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The Lexington Leader | Friday, September 11, 2026 | Early edition

LEXINGTON — At 11:55 p.m. on Thursday, September 10, 2026, the Minister of Justice transmitted two certified documents to the Tosler Elections Commission.

The first was the Election Reform Implementation Act (2026), bearing President Liam Ossoff’s signature and presidential assent.

The second was the constitutional amendment adopted by Congress less than an hour earlier, ceremonially signed by the President and now operative for the November 3 election because the legislation required to implement it had become law.

Five minutes remained before the Commission’s deadline.

After five months of public argument, 27 drafts, more than one hundred hours of extended parliamentary sitting and a final twelve-hour debate, Tosler had completed the largest transformation of its national electoral system in its history.

The House of Representatives will grow from 1,000 to 3,000 members. The Senate will expand from 300 to 500. Fifty House electoral regions will replace the existing ten. The Senate will acquire a separate nationally proportional tier while preserving two directly elected senators for every state.

The Class B state senators elected in 2024 will remain in office until 2028, ending the prospect that constitutional reform might lawfully—and politically disastrously—require them to seek re-election after serving only half their mandates.

Voters will receive more ballots, parties will require more candidates, and the Tosler Elections Commission will now attempt to perform in seven weeks what Congress required five months and several metric tonnes of coffee, thousands of ounces of marijuana, and at least a few hundred litres of alcohol to proscribe.

With the Commission Chief, John Oliver IV’s hand at the helm, Toslerians can feel confident the job will be done in time. Just after midnight this morning, Mr. Oliver confirmed receipt of the package.

“The constitutional amendment and implementing legislation were received at 11:55 p.m. Lexington civil time,” his statement said. “The statutory and constitutional conditions for application to the November 3 election have been satisfied. The Tosler Elections Committee will ensure that it delivers Toslerians an election event that adheres with the new Constitutional Amendment and the the Election Reform Implementation Act.”

After refusing Parliament’s request to extend the deadline to September 15, Mr. Oliver had spent the week being praised for administrative independence by people who did not require five additional days and denounced for administrative inflexibility by people who did.

At 11:55, he offered neither group the satisfaction of an adjective.

The final day

The consolidated amendment and accompanying Act were tabled at 10 a.m. Thursday. Unlike the surprise constitutional-revision proposal disclosed on Tuesday with fifteen minutes’ notice, the final package was circulated simultaneously to every parliamentary party. It included a written explanation, allocation rules, and a detailed account of the transitional Senate arrangements.

Debate continued for twelve hours.

The House and Senate sat separately for portions of the day, reconvened for constitutionally required proceedings and repeatedly suspended so that party leaders could confirm that language negotiated in one room had not acquired an unexpected subordinate clause in another.

The atmosphere was less chaotic than earlier in the week, although this was partly because exhaustion had reduced the number of people capable of objecting at full volume. Caffeine no longer helped.

The government defended the package as a settlement between national proportionality and territorial representation. Labour emphasized its binding inclusion requirements. Liberal Democrats pointed to the survival—and expansion—of regional candidate selection. Social Democrats claimed credit for preserving the mandates of Class B senators and securing geographical safeguards. And Conservatives claimed to have “participated fully in Tosler’s Parliamentary process”, according to a press release issued by its caucus communications’ office at 12:01 am this morning.

Greens welcomed the use of national votes to determine party entitlements but warned that implementation must not allow regional administration to become a hidden electoral threshold. Somd Conservatives said their support had depended on fixed chamber sizes, protection for direct state representation, and strict limits on the new constitutional revision procedure.

The Democratic Socialists called the package “imperfect, over-engineered, but substantially better than the system it replaced”.

Tosler First condemned it as simultaneously too national, too regional, too proportional, and insufficiently attentive to the constitutional importance of Tosler First.

After several delays, each sought by the caucus Whip of a different party, in seemingly pre-arranged succession, in order to provide each party an opportunity to confirm how its caucus members intended to vote and to ensure their members were actually in the Chanber, voting finally began shortly after 10 p.m.

