Ultrabureau of the Legislative
The Illuminatia Ultrabureau of Legislative (UBL) is one of the four top-tier branches of the Illuminatian government. The UBL is home to the government's tricameral legislature, consisting of three separate assemblies of democratically elected representatives: the Primary Assembly, the Ancillary Assembly, and the Paramount Assembly.
The Primary Assembly
- See article: Primary Assembly
The Illuminatian Primary Assembly is composed of representatives elected from geographically-defined electoral districts, very similar to most representative legislative bodies of early Earth. The Primary Assembly has multimember districts, with voters electing three members per representative district using ranked choice voting.
The Primary Assembly is the largest of the three legislative bodies and is one of two bodies of the legislature in which the majority of members are accountable to a constituency from a defined local geographic area. The Primary Assembly is the lower house of the Illuminatian legislative ultrabureau.
The Ancillary Assembly
- See article: Ancillary Assembly
The Illuminatian Ancillary Assembly is composed of representatives elected from constituencies that are arranged at random from the whole of Illuminatia's 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.
Constituencies represented in the Primary Assembly are more populous than those represented in the Primary Assembly. There are fewer constituencies in the Ancillary Assembly than there are in the Primary Assembly. Like the Primary Assembly, the Ancillary Assembly has multimember constituencies.
The Ancillary Assembly is the second-largest of the three Illuminatian legislative bodies and is the upper house of the Illuminatian legislative ultrabureau. The nature of the distributed and random nature of each representative's constituency in the Ancillary Assembly leads to representatives with a more significant continent-wide clout than would be available with a locally-focused, geographically-defined constituency.
The Paramount Assembly
- See article: Paramount Assembly
The Illuminatian Paramount Assembly is the only legislative body in the ultrabureau that is not elected by process of direct democracy through a vote of the general population. Instead, the Paramount Assembly is composed largely of members elected by vote of each of Illuminatia's local Tertiary Assemblies, in addition to a handful of members elected by vote of the full Primary Assembly and another handful of member elected by the Ancillary Assembly. Therefore, the Paramount Assembly has a large portion—but not all—of its membership determined by a geographic electorate, making it one of the two continent-wide legislative bodies with a geographic component.
The Paramount Assembly operates as a counterpart house of representation, parallel to the Primary and Ancillary assemblies, and is neither an upper or lower house relative to the two other legislative bodies. The Paramount Assembly is the smallest legislative body in size of the three continent-wide bodies making up the legislative ultrabureau.
The Paramount Assembly's members are considered to be considerably more technocratic than any other legislative or judicial body, as its members are often selected from known persons with special knowledge of government. As a result, the members of the Paramount Assembly tend to be much more educated in matters relating to government, law, the judiciary, and politics in general. The members of this house tend to be the closest Illuminatia has to politicians.
Legislative process
- See article: Legislative process
Legislation has two possible paths through the Ultrabureau of the Legislative. Legislation can be proposed by the Primary Assembly, approved there, and then passed onto the Ancillary Assembly to be passed in that house, all by a majority vote or other agreed-upon level of majority. Alternatively, legislation can be introduced in and passed unilaterally in the Paramount Assembly without approval of either of the other two houses, but only with a supermajority vote in Paramount Assembly exceeding 75%. Legislation can pass from the Paramount Assembly with a lesser majority or plurality vote, but can only be approved with a supermajority vote in either of the other two houses.
Representatives elected to the three houses of the legislative ultrabureau 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 and communication expenses.