Charter Amendments 1 and 2

Recent events have brought to light two weaknesses in the MAD Charter which I would like to address via amendment. As I’m sure folks recall, the amendment process was described in §1.5.2, which states

…amendments may be proposed by any member nation, and shall be subject to approval by unanimous vote of the MAD Cabinet, followed by majority vote of all member nations...

My proposal is as follows:

Amendment 1: In the event of a direct attack on sovereignty, member nations may engage in self-defensive warfare without or before the declaration of war by the MAD Cabinet.

This clears up §1.2.1, which could be read in a strict interpretation as to prevent individual member nations from defending themselves from attack until after official declaration of war by the Cabinet. This was certainly not the intent of the original text.

Amendment 2: The MAD Cabinet shall have authority to grant and deny membership in the alliance. The Cabinet may with unanimous vote revoke the membership of rostered nations which take actions that have a negative effect on the alliance as a whole. In the event that a rostered nation’s membership is revoked, that nation may within 3 days submit an appeal to the Alliance-At-Large, which shall consist of a petition signed by no less than 1/6 of all rostered alliance members, and shall be granted upon the positive vote of the rostered majority.

This addresses a hole in §1.3.1.1, which leaves membership open to anyone and does not include a provision allowing the alliance to reject members unless they are not peace-loving, which is clearly a subjective quality and surely not the *only* characteristic with which we want to be aligned. It also protects members from having their status revoked for personal reasons.

Eviliza and I have both signed off on the proposed amendments, so they're now up for general vote. Ratification requires a simple majority of voting members. Voting will close at 11:59 Saturday evening or with the confirmation of a majority. The first two affirmative votes are already registered as Eviliza and myself, so we need three more to achieve a 5 of 8 majority.