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Did you ever see congress candidates with an avatar saying "I'm a blocker", and didn't know
what it means? Maybe wondered what's all this talk about Croatia PTO, Australia ATO, South Africa Blocking, North Korea Multies and Bosnian citizenships? If that's the case, or even if it's not, this article is worth checking out to better understand what's up in this new world, and how you can help.

So let's start with the basics –



Political warfare in game occurs when one group attempts to take control of another group. This can either be a political party or a country. People generally refer to the two sides as PTO and ATO. All three types of elections can involve PTO/ATO activity.

PTO (Political Take Over) is the term used to describe an attack on the existing “power” in control of a country or party. The distinction is drawn between the normal course of elections between two or more members of the group and a force perceived as coming from outside the group.



Examples:
1) Members of Political Party A decide to switch to B and run their own person for party president. Party A members see Party B as a PTO challenge.
2) Hungarians get USA citizenship by bypassing our normal immigration review. They run for Congress and a PTO threat.
3) Country I creates a few hundred multiple accounts in country A and has them vote for one of their accounts for President. This is an illegal PTO of country A. In theory, Admin would disallow and cancel the votes of the multiple accounts and ban them. In theory.

ATO (Anti Take Over) is the term used to describe the defense against a PTO. Usually this involves calling on friends and allies to send voters to vote for the established candidates.



Examples
1) Party A calls on Party C to send their members to join Party A temporarily to counter the votes of Party B.
2) Norway asks the USA to send people to Norway and become citizens to vote for the Norwegian candidate as opposed to the Phoenix candidate.
3) A domestic troublemaker tries to run for Congress so that he can let in enemy PTO operatives, voters are organized to make sure this person does not win.

The key to political warfare is citizenship.



Citizenship – When a citizen is born, he gains the citizenship of the country where he was born. The citizenship allows a player to vote in this country, join a party, run for congress, and even run for president of the country. A player can get a new citizenship by moving to the country where he wants to gain citizenship and applying for it and getting approved.

You only need citizenship to vote, run for office, or join a political party. You can have foreign .citizenship and live and work in the USA and fight for the USA



Approval - Usually a congress member, of the country you are moving to, must approve the citizenship application for the player to get the new citizenship. Each month the number of citizenships a congressman can approve changes based on the size of the country and the population. For example a USA congressman might get 24 approvals while a congressman in North Korea might get 8. This is why it is important to hold onto foreign citizenship when asked. It is easy to make you American, while it may not be as easy to make you something else.



Often times when we send someone to a country that's players are in different timezones, we have to coordinate getting you approved. We will often ask that you move to that country a day or more in advance to ensure that their congress has enough time to approve you. While we and our counterparts try our best, we are dependent on their Congress people and occasionally you may find yourself waiting a long time.

Open Citizenship- is a special case. If a country is taken off the map during a war and is not back on the map to have an election for Congress, they are subject to open citizenship. Until the next congressional election, anyone who goes to that country and applies for citizenship will be automatically approved and made a citizen of that country. Recent examples of this are Croatia currently and North Korea last month.



OK, so what can I do to help fight against PTO?

There are many ways that you can help fight against a PTO. The main ways are either by blocking or being a mobile voter.



Blocking is primarily used in Congressional elections. The party presidents of the Top 5 parties must choose who will run in each region of a country. If there are more then one candidate running in a region, the president picks which will actually run. If a region has only one candidate for this party, the Party President MUST choose him to run for congress in this region. His name can be" PTO'er from Phoenix" and his campaign "I'm going to destroy your country", and the party president can do nothing about it. Blocking is, as the name suggests, blocking the PTO from running to congress. A blocker running in this state gives the party president the option to choose him to run for congress, even if he's not really running or intends to run. Blocking is easy, and only requires you to move to the region where blocking is needed (tickets are supplied usually by the Top 5 parties, Strategic Air Command and other organizations), and candidate yourself there.



Mobile Voting – despite our best intentions, occasionally a PTO candidate will slip through or sometimes a country may be split between our allies and our enemies enough that each election both sides can run candidates. Mobile voting is as simple as it sounds, players moving to other regions or even other countries to vote for the ATO candidates there..In order to be a mobile voter in another country, you MUST have citizenship in that country.Strategic Air Command is in contact with our allies and arranges for citizenship to be granted to people wanting to help. We provide you the moving tickets, and will let you know where to move to and who should be voted for.

OK, I blocked in South Africa and voted for a South African candidate. Can I have my US
citizenship back now?


