Congress Elections - A Case In Point

Day 2,551, 10:30 • Published in USA USA • by Gnilraps
Children's Story (Mandatory listening)
Day 2551 of the New World
14 November, 2014


A Case In Point

Yesterday I published my thesis that the primary reason for the demise of eRepublik has been the synergy between Plato’s oversimplification of the game and his subsequent insistence on Plato himself becoming the primary storyline. Basically, my point was that as Plato removed social complexity from the game, he replaced it with non-sequitur click-generating pablum like Batzookas, “Ball Kicker” awards, and Cupid. Among the examples I gave of Plato’s devastating game-killers was his utter ruination of the Congressional election process. Today I’d like to offer some detail (especially for newer players who never experienced this game in its better days) on the former congressional election cycle as a case in point.



On September 25 2012, Plato introduced a totally new method for citizens to elect congressmen. Starting with that month’s election, a citizen would vote for a political Party, thus casting a ballot for the entire slate of candidates offered by that Party. The fact that this system is able to be described in a single sentence goes a long way to describe how boring and puerile the whole thing has become.

But it was not always that way.



The former congressional system was not at all complicated, but it was complex enough that newer players had to be educated by experienced players. This, of course, led to many opportunities to publish interesting newspaper articles, develop intricate communication networks both in game and meta, and it extended the length of time Party leaders had to attend to Congressional elections.

In a top-5 Party, the Party President (who would have been freshly elected on the 15th) had to get immediately organized. 9 days was often barely enough to put everything into place, and the excitement and activity would begin to build. Election day itself was an incredible flurry of activity which would climax during the final 15 minutes before reset where a single vote or two could spell the difference between a successful cycle or a devastating loss.

In the old system, a congressional candidate ran for his Party from a particular region. This meant, for instance, that as many as 5 candidates would be running for election in each region held by the country. For eUSA, there were usually 50 congressional races, plus or minus occupied vassal states.



So the Party leadership had to elicit candidates through a vetting process. This led to enormous activity, community building, mentorship, and gave parties awesome mechanisms for identifying future leadership among its ranks. But it was rarely possible for any Party to find 50 top notch candidates, so the use of “blockers” was standard practice.

A blocker was a “candidate” who was not actually running for election. What the Blocker was doing, however, was just as important. He was holding that Party’s place in his designated region so that infiltrators from enemy nations would not be able to place their operatives into Congress. Blockers had to be trusted and known members (it often gave older players who had reduced their game activity a meaningful reason to hang around) who could, if needed, be converted into actual candidates on the 25th. This would happen in cases where one of the Parties had mistakenly allowed an enemy operative onto their ballot, or sometimes when a blocker was close enough and the Party leadership chose to snipe him in with a splash of last minute voters in order to gain an extra seat.

As you can imagine the entire blocker system created tons of activity and numerous story lines developed in newspapers in the days following elections. But the blocker process did not generate the most game activity, far more activity was generated by the actual candidates themselves.



If you really wanted to run for congress, you often started your campaign 6 weeks in advance. After the Party President was elected on the 15th, you would try to get a Party job. There were plenty of good jobs in a top 5 Party (because there were so many more reasons for game activity, Parties needed people to do stuff.) Through the course of a month, you proved yourself reliable, active, and pro-Party. Then, a month later, after Party President elections again had passed and you had at least a month of activity under your belt, you would apply with the Political Director of the Party. This was a different process in each Party, but it always involved multiple people who would develop google docs and form and all kinds of cool stuff.

Usually by the 22nd of the month, the Party had decided who its candidates would be and was scanning for appropriate blockers. The Party then had to decide which candidates to put into which regions. This gave rise to smoky back-room deal-making between top 5 Party leadership. It also led to backstabbing and betrayal, all of which was absolutely fantastic for game activity, newspaper publishing, and IRC gossip. This game was literally buzzing with activity from the 22nd onward.

The reason it was such an interesting and important responsibility for the Party President to determine not only who would be the candidates but also which regions they would run from is because of one extremely important election dynamic. This leads our discussion in the single most activity-generating dynamic of the entire Congressional election process, voting.

In order to vote, a citizen had to determine which candidate he wanted to vote for, then move to the region from which that candidate was running so that he could cast his vote. This gave rise to the most exciting election dynamic of all – mobile voting.



All month long a top 5 Party was gathering a list of people who would be willing to “mobile vote”. Mobile voters were people who were willing to let Party leadership instruct them as to which candidate to vote for (and of course where). During my days with the Federalist Party, there were election cycles where we had upwards of 60 distinct individuals who had signed up for mobile voting. That gave us an enormous tool in dictating which races we wanted to formally support with actual votes. It also meant that we had to be available during the entire 24 hour election day so that we could direct our votes where they were needed most.

Special IRC rooms were dedicated to directing mobile voters. Infiltrators from other Parties would of course attempt to eavesdrop in those rooms… it was great. And throughout the day the vote tallies would begin to accumulate. Tracking 50 races (instead of today’s 1) was a phenomenally exciting task, one that rewarded parties who could device tools to make it easier. I still have excel spreadsheets with extensive web queries and dozens of pages dedicated to providing up-to-the second race data for our Party. If your Party didn’t have such tools, you were at a disadvantage for sure. All of this, of course, generated even more activity and… well you get the point.



And I have yet to mention sniping. Oh, how I pity newer players to eRepublik who never enjoyed the adrenaline rush that was the final hour of a Congressional election day. I would usually take a two-hour nap, then wake up for the final hour of chaos and fun.

Snipers had to be identified prior to election day, and the number of snipers a Party had was always a closely guarded secret. This was where it was especially useful to have an inside informant in the other Party’s IRC warroom. In the Federalist Party, we usually averaged about 25-30 snipers during my months of Presidency and leadership. This meant that as the final 15 minutes of the day approached, we would begin to identify how to best spend those 25 final votes in order to secure as many seats as possible. Of course the other 4 parties were doing the same (well, the better ones were). Spend too few votes on a race, lose by 1, and you had wasted those votes. Spend too many and again you may have cost yourself a win elsewhere. It was a Party President’s peak moment. With 5 or 6 minutes to go, orders would be privately given to snipers, and then in the final 2 minutes the votes would go out. Being in a sniping room on an election day was definitely my #1 favorite thing about eRepublik. Too bad it’s gone.

(Take a look at a newspaper article I published on the evening of a particularly exciting election day – a day I will have to write about in a separate article some day soon. You can still smell the tension and drama: 16 Shells Late Breaking Election Coverage) My God I loved the old game.



All of this and I have not even mentioned all of the activity generated by the candidates themselves as they would publish articles elucidating their “platform” (not that it always amounted to much, but sometimes those articles were fantastically entertaining. Here is one of the better ones.) I also have not mentioned the FEC where the White House would attempt to have its say in the Congressional elections – again more activity. Add in drama surrounding multi votes, PTO candidates, last-minute region losses/gains (in fact, in one election Ajay Bruno – America’s worst-ever excuse for a citizen – was denied a seat in congress because we intentionally gave away his region by losing it in battle prior to reset… glory days indeed.)

I hope my younger readers will see this and understand why so many of us old bastards keep whining about the good old days. More than that, I hope Plato himself will read this and suddenly wake up from his asinine delirium and STOP RUINING THIS GAME. It can likely still be saved… there could be a renaissance… but the game in its current state is not worth saving. Mashing a red FIGHT button is FUNLESS.



You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking