We have two separate floor rules acts we are following right now. The APCOL act and the ARLPROF act.

There were two main reasons for making these rules. First, it's important to involve all members before something is passed. Second, it's important for the country and its ministries and courts to be able say "here is the law that they passed, and here's what it says".

• Involving all members before passing a law

This is sort of working. However a parliament vote just "passed" a law which I never saw, which is not the way it is supposed to work.

Also, is one post from a person really enough to show they read the whole thing, have said all they want to say, and have heard all they want to hear from others? The rules assume that one thread comment is enough to prove this happened but I'm not so sure. What if someone doesn't know whether they like the bill, so they post a question, and then someone else just says "hah you just posted, now I call a vote". This hasn't happened yet but it bugs me that it could, so the rules maybe don't do enough. Every member should get to see every bill, and should have the right to stop the whole voting process for a few days if they want to discuss the bill more before a vote happens, and I'm not sure the current rules do this well.

• Making it clear exactly what laws we've passed

This is also only sort of working. At least we no longer hold official votes on ambiguous, unenforceable, titleless, one-sentence-long acts like "hey guise lets sell some plots". That's a success.

On the other hand, at least half our votes are turning out to be "false starts", so sometimes we don't even know or even agree on whether we passed a bill or not. If we hold votes and we seem to pass laws but the laws are invalid because of technicalities, we confuse each other, the citizens, and the rest of the goverment as to what the law is. That's the opposite of our job as lawmakers.

Suggested new floor rules (a rough draft):

One person officially holds all the votes, and announces their result. It will be much less confusing that way. We could call them "Speaker" or "President" of the Parliament. Perhaps this person could also double as "librarian of parliament", collecting the laws we pass into one place for reference. They shouldn't have to be a parliament member to do this job. They do need to have supermajority support in parliament at all times; it should take a 2/3 vote of parliament to install a speaker/president (this means 4/5 or 5/7 depending on the parliament's size), and any member should be able to call a re-vote on this at any time.

To propose a bill, a member must make a post tagged [Motion to Consider], containing the bill title and text. This starts a vote, but it is not a vote on whether to pass the bill; it is a vote on whether to consider the bill. In other words, it's a vote on whether or not to hold a vote.

All members may respond to the main motion by announcing their "action" in a comment. Allowed actions are to "support", "oppose", or "abstain". If a member does not announce an action for three days, they are considered to be absent and their action to be "abstaining", even if they have made other comments in the thread.

Once every member has acted (or been judged absent), the president/speaker makes a comment announcing the result of the motion as follows:

• If a majority of those non-abstaining fails to support the motion, the speaker rules that the motion fails.

• If a majority of those non-abstaining supports the motion, but they make fewer than 2/3 of the parliament, the speaker rules that the motion carries, that a roll call vote on the question shall be held in two weeks, and that the floor is open for debate on the bill until then. At the end of the two weeks the speaker posts the roll call vote as a separate thread, PMs a link to the post to each parliament member, and announces the official result after 48 hours.

• If 2/3 of the parliament supports the motion, the speaker rules that the motion carries, and also makes a new secondary motion, a "motion to suspend" the rules and pass the bill immediately. If all members present supported the main motion, the speaker skips holding a vote and rules that the motion to suspend is carried by "voice vote". If however any member opposed the main motion, the speaker must hold an immediate vote in the thread on the motion to suspend, and 2/3 of parliament must vote in favor for it to carry. If the motion to suspend carries, the bill is passed as law; otherwise the speaker schedules a final roll call vote on the bill after two weeks of debate.

During a debate period, if a member wishes to substitute an amended version of the bill, they can post a [Motion to Substitute] which contains the amended version of the bill. A motion to substitute is treated the same as a motion to consider, except if it carries it cancels scheduled roll call votes on any previous version of the bill. This way, the only version of a bill ever scheduled for a roll call vote will be the version which is currently approved by a majority.

About "holding a vote on whether to vote":

This added step is not as useless as it may seem. Saying "you must vote yes or no to all of it, now" frames the situation the wrong way and pressures members to ignore their third option: modifying the bill before voting on it. If a member likes 98% of a bill then they basically like the bill and might be tempted to vote "yes now", but if they remember they are welcome to make changes then they might vote "not yet" and then contribute their 2%. Better laws get made when everyone's 2% is considered, so our system should try to make the third option easy for members to see.

About two weeks:

Since 2/3 can always suspend the rules, the only time we will actually see a wait of two weeks is in a 3-2 or 4-3 split. If a deadlock like this is held for the entire two weeks, it means the majority has not offered any compromise amendments the minority will accept, so this is probably worst-case democracy where the 51% are straight up bullying the 49%. It's even possible that 50% of the citizens would be against the bill even though 3/5 or 4/7 in Parliament are for it. In this type of situation, obstruction is good. There should be enough time for both sides to sell their case to the public, and for the opposition to organize a citizens' no-confidence petition if they think they have the voters on their side. Even having the ability to threaten to dissolve the parliament should force the majority to think twice about forcing a law that is highly partisan.

Our normal time period, 3 days unless everyone posts, is still there. With the president/speaker holding the votes though, there would be less confusion as to when a vote is complete or whether it was valid. A 1/3 minority could delay a vote up to the full 3 days, even while discussing it in the thread, which they can't do now (even though that was the whole point of having a 3 day rule in the first place). Also, asking "is this law ready for a vote yet" as the first question will remind us of our responsibility to critique and improve laws as much as possible before passing them.

So, yes, quite a wall of text I know. Whenever you get around to digesting it, please do comment on whether you agree with these goals first of all, and also on whether you think this is the best approach to take.