N.E.R.D. Party Commission on Congressional Reform. [Open table discussion.]

I feel like Congress is the key to making this an intellectually interesting roleplay that isn’t always about drama and campaigning.

The two big problems with Congress currently, as I see it, are:

1. Overall inactivity.
—There is usually a burst of excitement at the beginning of the Administration when the new Congress comes in, but enthusiasm wanes as the Administration grinds on. Congress starts to collect cobwebs.

2. Owner issues.
—Historically, it seems like half the government’s proposals are either lobbied against or actually vetoed by the Stream Owner. Not exactly encouraging to Congressmembers.

Solutions?

1. Reform Congress by reducing its size.
—Congress currently has 15 members, I believe, but many of them don’t post here regularly. It seems that a bigger size doesn’t lead to more activity, but ironically encourages congressional apathy. With fewer members, perhaps more 6-10, each member will have more power and feel like they can make a difference.
—Do some vetting upfront. Prior to appointing a Congressmember, check their stream history, ask them to commit to being active.

2. Build in a schedule to encourage regular Congress activity.
—For instance, hold a standing vote every Friday. It doesn’t have to be a major proposal: something as simple as honoring XYZ meme or memer would be fine. Point being to get people into the habit of being in Congress.

3. Reform Stream Ownership.
—I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Owner should stay out of the way of the government unless it starts violating TOS. If the Owner inserts his/her own biases and tries to steer the government, then the government can’t do what it wants and elections become pretty pointless.

There have been other Congress reform proposals in the past, like a “Senate” composed of representatives from different streams around Imgflip. Certainly an intriguing proposal. The questions I have are: Which streams would get to send Senators? How would Senators be selected? How can we be sure those Senators would be active? These questions require further study.

I think for congress, we should choose users who are often online on Imgflip. It should be part of the requirements. If you're not always online, then you can't run for congress. Congress members should be online at least once a day.

And as for senators, I actually have no idea how we're gonna do that....

But maybe we can have any stream have senators and representatives IF and only if they want to. We shouldn't force them.

But then again, IMGFLIP_PRESIDENTS is a ROLEPLAY stream and we're not actually presidents of Imgflip.

I think the Senate if it exists should only be of streams that are invested in PRESIDENTS, like crusader_stream, so we can count on them being there. The issue would be what criteria do we use to select them? Someone’s gonna feel left out regardless of where you draw the line. So, it’s a good idea in theory but actually making it work could be tough.

I had an idea that there would be a senator if you have a specific amount of followers like 200+ followers or so. But I don't think that's a good idea....

There are a LOT of streams that meet that metric…

Maybe 500+ followers? Which is about how big PRESIDENTS is. It’s a thought, and a neutral objective criteria, so that’s helpful.

But that would mean that the crusader stream can't be part of senate. They're only 244 followers.

Right. But totally random non-political streams like cats and dark_humour and even boobs (lol) would qualify.

So that doesn’t quite work, either.

Maybe some combination of followers and PRESIDENTS stream-investedness.

crusader_stream has gotta be a part of it, lol. It’s the most obvious choice for a senate delegation.

Okay.... that's a good standard.

Right. The constantly-AFK (or at least AFK-from-PRESIDENTS) congresspeople are annoying.

That’s part of why I propose vote-every-Friday. If you can’t make even one weekly meeting on a regular basis, yer out.

Another standard for Congress I thought of:

The member must be unbiased in their actions. They are allowed to join streams and groups like anime_army or AAA or LGBTQ. But they must not be biased or corrupt.

But that's a really hard standard to keep because you can't always see corruption that easily.

That’s a tough one, because being political is at some point about being biased, isn’t it? :)

Where I’ve come to land on this: You can be anti-anime or pro-LGBTQ or whatever. But if you start *harassing* the other streams for disagreeing with you, that crosses a line. Build your communities, sure, but stay in your lane!

The activist groups like porn_police, AAA, Crusaders, etc. seem to have become more mature in this respect lately.

That's nice!