6. The Reformation of a Nation
President Edwin Morris was the first President of Panem to go through a major political struggle between his years in office. This lead to chaos in the Capitol government. The struggle focused on, yet again, the Thirteen District Act.
Senatorial Battle
President Morris actually supported the Thirteen District Act for the renovations on industry to prevent unemployment. He wasn't too fond of the "specific industry per district" fact, but he preferred that this could be enforced over nothing being done at all. He was right, it was better than nothing, but it wasn't a successful plan to protect the nation, as it would enforce more control over Panem, which the Peace War was trying to prevent.
When Morris reintroduced this bill, the Senate began to go into crazy debate, as most of the senators were different in that session than the one that passed it under Clay. A stalemate began.
Because of the regulations for debate and law passing in the Senate, this led to a major battle to get one little law that had small public support to pass. Regulations prevented a law from passing or failing if either FOR or AGAINST only had one to five more votes than the other. Even the President's two-thirds votes were subject to this rule of thumb. No senator was allowed to ABSTAIN, as those procedural rules were suspended. The most common vote results were 71-76 (AGAINST) or 75-72 (FOR) from the senators. Including President Morris's two-thirds vote, the AGAINST vote would be 73-76 and the FOR vote would be 77-72. The regulation claimed that if this voting sequence, called the "One-to-Five Resolution Rule", occurs, debate is reinforced on the bill until it is either passed, failed, or removed from debate. No one was willing to end the debate on the bill.
This stalemate locked the Capitol government in major debate. This is the most chaotic that the Capitol has ever been in Panem's history, even compared to the infamous Presidential Dissolution at the end of the Mockingjay Rebellion.
President Morris was attempting to increase public support, feeling that it would encourage more senators to support the act. He began a whole propaganda movement on CNTV to increase support, but it backfired because of the non-state run media. The use of propaganda on the state run media began to lead to more fears that the Capitol was about to exert its power over the nation.
Because the Senate would refuse to leave this bill alone, the public was really suspicious of the lawmaking body. Its distraction on the act would prevent other forms of legislation from making it far on the floor, if it even made it that far. In order to prevent the nation from going into distress from the lack of a federal legislator, President Morris delegated the legislative duties to the Capitol Supreme Court, with exception to the act, which would continue to battle out the Senate.
Keeping the Nation Afloat
The Court was delegated all the legislative abilities of the Senate while the President and the Senate continued debate on the act. Since the country still needed a useful federal government, the Court began to take care of issues. They passed laws that weren't significantly important, and they mainly watched over the enforcement of already existing laws, especially the CCA. Also, they kept tabs on the economy and the national budget. The nation managed to survive the whole senatorial battle, which I admit is very confusing. If Morris would have never temporarily given the legislative power to the Court, the nation would have fallen into a crisis because of the lack of a successful legislator and the fact that the top executive official, meaning the President, was also too occupied in passing a law to run the nation.
The Passage of a Controversial Law
In 2064, the Senate finally passed the act and President Morris signed it into law. Public and media opinion wanted the Capitol Supreme Court to call it unconstitutional because it was too controversial, enough to even lock the Senate in a yearlong debate. The Court did rule it unconstitutional, but the Senate quickly fired back by suspending the Court's power to protect and destroy certain laws based on the Constitution. You can guarantee they were under fire from this, but the Senate defended themselves by claiming that this was argued and worked on for far too long to be turned down, so they prevented the Court's word from ending the act.
With the Thirteen District Act now passed into law, the enforcement began.
Elimination of the States-Reforming the Federal Government
Before even re-evaluating the borders, the first thing on the agenda for the Thirteen District Act was reforming the Capitol government to meet the needs of thirteen districts, through the Reformation of the Capitol. Changing from 49 states was not easy. The whole Senate had to be amended to how many senators from each district was allowed. Because of how the political system would change, many people were surprised this even made it to the floor the first time in the Senate.
The Senate, according to the bill, would be amended to 130 members with 10 from each district. The districts would be divided into 10 voting precincts to give all the areas an equal chance of being represented. Two people, from the specific areas, would be decided through primaries on the election year, and the two would face each other in the general election, just as it worked in the United States. There were no political parties though. There were some instances of unopposed running, so the names were, by law, not put on the ballot.
The President would amend the executive branch would be the introduction of a new Advising Council committee, the Department of Resources. Because of the implementation of specified industries in each district, the products created needed a dispersal system because of the large amount of governmental surveillance over the companies. The companies were more or less just a namesake. The Capitol would have full power, through the Department of Resources, to allocate products. They would determine the minimum and maximum price allowed to be allotted to the products, and the companies would decide from that. Prices tended to stay near the minimum charge, a positive surprise to the public.
The Capitol Supreme Court was not altered during the Reformation, partially due to their powers being suspended. Another reason was that there wasn't much involving the states themselves that the Court was really involved in.
Elimination of the States-Reforming the borders
After the makeup of the Capitol was determined, it was time to redistribute the borders for the thirteen districts. I am going to be vague right now, because the next chapter will focus on each district specifically. The general areas we think of with the districts were set in stone to be the following areas:
District 1: The location of the states Washington and Idaho.
District 2: The states of Nevada and California (what was left of it)
District 3: The state of Oregon and a small amount of California that wasn't put in District 2.
District 4: The states of Arizona, New Mexico, and the northwestern part of what was remaining of Texas.
District 5: The states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.(well, again, what was left of them after the bombing attacks in 2056)
District 6: What was remaining of the states of Indiana and Illinois.
District 7: Nearly from Illinois until the Rocky Mountains, though not exactly. This involved the northernmost states of the region.
District 8: The states of North and South Carolina, as well as some of Virginia.
District 9: The eastern half of the Great Plains region of the continent.
District 10: The western half of the Great Plains.
District 11: The states that were considered "Southern" during early American times: Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.
District 12: The Appalachia region and the areas of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
District 13: New York, Vermont, and the existing surrounding areas. The current Thirteen is focused near Syracuse, New York was.
The Capitol: Inside of the Rocky Mountains. Same location it always was, just felt necessary to include it.
The borders were enforced and put into full force almost mid-2064.
This act, though not officially, helped put Panem on the path towards the Dark Days.
Note: Next, I am going to explain each individual district as well as its industries, financial system, capital city, governmental setup, etc. as well as the general public opinion after the borders were enforced.