Particracy RP & the upcoming US Presidential election

[jamescfm]

The thing with having every nation having representatives is the same problem with organising other worldwide stuff in Particracy. Some players will think it's more of extra work to maintain, rather than finding it fun. The interest in these things tend to be seasonal. What I suggest is that the leader of this organisation would just have the power to call a summit on any issue, and the nation would at that point decide who they will send if they're interested in the issue.

I think you're probably right. If we find that there is a lot of engagement in the organisation then we could perhaps introduce an Assembly at a later date.

I suggest a method which uses continent-based primaries rather than ideologically-based ones. In the first round, each continent (Artania, Majatra, Seleya, and Keris-Makon-Dovani) would elect a nominee, then the world would elect one from those four. Each nation gets one vote. Each round will use some sort of instant runoff voting, to ensure that a majority is reached. This method is more inclusive, in that it will allow candidates from all over the world each time, but it has the drawback of being more time consuming.

The only problem with this is that surely each continent is likely to support their own candidate then it just becomes which continent has the most active nations. How about a system where each continent elects a representative (for which there could be a sort of primary) and then the continents alternate between who is the overall President- like Siggon suggested? So, effectively you've got four 'primaries' happening each cycle, except one of them is essentially a presidential election, if that makes sense.

[Siggon Kristov]

[

I suggest a method which uses continent-based primaries rather than ideologically-based ones. In the first round, each continent (Artania, Majatra, Seleya, and Keris-Makon-Dovani) would elect a nominee, then the world would elect one from those four. Each nation gets one vote. Each round will use some sort of instant runoff voting, to ensure that a majority is reached. This method is more inclusive, in that it will allow candidates from all over the world each time, but it has the drawback of being more time consuming.

The only problem with this is that surely each continent is likely to support their own candidate then it just becomes which continent has the most active nations. How about a system where each continent elects a representative (for which there could be a sort of primary) and then the continents alternate between who is the overall President- like Siggon suggested? So, effectively you've got four 'primaries' happening each cycle, except one of them is essentially a presidential election, if that makes sense.

IRL, the NAM does something like this without regions. The leadership rotates among countries, so the Secretary-General is just whoever is the head of the country at the time it gets the rotational leadership (it just passed from Iran to Venezuela). Ofc we wouldn't do that in the game since it wouldn't really be an election; players wouldn't feel like they had an input in who the leader is, and it may end up going to a country/player that doesn't put out the effort to RP the character.

So yes, I like your adapted idea, jamescfm... Every region would elect a leader, and the world leadership would rotate among the regions (so the leader of whichever region has it would also have the world leadership). It's simple, and it's not too time-consuming. It would also give some role to the regional leaders. So these are 3 ideas so far, and I have a 4th:

So we elect a leader for each region like you suggest, and the leaders would form a council among themselves to elect the world leader. This is essentially a second/second-round election, but it would only involve the few persons who are regional leaders, not a long process like the actual election among everyone. I don't particularly prefer this idea over yours, or your idea over this; I like them equally, but I'm just throwing another option out there that we can add to the list of possibilities that the community can choose from.

Wherever consensus develops, we can just go with that idea. Also, our interpretation of the continents doesn't have to be too rigid. We can split Seleya into 2 and Majatra into 2-4, maybe even split Artania as well. I guess however we split it will depend on the system we use and how many regional groups it would make sense to have.

[jamescfm]

So we elect a leader for each region like you suggest, and the leaders would form a council among themselves to elect the world leader. This is essentially a second/second-round election, but it would only involve the few persons who are regional leaders, not a long process like the actual election among everyone. I don't particularly prefer this idea over yours, or your idea over this; I like them equally, but I'm just throwing another option out there that we can add to the list of possibilities that the community can choose from.

Wherever consensus develops, we can just go with that idea. Also, our interpretation of the continents doesn't have to be too rigid. We can split Seleya into 2 and Majatra into 2-4, maybe even split Artania as well. I guess however we split it will depend on the system we use and how many regional groups it would make sense to have.

Totally agree with splitting the continents, I was thinking of suggesting it as I read through your comment. I'd say we should make a decision between the two systems based on involvement. If we find, as I guess we probably will, that it's difficult to get people properly involved then your suggestion probably makes more sense. If people do seem to want to invest in the concept then having a worldwide election might be preferable.

[Siggon Kristov]

I'd say we should make a decision between the two systems based on involvement.

We really have 4 systems on the table
1) The electoral college one
2) Rathon's proposal for regional primaries
3) Regional leadership (yours)
4) Regional leadership (mine)

Based on 2, 3, and 4... we can also do something like the Swiss Federal Council. If we split Terra into 5 geopolitical regions, and each of them elect a leader, they would just form a council together. The leadership would rotate among them; each of them would serve a 3-year term as leader of the council, as the entire council would serve a 15-year term.