Both chambers approved the accompanying Act and gave the constitutional amendment the majorities required for adoption before 11 p.m. The special clause permitting certain future electoral adjustments through a confined three-fifths procedure survived, but only after its scope was sharply narrowed.

The final version cannot be used to reduce the size of either Chamber, abolish district representation, alter the two-senator guarantee entrusted to each state, change voting rights or terms of office, weaken recall rights, or amend the special procedure itself.

It may be used for specified structural adjustments, including increasing seat numbers, changing the balance between district and proportional House seats, or revising the number of electoral regions. Any proposal must be published at least 30 days before a vote and cannot govern an election held within six months of its adoption.

The government began the week seeking a constitutional shortcut.

It ended it obtaining a marked path surrounded by fencing, warning signs and a requirement to notify the Elections Commission before entering.

Mr. Ossoff comes to Parliament

President Ossoff had not planned to sign the legislation at the Parliament buildings.

The original programme contemplated a formal ceremony at the Presidential Palace, with parliamentary leaders, party representatives, constitutional advisers, invited activists, and sufficient staging to suggest that the Republic had completed the process in an orderly fashion.

By Thursday evening, order had become a scheduling luxury.

As voting continued, Mr. Ossoff travelled to Parliament with a small presidential party. The Palace press office described the replacement event as a “streamlined ceremony.” One parliamentary official called it “the ceremony that remained mathematically possible.”

At 11:30 p.m., in a reception room adjoining the chambers, Ossoff signed the Election Reform Implementation Act and gave it presidential assent. He also ceremonially signed the certified constitutional amendment adopted by Congress.

The legal distinction mattered.

The constitutional amendment became part of the Constitution when Congress completed the required adoption process. Presidential approval was not a legal requirement. Mr. Ossoff’s signature on that instrument recorded and proclaimed the constitutional event, and of course marked a significant political win for Mr. Ossoff himself, who had birthed the concept in a joint Congressional session just months earlier (in April).

The accompanying Act, however, required presidential assent to become law. The amendment provided that the new arrangements would govern this November’s election only if both constitutional adoption and implementing legislation were completed by the end of September 10.

When Ossoff signed the Act at 11:30, the final legal condition was satisfied.

“This reform belongs to every legislator who went sleepless to improve it, every organizer who insisted that representation have a place as well as a number, and every Toslerian who expects a vote to mean what the Constitution says it means,” Ossoff said.

He acknowledged the hour, the abbreviated ceremony and the institutional drama that preceded it.

“Democracy is not made less democratic because it is difficult,” he said. “But future Congresses may wish to begin slightly earlier.”

Prime Minister Richi, standing beside Mr. Ossoff laughed. “We tried” she said, capriciously.

The Minister of Labour, and Labour leader, John Reynolds looked on. He told the Lexington Leader following the ceremony, “You know, it’s just remarkable. Our Parliament, we made history together. And our elections, our country, it’s better for it. I’m sure proud to be Toslerian today. I hope you are too”

As President Ossoff sat at the table, while the Speaker of the House and Senate Speaker walked in unison, each carrying one of the two documents the President was to sign, the Minister of Justice, Constitutional Affairs and Attorney General of Tosler, Michael McDowell, watched the proceeding with the concentration of a person responsible for moving them across Lexington before midnight. At one point, he produced a pocket watch glance at Mr. Ossoff’s Chief of Staff, mouthed the word “hurry”, and wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

There was no formal reception. The President used one pen—not eleven as usual. Still, he handed the pen to his Minister of Justice, Mr. McDowell, who is known to have personally drafted much of the Constitutional Amendment. “Thank you Michael”, Mr. Ossoff said, before posing for a photo with Mr. McDowell.

It was then that Mr. McDowell dashed off with the two signed documents in hand, and yes, he did actually run.

The 25-minute republic

Once assent was complete, officials authenticated the final texts and prepared the formal transmission to the Elections Commission. Electronic certified copies and the accompanying legal notice were transmitted at 11:55, with physical true copies scheduled for delivery this morning.

