NationStates Jolt Archive

Davisia presents for consideration the following proposal:

Universal Suffrage

Article I. No member of the United Nations shall deny the vote to any citizen on the basis of gender.

Article II. This resolution shall not be construed to require any nation to abandon voting requirements that disproportionately impact one gender, provided that the requirement was not imposed to intentionally circumvent the provisions of the first Article of this resolution.

Article III. This resolution shall take effect in each nation by the time of the next scheduled national election, or within one year of the passage of this resolution, whichever is longer.
--

This is a common-sense bill. Article I is self-apparent--no nation should discriminate against voters solely because the voter is a man or woman.

Article II addresses an important problem. Not all nations have unfettered voting. Any of these will more than likely affect one gender more than the other. Consider a nation that requires voters to be high-school graduates. A nation may have 90% of women that have graduated high school, and 85% of men. Such a law disproportionately affects males, but so long as the intent of the voting requirement was not to discriminate against men, a nation could have such a requirement, due to the wording of Art. II

Art. III gives all nations a fair chance to implement the rules, and prevents chaos in nations who are scheduled to have elections soon.

Comments, questions, concerns appreciated

I hope that delegates will support this proposal.

Archaeus permits universal voting rights, but does not hold 'elections,' and does not plan to. Once monarchial government has been removed (which I am working towards) it will be replaced with a complex but non-democratic government.

- Jordan, Monarch of Archaeus

It would be rather difficult for an Anarchy with no Formal leaders to have Sufferage..

For those countries that have no elections, this law won't affect you much. If you deny the vote to all the people, you're not denying it based on gender, whether the vote is denied because you're a monarchy or anarchy.

By its terms, it only operates to ban those nations which grant a right to vote, but bar voting to men, or bar voting to women.

Furthermore, Article III does not take effect in a country until the LATER of two things: 1 year, or the time of the next regularly scheduled election. What does this mean? If you don't have a national election (I.e., non-democracies), it doesn't take effect until you *do* allow elections.

What of race and age? The proposition should say that voting shall be open to all people. Of course, this means nothing to me, as Paxania is a constitutional monarchy in the most autocratic sense of the phrase, and we only have elections when there's no member of the royal family to take the throne. 8)

This could hardly be called "universal" suffrage, in my book.

u·ni·ver·sal ( P ) Pronunciation Key (yn-vûrsl)
adj.

...
2. Including, relating to, or affecting all members of the class or group under consideration

...
7. Logic. Encompassing all of the members of a class or group. Used of a proposition.

---
The word "universal" doesn't always mean "with no restrictions at all, for any group imaginable." Like many words, "universal" has many meanings. Determining which meaning is intended is determined by context. It's part of a skill set known as reading comprehension. Looking beyond the title and reading the entire proposal as a whole, shows that the "universal" in the title refers to universal gender suffrage, with gender being the group under consideration.

"Universal suffrage" is also a phrase that has a distinct sociopolitical meaning. Restrictions still exist so long as they are defined by characteristics outside of the universally accepted group. For example, all western democracies have what is known as "universal suffrage" with regards to gender and racial group. Children can't vote in any of them. To my knowledge, resident aliens can't vote in most or all of them, and neither can convicted felons. But still the term "universal suffrage" describes these nations. Why? Because the restrictions are not based on the groups of race and gender, but are based on citizenhood, age, etc.


Debate about the substance of the proposal would be great. But nitpicking about the title is not productive, and frankly relies on incorrect bases.

Apologies for any excessive snarkiness.

I don't have time to argue my point, so I will say what our forefathers in the past have said. In this world, in the extremes, there are two types of people, the educated and the non-educated. Would you really want the non-educated people to make decisions for us? Or would you rather have the educated people who knows about politics and economics to make the decisions? It's up to you. I'll elaborate more on this later. Good night people.

I don't have time to argue my point, so I will say what our forefathers in the past have said. In this world, in the extremes, there are two types of people, the educated and the non-educated. Would you really want the non-educated people to make decisions for us? Or would you rather have the educated people who knows about politics and economics to make the decisions? It's up to you. I'll elaborate more on this later. Good night people.

We all vote by clan and sept and it works fine. Each local unit decides how many relative votes each of its members gets, but their total vote as a unit is determined by population.