So that would be 5 systems on the table, so far.

[Rathon]

I would point out that nations on each continent wouldn't necessarily support its own continent's candidate- my party, for example, won't support Beiteynu's candidate or a Hosian Democratic party candidate even if it is from Majatra- it would sooner vote for Generic Center-Left from Seleya. That said, I do like Siggon's most recent idea where each continent/region elects a representative, then those representatives elect the Secretary General among themselves. I would throw in additional stipulations that a candidate can't vote for himself, and the same continent/region can't hold the Secretary General post for two terms in a row (that's to further ensure that this organization is a "World Union" and not, for example, an "Artanian Union.") Also, I think that if this system is used, the world should be divided into regions of 5-7 countries each (A larger group of representatives means less work for most players at the expense of those who get elected, who are probably more likely to commit such an effort anyway). My suggestion:

Artania North: Dorvik, Kirlawa, Aloria, Dundorf, Rutania, Hawu Mumenhes
Artania South and Keymon: Luthori, Beluzia, Hobrazia, Darnussia, Malivia, Keymon
Artania East and Makon: Kundrati, Endralon, Davostag, Hutori, Telamon
Majatra North: Beiteynu, Pontesi, Barmenia, Selucia, Cildania
Majatra Southwest: Vanuku, Zardugal, Jelbania, Cobura, Deltaria, Jakania
Majatra East: Badara, Kafuristan, Kalopia, Solentia, Istalia
Keris, Lodamun, and Likatonia: Trigunia, Dolgaria, New Endralon/Kizenia, Egelion, Lodamun, Likatonia
Seleya North: Valruzia, Kalistan, Baltusia, Gaduridos, Tukarali, Aldegar
Seleya South and Indrala: Saridan, Mordusia, Aldurie, Rildanor, Kanjor, Indrala
Dovani: Dankuk, Kazulia, Mikuni-Hulstria, Sekowo, Lourenne, Talmoria, Vorona

[jamescfm]

I'd say we should make a decision between the two systems based on involvement.

We really have 4 systems on the table
1) The electoral college one
2) Rathon's proposal for regional primaries
3) Regional leadership (yours)
4) Regional leadership (mine)

Based on 2, 3, and 4... we can also do something like the Swiss Federal Council. If we split Terra into 5 geopolitical regions, and each of them elect a leader, they would just form a council together. The leadership would rotate among them; each of them would serve a 3-year term as leader of the council, as the entire council would serve a 15-year term.

So that would be 5 systems on the table, so far.

I would point out that nations on each continent wouldn't necessarily support its own continent's candidate- my party, for example, won't support Beiteynu's candidate or a Hosian Democratic party candidate even if it is from Majatra- it would sooner vote for Generic Center-Left from Seleya.

Okay, so my personal preference is one of the regional leadership ideals i.e. 3, 4 or 5. I take the point about not necessarily voting for you own continent's candidate but I still think there would be sufficient bias to make it less preferable than some of the other options on the table.

That said, I do like Siggon's most recent idea where each continent/region elects a representative, then those representatives elect the Secretary General among themselves. I would throw in additional stipulations that a candidate can't vote for himself, and the same continent/region can't hold the Secretary General post for two terms in a row (that's to further ensure that this organization is a "World Union" and not, for example, an "Artanian Union.") Also, I think that if this system is used, the world should be divided into regions of 5-7 countries each (A larger group of representatives means less work for most players at the expense of those who get elected, who are probably more likely to commit such an effort anyway).

I think we can agree then that some kind of regional representative forming a council is the first step. I would prefer the idea of the council then voting on their leader, though perhaps with the terms you have suggested. The only slight issue I see with your suggestion is that (if I counted correctly) there are ten regions, which makes a tie on voting a genuiene issue. This doesn't have to be a limitation, however, maybe we could create a Chairman role who only votes in the event of a tie (which at this point would require an abstention) and who oversees the procedure for electing a new President throughout the council's term (if it is longer than the President's term).

We've come quite far with this and we've made good progress, might I suggest we come up with a provisional name for the organisation and start a new thread now that we have the foundations? If you'd prefer to stay here that's fine but a new topic might arrouse the attention of others who are browsing the forum sufficiently that they take the opportunity to join in.

[Siggon Kristov]

I would prefer the idea of the council then voting on their leader, though perhaps with the terms you have suggested. The only slight issue I see with your suggestion is that (if I counted correctly) there are ten regions, which makes a tie on voting a genuiene issue. This doesn't have to be a limitation, however, maybe we could create a Chairman role who only votes in the event of a tie (which at this point would require an abstention) and who oversees the procedure for electing a new President throughout the council's term (if it is longer than the President's term).

This sounds like we're going towards something complex.

