Bill: Draft Stop the Slop Petitions Act

[HatManMC]

CONGRESS OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT​

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A BILL TO
RAISE THE REQUIRED AMOUNT OF PETITION SIGNATURES FOR IT TO BE ANNOUNCED IN GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

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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 "Stop the Slop Petitions Act" or "StSPA".
(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.
(3) This Act has been authored by Speaker HatManMC, coauthored by Deputy President of the Senate _GreyMC, with significant inspiration from Clerk xEndeavour's suggestion "Increase petition support required for a referendum" in #suggestions.
(4) This Act has been cosponsored by Representative lovepurplepoodle.
(5) This Act amends the following Acts:
(a) Referendum Act

2. Reasons and Intent
(1) Nowadays, most petitions on #petitions are slop - not policy requests as they are meant to be, but simply memes to try and get on #government-announcements (see "Petition to Make Hat Man Announce This Petition" for a more literal analysis of this point).
(2) The best and easiest way to combat this is to increase the amount of ayes required to get on #government-announcements, as to promote only actual policy from being put on there.
(3) I'm tired, boss.
(4) This Act serves to raise the number of ayes required for a petition to be announced.

PART II: AMENDMENTS
3. Referendum Act
(1) The following amendment shall be made to the Referendum Act:
...
(2) A petition must:
(a) Be listed in the #petitions channel of the DemocracyCraft Official Discord.
(b) State clearly what it asks for;
(c) Be supported by at least 3060 citizens;
(i) Support must be demonstrated by reaction.
(d) Not repeat an ongoing or rejected petition from the last 30 days.
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(3) If a petition receives the necessary support, it must be announced to Congress by the Office of Congressional Affairs for consideration. This shall not happen if:
(i) This shall not happen if the petition was created over 30 days before the petition receives the necessary support.
(i) the petition was created 30 days before the petition receives the necessary support;
(ii) the petition has been vetoed by staff;
(iii) the petition has been renamed;
(iv) the petition repeats an ongoing or rejected petition from the last 30 days; or
(v) the petition has been rescinded by its proposer.
(4) A petition cannot be renamed. Should a petition be renamed, the petition is rejected.

PART IV: IMPLEMENTATION
4. Implementation
(1) The Office of Congressional Affairs is authorized to make any changes involving renumbering of sections as a result of edits made in this Act.