New Councillor + Impeachment process

[DukeofRealms]

Greetings,

Due to recent events a member from the council had to be removed. As our council election was STV with each voter giving 5 preferences, we've been able to recalculate the results without the user in question and have found a replacement. The nature of STV means that anyone who voted for the removed Councillor will have their votes go to their next preference. This means that we're not eliminating a voter block.

Here are the raw stats

As before, if you see any errors with the recalculation make sure to point them out!

The council along with the help of Bench have developed an official impeachment process to handle any future incidents that might occur. The first draft of this is here:

Spoiler: Proposed Impeachment Process

Due Process:

• An impeachment process may only be started if no other impeachment process is already running. Each impeachment process may only be used to impeach a single councilor that has come under question for offenses committed while currently acting as a councilor.
• The council will conduct internal debates and discussions to determine the nature and severity of the offense(s) by the councilor under question, and potential resolutions.
• If no resolutions can be presented to Schine then Schine will become involved in determining possible courses of action.
  • At this stage, it will be determined if impeachment is to be considered.
• In the event the conflict with the councilor under question cannot be resolved through any methods determined by the remaining representatives and Schine, the remaining representatives may opt to vote for impeachment of the offending member.
• Before a vote for impeachment can begin, there must be clear and substantiated evidence provided of not only the offences by the councilor under question, but also that the remaining representatives have exhausted any other proposed methods of resolution.
• The remaining representatives will then be asked to vote. The votes will not be shared or discussed between representatives until the result of the vote has been determined.
• All votes conducted will be decided by 2/3rds majority.
• If the vote results in the impeachment of the councilor in question, a second vote by the remaining representatives may also be conducted to determine if the impeachment should extend beyond the current term to prevent disruptive citizens from re-running for the council.
  • Schine's representatives will discuss with the remaining representatives to determine if this secondary vote is deemed necessary according to the offenses that were addressed in the impeachment, and the actions of the now-removed council member in relation to their impeachment.
  • Schine reserves the right to retroactively lift this secondary preventative impeachment.

Appeals:

• The impeached member may request a contractual appeal
  • Contractual Appeal : A specific set of terms and conditions for the impeached member to prevent similar offenses that resulted in their initial impeachment, but that would allow the impeached member to either be reinstated to the council or that would enable the impeached member to run on the ballot for future terms.
• The council and / or Schine will then determine if there is grounds for the appeal.
• Should Schine and the council agree that there are grounds for an appeal, then the council will vote to approve the appeal.
• Should the terms of the impeached member's reinstatement be violated, they will be released from the council without a second vote, and their impeachment reinstated if it initially prevented them from running in future elections.

Impeachment and Resignation:

• • Should an impeached councilor slander the council or Schine, or break their NDA, they will no longer be able to file for an appeal, and will be barred from future elections.
    • Additional consequences for breaches of their NDA will be determined by Schine separate to the council.
  • Once the impeachment is successfully rendered; access to all council related materials, channels of communication, and associated privileges will all be terminated immediately.
    • This process will begin with the removal of any administrator / moderator access.
  • The next candidate will be brought into the council, based on a recalculation of the ballot votes excluding the removed councilor, if the impeachment is conducted and concluded before half-term. Anyone who voted for the removed councilor will have their votes go to their next preference.
    • If the impeachment is concluded post-half-term the council will remain without the removed councilor until the conclusion of the term, after which the empty seat will be filled along with all the other seats based off the next election.

Parties and Roles:
CIR / Council : Council of Interstellar Representatives
Schine : Development team for StarMade or the allocated representative thereof
Impeached Councilor / Councilor in question : The councilor currently under investigation due to offenses committed while currently a member of the council.

The recalculated results have shown that keptick will take the final council position. Congratulations keptick , welcome to the the Council of Intergalactic Representatives!

Thanks for playing StarMade,

- SM Team

 

[Keptick]

I'm honored to be a member of the council, thanks to everyone that voted for me! Also thanks to everyone that voted for candidates, making the council a thing in the first place ^_^.

 

[Tydeth]

Congratulations, Keptick.

 

[kikaha]

Congrats keptik. Now we might see some from the council since its complete...

 

[Thalanor]

Yayy keppers ftw!

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Way to go keptick

 

[Jay_do]

Congratulations keptick !

 

[Omegacybran]

Congratulations keptick!

 

[iceman6491]

And so the plans to populate the council with kepdrones begins...

Nice job tho Kep

 

[NuclearFun]

congratulations!

although i fear that the council will soon be dominated by one massive AI ship and a bunch of drones :D

 

[Thalanor]

Psst. the council is ran by an AI overlord, which was programmed by a cat megalord. Do you still require proof?