I think #5 is a good mix of what we all want, noting that #1 is my original proposal, and #3 and #5 are merely my adaptations of things you both have suggested.

We would simply split the world into regions. Each region would elect a regional representative.
The regional representatives would together form a council; we can call it the "World Council" or "Council of Terra" or something like that.
Each member of the council would take a turn being the leader of the council.

As I suggested (and at least 1 other person agreed), a 15-year term would be the most practical length, since it's not too long to make sense IC, and it's not so short that we would have to be doing the OOC work too often. It would make sense, then, that we split the world into 5 regions and each member of the council would be the leader for 3 years.

We would have regional elections, and no region would feel shut out of the leadership. The only thing with having internal elections in each region (a problem in every proposal except #1) is that a nation may be popular globally, but very disliked by other members of its own region. I guess it's a trade-off, as no proposal will ever be perfect. As simple as it is, #1 is probably the most complex proposal anyway, and we're aiming for simplicity. So I think we should work out the fine details and proceed with developing #5, then officially proposing it to Moderation and the community.

Rathon, if you're in support of #5, you could revisit your original list of regions, and change it to be 5 regions. You would, however, need to include the non-playable nations, so maybe we need someone from the Global RP team to help with this.

We've come quite far with this and we've made good progress, might I suggest we come up with a provisional name for the organisation and start a new thread now that we have the foundations? If you'd prefer to stay here that's fine but a new topic might arrouse the attention of others who are browsing the forum sufficiently that they take the opportunity to join in.

I think we can continue with this thread, until we formally agree on everything, then we can just do a poll in a new thread to see if our idea is approved. If we don't agree on every fine detail, then we may just have 2-3 competing ideas on the poll, and the community could choose among them. Anyone can see the thread we're using now, so it's not like anyone is shut out.

[Doc]

GENERAL

So I suggest we divide the world into continental/regional groups, like the UN does.

--

VOTING

To make it easier to produce a majority, we can have some sort of Electoral College, with each continent being a single entity. The number of electoral votes assigned to each continent can be based on the number of provinces in the continent. This is a one-time calculation that wouldn't need revision every election, unless some dramatic event causes a continental group to split up or something.

When all nations have voted on a candidate, the most popular candidate in each continent will get all of that continent's electoral votes. In this regard, each nation in a continent will have 1 vote, so Vorona will be equal to Indrala.

If no candidate emerges with a majority of electoral votes, then we could do either of 2 things:
- we eliminate the candidate with the least electoral votes, and allow him to endorse another candidate and transfer his votes to that candidate
- we eliminate the candidate with the least electoral votes, then his electoral votes in each continent will be transferred to the next most popular candidate (something like STV, but not exactly, since we would just look at the 2nd most popular candidate in each continent instead of asking nations to declare their 2nd choice).

--

CANDIDACY

The leadership of the organisation would rotate among the continental groups. This is an easy way to narrow the candidates down. So for the first election, all candidates will be Artanian (i.e. Artanian candidates nominated by Artanian players). For the second election, all candidates must be Majatran (i.e. Majatran characters nominated by Majatran players).

I like the idea of indirect election through electoral college. I think, however, if we were doing the transferable vote to avoid a second election through the run off, I would think a ranked list would be more appropriate. One way we can do this is: if we have 10 candidates on a continent, we reward first choice 9 votes, and follow on down to reward each lower rank 1 less vote, and our last choice gets zero votes. Then we knock out the lowest ranking candidate and transfer the votes of those who put that candidate s first onto their second place choice, and down the line... We do that until 2 candidates are left, and then we add up all the votes and the winner of the election has the majority. With 10 candidates, there will only be 8 counts. We could do that fairly quickly, I imagine, with an Excel macro. The advantage of this system is there is no concept of "wasted vote"- People are free to vote as they want, by ranking, so minor candidates actually have a shot to make it into the later rounds if enough people rank them high enough. And more people will accept the results, because the way it is counted, more people will usually see their highest ranked preference win each round, while those who have very strong support at the top can theoretically still lose, but strong second and third ranked candidates, if a LOT of people rank the same folks in second and third...

The only other thing I would add to Siggon's proposal here is that everyone should have the right to vote on the candidates. I am not clear whether Siggon is proposing this implicitly, but if all the candidates are from Majatra, people in Selaya should still be able to vote for or against these candidates. If that's in the proposal, I don't see it suggested.