The Commission’s receipt was not itself what made the amendment or Act legally valid. Congress had adopted the amendment, and Ossoff’s assent had made the Act law, by 11:30. But the transmission supplied formal proof that the conditions had been met and gave the commission the operative texts under which it must now conduct the election.

It also prevented what would otherwise have been Tosler’s most consequential argument about an email timestamp.

Activists, gathered outside Parliament, watched the deadline clock count through its final minutes. When confirmation of transmission reached the crowd, the display was stopped at 11:55. Some cheered. Some cried. Several immediately began arguing about whether the Senate candidate-matching rules could be expressed more elegantly as a flow chart.

The enormous alarm clock installed earlier in the week was draped with a banner reading: “DELIVERED, WITH FIVE MINUTES’ REPRESENTATION TO SPARE.”

What Happens in November?

The House of Representatives

Parliament’s House of Representatives will contain 2,000 district representatives and 1,000 proportional members.

District representatives will continue to be elected in single-member constituencies by ranked alternative vote. Each voter will also continue casting a separate House party vote ballot and may, but need not, rank candidates from the selected party’s regional list. This is unchanged from it’s 2023 introduction.

Party entitlement will be calculated nationally. District seats already won will count toward that entitlement, and the proportional seats will fill as much of the remaining gap as the fixed 3,000-seat chamber permits.

There will be no automatic overhang or balancing seats beyond the constitutional total.

The proportional representatives will be selected through 50 House electoral regions, replacing the existing ten. The regions determine where candidates are drawn from; they do not divide the national proportional calculation into fifty separate contests.

The Senate

The most politically sensitive transitional question concerned the 150 Class B state senators elected in 2024.

An earlier proposal would have required every state Senate seat to be contested in 2026 as the new 500-member chamber came into being. That approach may have been constitutionally possible, but it would have shortened existing democratic mandates and forced Class B senators to campaign again after two years of four-year terms.

The final settlement avoids that result.

At the November election, voters will elect 150 Class A state senators and 100 Class A proportional senators, all serving until 2030.

The existing Class B state senators will remain in office until 2028. Their seats will not appear on the 2026 ballot.

Voters will nevertheless cast a separate Class B party vote to elect the first 100 Class B proportional senators, who will serve initial two-year terms ending in 2028.

Beginning in 2028, the Class B state and proportional components will be elected together for four years. Class A will follow in 2030, preserving the alternating cycle.

The arrangement enlarges the Senate immediately without treating constitutional modernization as permission to revoke the result of the 2024 state elections.

The Senate will contain 300 state senators and 200 proportional senators.

Every state retains two directly elected senators—one in Class A and one in Class B. The classes continue to serve staggered four-year terms, with one class ordinarily elected every two years.

The 200 new proportional senators are divided equally between the classes. At each regular Senate election, voters will cast one ballot for their state senator and a separate party ballot for the 100 proportional seats belonging to that Class.

Senate party entitlement will be determined nationally and independently of state Senate results. Winning a state seat will neither reduce nor increase a party’s proportional allocation.

Candidates will be organized through 15 Senate candidate-list regions, each containing ten states. Voters may optionally rank their selected party’s candidates.

The system then imposes its central geographical protection: no state may supply more than one proportional senator in the same class across all parties.

At each Class election, 100 states will be designated to supply proportional senators. When that class next faces election four years later, the 50 states omitted previously receive priority, while the remaining 50 are selected by public draw from the states represented at the previous election.

The commission must reconcile national party entitlements, regional voting patterns, candidate rankings, representation requirements and the one-state-per-class rule through a published provisional matching process.

Candidates may be skipped, regional assignments reconsidered and selected states substituted where necessary to complete a lawful allocation. The commission must publish reasons whenever it passes over a higher-ranked candidate or departs from an initial regional assignment.

Tosler has therefore answered the question of how to prevent large states from dominating the proportional Senate tier.

It has answered it with national arithmetic, regional lists, state rotation, public draws, reserve candidates and a matching process whose source code must be published.

Nobody can accuse Congress of leaving the noun undefined.

The Class B solution

One Class B senator described the provision as “a welcome constitutional recognition that four is a different number from two.”

