Rod Damon Writes

A few days ago, we put out a pretty comprehensive guide to ATO operations. http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/an-average-joe-039-s-guide-to-pto-ato-and-everything-in-between-1493521/1/20

Today, we would like to narrow our scope to go over some facts and misconceptions about political parties and being a member of a party. Being a member of a party is important, but not as important as being an active, involved, educated player. We hope that this article will help many of you understand the importance of getting involved in the political process.



Political Parties

Each country has its own set of political parties. While certain parties may share names, there is no game mechanic that links parties together. Each party is independent and separate from all others as far as game mechanics are concerned. So the “Really Cool Party” in Hungary has no in game connection to the “Really Cool Party” in Singapore, at least as far as game mechanics go.

Some players who rise to lead parties, may seek to have branches of their parties in other countries, in theory all working for the same goal. Whether this actually occurs or not is subject to debate. Also, in these other countries, these new parties are likely to be considered Vanity Parties.




The Top 5

Game mechanics dictate that only the Top 5 parties are of any real consequence. To be a Top 5 party, you must have more members then the parties in 6th place. That is all that is really required. The USA currently has 60 political parties, Hungary has 34, Russia has 38, Croatia has 6. The total number of parties in a country is based on parties created by citizens of that country and parties that it “inherited” when it conquered and eliminated enemy nations from the map. Some of the parties that the USA currently has, date back to when we took France off the map for a few days.

But, as we said, only the Top 5 matter in game. The Top 5 parties are the ones that get to nominate and run primary candidates for Congress and the Country Presidency.
1. Congress Elections: For Congress elections, while the other Parties may nominate candidates, they do not appear in the election; only candidates from the Top 5 parties appear in the election. These other parties can not do anything positive as far as Congress elections are concerned.
2. Country Presidency Elections: For the Country Presidency, things are different and other parties may see their candidate appear in the election. If two or more Top 5 parties endorse the same candidate, then the other Parties (from 6th place on back) will see their candidates appear, but only the first five candidates will be able to run in the election.



PTO Averted

As you may have read recently, we narrowly avoided a PTO attack. A PTO attack is an attempt by enemy operatives to get their candidates elected into our government to weaken our country. The sixth place party, The Republican Party, is led by a domestic troublemaker who is working in conjunction with Hungarians and other Phoenix operatives to try and PTO our country.

As recently related by Admin in this article: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/the-questions-and-answers-insider-day-1009-1498512/1/20

“We’ve spotted a case of PTO in US Congress elections. To be more specific, the Republican Party entered in the top 5 parties using unlawful methods so we so we had to take action and interfere, thus: the illegal citizen accounts used were permanently suspended, the candidates were removed from the race and so there are only 4 parties participating to this election.“

What had occurred was, that by a combination of enemy operatives and illegal accounts, the party in question was able to apparently gain enough members of its party to be the fifth largest, narrowly exceeding the United Independents Party which had gotten pushed down to sixth place.

Thankfully, Admin removed the candidates from the PTO party and banned the illegal accounts. Unfortunately the legitimate candidates from the UIP were prohibited from running their elections.



What can we do?

We need to take steps to ensure that a repeat of this threat does not occur. There are three main steps that we would like to see happen

1) Join a Top 5 party - If you are not a member of a political party or engaged in ATO duties abroad, you should join a Top 5 party. It does not matter if you care about politics or not, or can not decide what party is best, all that matters is that you are part of the process. If you have no preference, you should join the #5 party. To check current party membership totals refer to this page. http://www.erepublik.com/en/rankings/parties/1/24

2) Quit your Vanity Party - As we said above, the USA has 60 parties. That is 55 more then we need for game mechanic reasons. While some of the larger parties offer an alternate voice for some people, the majority of those 55 parties serve no practical use for the USA. Except that they divert citizens from being in a Top 5 party and help to protect us from PTO attacks. If one person from each of those 55 parties had been in the UIP, the PTO attack may have failed right then, before Admin intervention.

Again, my thanks and appreciation to the Admin team for their actions.

My caution to my fellow players, we can not always rely on Admin to be able to react in time to correct these acts.

3) Be ready to mobilize - the third step is that the members of the top parties need to be ready to temporarily change party membership to help protect the lower parties. As I write this, the first place USWP has 736 members, the fifth place UIP 287 members. That is a spread of 449 people. If the members of the # 1 and 2 parties who are not running for Congress are able to change parties for a day or two, that is a few hundred people who can help protect our country from PTO without having to move or do anything that would cost them money, wellness, or happiness.



Change parties?

Yes, you can change parties. In game it is a whole lot easier then in real life. We are not asking you to give up your loyalty to your party, we are just asking you to temporarily move your name from one roster to another. You can change back to your other party, usually the next day. Also being a member of a party does not mean you have to vote for their candidate for Congress or President.

The only time being a member of a party limits your choice to vote is for Party President, in which you have to vote for someone running for president of the party you are a member of. For Party President elections, you can always temporarily change to your preferred party, vote, then go back to the party you are bolstering for ATO.

We encourage everyone to contact their party leadership. Get involved with your parties on their specific forums or on IRC. Become an active and involved member of the community. But please remember that we need to be aware of game mechanics and need to be vigilant against PTO attacks.

We do not have to fear Phoenix PTO groups or domestic troublemakers, we just have to be aware of their activities and take simple steps to thwart them. Their continued failures will eventually drive them away, at least the more intelligent ones.



The Big Picture

Protecting ourselves from the threat of PTO is something we have to maintain a constant vigil for. But by being prepared and aware, we can act to minimize the effort and resources we have to expend on our own defense and we can turn our eyes to helping our friends and allies, such as Australia, South Africa, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Norway, Croatia, North Korea, India, and others. Our strength comes from one pool of voters. The better organized we are to defend our own elections, the more powerful we can be in fighting against our enemies abroad in political warfare.


Our Allies waiting for us


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