[Siggon Kristov]

I like the idea of indirect election through electoral college. I think, however, if we were doing the transferable vote to avoid a second election through the run off, I would think a ranked list would be more appropriate. One way we can do this is: if we have 10 candidates on a continent, we reward first choice 9 votes, and follow on down to reward each lower rank 1 less points, and last place gets zero votes. Then we knock out the lowest ranking candidate and transfer the votes of those who put that candidate s first onto their second place choice, and down the line... We do that until 2 candidates are left, and then we add up all the votes and the winner of the election has the majority. With 10 candidates, there will only be 8 counts. We could do that fairly quickly, I imagine, with an Excel macro. The advantage of this system is there is no concept of "wasted vote"- People are free to vote as they want, by ranking, so minor candidates actually have a shot to make it into the later rounds if enough people rank them high enough. And more people will accept the results, because the way it is counted, more people will usually see their highest ranked preference win each round, while those who have very strong support at the top can theoretically still lose, but strong second and third ranked candidates, if a LOT of people rank the same folks in second and third...

To be clear... Are you suggesting that each nation would rank the candidates, or would the candidates just be ranked by continent? I got a little confused because first it seemed like you were referring to a continent, then it seemed like you were referring to nations.

I would disapprove, either way. For one, we must remember that individual nations are not individual persons; there are multiple players in a nation, so coming to a consensus on how ranking should be done would be a pain. If you mean by continent, I would still disapprove because the weight of points in such a system is arbitrary, and highly-dependent on the number of candidates. For example, if there are 3 candidates, each vote would give the first choice double the amount of points as the second choice, whereas if there are 5 candidates, the first choice would get 4 points and the second choice gets 3 points, and with 10 candidates, the variation between the top 2 would be minimal. A ranked system is fine, but a mix between a ranked system and a point-based system will produce some weird number phenomena.

Additionally, it would take away the possibility of using game mechanics for our convenience. While I'm not fixated on maintaining that option, it's still good to maintain. My proposal (#1, the electoral college one you quoted) would have each nation just voting for 1 candidate, and the candidate with the most votes in a continent would get all of that continent's electoral votes.

The only other thing I would add to Siggon's proposal here is that everyone should have the right to vote on the candidates. I am not clear whether Siggon is proposing this implicitly, but if all the candidates are from Majatra, people in Selaya should still be able to vote for or against these candidates. If that's in the proposal, I don't see it suggested.

Yes, in my proposal, everyone would vote for the candidates. That's one of the things that distinguishes my electoral college proposal (#1) from the proposal made by jamescfm afterwards (#3).

--

Here's a rundown of the 5 proposals we have developed so far:

In my electoral college proposal, I noted that each continent would be a single entity in the election, so the most supported candidate in each continent would get all that continent's electoral votes. That would not make sense if it was just 1 continent. I was saying that candidates would only come from 1 candidate each election, but every nation/continent would vote on the candidates. If no candidate had a majority, the candidate with the least electoral votes would be eliminated; in each continent that he won, the electoral votes would go to the 2nd most popular choice instead. This was #1.

Rathon didn't like the idea of limiting the continent that candidates could come from, so he suggested that we just have continent-based primaries each election. That would mean each nation in a continent elects a continental leader, then nations choose which of those leaders they want (and you can vote for someone outside of your continent in the second round). This was #2.

Then the next proposal was by jamescfm, who was saying that we could have an election for the leader of each continent. World leadership would rotate among each continent, so this year would be Artania's turn, then next year would be Majatra's turn, etc. - so Artania would really be electing someone who would be the continental leader and the world leader, while the other continents just elect a continental leader. In the next election, Majatra would get that privilege, and so on. This was #3.

The next proposal was made by me, as an adaptation of #2 and #3, where we have an election for the leader of each continent, and they together form a council and elect a leader among themselves. This was #4.

The next proposal was also made by me, where we have an election for the leader of each continent, and they take turns serving as the leader of the world. This was #5.

[Rathon]

Rathon, if you're in support of #5, you could revisit your original list of regions, and change it to be 5 regions. You would, however, need to include the non-playable nations, so maybe we need someone from the Global RP team to help with this.

#5 is good, but I personally prefer #4, as it still gives the semblance of an election for one overall leader that was initially proposed, even though that leader will be elected indirectly by regional candidates. And with #4, I would think that a larger number of regions would be desirable, both to simplify things for the average player (fewer candidates per region) and to get more finalists into the second round (players who are more likely to commit their time and effort).

The only other thing I would add to Siggon's proposal here is that everyone should have the right to vote on the candidates. I am not clear whether Siggon is proposing this implicitly, but if all the candidates are from Majatra, people in Selaya should still be able to vote for or against these candidates. If that's in the proposal, I don't see it suggested.

I disagree here, for both IC and OOC reasons. IC, the point of having regional candidates is that they each represent their region, thus they shouldn't be elected by parties outside the region. OOC, the point of having regional candidates is that we're trying to simplify things for the average player by reducing the number of candidates he/she has to consider.

...Unless you're referring to proposal #1, in which case, yes, the whole world should be able to vote even though it's Artania's turn to be the leader.