Parties now need people

The new proportional Senate system imposes substantial nomination requirements before polling begins.

A party seeking placement on the national Senate party ballot must nominate candidates connected to at least 25 states across at least 10 of the 15 Senate regions.

For every state it claims as covered, the party must nominate a principal candidate and at least one reserve. A second reserve is permitted. All must be publicly disclosed before polling and available for voters to rank.

The Commission will review each party’s nomination coverage and test whether the overall candidate-state matrix can support a lawful allocation. Parties will receive at least 72 hours to correct curable defects before ballots are finalized.

Once polling begins, no new candidate may be added.

A party’s maximum possible allocation cannot exceed the number of distinct states it has validly covered. The rule is designed to prevent a party from winning a substantial national entitlement while supplying too few candidates—or supplying twenty candidates from Lexington and expecting geography to become somebody else’s problem.

The Act also establishes minimum representation requirements in both proportional components. At least 334 House proportional members and 67 proportional senators must collectively come from people under 35, Indigenous people and communities historically underrepresented in the National Assembly.

Those requirements operate within each party’s electoral entitlement. They cannot be used to displace a directly elected district representative or state senator.

The Commission’s morning after

The Elections Commission must now publish a complete administrative calendar within 24 hours.

Its immediate responsibilities include drawing 2,000 House districts, establishing 50 House regions, grouping 150 states into 15 Senate candidate-list regions, conducting separate Class A and Class B state-selection draws, issuing nomination requirements, preparing the new ballots and explaining the system to an electorate that has spent the past week receiving informal instruction from cafés.

The Commission may shorten procedural periods where strictly necessary for the 2026 transition, but it must preserve meaningful participation and publish reasons for every shortened deadline.

Allocation rules, calculations and source code must also be released in a form permitting parties and independent experts to reproduce the result.

At a brief post-midnight appearance, Oliver was asked whether the commission could be ready by November 3.

“The National Assembly has enacted the instructions,” he said. “The Commission will conduct the election.”

Asked whether receiving them at 11:55 created difficulties, he paused.

“It did not create additional September 10.”

Congress goes home

Members began leaving Parliament shortly after midnight.

Some had been in extended sittings since the previous Friday. Staff removed abandoned papers, empty coffee cups and several versions of provisions that no longer existed.

The Bolognati Culinary Institute students distributed the last of their pastries in equal portions. The Sorentino café announced that its confidence-and-supply breakfast would return to an ordinary menu, subject to successful implementation.

In Milani, parliamentary coverage finally gave way to overnight financial news. Commentators immediately began discussing which parties were organizationally capable of nominating candidates in 25 states and ten Senate regions before the commission’s accelerated deadline.

Ossoff returned to the Presidential Palace after midnight. Richi remained at Parliament for meetings on implementation. The Minister of Justice confirmed that the transmission receipt had been archived in three locations.

The constitutional marathon ended without the formal ceremony its authors imagined, the timetable ministers requested or the simplicity Ossoff originally proposed.

But it ended in time.

At 10 a.m., Congress received a final package.

At 11 p.m., it had approved it.

At 11:30, the Act became law.

At 11:55, the Elections Commission received the instructions.

Five minutes later, September 10 was over.

Congress, at last, went home.

The arithmetic did not.

As adopted and promulgated by the Parliament/National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Tosler on 10 September 2026

The National Assembly adopts the following amendment to the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Tosler.

PART 1: Preliminary Provisions

1. Purposes

This Amendment enlarges and modernizes the National Assembly, preserves direct representation of every state in the Senate, establishes proportional representation in both chambers, protects the staggered Senate cycle, strengthens representative inclusion, and provides a confined procedure for specified future adjustments to electoral architecture.

2. Definitions

(1) In this Amendment:

(a) “Commission” means the Tosler Elections Commission established by section 11 of the Constitution;
(b) “district member” means a Member of the House of Representatives elected for a single-member district;
(c) “full membership” means the total number of elected seats constitutionally prescribed for the chamber or chambers concerned, including vacant seats and excluding the President, the Vice-President and any other person who may participate or vote only by virtue of holding another office;
(d) “House proportional member” means a Member of the House of Representatives elected from a regional party list to correct the national relationship between party votes and seats;
(e) “proportional senator” means a Senator elected from a party list as part of a separate proportional tier and not as compensation for state Senate results;
(f) “Senate class” means Class A or Class B; and
(g) “state senator” means a Senator directly elected to represent a state.

