I Smell Some Spoiled Cereal

Day 1,010, 04:33 • Published in Israel USA • by The Libertine


And I don't know about you, but I hate it when cereal goes rancid. I never let my cereal go rancid.

...Yes, this article is about some of the bizarre numbers coming out of yesterday's elections, specifically Nazareth. I heard they despise cereal in Nazareth. Silly people.

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE IS REALLY WONKISH AND HAS NO MORE PICTURES. AVOID ID IF READING BOOKS MAKES YOUR HEAD HURT. OR IF YOU ARE YIBGIB.

Let me explain:

So, 50 total votes were cast in Nazareth North in yesterday's Knesset elections, while only 70 citizens in the region are eligible to vote (one must be level 10, which is 40 exp, to vote). Considering our historically pitiful turnout rates, this is jaw-dropping on its own, but I decided to look further and crunch the numbers. Here is what I foun😛

UIIP
- 16 of the votes in the region were for the UIIP. I can account for 15 citizens in the region who participated in the UIIP mobile voting program. This leaves 55 eligible voters left and 34 votes left.

Unemployed/Inactive
- There are 25 unemployed workers in the region that were eligible to vote (90% of which are under level 20). There is also one American citizen (can't vote), and one citizen with a job that has not worked or shouted in months. There are also 3 current or former UIIP members that I believe are inactive and didn't vote today because I would have known if they responded to my PMs. That means roughly 30 of the remaining 55 voters are inactive, leaving roughly 25 possibly citizens left to account for the 34 votes left. This basically assumes that all 25 remaining people with jobs are active. 25 possibly active voters for 34 votes left.

Israel First and Shalom
- Israel First received 22 votes, four of which presumably came from the four people running. Plus yuvy15 and goforit, two active citizens who both won Knesset seats last night (congrats!), appear to have moved there to help. Another vote appears to be from someone I know to be active. This leaves 15 unaccounted for Israel First votes and removes 7 people from the voting pool.
- The UZP received a combined 12 votes, two of which were presumably from the candidates themselves. Current UZP Knesset member Arthur Sandyman lives there, and I know where another came from as well. That leaves 8 unaccounted for UZP votes and removes 4 more people from the voting pool.
- Combined, this leaves 23 unaccounted for votes from a voting pool that should have shrunk down from 25 to about 14 voters. I'll repeat that: 23 more votes were cast in Nazareth North out of a projected 14 that could have possibly been active and coordinated citizens.

Something doesn't smell right, and it better not be my milk.

Clumps of new citizens
Additionally, there were also 4 "clumps" of citizens all born on the same day recently (these are all from the list of citizens eligible to vote and many are unemployed).
- 6 citizens with generic avatars were all created on July 13th, 2010
- 5 citizens less generic but not personalized avatars were crated on August 20th, 2010
- Another clump of 5 joined the game on August 19th, 2010
- A last small group of three joined the game on August 17th, 2010.

How many days does it take a citizen to reach level 10 to vote? 5 days, according to the eRepublik wiki. Compare the number of citizens born on the 19th and 20th to the projected voting gap above. Both are basically ten. Weird.

Amazing Coordination
Lastly, at one point later in the day, there was a quick 5 or 10 minute period when the four Israel First candidates, who had fallen behind two UIIP candidates, received 6 votes split between the four.
- The biggest piece of this puzzle is that at the time, the four candidates had a perfect 4-4-4-4 split before the 6 quick votes were cast, meaning that presumably both the first 16 voters and the last 6 voters had to be either moderately and extremely coordinated in their actions, respectively.
- I cannot find more than maybe 7 Israeli First members or likely voters living in this region who would have been active enough to pull this off. I messaged many citizens in this region myself and received only a few replies, of which two or three voted for UIIP candidates and one declined to help out. So that makes a whole sum of one person who was active enough to respond to a message and did not vote for the UIIP, out of the bunch I contacted.
- I'll just throw in that the two UZP candidates both had 6 votes exactly as well. Anyone who knows who disorganized the UZP has been lately (they make about one post per 3 days on their public forum), knows how bizarre this vote split appears. Their candidates were Greekboy, a brand new citizen from....Greece, and Haile Selassie, a Knesset member from last term that I'm not sure ever showed up on the Knesset forum. Like I said, the election results are bizarre.

One more thing to consider is votes per party, from all districts combine😛

Last Election
United Zionist Party - 40 for 203 members (20😵
Shalom (now Israel First) - 56 for 123 members (46😵
United Israeli Independents - 45 for 49 (92😵
No one from Lantern ran last time

This election
United Zionist Party - 40 for 109 members (37😵 (Considering at least 10 very active members of the the UZP left since last election to other parties, I'm skeptical of this number.)
Israel First (formerly Shalom) - 96(!) for 97 members (99😵 (This. Is. A lot. Wow. How'd you guys do it??)
United Israeli Independents - 58 for 78 members (74😵 (Decent showing for the UIIP. Gained about 30 new members and gained 13 votes. Considering a bunch of members have gone inactive since last election, this is pretty good.)
The Lantern Society - 9 for 11 members (82😵 (I'm not even going to try to figure out how Con Dingo got 9 votes in Haifa. He hasn't posted an article in 3 months, his party has 11 largely retired players (few of which, if any, were in Haifa), and he never responds to my PMs, so I doubt he campaigned.)

In Summary
I am not drawing any conclusions about these things here. This is merely an analysis of the voting returns in one region that struck me as more than a bit odd.
I watched the elections for a large portion of the day, so I felt like I should do a big recap of sorts, but the curious events in Nazareth North stuck out in my mind too much not to write about it. I would not be surprised if there were similar clumps of citizens created on the 19th or 20th in other parts of the country, but I am not going to be looking through lists in other districts. I'll leave that to someone else.

I would like to hear others' thoughts on this matter. I don't mean to cast a shadow over yesterday's exciting results, but I felt like this information needed to get out there for the public to think about and debate. Perhaps I'm missing something or my math if off (In fact, I know some of it is off. I really hate math). But perhaps it is not. Let me know what you think.

Best,
CRoy

(Additionally, I have the spreadsheets that the UIIP used to prepare for these August elections online. If anyone would like to check out and learn how parties coordinate elections, send me a PM and I can show you.)

(Also additionally, I have saved a copy of this article in case it is deemed to break the eRepublik rules against false accusations. I tried very hard to lay out facts and to not overtly suggest any wrong doing. If the article is taken down, I'll re-post it on the forum, but I feel like I did my best to stay within what is acceptable to write.)