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The campaigning for the 146th Senatorial election has already begun, with the election being underway in just a few days. This in mind, it might be interesting to reflect a bit on what the 145th Senate has done, or rather tried to do.
To begin with some statistics: The Senate docket has seen forty-four Senate Bills, one private petition, eight appointments, and two impeachments. Of those seven appointments, all but one passed, namely the appointment of Xi4 to the position of Judge, made by the President in jest. Of the two impeachments, both the motion to “vacate the chair” aka to impeach Speaker Stalin, and the motion to impeach President Birdish for “being stinky” failed.
Its notable legislative achievements include streamlining and simplifying criminal procedures, setting a fixed pay rate for the Bar Director, expanding the SimDem judiciary’s jurisdiction to include foreign nations in serious cases of doxxing or sexual harassment, and passing the Proportional Countbacks (Constitutional) Amendment, which would abolish the by-election system, although this hasn’t passed referendum yet.
Furthermore, it has given out two Senatorial Medals of Honour, namely to Attorney General Ed for his outstanding and hard prosecutorial work of multiple weeks and Ivy for his outstanding legislative work in drafting many bills for the Senate, despite not being a member of the chamber himself.
Not all of the Senate’s work has been successful though, as on the 15th of July, President Thyme vetoed three of its bills at once, namely the Severability Amendment (due to its likely unconstitutionality as it potentially cannibalizes the President’s authority to veto future bills passed by the Senate), the Sexit Referendum Act (due to SimDem not being ready for a binding referendum on whether to leave the League of Servers), and the Bank Note Regulation Act (again, due to its likely unconstitutionality as it allows for fines to be given out without due process). Furthermore, its attempts at overturning the veto of the Sexit Referendum Act failed, not reaching the required 2/3rds majority.
On the other hand though, it also attempted to innovate and bring a bit of new light into the legislative system by attempting to hold a voice channel debate, instead of a text-based one. Although the motion by Senator Stalin to hold a voice channel debate was almost unanimously approved by all but one of the Senators, the debate has not been held yet for some reasons.
Concluding this article, with the Call for Candidates of the 146th Senatorial Election already having been posted, there are now less than three days left for the 145th Senate. What it chooses to do with these few days, and whether the voice channel debate will finally be held, is still an open question.
Many of the current Senators have already announced they would be seeking reelection, namely Tripod, Rein, Literal, Lyoko, Saket/Budo and Phobos.
On the other hand though, many new faces have also announced their candidacy, namely Olive, Egg, Flor, Medmouse, Nf19, et al. of the Lemon Party, Delulu of the FPB who lost the recent Presidential Election in third place, the currently arrested Notcom of the LDP, and ValleyOfStarlight, Tech Support, and DemocracyForYou, who are all returning to SimDem politics from a longer break/retirement. Lastly, Bill Rocky Moor of the LDP, who lost the last Senatorial Election, but still ended up proposing many bills to the chamber and having a substantial effect on SimDem’s legislature, is also trying his shot again.