The Legate has its membership fixed at 100 Legators; the House of Commanders, the subject for this article, is in a constant state of flux, but never seats fewer than twice that many. (Little reasons aside, any CFMF ship commander, except for commanders of Broadway-class courier-corvettes, is entitled to a seat, and as of 2406 there's about 220 ships in the CFMF.) All told, of the not-quite-4000 military and civilian ships in the CFMF and CFA, about 1000 or so fall -under- the 10-man rule, giving the House a potential membership of thousands.

There are restrictions, of course, both practical and otherwise. The main practical consideration is that ship captains in the Alliance are usually kept too busy to do much in the way of politics. Another restriction is that a member of the House of Commanders must be present to vote, and there -IS NO QUORUM-... when a vote is called, the people in the chamber vote, and that's the end of it. There are no proxies and no abstentions taken.

Despite this, there are a large number of dedicated politicians who, for various reasons, maintain nominal captaincy over a ship for the sole purpose of holding the non-elective House seat. This has led to the emergence of the Freespacer 'rotten boroughs.'

Rotten boroughs originally came up in England during the late 17th, entire 18th, and early 19th centuries. Although the House of Commons was supposedly meant to represent the entire common people, many of its seats were for districts which, for one reason or another, had either depopulated or lost most of their qualified voters. Towards the end (during the time of the American Revolution through the Napoleonic Wars) there were a substantial number of seats whose occupancy turned on fewer than a hundred votes... and two or three seats with only -one or two voters.- These were the rotten boroughs- seats effectively controlled by one faction or another, usually a rich lord or MP who bought the elections and gave the seats away as patronage.

A Freespacer rotten borough is a spaceship kept in operation for the sole purpose of putting or keeping a person in the House of Commanders. It has no fewer than ten inhabitants (not including the captain), but seldom more than twenty. These inhabitants tend to be commuters who work on other ships within the Freespacer Home Fleet; occasionally they are employees of the captain.

As a mild check to rotten boroughs, the House of Commanders requires proof of occupancy- the inhabitants must be permanent residents, spending no fewer than half their sleeping nights on the ship in question for one year. However, the House can waive this requirement by majority vote, a loophole inserted for the use of newly appointed captains to large ships of unquestioned population like CFA New Orleans. This loophole is frequently abused, since most political parties in the CFA have at least a few rotten boroughs, or at least want to be able to add more at critical times.

The Fleet Party has the fewest rotten boroughs per House delegation, but they do have some and are not averse to the practice. Their main strength comes from appointed captains of CFMF and CFA Home Fleet/RebelTech ships. The Peace Party, on the other hand, has the highest proportion of rotten boroughs; at any given time, no less than 40%, and usually more than half, of their Commanders come from rotten-borough ships. The only party to eschew the practice altogether is the Screaming Loony Party, which among other things wants to abolish the House of Commanders altogether as being undemocratic.

Despite the obvious unfairness of the system, and its contribution to party politics in a system which does not officially recognize parties as existing, the majority of the Freespacers resist any and all attempts to abolish the House, or to raise the requirements for seating, strenuously. The general attitude is that the House is, in its way, democratic, in that anyone who can buy a ship and get ten people to live on it can be a lawmaker... and the Freespacers aren't ready to give up that privledge just yet.

Redneck

Also, there is an error in the first paragraph, of the approximate form "The legate does blah. The legate, on the other hand, does blah."

That is all. Feel free to delete.

Sirrocco
Zen Weasel