Link to the original news post
The polls for the 147th Senatorial Election have already been open for multiple hours now and the 146th Senate’s term is rapidly coming to a close. With this in mind, it might be interesting to reflect a bit on what the 146th Senate has achieved and wanted to achieve.
To begin this article, the 146th Senate was one of the biggest ones in recent history. The amount of seats in every Senate is calculated by entering the amount of valid votes into a formula, which then usually gives out a number roughly equal to a ninth of the amount of votes. Thus, the ninety-four ballots gave SimDemocracy a twelve-seat Senate.
The chamber’s composition also wasn’t too uninteresting, with both the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Momentum Party (MMTM), two long-time political rivals, managing to claim multiple seats each. The LDP provided three Senators, whereas MMTM only provided two, although this number grew to three later on in the Senate term when another Senator resigned and had to be replaced.
Speaking of resignations, the 146th Senate was the first one to employ proportional-countbacks instead of by-elections as the system for replacing vacant seats. Before the reform, an individual by-election had to be held for every seat left empty due to resignation, impeachment, or similar, but now the replacement Senator would be chosen from the list of those that ran in the Senatorial election but did not get elected in the initial election.
This system was put to use twice: Once - as already mentioned above - when Senator Literal of the Revolutionary Organization for Social Equality (ROSE) resigned due to having to fulfil his new duties as Attorney General and was promptly replaced by now-Senator Tripod, who became the Momentum Party’s third seat in the chamber. And a second time when Senator Delulu of the Fucking Best Party (FBP) resigned due to the job’s stressful nature and got replaced by Coolkaonz of the Lemon Party (LP), which gave the LP a second seat in the chamber.
While there has been lots of talk relating to growing partisanship and political rivalry between the two major parties within SimDemocracy, the opposing Senators of both the LDP and MMTM decided on forming a unified Senate conference, the “Confederacy of Independent Systems” or CIS in short in spite of this. It was led by Tech Support, a Senator from a minor party and also saw Senators from many other smaller political parties join.
As such, the two major parties didn’t oppose each other in conference. As there of course still needed to be an opposition conference, Senator Nf19 of the Lemon Party decided to form the Jedi Order, mirroring the Star Wars-related naming of the united LDP and MMTM conference. This conference, similar to the CIS, housed a wide range of different party affiliations, such as Literal (ROSE), and the Independent Sunbear.
Whether the LDP and MMTM forming a unified conference actually solved their issue of partisanship is a complex question, although the answer to it probably is a resounding no, as - in the end - Senate conferences don’t mean all that much, and are only used for determining who staffs (or leads) what committees. There was still significant “party whipping” from both sides of the political spectrum, a practice where a political party encourages (“whips”) its Senators to vote in a certain way aligned to the party’s interests. The designated “party whip” of the Liberal Democratic Party, Bill Rocky Moor, admits to employing this practice himself in a news article he wrote, “Controversy without contention: How counting saved a nomination”.
Another point of controversy might be the Senate’s relation to former President Thyme (MMTM), who served during the first half of its term. While she had run on a platform of working together with both the LDP and MMTM, there still was significant contention between her and Speaker of the Senate Bill Rocky Moor for most of the time both of them were in office. Interestingly enough, this conflict didn’t show itself through the President vetoing Senate bills though, as one would expect, but rather only in public debate; Thyme actually reserved her veto-power for just three Acts of Senate, namely The Gloves Don’t Fit Act, The Anti-Fun Act, and The Proposal Act.
Taking a step back from political theory towards actual accomplishments, the 146th Senate had the honour to approve two whole appointments to the Supreme Court, something that usually occurs only very rarely in SimDemocracy as Supreme Court Justices serve for life. The reason for something as rare as this happening twice in one term was the ratification of the Supreme Court Expansion Amendment, which increased the number of Justices from three to five, thus forcing the President to appoint two new ones. Both of her choices, Ed and Britz, were approved by the Senate almost unanimously and without much criticism, as the two picks had actually been suggested to the President by the three already sitting Justices of the Supreme Court.
The Senate’s notable legislative achievements include passing the War Powers Act, which grants specific intervention authorizations to the President in certain foreign affairs related crises, reintroducing a clemency system for remorseful prisoners via passing the Parole Act, and creating regulations for government grants to news organizations (the Rocky-Nomics Act Pt. 1).
At the end of its term, the chamber began having problems with not reaching the required quorum of at least half the Senators voting or formally expressing their intention to abstain. As such, two whole Senate bills have automatically failed. This is an issue probably unique to this Senate due to the large number of members it had, and thus will probably not arise again in the future, as election participation has already significantly gone down since the outstanding ninety-four votes in the 146th Senatorial Election.
Concluding this article, many outgoing Senators have already announced they will be seeking reelection in the 147th Senatorial Election. This includes Tripod (MMTM), Tech Support (SPQR), DemocracyForYou and Rein (Center), and Coolkaonz (LP). On the other hand though, many new faces have also thrown their hat into the ring, such as Lucas (MMTM) and Sesruinen (FBP) who both recently returned to SimDem politics from a longer break, and Thyme who actually served as President just a few weeks ago.