Message from @FroggyC

Discord ID: 451068338475368471


2018-05-28 20:53:55 UTC  

Aka needing the vote of 50%+1 of voters

2018-05-28 20:54:04 UTC  

It makes abstention = a no vote

2018-05-28 20:54:16 UTC  

So who's against the referendum will campaign for just not voting

2018-05-28 20:55:34 UTC  

Since a sizeable percentage of the people always not vote, you will end up with the referendum not passing having a significant headstart

2018-05-28 20:56:37 UTC  

About the cabinet. I understand what you're saying but it still needs to be expression of a single political line.
You might need the nominations to have a confirmation by the Senate, but you can't ask the Senate to pick them. It also would break separation of powers, making executive positions dependent on the legislative branch.

2018-05-28 20:56:59 UTC  

Even parliamentary democracies don't have ministers appointed by the upper house. The houses just give confidence

2018-05-28 20:58:49 UTC  

@Kelben ^^^^

2018-05-28 20:59:23 UTC  

What I'm saying is that having a cabinet that doesn't express a single vision might make it impossible to work together at all

2018-05-28 21:29:24 UTC  

I expect the Cabinet will still represent a single vision, it will just be the vision of the leading coalition instead of the vision of the President. Because the new Electoral system would make everyone hyper aware of how fast their political career can end, and therefore it would eventually be considered political suicide to be an obstructionist unless you are absolutely sure that is what your base wants. The idea is that because nobody likes a government that can't get things done people will punish politicians who make that impossible.
And even if they don't this ability to check executive orders is the only power that the Cabinet as a whole has, the rest of the powers belong solely to individual Cabinet members and therefore they will likely get there individual jobs done regardless.
It would interfere with the separation of powers in the sense that the president would have a harder time passing legislation, but passing legislation is the job of the legislature anyway. As far as I see it the separation of powers has already broken down in the executives favor, this would just be correcting for that.
As for your point about the referendums, I agree that that may have been an over correction. The main thing I was worried about was a common occurrence in my state of Texas, here the state has to hold a referendum everytime it wants a constitutional amendment, which is often because of the way the Texas constitution is written, however because so few people vote in state elections they usually pass with only a few percentage points of the population in favor of them. But yeah like I said, in hindsight I may have over corrected for that problem.

2018-05-28 21:29:39 UTC  

@FroggyC ^^^^^

2018-05-28 21:44:42 UTC  

@FroggyC I'm curious what you think a good minimum percentage of voters would be though, cause I still feel like there should be one.

2018-05-28 21:46:09 UTC  

here in the netherlands it was 30% for a advisory referendum. but our goverment doesnt like advisory referendums so they got rid of it

2018-05-28 21:46:34 UTC  

we have(had) 30% and that was on the high side compared to the rest of Europe

2018-05-28 21:54:39 UTC  

How hard was it for an advisory referendum to fail?

2018-05-28 21:55:22 UTC  

well, it mostly got removed because the gov't didn't like the result

2018-05-28 21:55:45 UTC  

but in the netherlands we don't really have a referendum culture. It only was introduced in 2015

2018-05-28 21:56:31 UTC  

Ahhh, so I'm guessing it wasn't part of your constitution then?

2018-05-28 21:56:59 UTC  

nope

2018-05-28 21:59:02 UTC  

OK, well still 25-30% sounds like a fairly good number.

2018-05-28 22:19:03 UTC  

Actually, if we're just talking about the number of people that need to participate, would it maybe be better to set it at something like 50-60%? That way enough people will have to know that it's unlikely that anyone didn't participate due to a lack of knowledge of the referendum.

2018-05-29 17:04:32 UTC  

I'd say between 30% and 40%

2018-05-29 17:04:42 UTC  
2018-05-29 17:05:08 UTC  
2018-05-29 17:05:16 UTC  

We have the participation quorum in Italy

2018-05-29 17:05:21 UTC  

it's the same problem

2018-05-29 17:05:37 UTC  

it should require 40% participation

2018-05-29 17:05:44 UTC  

50

2018-05-29 17:05:56 UTC  

50% quorum sounds like a good idea but it's not

2018-05-29 17:25:15 UTC  

@FroggyC why not? Also why did you @ me twice?

2018-05-29 18:03:13 UTC  

@Kelben sorry, didn't notice that I @'d you twice

2018-05-29 18:03:42 UTC  

Because if the quorum is too low who's against the referendum will campaign for not voting

2018-05-29 18:03:49 UTC  

No problem, I was just curious

2018-05-29 18:04:00 UTC  

It needs to be low enough that passing the quorum is almost always a significant risk

2018-05-29 18:04:46 UTC  

In that case who's against the referendum will not campaign for not voting, because they risk losing with a ~95% vote and that doesn't look good

2018-05-29 18:05:15 UTC  

Look at the history of Italian referenda

2018-05-29 18:05:30 UTC  

(the popular ones, which implement a 50% participation quorum system)

2018-05-29 18:05:37 UTC  

And see how many just didn't meet the quorum

2018-05-29 18:05:47 UTC  

Then look at how many won with a 90%+ vote

2018-05-29 18:06:22 UTC  

The only case in which both Yes and No campaigns went to vote is when the issue was very contested and it was well known that a lot of people would vote

2018-05-29 18:06:54 UTC  

Not only, if people against the referendum campaign for not voting, voting No basically helps the Yes campaign, as retarded as that sounds