it's anywhere near perfect, but I think it is likely the best option we have at this moment. : / Perhaps there may be some alterations we could enact to try to improve upon it instead of eliminating it.
As I said above, if this is what we will need to prevent absolute anarchy, then I would be for this. We need a system. We can't just let people run wild and accept anybody they wish to. I don't want to end up like the eUSA or eDenmark, and I'm sure you don't want that either. : )
tbf the blame for that also lies on congress members not actively checking the request page in-game Alphabethis. Seeing as New Era like to hold up Eno Live (I doubt 5 members have even spoken to him personally) as the poster boy for the citizenship injustice, there members as well as others and Iain have failed in getting good, top talent into the country. x2
Exactly. I don't think Keers should be saddled with ALL of the blame for missing a few people. There are others as well.
I didn't miss Eno Live, I rejected him for moving to the USA, saying "F*&k UK I'm going to leave and join the enemy" during their war on us and basically tank against us. Same as with Alfa. Letting people like that in is silly.
Imagine a footballer getting p**sed off with his team and scoring six own goals to get revenge. Would the manager want that player back? Even if he scores 20 goals for and 6 against, it's the attitude you don't want. That is why they were rejected.
Well Keers missed out the criticisms as raised by the UKPP (and equated our discord as hatred of him)
4. An ePolish citizen (for whatever reason) was in charge of eUKs CS system.
5. Lack of succesion planning / education /set policy.
Those points caused us to slap an 'advisory stickor' on his product.
Keers, do you know what a heated debate is? People , some kind of people, speaks anger and fear in certain situation and then they calm down and they repent. You miss to know many basic essentials of human nature, there're many other things apart from the history of eSerbia or eFYROM.
Even a board of 30 won't do, just one single person with the wrong intentions can do so much harm. A PTO and it's mechanisms are beyond the control of someone who actually plays the game in a legitimate way. The threat of multies and the threat of players who do not play other aspects of the game (as such far less attached to the integrity of their account) are both far more important then the one of immigration. Laying focus only on immigration is giving people a false sense of security.
'I didn't miss Eno Live, I rejected him for moving to the USA, saying "F*&k UK I'm going to leave and join the enemy" during their war on us and basically tank against us'
Funny, I saw Eno Live tanking like mad and winning Battle Hero's as well as Campaign Hero's for eUK, his MU was a eUK MU, The Privateers. Also the fact he managed to put in 150m worth of damage in the short time he was here for TP medals + 12m on day 1749 for eUK... Yet only 200m for the nation he spent many months in...
That being said, immigration is one of the three pillars through which "hostiles" enter a country. It's by far more effective for congressmen to accept one or a few people to be experts on the matter then allowing every congressman to exerce their full rights.
I do not care what system is used. Most important is that we can lower the risk of a PTO. Sad that many still miss the knowledge about that, but bad things happens.
When political parties do not educate their members they put on the list, these parties are to blame. Of course they are independent and eager to win, even when UK would be lost. It is all in the game rules, you may behave as smart or stupid what you like. I do hope that people will be smart enough to act wisely.
Obviously you didn't read my post Wayne. If I got annoyed with the UK and decided to mortally insult all our allies or something, ruining our relationship, all my years of reputation here would be gone in an instant. Being a loony oddball who will switch sides at the drop of a hat doesn't get you citizenship back.
I've seen a couple of valid points raised - any more than 1 candidate per top 5 party is way too much. Also, a couple of questions:
-Will committee members have the power to veto an application?
-Will there be an elected chairman of this new committee, or will everybody be equal?
mortally insult ? gone on an instant ? years of reputation? Superlative thinking is a characteristic of .... and .... persons. Fine grained thinking is a characteristic of smart people ( like me). Seriously,
let's remove the emotional component out of Keers and we may have somebody appropiate ( weird a Spaniard saying this to an Englishman, but it's the case) for counseling a board of citizenship.
@Keers, You stated (many times) that Eno was rejected due to him leaving for an enemy country and tanking against us. Not for his insults upon leaving. As far as I recall Eno left only once, and wanted to return many months later. He was far from a 'loony oddball' that 'switched sides at the drop of a hat'. I understand your reasoning for barring him. I just wish you lot would stop painting a portrait of him that is far from the truth. He was not accepted for personal reasons...
Support, one rep per party, elected by that party.
We need to increase our population, I agree with Goku, it's fine to accept people, just not people from the same country, that's where the PTO risk is
I do like this policy but it seems a bit laborious to go through this process every month. If each party put forward a member of their party to be on the board once every 3 months, and these 5 members had to be approved by a vote of congress this would guarantee an even spread on the committee, a democratically elected committee, of sorts, each party to their own. Furthermore the longer time period between re-elections allows for committees to become suited to their role.
This will be less efficient and will obviously carry the risk of losing its efficacy if people go inactive (as has happened in the past).
If this or something similar goes through, I hope that all PP's that agree to it in principle will actually police their own members and enforce the punishments.