What?

while i aggree that no one should be denied a voice on the basis of gender the term "universal" taken at face value as we in carlemnaria much prefer to, goes a great deal further then questions of lineage or gender. universal sufferage in our view would include every relatively sentient lifeform of every age from birth to death, encompassing infancy and sinility. it would also virtualy forbid anyway of insuring rights and freedoms not derived from popular mandate (which would often rather pretend to have them then actualy aquire them).
while we strongly favor every resonably sentient awairness having a voice in every matter that affects them and the kind of world they have to live in, we find there are challanges to a truely unbiased implimentation of UNIVERSAL sufferage that are unlikely to have been considered.
for many years carlemnaria has attempted to devise methods of enabling small woodland creatures to voice their concerns in matters of public debate. these efforts are ongoing and continue and will likely do so untill this challange is met. we know of few nations who have yet to even consider undertaking such an effort.
we also allow and even encourage school children as young as 6 and 7 to participate in local and national elections and referendums, our education system being such that by that age they are fully cognizent of and prepared to sholder the burdens of responsibility such sufferage implies.
in trueth we are only giveng you a bad time over an ommissin that may be less obvious to others then it is to ourselves while at the same time fully supporting what we perceive to be the implied intent that gender be no bar to sufferage.

=^^=
.../\...

Davisia presents for consideration the following proposal:

Universal Suffrage

Article I. No member of the United Nations shall deny the vote to any citizen on the basis of gender.

Article II. This resolution shall not be construed to require any nation to abandon voting requirements that disproportionately impact one gender, provided that the requirement was not imposed to intentionally circumvent the provisions of the first Article of this resolution.

Article III. This resolution shall take effect in each nation by the time of the next scheduled national election, or within one year of the passage of this resolution, whichever is longer.
--

This is a common-sense bill. Article I is self-apparent--no nation should discriminate against voters solely because the voter is a man or woman.

Article II addresses an important problem. Not all nations have unfettered voting. Any of these will more than likely affect one gender more than the other. Consider a nation that requires voters to be high-school graduates. A nation may have 90% of women that have graduated high school, and 85% of men. Such a law disproportionately affects males, but so long as the intent of the voting requirement was not to discriminate against men, a nation could have such a requirement, due to the wording of Art. II

Art. III gives all nations a fair chance to implement the rules, and prevents chaos in nations who are scheduled to have elections soon.

Comments, questions, concerns appreciated

I hope that delegates will support this proposal.

I feel Archaeus could definitely accept this resolution (which seems quite well thought out) if two requests were granted:

1. 'The vote' is defined more precisely, perhaps replaced with 'voting rights in national elections.'

2. 'On the basis of gender' and the like be substituted with something a more inclusive statement - perhaps 'on the basis of income, social class, gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.'

Or something similar.

- Jordan

I used "the vote" specifically because it was so broad--it should not apply to just national elections, but any vote. "The vote" in the sense of "the right to vote" in general, and not particular votes in limited cases.

As to your second point, there's no need to do it all in one referendum. This starts off with universal gender suffrage. A later resolution can address other groups whose characteristics should not be used as the basis of voting discrimination.

Do these clarify your concerns?

I used "the vote" specifically because it was so broad--it should not apply to just national elections, but any vote. "The vote" in the sense of "the right to vote" in general, and not particular votes in limited cases.

As to your second point, there's no need to do it all in one referendum. This starts off with universal gender suffrage. A later resolution can address other groups whose characteristics should not be used as the basis of voting discrimination.

Do these clarify your concerns?

There are some votes, IMO, that countries may consider are not the business of the general populace.

However, my point was poor and restricting - governmental votes of any type should not be subject to discriminatory policies. You're right, thanks for making me see that. The second one, though, still stands - I think it would be better to address any other categories that might used for prejudicial selection in voting alongside gender - thus, a truly 'universal' act.

- Jordan

Universal suffrage needs more sponsors. Consider voting for this noble resolution

Universal sufferage only works if it is applied to the whole universe.

Many thanks to the nations who have thus far supported the resolution. More help is needed, however.

I support your efforts, but because the majoirity of countries in my region feel that universal sufferage will lead to the right to vote in every election, I cannot approve the proposal.

Though the populace within my nation posesses no political power, I am, on a related note, attempting to abolish all legal and governmental recognition of gender.

Germany and France,

Your region cannot seriously believe that this proposal will "lead to the right to vote in every election" unless they derive the meaning of the bill from the title alone, while ignoring the only operative parts--the text.

That criticism is completely ludicrous. I hope that all regions will vote for this propositon