The Senate

· ·2 min read

CLP loses the power to block as the Senate shrinks to ten

Three seats is one short of what stops an override in a chamber of ten — and ROSE has four. With the presidency gone to Solidarity and turnout down eleven ballots, the bloc that ran the last Senate cannot stop this one.

The Civil Liberties Party can no longer stop anything.

Ten senators were returned on 69 valid votes, and on the arithmetic of a smaller chamber the party’s three seats are one short of the number that matters. The Revolutionary Organization for Social Equality has four, and now holds the power the CLP held a fortnight ago.

Party Seats
Revolutionary Organization for Social Equality 4
Civil Liberties Party 3
Independent 1
Revitalize! SimDem 1
Solidarity Party 1

Three is the wrong number

Overriding a presidential veto takes two-thirds of the Senate. Two-thirds of ten is 6.67, so seven votes carry an override — which leaves exactly three who cannot stop it.

Last week the paper reported that the CLP’s four seats in a chamber of eleven were precisely the number needed to make an override impossible. Two things have since removed that. The presidency went to Solidarity, so there is no CLP veto left to protect. And the chamber shrank: turnout fell from 80 to 69, which under the statutory formula costs a seat, and the eleventh seat was the margin.

ROSE now holds the blocking four, the vice presidency, and — through Solidarity’s President Lucas — a working relationship with the executive.

The count

Seven senators cleared a threshold. Three did not.

Senator Party Elected at
PHon ROSE bar of 5
Jotan ROSE bar of 5
Mercury Fede Civil Liberties Party bar of 5
Ed Independent bar of 5
Senator Right Kelvin Civil Liberties Party bar of 5
tmc ROSE bar of 4
ARCHIVIST Revitalize! SimDem bar of 3
NotCom Civil Liberties Party second phase
SkULL Solidarity Party second phase
Asa ROSE second phase

The quota was 6.9 ballots. As in the 173rd, the last three seats were filled in the second phase — the bar having walked down to 1 with nobody able to make a quota, the remaining seats go to whoever holds the most unspent ballot weight.

Mercury Fede, President until this month, returns to the chamber as a backbencher, at the top bar. NotCom — who took the decisive seat in the last Senate and moved the amendment that gutted the SDIOA restoration — got in on residual support this time.

We counted it

This paper ran the Commission’s published ballot sheet through its own implementation of Threshold Equal Approval: 69 ballots, 27 candidates. The same ten senators, in the same order, at the same thresholds.

The full count and every ballot are published.