Act of Congress Clerical Exemption Act

[greymc]

CONGRESS OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT
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A BILL TO

ALLOW CLERKS TO FIX SMALL MISTAKES




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The people of the Commonwealth of Redmont, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:


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PART I — PRELIMINARIES

1. Short Title and Enactment

(1) This Act may be cited as the `Clerical Exemption Act’

(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.

(3) This Act has been authored by Speaker _GreyMC.

(4) This Act has been co-sponsored by Deputy Speaker HatManMC.

(5) This Act amends the following acts:

(a) Legislative Standards Act
(b) Redmont Civil Code Act
(c) Criminal Code Act

2. Reasons and Intent

(1) The Clerk Empowerment Act and Clerk Powers Quickfix Act both amended the same section of the LSA, §6(8). However, the Empowerment Act was before the Quickfix Act, and was not recognized by the Quickfix Act, meaning the text amended in the Quickfix Act did not reflect the actual text, a legal grey area. This act fixes this issue by repealing the Clerk Empowerment Act.

(2) In some scenarios, someone may propose a bill and make a clerical error which is not realized until the bill is up for vote. Clerks are not currently permitted to amend bills with clerical errors, only passed legislation. This will allow clerks to amend clerical errors with permission of the presiding officer and bill proposer.

(3) This act also changes the need for a re-vote on a motion to amend. Now, if the change does not affect the “substantive meaning” of the bill (just like the changes clerks can normally do) it will not require a re-vote.

PART II — AMENDMENTS

3. Legislative Standards Act

(1) Legislative Standards Act §6(8) shall be repealed and replaced with the following:

(8) The OCA is authorised to make any of the following corrections to Acts of Congress, provided that such corrections do not alter the substantive meaning of the Act and are made with the permission of at least one Presiding Officer:

(a) Adjust the numbering of sections and subsections to correct errors, including updating references to such sections and subsections where it is necessary to reflect the corrected numbering;

(b) Correct obvious spelling errors that are not the result of regional differences in spelling, including capitalization mistakes;

(c) Update names of offices and organisations when the name of that office or organisation has changed since the passage of the original Act;

(d) Remove provisions that have been explicitly declared invalid or unenforceable by another Act of Congress or Judicial verdict.

(2) Legislative Standards Act §6 shall be amended as follows:

(9) The OCA may also make the amendments provided in subsection (8) while a bill is proposed, awaiting voting, or under voting, provided that the Presiding officers in both chambers and the original proposer of the bill agree to the change.

(10) The Presiding Officers shall fund the OCA's activities through provisions in the Legislative budget.

(3) Legislative Standards Act §11(11)(d)(i) shall be amended as follows:

(i) In caseIf the Motion to Amend changes neither the wording, nor the interpretation of a billdoes not alter the wording, including anything in the preliminaries, nor intent of the bill, it will not be required to restart the voting process in this manner under the discretion of the presiding officer with agreement from the proposer of the bill.

(4) Redmont Civil Code Act §3(2) shall be added as follows:

(2) Clerks may make aesthetic changes to this act, including, but not limited to, adding and removing vertical bars as a separation between offenses.

(5) Criminal Code Act §4(2) shall be added as follows:

(2) Clerks may make aesthetic changes to this act, including, but not limited to, adding and removing vertical bars as a separation between offenses.

 

[greymc]

I am voting AYE on this bill. Please note, I also voted AYE before in the House, so the poll is not accurate.

 

[greymc]

Vote prior to S-6/40

 

[xXTheoryXx]

Presidential Assent

PRESIDENTIAL ASSENT​

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The Clerical Exemption Act restates the correction power of the Office of Congressional Affairs in §6(8) of the Legislative Standards Act, extends that power to bills still before Congress where both Presiding Officers and the proposer agree, restates the re-vote exemption for Motions to Amend, and lets clerks make aesthetic changes to the Civil Code and the Criminal Code. The substance is sound. Numbering, spelling, cross references and stale office names should never need a bill of their own, and the safeguards are the right ones: nothing may change the substantive meaning of an Act, and nothing happens without a Presiding Officer, or for a live bill, both of them and the proposer.

I record the following for Congress and for the Office of Congressional Affairs. These are not conditions of my assent.

1. Section 2(1) says this Act repeals the Clerk Empowerment Act. Nothing in Part II does. That Act remains on the books, though its purported amendment is overtaken: as of this assent, §6(8) and §6(10) of the Legislative Standards Act read as this Act sets them out, and nothing earlier alters them. Congress should rescind the Clerk Empowerment Act properly, since §16(3) of the Legislative Standards Act keeps a redundant Act in force until it is.

2. Section 3(3) does not do what section 2(3) says. The reasons describe a re-vote exemption for amendments that leave the substantive meaning intact. The text enacted exempts only a Motion to Amend that alters neither the wording, including the preliminaries, nor the intent of the bill. A Motion to Amend that alters no wording is a rare thing. The provision is no wider than the one it replaces, and Presiding Officers should apply it as written, not as described. If Congress wants the exemption in section 2(3), it should enact those words.

3. Sections 3(4) and 3(5) add a subsection (2) to §3 of the Civil Code Act and §4 of the Criminal Code Act. Both Codes restart their section numbering in every Part. I read the references as Part I, §3 (Additions to the Code) of the Civil Code Act and Part I, §4 (Additions to the Code) of the Criminal Code Act, the only sections of those numbers with a single subsection and a matching subject. The Office should insert the new text there.

4. New §6(8)(d) lets the Office remove a provision declared invalid by a judicial verdict. The Office should act only on a verdict that is final, once any appeal is decided or the time for one has passed, should remove only the words the court struck, and should note the verdict in the Act's thread. Where it is not plain that a verdict reaches a provision, the Office should leave the text alone and let Congress repeal it.

5. Where the Office corrects a bill under new §6(9) during voting, the correction should be posted in the bill's thread before the vote closes, so the record shows what members voted on.

6. The short title in §1(1) opens with a backtick and closes with a curly quote. Under the power this Act confers, the Office may now fix that.

Accordingly, I assent to this Bill, and it is enacted as law.

I thank Speaker _GreyMC for authoring the Bill and Deputy Speaker HatManMC for co-sponsoring it.

Given under my hand and the Seal of the President on 21 September 2026

Theory Fontaine
30th President of the Commonwealth of Redmont​