Introduction
The Terran Commonwealth is the union of colonies governed by Earth. Its members include Earth, the various colonies within the solar system and numerous settlements which are located outside the solar system. This last category includes planetary settlements, colonies located on moons and space stations.
The Commonwealth employs a democratic federal system. The overall government is located on Earth and has authority over criminal law, defence and many aspects of civil law. Local governments exist within the extra-terrestial colonies but the legislative powers of these governments are limited to civil matters and in many respects are better regarded as administrative centres rather than executive and legislative bodies.
Taxation is regulated by the central government although individual colonies are at liberty to apply local variations, provided that they fall within those permitted by pan-Commonwealth law.
President
The leader of the Commonwealth is an elected president. Election of the president avoids constituences and electoral colleges and instead considers the electorate as a single body. A preferential system of voting is employed. The winner must receive more than 50% of the votes. If the leading candidate after the first round of counting has a plularity that is short of an absolute majority, second choice votes are counted.
The term of office of the president is four years. There is no limit on the number of terms that may be served. As will other political offices the electorate has the power to remove the president from office by means of a recall ballot.
The current Commonwealth President is Megan Dressler.
Crude Resource Systems
A crude resource system (CRS) is a colony which exists solely for extraction of resources from a planet, moon or asteroid field. The extraction is typically in the form of mining.
Commonwealth law prohibits the exploitation of worlds which possess an ecosystem that supports multicellular organisms. Thus, crude resource systems are usually found on moons lacking an atmosphere or in asteroid fields.
The functional nature of a CRS means that living conditions are spartan. High levels of automation have the result that many of the jobs which require human emoloyees fall into the unskilled and low-skilled category and have low pay. As a consequence, CRSs have a reputation for ensnaring people who are in finanical difficulty. People caught in ths trap may refer to themselves and those like them as 'crissers'.