Post by Vladimir Vova Ochiuriushka on Apr 10, 2009 10:57:13 GMT
The USSC's legislative process isn't the easiest to understand at first glance, but is advantageous for many reasons, especially bookkeeping! Here I will explain to everyone - old Colians and new - exactly how our legislature works.
- All citizens have the right to speak in the Supreme Soviet. The Supreme Soviet is where all the legislating takes place. The Speaker of the Supreme Soviet, appointed by the President, oversees the general operation of the legislative process.
All existing legislation can be found in the Legislative Register, stickied in the Supreme Soviet forum. All new legislation takes the form of an edit to this document. - New legislation can come into existance in two ways. Firstly, a citizen can propose a fully constructed law, an edit to the Legislative Register - a Bill. This would be posted in the Supreme Soviet forum in a post inviting other citizens to vote on it. The thread title would be "[Vote] The Name of the Law Bill" because in it, citizens vote on the Bill put before them. Voting on a Bill is open for 6 days.
- If at the end of 6 days there are more Yes votes than No votes, the Speaker declares the Bill passed (from then on it is then referred to as an Act), adds it to the Index of Actions of the Supreme Soviet (a list of the resolutions passed), moves the new law to the Ministry of Law (a forum where all passed Acts are kept for safekeeping) and edits the Legislative Register accordingly. If there are more No votes than Yes Votes, the vote has failed and the Bill cannot be resubmitted for a vote until 7 days have passed.
- The other way legislation can come into existance is through a discussion thread. A citizen who has an idea but not a completely drawn-up Bill may post a discussion thread in the Supreme Soviet forum, with the title "[Discussion] Whatever". The idea with discussion threads is for a concensus to be reached and for eventually a complete Bill to be drawn up. This Bill could then be proposed in a Vote thread by any citizen, and the procedure described above would commence.
- This system of editing a single document makes amending old laws easy, makes finding out a specific law easy (opening the Legislative Register and pressing Ctrl+F isn't at all taxing) and as mentioned before makes bookkeeping easy. I must confess the last point is the most important to me as a librarian at heart!
