[Gnote]

We are going about this all the wrong way. The process should work like this:

1) Election held.

2) Party with the most number of seats gets first chance to form government, regardless of whether they are a majority or not.

3) Party with the most seats can either decline that option, or present a budget (or platform, collection of policies, or perhaps a constitution to start with).

4) The entire parliament votes on whether to support the budget/platform/constitution. This is essentially the point at which we determine whether the party attempting to form government has the confidence of the house. If they do, they'll be allowed to continue to govern until they present a bill to parliament that gets voted down. If they don't, go to #5.

5) Either: 1) an election is held (I think this should be the result in every case where a party has already formed government, and is presenting a SUBSEQUENT piece of legislation; or 2) the party with the next most seats gets a chance to form government.

6) Repeat.

This is essentially the way the Canadian parliamentary system works.

I don't see another viable way we can do this.

[ingliz]

And 10 abstained, the PUC fared little better.

Gnote:

Present your amendments to the Constitution tomorrow they will be discussed

[Dave]

If we're going to count abstentions as no votes, then we might as well scrap this whole thing due to the inactivity of members. There are also PNL voters who I do not consider party members, surely other parties have similar issues?

[ingliz]

We have no problems with inactive members even Zyx who hardly ever joins in has agreed to be Deputy Health Minister in the new government.

[Dave]

Something which is not the case with any of the other parties, some of us recording substantial voter support.

[dilpill]

After re-reading the changes to Section 2 and 3, I agree with Dr House.

I will vote against ratification of any constitution that does not contain:
(from Clausewitz's Original Constitution)
In Section 2:
1. Parliament will constitute 100 seats in a single house apportioned by the D'Hondt method according to the results certified by the Clerk of the Parliament.*
2. At the moment the results are certified, the Party Leader holds all the seats apportioned to his party.†
3. Each Party Leader after that point will have the option of assigning its apportioned seats to Party members. Party members may be assigned multiple seats. Whether and how such seats are distributed is left to the determination of individual parties.‡

In Section 3:
4. Party leaders may declare the vote of their party on a piece of legislation. Seats assigned to the party leader and seats assigned to members of his party that did not report their position in the thread will be presumed to vote with the party leader.**
5. MPs (that is, people assigned seats in Parliament by their Party Leaders) have the right to break with their party leader if they so choose over a piece of legislation.††

*We agreed on this when we started the simulation. We have already distributed the seats in this manner, and changing it around just seems pointless.
† and ‡ Parties have already determined how they are distributing their seats, and again, we already agreed that parties would have the right to distribute their seats in whichever way they choose.
**This would result in much less clutter, and would make it much easier for us to get anything passed, since people are inevitably going to be absent some of the time
†† I want this simply because I might want to use it on occasion. Parties that want to get around this rule would just leave all of the seats in the Party Leader's possession.

[HoniSoit]

I have seen no evidence of a coalition just more bickering between the Parties

I have to second this.

The SN-RF practically worked out all the basics several days ago and has waited for the past three days or so to give the other parties the time to form an alliance. The three-day deadline is almost reached and other parties still haven't quite formed a stable alliance yet. You do have to question the efficiency of any such slow-moving and internally conflict-trodden alliance to govern.

[Donna]

If abstentions are counted as no votes, as the interim constitution suggests, both the SLD and the PUC rejected the Grand Coalition.

This is false on both counts. PUC has always been open to a coalition with any party except the PoP and SN-RF. Paradigm has stated numerous times that the SLD is willing to support the Grand Coalition (Gnote's dissent at this moment is irrelevant). The "bickering" that you are observing right now between GC parties are post-agreement talks. The Grand Coalition forms a greater minority than SN-RF-THP, so please stop attempting to form an illegal coup government.