From me:

The main argument for having representative government, rather than direct democracy, is to allow policy to be enacted over a period of time, rather than changing it according to the fad of the hour. Also, it puts the business of official decision-making in the hands of a few dedicated individuals, leaving the casual citizen free to slack at the sidelines and complain about dirty no-good politicians

This is a rather different discussion though. Please feel free to start a new thread on this if you want to discuss it further, but let's keep this one focused on figuring out the best way to elect a Senate.

Given the unnecessary complications, I'm not so certain that we even need a Senate with only 24 citizens--21 private citizens with the govt excluded. The beauty of Democracies is that they are malleable and adaptable to changing demands. The consitution on which the DGame was founded seemed perfectly fine until we started encountering this issue with voting, and this has raised a couple of more fundamental issues.

1. What is the more truly democratic form of government? One in which national policy is determined via intermediary representatives of the people, or via direct vote by the people?

2. All else being equal, and assuming that democratic principles are the primary goal, which is the "better" form of government? A direct or representative democracy?

I'm gonna suggest that, with only 24 citizens, there is no need for a Senate and given the mechanics of polls on this site, it would be easier, and a more democratic structure to simply dispense with representatives, and have every citizen in the Dgame have an opportunity to vote on the issues about which the President must seek Senatorial sanctioning.

The referendum quite simply: replace the word Senate with Electorate, and Senator(s) with Citizen(s) in the constitution.

If there is a concern about quoroms, a certain % of the population could be specified as being required to transact national policy making business, say for example five citizens.

Often times 50% is considered a quorum. But given that we are already limiting ourselves to only five Senators being consulted on issues of national policy making, we could make the quorum five citizens, which is effectively what we are doing by having a Senate of five.

ADDIT: except for the fact that Senators might feel more obliged to be on the site regularly to participate in national policymaking than are all 21 private citizens, having 21 "Citizen Senators" with a quorum of five is effectively (a) no different in terms of efficiency than running a Senate; (b) more efficient in terms of skipping the time and effort to run Senatorial races: and (c) more truly democratic in allowing every citizen equal opportuinty to vote in all questions of national policy making.

Direct participation in all voting issues would encourage citizens to particpate, thus overall increasing the probability that a true majority of the citizenry would influence policy, and suffering no more unrepresentativeness than the Senate itself would impose in the first place. Having Senators certainly is not going to encourage participation any more than would direct democracy.

If there are five people who are willing to commit to being Senators, and thus to be present with sufficient regularity to conduct national business, then it stands to reason that there will already be a sufficient number of citizens present most of the time to conduct national business as a direct democracy too.

So, here is how the section of the Constitution that MM quoted above would read:

This next part I find a bit perplexing and even a bit contradictory, though forgive me if I am simply not understanding MM.

Which seems to me to be fundamentally contradictory to the very idea of a democracy, i.e., that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. If the point of this being a Democracy is that every citizen has an equal say in the policy of the social entity in which he/she is a participant, why create unneccessary middle men? This can only promote cronyism, and partisanism such as the formation of so-called "political parties" and special interest groups.

leaving the casual citizen free to slack at the sidelines and complain about dirty no-good politicians

Why allow citizens to be slack? Why not impose a rule: he who does not AT LEAST log on to the site for a certain span of time (4 months?) will have his/her citizenship revoked? Obviously this would be a simple token "punishment," because such a revocation should never be irreversible, but at least it would provide a means to thin out the electorate when people stop wanting to participate. IIRC, in direct democracies like Switzerland one is required to either participate or explicitly abstain, and is subject to being fined if one breaches this requirement.

Is it not the duty of every free citizen in a democracy to his fellow citizens and to their common welfare to participate to his earnest best and on equal footing with all his fellows?

If we grow than we can grow into a representitive style of government.  And evolve into a Congressionally run style of Democracy.  Lets crawl first?  And be on with it.

ADDIT:  Glad your off the meds for your head cold Scipio.

Well I can understand if there is a bigger concern with getting things moving along than with actually simulating a democracy.

But then why call it a "Democracy" Game? If founding documents are to be left sacrosanct and unamendable by the will of the people, if more confidence is to be placed in an oligarchy than in the people, why not call it a Republic Game, or an Oligarchy Game?

I don't wanna cause trouble cause I know you guys enjoy these things. But, I guess I just don't understand what these Democracy games are supposed to accomplish if they are not actually meant to be a simulation or test of running a civilization game through democratic enterprise. Believe me, I can shut my cake hole if pondering this stuff too deeply is clearly unfashionable; but I just cannot help but ask at least once: what is the point if not to simulate a democratic enterprise? How is anything less than a direct democracy a more thorough simulation of a democratic enterprise?