GCO Senate Procedure Code

The following are the procedures regarding the Global Countryball Organizations Senate.

Elections and Senate Districting

Election Protocol

Communities who are apart of the Global Countryball Organization (GCO), upon either accession into the senate or the next election cycle, may elect either one (1) or two (2) representatives, based on community size (see §1.3). Elections will have to be held in a transparent manner, using the Poll feature if held on Discord, or on a transparent polling website.

Interference Policy

If any interference is suspected by community or GCO administration, an investigation into the election may started by sitting Senate members.

When the investigation concludes, and if fake votes or interference is found to be present within the election, consequences may be received, including, and NOT limited to:

• Expulsion of seat (if a sitting member of the Senate)
• Barring from office (length decided by the Senate)

Community Representation

The size of a GCO member community may decide the amount of senate seats that they may run for. If a community has an active base of fifty (50) or more members, they may be granted a second seat at the discretion of the sitting Senate.

The number of seats may only be one (1) or two (2) representatives per community. If a community drops below fifty (50) active members, the second (2nd) seat may be removed at the start of the next Senate session (see §1.4.)

Election Cycles and Senate Sessions

Senate Sessions are the periods of which a senator's term is valid without re-election. These terms will be three (3) calendar months, with four (4) sessions falling within a calendar year.

The sessions for each calendar year will fall from: January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to December.

Election Cycles are the periods (about a week between each session) that elections will be held within each community. During election cycles, the GCO Senate will dissolve, and any pending bills or legislation will be voided. These can be reconsidered once the next session begins.

Election Cycles will occur for one (1) week preceding the session, which is being elected, specifically on the following dates:

• January-March Session: December 15th-20th
• April-June Session: March 24th-31st
• July-September Session: June 23rd-30th
• October-December Session: September 23rd-30th

Senate Holidays and Recesses

The days the GCO Senate will not meet for any reason (except emergency) are the following dates:

• January 1st: New Year's Day
• January 10th: GCO Day (Founding of the Global Countryball Organization)
• Between March 22 and April 25 (depends which year; only two days): Easter
• July 2nd: Manifesto Day
• July 29nd: Independence Day (Encyclopedia Polandballae)
• December 25th: Christmas Day
• December 31st: New Year's Eve

Although Election Cycles (see 1.4) are not Senate holidays, they will be treated as recesses.

The final eleven (11) days of the year (December 20th-31st) will fall as a Winter Recess, which coincides with Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Parties or Platforms

Parties and platforms are allowed for each community and may collaborate, or form blocs and alliances, with parties from other communities. Parties or platforms based upon hateful or discriminating doctrine will be banned from existing in the GCO Senate.

Senate Procedures

Session Norms

The official language during Senate Sessions is to be English (en), as it is the most widely spoken language among GCO members. Community languages (Spanish, Japanese, etc.) may be spoken between representatives of non-English communities in private but must revert to English once within the general session.

Machine Translation (i.e., Google Translate, DeepL) is allowed for those who do not speak English, although human translation may be used if misunderstandings occur.

Start of Sessions

When a Senate Session begins, the election of the following roles must happen before bills or articles can be sent for debate and/or vote:

• President of the Senate
• Coalition Leader (if applicable, can be the same as the President)
• Opposition Leader (if applicable)

Once these roles are set up, the Senate must appoint different committee chairs and members to deal with specific topics. The names, along with purpose (in parentheses), are as follows:

• Senate Art Committee (on GCO-wide art rules and contests
• Senate Judiciary Committee (on Election Interference and Misconduct (see §1.2, GCO rules)
• Senate Accession Committee (on the accession of new communities into the GCO)
• Senate Project Committee (on projects overseen by the GCO (i.e. Athenas, Babel, etc.)

These committees may create their own procedures for their specific topics.

Bill Submission Procedure

Bills are preferred to be sent in the form of either PDF’s (.pdf) or Word Documents (.docx, etc.) Discord messages containing the bill are discouraged but are allowed as needed.

Submitted bills are required to have a proper change, addition, or removal of a in-place rule. Bills are allowed to have content specific to one (1) or multiple (2+) communities. All bills must also have one (1) or more sponsor.

Debate Procedure

Debates regarding bills are required to be no longer than two (2) days, or forty-eight (48) hours long. With consent from at least one (1) senator who has not sponsored the bill, it may also skip debates and go straight to voting, whether it be committee or general voting.

Debate language is required to follow all GCO rules.

Voting Procedure

Committee voting is required to have a majority vote (fifty-one percent (51%) or higher) to move on to general voting. When general voting begins on a bill, all Senators must be notified to vote. Regular bills are required to have a majority vote (fifty-one percent (51%) or higher) to pass, while GCO-affecting bills are required to have a supermajority vote (sixty-six percent (66%) or higher) to pass.

Approval by Administration

The approval of the administration is required for a bill to become GCO code.

Amendment Clause

This clause allows any amendments to be made to this procedure code, with a supermajority vote (see §2.5) from the Senate and approval by administration to apply amendments.

Original bill written by  Hurstbergn , dated September 5th, 2024.
First approved September 6th, 2024. See Archives for specific versions of the bill.