(2) Where a fraction results in calculating a constitutional majority or supermajority, the number required is the next whole number.

PART 2: The House of Representatives

3. Composition and election of the House

3.1 Sections 18 and 19 of the Constitution are replaced by the following:

"18(1) The House of Representatives consists of 3,000 elected members.
(2) Of those members, 2,000 are district members and 1,000 are House proportional members."
(3) The Speaker and other officers of the House shall be chosen as otherwise provided by this Constitution and by law.”

“19(1) The House is elected for a term of two years, subject to this Constitution.”
(2) District members are elected in single-member districts by ranked alternative vote.”
(3) House proportional members are allocated among political parties by reference to the national party vote, taking account of district seats already won, so far as possible within the fixed total of 3,000 seats.”
(4) Every district winner retains the seat won. No balancing or overhang seat may be added beyond the fixed membership of the House.”
(5) House proportional members are selected from open preferential lists established for House electoral regions. A voter may vote for a party without ranking candidates, or may rank candidates of the party selected.”
(6) The qualifications, allocation formula and administration of elections under this section shall be prescribed by law consistently with this Constitution.”

4. House Electoral Regions

(1) Tosler shall be divided into 50 House electoral regions for the selection and distribution of House proportional members.

(2) The regions shall contain whole states so far as reasonably practicable, but the District of Lexington may be included in a House electoral region and its population and electors shall be included in the apportionment of House districts and proportional representation.

(3) The Commission shall establish and review the regions independently, having regard to population equality, communities of interest, geographic coherence, accessibility and effective representation.

(4) The national entitlement of a political party to House seats shall not be divided into separate regional entitlements or diminished by the regional distribution of its candidates.

PART 3: The Senate

5. Composition of the Senate

5.1 Sections 20 and 21 of the Constitution are replaced by the following:

“20(1) The Senate consists of 500 elected Senators.”
(2) Three hundred are state senators. Each state is represented by two state senators, one assigned to Class A and one assigned to Class B.”
(3) Two hundred are proportional senators. One hundred are assigned to Class A and one hundred to Class B.”
(4) The District of Lexington is not a state and does not elect state senators, but its electors vote in elections for proportional senators.”

“21(1) Senators ordinarily serve four-year terms.”
(2) Class A and Class B are elected at alternating general elections held two years apart.”
(3) At a regular election for a Senate class, the electors of every state elect the state senator of that class, and all electors vote separately for a political party for the 100 proportional Senate seats of that class.”
(4) State senators are elected by ranked alternative vote.”
(5) The 100 proportional seats of a class are allocated among qualifying political parties according to their shares of the national party vote cast for that class. State Senate results do not reduce or otherwise affect that allocation.”
(6) A voter may vote for a party without ranking candidates, or may rank candidates of the party selected on the applicable regional list.”
(7) A general or extraordinary election shall not alter the established Class A and Class B cycle except by an amendment made through the ordinary constitutional amendment procedure.”

6. Senate candidate list regions and state distribution

(1) Tosler shall be divided into 15 Senate candidate-list regions, each composed of 10 states. The District of Lexington shall be assigned to one such region for voting purposes without thereby becoming a state.

(2) National votes determine each party’s entitlement to proportional Senate seats. Senate candidate-list regions organize ballots, candidate preference and the regional drawing of candidates; they do not create separate regional party entitlements.

(3) No more than one proportional senator in the same Senate class may be drawn from the same state, across all political parties.

(4) At each regular election for a Senate class, 100 states shall be designated to supply its proportional senators. At the next election of that class, the 50 states that were not finally designated at the preceding election have priority, and 50 further states shall be chosen by an independently administered public draw from the remaining 100 states.

