Vetoed Protect Our Democracy Amendment

[Mhadsher]

A
Bill
To

Amend the Constitution​

The people of Democracy Craft, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:


1 - Short Title and Enactment
(1) This Act may be cited as the “Protect Our Democracy Amendment"
(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.
(3) This Act is authored by an anonymous citizen and Mhadsher101.
(4) This Act is co-sponsored by Senator Venom.


2 - Reasons
(1) In Section VI of the Constitution, the Owners are given a special relationship to the government, allowing them to completely override any government decision, and to dissolve government institutions. While normally a role with this much power would be separated, nothing has stopped the Owners from running for political office as well.
(2) Whereas an Owner veto is an added check on the government, there can be no check if the Owner is the one making legislation or policy.
(3) This amendment only limits the Owner’s ability to use their veto while being in office. This is to allow the Owner to still be involved in government while avoiding unreasonable power.
(4) Another Owner who is not serving in an elected position may continue to use veto power.


3 - Changes
(1) In Section VI The Owner’s Relationship to Government, adds “If an Owner is serving in the elected position of Representative, Senator, or President, they forfeit their owner veto ability for the duration of the term. An Owner not in any such position may continue to use the veto.”

 

[Westray]

Presidential Assent

This bill has been granted assent and is hereby signed into law.

 

[DemocracyCraft]

Owner Veto

Senior Administration has been consulted in this owner veto.

Ownership
Unless you do something outrageously out of left field, an owner veto is usually at the very least an ownership decision, if not a senior administration one. End and Tech operate symbiotically - End handles front of house/government/staff and Tech handles performance/networks/security/complex technological issues. There is some overlap, however they have worked their responsibilities down to a fine art - it just happens. This is a very surface-level perception-based Act, because if a law needs to be owner vetoed, End would probably have to let Tech know anyway - just like Tech would have to tell End if the server was about to run out of memory. They just don't monitor each other's work because they trust and respect each other's strengths.

Owner Veto In Reality
In 2 years we'd estimate that the owner veto has been used ~10? times. After searching forums, we could only find 7 instances.

What do you need to do to get an owner veto?
- Enact something that the server cannot support (i.e. plugins, resources, etc).
- Unreasonable amendments to staff-related functions.
- Something not consistent with the ownership's vision for the server (i.e. moving the capital city to Aventura in the last week of your presidency @LilDigiVert).

We are extremely reserved with what we owner veto because our position is that the Government should lay in the bed it makes. This is part of Government RP and it makes the server fun because we don't shield the government from the consequences of its actions. We set trigger points for our involvement (i.e. Government finances dip below $[Redacted]).

The reality is that End has been in Government for the best part of 2 years, 1 year collectively in the legislature. Tech has spent time in Government. At no point has anything been owner vetoed something because they don't personally agree with it.

Why have an Owner Veto?
At the end of the day, DC is a business and it needs to pay for itself. We have codified our relationship as an ownership and staff team with the government so that we are both on the same page. We don't intend to change the current position that we are in for the number of reasons that we have articulated in this veto. The server gives an insane amount of power and influence to the regular player - its what we do and we wouldn't ever change that, because it makes DC what it is. But, there needs to be some boundaries on that so that no one burns the server down - and the ones we have now work well.

If we go away, or if we are both in an elected position, we need to be able to exercise the veto. It is as simple as that.

Staff | Government Divide
We put a great deal of emphasis on the separation of staff and government. The decisions that we make as staff don't cross the divide. The decisions that we make politically don't cross the divide. Staff look at issues through a holistic scope of what needs to be done to protect the server/how can we progress the server. As a politician, we look at things from a player base perspective. We do not carry grudges over the divide, we do not carry political differences across the divide.

The origin of this bill was to disallow ownership to participate in government. This comes with its own issues such as owner engagement and activity - we need to be able to participate to keep engaged. New players are always surprised when they see us on, especially when we are on at the same time - why? Because outside of our server, it's rare to see the owners online. We play because we love doing what you love doing. We put mechanisms in place to ensure that End did not have an upper hand in the election by doing things like removing his permissions to see live vote results. We make a considerable effort to be fair. Regressing this bill to remove ownership powers is not the road we'd like to take.

I hope that we were able to give you good reasoning as to why this Act was vetoed.

This Act is hereby owner vetoed.

- Tech & End