The Senate of the Wysterian Union is the supreme decision making body in the organization.
The body is always comprised of only one hundred senators. Whenever a new nation joins the Union, a reapportionment of senators is undertaken to account for the new members. As membership grows and contracts, nations will find that their influence also ebbing and flowing as they are allocated more senators or have their delegations reduced.
Decision making in the WU senate is democratic and is based on rules and policies which exist to strengthen the democratic tradition of this body.
COLONY POLICY
LWU 02-06.04.05 states that each member nation may have one colonial representative among their senate delegations. This one additional representative is in addition to the senators delegated at each apportioning. The colonial representative is non-voting, but provides the input of a senate nation's colony in the WU capital.
VOTING AND TIME UNITS
Voting happens twice every OOC in the Union Senate. For the majority of business in the senate, a quorom of sixty six senators must submit a vote for it to be considered a binding vote of the Union Senate. Of that sixty six, a simple majority must vote in favor to bring the legislation into force. The executive of the Union, the Chancellor, has no power of veto over the legislation produced by the WU senate.
The most critical principle to the way business is conducted in the WU senate is an understanding of time units. Time units are measurements of the time allowed to move a proposal from debate to voting. Each OOC week consists of two time units or TUs. The first TU occurs Mondays, 12 p.m. US Central Time to Thursday, 11:59 a.m. The second TU occurs on Thursday 12:00 p.m. US Central Time and extends to Monday, 11:59 a.m. Within the span of one of those TUs, legislation must be introduced onto the senate floor, debated, reach quorom, and voted on. Successful legislation depends on each member nation understanding the concept of the time unit and participation in ongoing votes in the senate.
STANDING
The Senate has strict rules regarding the maintenance of membership in good standing. These are codified in a piece of legislation called the Membership Act of 2005 or MA2005. As a member of the Union, states are expected to provide basic input in decision making. Generally a nation is removed from the senate under the following circumstances:
-it is deleted from nationstates.net; or
-it fails to post on the WU board in one OOC month. |
