Join the new world

Okay, so I didn't do this last month. If you've ever run an election, you probably understand. Your first instinct is to bury your head and forget it ever happened, like fleeing the scene of a crime. And it was delayed another day when I foolishly pressed the 'Publish' button with the ridiculous expectation that it would be published.

We got seven people in the door, most importantly rainysunday who won a hotly contested race with a blocker.. I would sooner win her race than all the others combined; that's how important the work she does in Kongress is. I was also pleased that Xtasia got in with only a little help from your truly. Paladn got in, where he gets his votes I do not know and will not ask. Leplatt returned for another term and Sunny made a strong showing, though we do not have the foggiest where her votes came from. I'm undecided as to whether she's more than a little famous or 'gyrl' really holds that much sway. FUTREL won his race, without any help and I also got in with a landslide of two votes.

On the more unfortunate side of things, Wallingbottom and BoxOfAIDS both lost their bids. This is worth remarking on; in AIDS case the one vote he was ahead by was discounted as a multi vote and Wallingbottom lost somewhere along the lines of five votes that way letting a Hungarian into our Kongress. I believe this probably also happened elsewhere and it seems to me that my candidates were the target of multi voters with the intention of forcing me to act upon a misleading vote count. This would be a disturbing trend indeed.

More broadly, the entire election was rather schizophrenic. With eAnylitics down, the parties were all scrambling to get an accurate picture of the elections and there were blockers winning in several races, making it difficult to distinguish PTO's from simple cases newbies voting unpredictably. This leads me to a very important point, which is that PP's and those tasked with organizing elections for their parties need to put forward a better effort to get their blockers to wear blocker avies.

The vast majority of my candidates were and that's because when I messaged people with their state assignments, I included the URL to our blocker avie and instructed them to use it if they were blocking. I cannot help but think if such basic things were done by the other parties, there would be less confusion. I'm not just complaining about rainy's contest with the blocker in Florida, she put up a blocker avie when she logged on later in the day and I appreciate it. But this was happening all over the place and we all know it.

I understand there's little motivation make an effort for this and that we can't control every single member of our parties. I couldn't get halfie to do it, though I did ask, and of course every vote that goes to one of my blockers is a vote the other guy has to waste to compensate.

But I know I hate it when my candidate is losing to a blocker and I'm sure you do too. We need to get on the same page with this, people. If you're blocking, don't be a dick; use an avie. If you're a PP or election official, make sure everyone who's blocking has easy access to one. Because worse than the irritation of competing with a blocker is knowing that combined, we all wasted enough votes on blockers to prevent the Hungarian from winning in WV. And that kind of makes it everyone's fault.

Now, it's time to get something off my chest.

That was an absolutely piss poor showing, S.E.E.S. I'm going to say it again, that was a piss poor showing. I directed perhaps 12 votes all day and 9 of those were at the end of the day. The fact that I got 7 people in is nothing less than an act of grace by the God-Emperor Dio Brando himself. I had 36 people sign up and 17 of them were candidates. I should have no less than 17 voters and I fully expect that all 36 people should have at least asked for voting orders and only if they had a really fucking good reason they couldn't stay up until reset on a SATURDAY NIGHT. Honestly, what the fuck? Get your shit together, people.

Alright, I feel a little better and I'm going to step back and accept some of the blame here. We weren't well prepared for these elections and I didn't expect they'd go well. We lost a lot of our top guys this month, on a holy mission to purify Pakistan and, honestly, they're basically who showed up time and again to make sure S.E.E.S. was represented in Kongress. More than that, I got a late start and ran it all on a shoe string. Being in a position of authority, people take cues from me whether they be implicit or explicit and I'll admit that one could pretty easily have gotten the implicit notion that it wasn't important from me. I'm sorry and I'm going to do better next month and expect damn well that you all do too.

That being said, I have cleared the sign up sheet and will begin organizing early this month. If you won last month, I will be automatically slotting you for the same state next month. If you don't want to run, you'll need to tell me because I am going to act under the assumption that you do. If you want to run or block next month, the sign up sheet is the same and you can fill it out at any time.

http://www.tinyurl.com/SEESKongress

If you think you can or will want to do either, but aren't sure, just fill it out anyway. If something comes up later, you can always let me know and I'll strike your name. No big deal. I had a hell of a time getting blockers last month. In the end, I only needed 2 FEC blockers as the late entry’s, thankfully, continued to trickle in. I don't want to hear this deployability bullshit next month. It's two days and you know god-damned well that Wallingbottom is just going to tell you to do it anyway. If you're military, that's a little different but, unless you're in airbourne, if you talk to your CO's they're usually pretty understanding.

I'm not pissed at anyone in particular and I'm sorry if it's coming off like I'm mad. I'm not but we lost some good people to Pakistan and, if you don't know, they fully expect that S.E.E.S. isn't going to be able to survive in any respectable form without them. If we can't step up to the plate and put in a little more, they're going to be right. I stayed behind because I believe S.E.E.S. is not dead and, while it may not be the organization they had intended or wanted it to be, I believe it holds value. That is should not be a constant, unchanging character on the American political landscape, but a complex and ever evolving one.

Darwin once said that 'it is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one most responsive to change.' We have reached the edge of that chasm; change is nigh and it is time for us to respond; to pull ourselves together and morph in strange and unexpected ways into a beast every bit as beautiful and terrible as that which we were before.