I don't understand how a shortened referendum (assuming its possible as Eventru says) is any different than lowering everyone and raising some back up, as far as OOC feelings go. Sure both options suck, but what can you do besides state your opinion, and when its ignored, make due.

It probably would make sense to temporarily remove the code that requires all the GMs to agree, and just let the CL descend people, for the rest of this week. Or at least make it only take one or two. Then put it back next week. Trying to race time to get everyone descended is just going to make everyone start hollering to delay the debt collection, and I think it's better not to delay this stuff any more, just because of the sudden rush to descend a bunch of people.

The fact that these changes were not implemented in an IC fashion (event) by the admins is incredibly disappointing. The general loss of RP in Lusternia isn't really being helped by the admins in this case.

Or, the admin can just refund a little power if an org is a day late descending their last ascendant. It's not like this might be an issue for any but two orgs.