(5) The law shall establish a transparent provisional allocation and matching process that:

(a) preserves national party entitlements so far as mathematically possible;
(b) applies the state limit and rotation in subsections (3) and (4);
(c) gives effect to voter preferences within party lists;
(d) permits a provisional candidate or regional assignment to be skipped, moved or reconsidered where necessary to complete the allocation; and
(e) publishes the reason for every displacement of a higher-ranked candidate or departure from an initial regional allocation.

PART 4: Representative Inclusion

7. Representation in proportional components

(1) Electoral law shall ensure that persons who are under 35 years of age, Indigenous persons, 2SLGBTQIA+ persons, and members of other equity-deserving communities who are historically underrepresented in the National Assembly / Parliament of Tosler, to be prescribed in Regulations made by Order in Council of the Cabinet, collectively hold not fewer than one third of the seats in each proportional component, subject to subsection (2).

(2) A person belonging to more than one listed group counts once toward the collective minimum. Candidates shall be elected by voters, and the implementation of this section shall operate within each party’s electoral entitlement.

(3) The House minimum is 334 of the 1,000 House proportional seats.

(4) The Senate minimum is 67 of the 200 proportional Senate seats. Electoral law shall distribute the requirement between the two classes so that the continuing and newly elected proportional senators collectively satisfy the minimum after each election.

(5) No provision of this section authorizes a political party, the Commission or another authority to displace a district member or state senator elected directly by voters.

PART 5: Constitutional Procedure

8. Ordinary constitutional amendment procedure

8.1 Section 58 of the Constitution is replaced by the following:
“58(1) A proposed constitutional amendment may be introduced in either chamber.”
(2) The proposal must first be approved by not fewer than two thirds of the full membership of the House and two thirds of the full membership of the Senate.”
(3) Following that approval, the proposal shall be referred to a Joint Special Committee on the Constitution. The Committee shall receive public submissions and testimony, may recommend amendments, and shall report a final text to both chambers.”
(4) If the Committee recommends a substantive alteration, the altered text must be approved by not fewer than two thirds of the full membership of each chamber before it proceeds.”
(5) An Extraordinary Joint Session of the National Assembly shall then consider the final text.”
(6) The amendment is adopted only if not fewer than two thirds of the combined full membership of the National Assembly vote affirmatively on the identical final text.”
(7) A substantive alteration proposed at the Extraordinary Joint Session returns the proposal to the Committee and engages subsection (4).”
(8) Sections 48 and 49 do not replace or abridge any requirement of this section.”
(9) Nothing in this section limits sections 60 to 62 or another amendment route expressly established by this Constitution.”

9. Effect of adoption

9.1 Section 59 of the Constitution is replaced by the following:

“59(1) Upon adoption in accordance with the applicable constitutional procedure, an amendment forms part of the Constitution and has effect immediately unless the amendment expressly provides for a later commencement.”
(2) The National Assembly may enact consequential and transitional provisions consistent with the amendment.”

10. Special procedure for limited electoral adjustments

(1) A constitutional amendment confined to one or more matters in subsection (2) may be adopted by affirmative votes of not fewer than three fifths of the full membership of the House and three fifths of the full membership of the Senate, voting separately.

(2) The matters are:
(a) increasing, but not reducing, the total number of House seats;
(b) increasing, but not reducing, the number of proportional Senate seats, without reducing the number of state senators or altering equal state representation;
(c) changing the allocation of the fixed or increased House membership between district seats and House proportional seats, without abolishing either component;
(d) changing the number of House electoral regions or Senate candidate-list regions, or authorizing their adjustment following a census; and
(e) making strictly necessary numerical, classificatory or transitional changes consequential upon a matter in paragraphs (a) to (d).

(3) The complete proposed text and an assessment by the Commission shall be published at least 30 days before the first vote. A substantive alteration restarts that period.

(4) An amendment under this section shall not govern an election held less than six months after its adoption.

