Citizenship Length Requirement Amendment

I am opposed to this amendment based on the same reasons I articulated during the constitution debate in our Parliament session earlier this year. I do not believe this level of specificity regarding citizenship belongs in the Constitution. We decided a week was too long and wanted to shorten it, what if we decide that's too short and want to lengthen it again? Constitutional amendments are harder to pass for a reason, because they are significant and important changes. The Legal Code should handle citizenship on this level of specificity as it's more likely to be changed, and we can further expand on the process should we deem it necessary. It's simply too big a lift to constantly amend the constitution.

Given what I said above, a constitutional amendment about citizenship should instead remove the waiting period entirely. Residency and a forum account are crucial and should remain the basic standard, but anything else should be handled with the flexibility of the Legal Code. It may be that we decide nothing else is needed. If we want there to be some other kind of requirement, it should be a substantial one, not an arbitrary wall like this. What's the real difference between 4 or 7 days anyway? What purpose does this serve? It has been noted in the past that such a restriction guards against importation of voters to manipulate elections. This is a reasonable concern, but one that I believe should be handled in election law rather than citizenship. There's no reason to make eager participants in our community wait any length of time after they show up and establish a nation and forum account, especially since most of the time there is no election to justify a delay. Even if there were an election, shortening the waiting period lends itself to giving vote importing a small window to be done, as elections are longer than 4 days. The proposer of the amendment and anyone supporting it is well aware of this, and if the election protection isn't enough of a concern, then I truly do not see the point in this change or any waiting period. This requirement is arbitrary and lazy.

We can have a discussion about placing limits where limits are needed. This one is not needed in this particular case and achieves nothing actually related to becoming a citizen. This change is a response to a demand which I do not believe will be fully met by reducing the waiting period. The waiting period itself is the problem.