 

[linwe talion]

At last it happened) Gratz, Kep)

 

[Snk]

Congratulations!

 

[Drakkart]

Congratz man!

 

[lupoCani]

Congratulations, I do have to say, you seem rather agreeable.

Edit: Very funny, Keptick. Very funny.

 

[spacie]

Firstly, congratulations to keptick,

Secondly, on the proposed process:

Spoiler: 'whole buncha stuff'

I kinda didn't want to get involved with this stuff, anyway. I'll go through the stuff that's still vague to me/open to interpretation, then I'll put up a few other points.

First of all, is something an offense only if it breaches the starmade TOS, Council TOS or NDA or can something else also be specified as such?
Either way some clarification is in order.

• The council will conduct internal debates and discussions to determine the nature and severity of the offense(s) by the councilor under question, and potential resolutions.

The first part here implies the whole council should be present at these debates, the second makes me question that, please clarify. Also, it seams nowhere in this part or the next does a councilor have to be notified that he is being investigated, so to speak. It would be nice to have that in the official process (not being convicted without first being officially charged metaphorically speaking). It might be your intention to do so in the official schine process, but that can't be seen from the document a.t.m.

• In the event the conflict with the councilor under question cannot be resolved through any methods determined by the remaining representatives and Schine, the remaining representatives may opt to vote for impeachment of the offending member.

This is a weird one, first you have written everything in terms of offense(s) (a transgression of terms) then we suddenly have the word conflict.
To me it seems like a poorly chosen term, since you have representatives, they will naturally have differing opinions and thus smaller or bigger conflicts will always be a part of that. If everyone agreed you wouldn't need a representative council. If someone starts spouting profanities and throwing "ad hominem"s around, that would of course not be acceptable, but such things should probably be covered in any of the TOS's (just looked it up, it already is)
The same applies to the word resolution later on. I've never heard of an offense getting "resolved". You punish people for offenses ( "warn, kick, ban, slap on the wrist" that sorta thing) you can't really resolve them.
Am I to understand from this that the main reason one would be impeached is because one can't get along with the other councilors? (again, this is bound to happen with representation) Or are these two points just poorly worded?

• The remaining representatives will then be asked to vote. The votes will not be shared or discussed between representatives until the result of the vote has been determined.
• All votes conducted will be decided by 2/3rds majority.

I wish you all good luck trying to restrict that kind of information flow before and during such a vote. Also if the council already said the person's offenses are too severe to be able to work with them and took it too schine, wouldn't the result of such a vote be more or less obvious?
The 2/3rds majority, does that apply to the whole council or the council - the person under question? It makes quite a big difference for such small numbers (5 votes vs 4 votes).

The last part seems a bit like just adding injury to insult also with a very specific "to prevent" part there (I'm guessing inspired by recent events). Anyway, to me it seems that schine itself would be a better judge for impeachment extension. The council might not be there anymore on the same form the next term, schine most likely will. A councilor should as far as I can tell be an aide to schine, if schine doesn't think that is possible or too much trouble for what it's worth, then that should be enough.
This could also be applied to the entirety of the process TBH, in short: Council is there to aid schine and answers to it. If a councilor is no longer willing or able to aid schine, schine can remove said councilor from the council.
That's the end of it, no need for a debate or vote(s) from other councilors, it's simpler, quicker, less drama sensitive (other councilors don't need to voice their opinion on their peer)

If you are willing to make it as complicated as described here, it would be quite nice to include something along the lines of
"After an impeachment, the aforementioned evidence is screened and censored for NDA breaches, if schine has reason to assume (parts of) the evidence could be used for offensive actions against the impeached councilor, they may choose to withhold said evidence."


"phew" I wasn't counting on typing for this long, time to continue.

Appeals part seams fine so far.

The last section:
Is the slander and NDA part really necessary? If that happens Schine can always use it to reject an appeal, no need to give it its own clause.
The rest seems fine (I'm running out of steam here *puff* *puff*)


One last nitpicky thing, the currently drawn out proposal seems more suitably named as an Expulsion Process (people voting off their peers) instead of impeachment (which is actually officially the word for bringing charges against a public official, not the actual throwing out part, contrary to popular use)


/essay

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Congratulations keptick, now get to work :P

 

[Dark-life]

Gj Keptick? (who got impeached and why?)

 

[Jay_do]

Gj Keptick? (who got impeached and why?)

Tomino got impeached due to some complications with the council.

 

[montecristo]

Congrats Keptick!