(5) The procedure does not authorize:
(a) a reduction in the membership of either chamber;
(b) a reduction in the two state senators guaranteed to each state;
(c) the abolition of district representation, House compensation, proportional Senate representation or preferential candidate voting;
(d) a change to the franchise, candidate or party qualification thresholds, terms of office, representation minimums, recall rights, dissolution rights, or the independence of the Commission;
(e) a change to this section or to an express safeguard governing its use; or
(f) a matter whose dominant purpose or effect lies outside subsection (2).

(6) An amendment that exceeds this section must proceed under the ordinary constitutional amendment procedure or another applicable procedure in the Constitution.

11. Membership based thresholds

(1) In section 48(2) of the Constitution, “651 members” is replaced by “more than one half of the combined full membership of the National Assembly”.

(2) In section 70, the requirement of 501 votes in the House is replaced by “more than one half of the full membership of the House”, and the requirement of 151 votes in the Senate is replaced by “more than one half of the full membership of the Senate”.

(3) Until the members elected under this Amendment assume office, thresholds calculated by reference to full membership continue to be calculated using the membership of the National Assembly then in office.

PART 6: Recall Dissolution and Vacancies

12. Application to all elected components

(1) Sections 69 to 72 of the Constitution apply to district members, House proportional members, state senators and proportional senators, with the modifications required by their electoral basis.

(2) For section 71, the relevant electorate is:
(a) the district for a district member;
(b) the House electoral region for a House proportional member;
(c) the state for a state senator; and
(d) the Senate candidate-list region from which a proportional senator was drawn.

(3) A replacement for a recalled or vacant proportional seat shall be selected through an electoral process prescribed by law that preserves, so far as practicable, the party entitlement, geographical rule, class and representation requirement attached to the seat.

(4) An extraordinary election of the Senate may include both classes, but each successful candidate serves only the unexpired term of the applicable class, and the established alternating cycle continues.

PART 7: Transition and Commencement

13. Senate transition at the 2026 election
(1) At the general election scheduled for 3 November 2026:
(a) the 150 Class A state Senate seats shall be elected for terms ending in 2030;
(b) the 100 Class A proportional Senate seats shall be elected for terms ending in 2030;
(c) the Class B state senators elected in 2024 continue in office until their terms end in 2028 and their state seats shall not be contested;
(d) the electors of every state and the District of Lexington shall nevertheless cast a separate Class B party vote to elect 100 Class B proportional senators for initial terms ending in 2028.

(2) Beginning in 2028, the state and proportional components of the class then due shall be elected together for four-year terms.

(3) The Class A and Class B state-selection rotations for proportional senators begin with the states finally designated to supply proportional senators at the 2026 election.

14. Continuity of institutions
(1) The members in office immediately before the 2026 general election continue until their successors are elected, qualified and assume office, except that the Class B state senators described in section 13 continue until 2028.
(2) The expanded membership and the related full-membership thresholds apply when the respective successors assume office.
(3) No change made by this Amendment shortens the mandate of a Class B state senator elected in 2024.

15. Administrative authority before the election

(1) Upon adoption, the Commission may immediately undertake boundaries, nominations, ballot preparation, public education, staffing, procurement, testing and other measures necessary to administer this Amendment.

(2) The National Assembly may appropriate funds and enact the Election Reform Implementation Act, 2026 and other provisions strictly necessary to implement this Amendment.

16. Application to the 2026 election

(1) The electoral arrangements created by this Amendment govern the general election scheduled for 3 November 2026 only if, by the end of 10 September 2026 in Lexington civil time:
(a) this Amendment has been validly adopted; and
(b) the Election Reform Implementation Act 2026 has become law and all provisions necessary to conduct that election are in force.

(2) If either condition is not satisfied, the 3 November 2026 election proceeds under the law previously in force. The institutional and electoral transition established by this Amendment shall then take place at a later election fixed by law, with such revised class transitions as are necessary to protect existing mandates and preserve staggering.

(3) Neither the Executive nor the Commission may waive, extend or apply the deadline in subsection (1) retrospectively.

17. Constitutional status

(1) This Amendment forms part of the Constitution upon adoption in accordance with the constitutional procedure in force when it is adopted.
(2) For greater certainty, the special procedure established by section 10 does not apply to the adoption of this Amendment itself.