Weighted Voting Amendment Fails To Pass The Final Hurdle
Citizenry decisively rejects the amendment in a 57-43% vote
Written by ICH
The Weighted Voting Amendment (WVA) failed to gain the People's Assent in a recently-concluded referendum where it secured only 20 votes in favour of it as opposed to the 27 votes against it. This drew the curtains on a month-long debate surrounding the fate of this concept, which has also been the subject of bitterly-contested arguments between some of the region's most well-known faces.
This concept was propelled into regional discussion by PhDre, when they proposed the creation of a system in which the voting power of a senator on non-constitutional legislation would be tied to how well they had performed in the election. While citizens at the time including John Laurens, Josi and Comfed opposed the concept, indicating their dissatisfaction with the concept in a discussion on PhDre's platform. PhDre would go forward to introduce legislation proposing a weighted vote system on the Senate floor, thus triggering a wider regional discussion on the concept both in the Senate and amongst the citizenry.
Then-Senator Elio took the lead in initially opposing the concept in the Senate, expressing his belief that all the Senators' votes should be equal, an opinion also shared by those opposed to this concept. Furthermore, prominent opponents to the concept, including Josi, Comfed, Chipoli and Olde Delaware, expressed their concerns about the message it will be sending to newcomers that they could not be trusted with equal voting power as that of a long-term senator. Some also noted that long-term Senators were more likely to get more votes even if they had done less work on their platforms in comparison to newer candidates who had done more work on their platform. They feared that such bias against the newer candidates would discourage them from running for the Senate. However, equally fierce was the support in favour of the concept, with citizens like Rand, Cordova I and the bill's author PhDre lending their support to it. Proponents of the bill argued that the introduction of weighted voting would mean that more citizens would be willing to consider an even-numbered Senate, thus leading to a bigger Senate than usual. They further explained that voters would now be more open towards supporting newer candidates as a result of the adoption of WVA. There were suggestions that experienced candidates would be putting more effort into their platforms in order to gain a greater voting power.
The proponents of the WVA further extended an olive branch to those on the fence by stipulating a trial period in the formal legislation and encouraging others to give the concept an opportunity to display its positive sides. However, this did not evidently manage to change the mood of the region as two polls undertaken by Rand and McEntire showed that 58.7% and 60% of the citizenry were either opposed to trying Weighted Voting or to the passage of its legislation, respectively. Even despite this demonstration of the wider citizenry's stance, the Senate voted to pass the Weighted Voting Amendment (2023) in a 3-1-1 vote. Citizens, including Olde Delaware, expressed their disappointment with the fact that the Senate did not take into consideration the results of the polls while voting. McEntire, in her departure speech, noted the passage of the Weighted Voting Amendment as an example of an instance where she felt disconnected from the wider community. Even before President JayDee got the chance to exercise his presidential prerogative to either grant or deny the People's Assent to the legislation, Aexnidaral started a petition to trigger a referendum on whether the legislation should receive the People's Assent, which ultimately put to rest the fate of the legislation through a region-wide vote against it.