Citizenship is precious

Well, of course you can. However, you can and should keep your new foreign citizenship. Each country has a limited amount of citizenships to give players every month. A maximum of 10% of a country's population can be offered citizenship. In a big country such as the US, which currently stands with 12,146 citizens, we know that we can hand out 1,214 citizenships, divided by 42 current congress members, these are 28 citizenships given by each congress member. That's a LOT of citizenships. But let's look at a country like Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have a population of only 274 citizens, which means they can only hand out 27 citizenships. Dividing that by the number of congress members they have, its 2 citizenships Per Congress Member. Judging usually not all congress members are in favor of the ATO, and some of them are PTO members, which mean we can only get about 10 citizenships from Bosnia Per Month. That's why it's so important to keep your foreign citizenship. In small countries under PTO threat Every Vote Counts, and you keeping the citizenship lets us get another guy citizenship the next month.



One of the key parts of a successful ATO operation is communication. Often times elections are decided at server reset (23:59 game time). Fortunately, while in the middle of the night for the USA, many of us are on. Congressional elections are especially vulnerable to late voting or sniping. Many congressional elections only involve a handful of votes and getting a few coordinated voters together at 23:50 can sometimes swing the balance of power in a congress. For this reason we encourage EVERYONE to get on Rizon IRC and join us in #ato. If you are unsure of how to get on IRC, contact us and we will give you instructions.

Besides helping with ATO, we also would point out that much of our society is on IRC and it is a great way to meet people and learn things about the game.



Here are some terms you may have heard and wonder about.

SAC or Strategic Air Command is the USA’s organization for providing ATO assistance to our friends and allies. It is the current incarnation of what was once the United States Air Force.

CARE or Project C.A.R.E. is the USA’s organization for hunting down multiple accounts. If we are seeing a build up of new citizens in a country and suspect cheating, CARE is often called in to help try and trim the numbers.

MT or Moving Tickets are needed to allow citizens to move between regions and countries. SAC will supply tickets to all volunteers to get them to where they need to be and back home again.

IES or Immigration Enforcement Service is the USA’s organization that handles screening of people looking for USA citizenship. They are our front line in detecting and preventing foreign PTO’ers from getting into our country. If returning from ATO duty and you must have your citizenship back, these are the people that will get you through the process. Please note that being on an approved SAC list helps streamline the process.

These countries have been recently featured in our operations

NK - North Korea

BiH - Bosnia and Herzegovina

SA - South Africa

DATES - the following dates are important. If you are involved in ATO assistance, you should make sure that you can move on these days (so do not change jobs 3 days prior)

5th - Country President Elections - you will only have to move if you are getting new citizenship

15th - Party President Elections - you will have to move to the country you are voting in AND be a citizen of that country AND be a member of that party.

23rd - Final day for Congressional Candidates to declare their candidacy - You will have to move to the right region and country to be a blocker AND be a citizen of that country AND be a member of the right Top 5 party

24th - Top 5 Party Presidents choose their candidates - occasionally we may need you to move and join a party

25th - Congressional Elections - If you are a citizen of the country you are voting in AND the last time you were in that country, you were in the region needed, you will not have to move. Otherwise you will have to move to the right region and country and be a citizen.

Blockers - please be aware that you will generally be unable to leave the country you are blocking in from the 23rd through the end of the 25th.



Things to Remember

1) You can only vote ONCE per election. If you vote in the USA in the morning, and move to another country and get citizenship, you will not be allowed to vote there that day.

2) You must be a citizen to vote in a country, but need not necessarily be in the country on election day (depending on the election)

3) Please hold your vote as late as possible, unless you are asked to vote early. this allows us to see how elections are developing and direct your vote to where it will be most effective.

4) If you will need to move out of a country, you will need to quit your job. If you recently changed jobs, you will need to get your employer to fire you. Not all employers check their messages when you want them to. Please consider not changing employers within 3 days of the days listed above.

5)Being on Rizon IRC in #ato is the BEST way to have accurate information on voting. While we try to handle things through in game messages as well, sometimes we just don’t have enough time to get you a timely response.



What should I do to help?

Please contact us here, and we will add you to our roster of voters and contact you with instructions as elections come up.

Subscribe to these papers for information on forign and domestic elections
The Hanging Chad
FEC you, America

Remember that in voting all citizens are equal strength and your vote is as mighty as the oldest players in the game.




And now for the gratuitous pictures we normally use