Ancillary Assembly
The Ancillary Assembly is a legislative body under the Illuminatian government's Ultrabureau of the Legislative (UBL). The Ancillary Assembly is the upper legislative body of the legislative ultrabureau's tricameral legislature. The other continent-wide legislative houses include the Primary Assembly—the lower house relative to the Ancillary Assembly, and the Paramount Assembly—which is parallel to the other two houses.
The Illuminatian Ancillary Assembly is composed of representatives who are democratically elected by a direct popular vote from constituencies that are arranged at random from the whole of Illuminatia's voting population. Ancillary Assembly electoral constituencies are in no way geographically defined and as a result are not referred to as districts. The constituencies that elect members to the Ancillary Assembly change completely with every election, as the members of the electorate are subject to a new process of random selection from a pool of all Illuminatian voters, continent-wide. The Ancillary Assembly is the only house of the Illuminatian government's legislative ultrabureau that is in no way geographically defined.
The Ancillary Assembly, like the Primary Assembly, has multimember constituencies, with voters electing three members per representative constituency using ranked choice voting.
The multimember nature of electoral constituencies for the Ancillary Assembly allows for a proportional and balanced representation of constituents by a diverse roster of political candidates and elected representatives. The result is a more representative, less polarized legislative body compared to many of the historical political systems of Earth. This system generally provides for representation in each constituency by multiple political parties. Representatives in the Ancillary Assembly, as with every legislative body in Illuminatia, are free to express support for multiple major and minor political parties. The political parties as a result can afford to be less polarized toward extreme political viewpoints and less antagonistic toward one another.
The Ancillary Assembly is the second-largest of the three Illuminatian legislative bodies, exceeding the Ancillary Assembly in size but exceeded in size by the much-larger Primary Assembly. Constituencies represented in the Ancillary Assembly are three to five times more populous than the geographic constituencies of the Primary Assembly. As a result of the continent-wide, random distribution of the constituency along with the larger magnitude of population of each constituency, Ancillary Assembly members tend to possess more visibility and clout on the continental political stage than would be available with a locally-focused, geographically-defined constituency.
The population of people represented by Ancillary Assembly electoral constituencies are strictly equal to one another. The random selection of constituents before each election allows for the precise calculation of constituency size based on continent-wide population numbers provided by the Office of Demography. As a result, Ancillary Assembly constituencies tend to grow from election to election, but a person's vote is guaranteed to carry the same weight as any other voting Illuminatian thanks to the system of random electoral constituency designation, preserving democratic equity.
Ancillary Assembly representatives, like all elected representatives in the Illuminatian government, are unpaid. They receive no salary for their role as representatives. However, they do receive full reimbursement for expenses incurred in the representation of their constituencies—including travel to Voston—as well as communication expenses. Ancillary Assembly communication and transportation expenses tend to be higher than that of the other legislative houses because Ancillary Assembly representatives must all maintain the ability to communicate with and interact with a continent-wide constituency.
Legislative process
- See article: Legislative process
Illuminatia's Ancillary Assembly is the final approval point for legislation introduced in the Primary Assembly. Legislation entering the Ancillary Assembly by way of prior Primary Assembly approval can be passed with a standard 50% majority or other agreed-upon level of majority, as with in the lower house.
Alternatively, legislation can be introduced in and passed unilaterally in the Paramount Assembly without approval of either the Primary or Ancillary assemblies, but only with a supermajority vote in Paramount Assembly exceeding 75%. Failing that, legislation may also pass from the Paramount Assembly with a lesser majority or plurality vote, but can only be approved with a supermajority vote in either the Primary or Ancillary assemblies.
After final approval by the legislative bodies of the UBL using any of the aforementioned channels, accepted legislation is traditionally forwarded to the Ultrabureau of the Executive (UBE) for final approval by Illuminatia's chief executive(s). Legislation approved via the appropriate UBL legislative processes but rejected by the Executive can instead be overcome with approval, jointly, in both the Ultrabureau of the Judiciary and the Ultrabureau of Control. This legislative process elegantly illustrates the effectiveness of both a tricameral legislature as well as the checks and balances afforded by a four-branch government.