Constitution
§2.6.a — Government Formation
Read the operative provision in the annotated Constitution.
Open provision →The general election returns a fractured Assembly. The outgoing Civic Consul resigns as the new chamber convenes, opening the vacancy that triggers §2.6.a. Four blocs of roughly equal size, none near a majority, each with a preferred candidate for Civic Consul and none willing to be the first to concede. This is the situation most constitutions handle badly: either the largest bloc takes the office on a plurality, or the seat sits empty while coalition talks drag on and someone — a caretaker, a holdover, an army — fills the vacuum.
The Federated Republic does neither. Under §2.6.a, the Assembly has a fixed window to elect a Civic Consul by absolute majorityA majority of a chamber's full seated membership — counted against every seat filled, not just the members present or voting.. If it cannot, the vacancy does not become indefinite and the office does not pass to the strongest faction. It converts, by constitutional operation, into a national election. The Assembly's failure to choose becomes the people's opportunity to.
Days 1–21: The Assembly Cannot Agree
The statutory window for the Assembly to elect is twenty-one days from the vacancy — the constitutional default, no separate statute having narrowed it. The threshold is an absolute majority of the full seated Assembly: not a plurality, not a majority of those voting. A Civic Consul must command the confidence of more than half the whole chamber, because that is the same standard by which the Assembly could later remove one under §2.6. The office is defined by the confidence that installs it.
Day 6
First ballot fails
Each of the four blocs runs its own candidate. The leading name draws well short of an absolute majority. Three more ballots over the following days shift a handful of votes but move no one across the line. No bloc will collapse into another's candidate without concessions none are yet willing to make.
Day 18
The arithmetic hardens
Two blocs open talks toward a joint candidate. They reach a number that is still two votes short and cannot find the two votes without alienating a third bloc whose support they also need. The negotiation that would work in a calmer month will not close in three days.
Nothing about this is a crisis. Routine administration and legislative business continue. The formation clock runs from the vacancy, and its expiry places the constitutionally designated Acting Civic Consul in office.
Day 22: The Speaker Steps In — And Is Bound
At the close of the twenty-one-day window with no election, the acting role attaches automatically to the sitting Assembly Speaker. Not by the Speaker's choice, not by any vote — by constitutional operation. The Speaker becomes Acting Civic Consul, keeps their Assembly seat, and is deliberately hemmed in on every side.
Day 22 — Constitutional operation
The caretaker's leash
The Acting Civic Consul's authority is limited to maintaining existing policy. They may not exercise the suspensive veto under §2.7. They are not subject to removal under §2.6 — there is nothing to remove, only a temporary custodian. And critically, the acting role confers no advantage in what comes next: the Speaker administers the process that may hand the office to someone else, with no discretion over its conduct or result. The service is published to the NRS the moment it begins.
The caretaker design answers the oldest temptation in a formation deadlock — that whoever holds the seat during the interregnum can entrench there. The Republic's Acting Consul cannot legislate a new direction, cannot veto, and cannot tilt the election that will replace them. They keep the lights on. That is the whole of the mandate.
The acting officer retains only a limited opportunity for reconsideration, not a veto. Under §2.6.a(3), a reconsideration notice pauses the bill's review period for ten business days, during which the Assembly may withdraw the bill by simple majority. Otherwise the review period resumes. The suspensive veto is unavailable to the Acting Civic Consul. This is a temporary opportunity for legislative reconsideration, not a power to block enactment.
Days 22–24: The Nominating Ballot
The Acting Consul's first substantive task is procedural, and the constitution is emphatic that it is only procedural. They administer a nominating ballot of the Assembly to identify the candidates who will stand before the nation.
Day 23
The Assembly names the field
The nominating ballot requires no quorum and produces its result regardless of participation — it cannot be defeated by a boycott. Up to four candidates receiving the most votes advance; a sole advancing candidate faces a national confirmation vote. With four blocs, four names cross the threshold. Each must independently qualify for the office under §2.5 and §7.4; a bloc cannot advance a candidate who could not lawfully serve. The Speaker administers the count and certifies the result, exercising no judgment over either.
If only one candidate advances, §2.6.a(5) requires a national yes-or-no confirmation vote; where more than one advances, the election uses ranked-choice voting. Ties that would advance more than four are resolved by continuous service, then age. The four-bloc nomination in this story produces four advancing candidates and a ranked-choice contest.
If no candidate is elected, the nomination and election process repeats under §2.6.a(6), with acting continuity maintained. Rejection of a sole candidate does not confirm that person or leave the office without a constitutional process.
Days 24–69: The Nation Decides
The four advancing candidates now stand in a national ranked-choice election, administered not by the Acting Consul or the Assembly but by the independent Elections Panel. The constitutional default is that the vote is held within forty-five days of the nominating ballot's close; statute may define the period, but in no case may it exceed ninety days from the nominating ballot.
Day 45
Ranked-choice, nationwide
Voters rank the four candidates. The ranked-choice tabulation guarantees the winner holds a majority of the final count, not a four-way plurality — the same majority principle the Assembly could not itself reach, now supplied by the electorate. One candidate becomes ineligible late in the period; the election simply proceeds among the three who remain qualified, no restart required.
Day 66
A majority, at last
After redistribution of lower-ranked preferences, the candidate from the bloc that had been two votes short in the Assembly wins an outright majority of the national count. The number the Assembly could not assemble among five hundred members, the country assembled among millions.
Day 69: Full Authority, Ordinary Office
The winner becomes Civic Consul with full authority. They vacate their Assembly seat. From the moment of installation they are an ordinary Civic Consul in every respect — wielding the suspensive veto the caretaker could not, and removable only under §2.6, by the same constructive vote of no confidence that governs any Consul. The Acting Consul's service ends at that instant; the Speaker returns to being only the Speaker.
One exit ramp stood open the entire time. At any point before the national election began, the Assembly could have ended the whole fallback by simply electing a Consul by absolute majority — the ordinary process, resumed. Two blocs nearly managed it on Day 18. Had they closed the gap even on Day 30, the office would have returned to them. But once the national election started, it ran to conclusion. The people, once asked, are not un-asked.
Constitutional finding
§2.6.a converts a formation deadlock into a legitimacy event rather than a vacancy. The vacancy leads to a defined acting and electoral process, and the office cannot be seized: the caretaker is bound to existing policy, denied the veto, and barred from tilting the election that replaces them. The failure to choose is not punished and not papered over — it is escalated to the only body larger than the Assembly, the electorate.
The design's signature is that the majority requirement never bends. The Assembly must elect by absolute majority; when it cannot, the national vote produces a majority by ranked choice; a lone survivor still needs an affirmative majority to ratify. The Republic will wait, appoint a bound caretaker, and hold a national election rather than let a Civic Consul hold the office on anything less than a majority's consent. Deadlock does not lower the standard. It changes who must meet it.
See it in the world
The Republic's first Assembly faced this formation problem during the Article XIX transition. Read The First Twelve Years to see the deadlock inside the wider process of turning three predecessor governments into one constitutional order.
In Year 13, an Assembly member who never entered the consular race used §2.6's sister mechanism to become Civic Consul — read The Motion Has a Name In It and Two Hundred Seventy-Four.