Forum and Congress: Why it's broken and how to fix it
•
by Revvenge
Hello everyone,
I realize by now everyone is drowning in anti- and pro-forum posts on the wall, but I felt it was necessary to explain some things, and offer solutions.
First of all, let's talk about congress and why it is not working in the eNetherlands:
If you have a look at the past few congress election (I myself checked back as far as the December 2015 election, but I'm sure that wasn't the first one in the list of elections in which this happened), you will notice one major thing.
Every single candidate was elected.
This is a problem, and I'll explain why.
Due to the way the system works, right now, no matter how high your Party President values you, and no matter what party you run for, you likely get elected. You can not be held responsible for your actions, as no one has the power to give you any reprecussions. Voters can't stop voting for you or even your party. Your Party President can't put you lower on the list. Well, they can do all that, but it doesn't matter. If you decide to sign up to Congress elections, you will be elected. No questions asked.
In addition, no matter how many votes a party gets, all their candidates likely get elected.
Let's have a thought experiment.
Let's say the eNetherlands has two parties and a maximum of 40 seats. Party A and Party B. Party A has 9 people sign up for congress election. Party B has only 1.
Party B is hugely popular, and gets 90% of the votes. Party A only gets 10%.
While Party B gets 90% of the votes and A only 10%, because the game tries to give all parties the seats they earned, B get 1 seat (the amount of candidates they had) and A gets 4 (10% of 40 seats). So while B had 90% of the votes, they have 20% of the seats, while Party A had 10% of the votes and 80% of the seats.
While this is an extreme example, it shows the exact issue the eNetherlands is facing. While the differences are less dramatic, the votes still have nothing to do with the seats handed out, as the seats is just the people who signed up. Votes for congress don't matter. Congress is not chosen.
In addition, due to some people not having a forum account, or being blacklisted due to misconduct, or simply never showing up to vote, this in-game congress isn't even truly represented on the forum.
All this has resulted in people claiming the forum is not representative of the feelings of the people in-game. While I tend to agree, I would say that this issue already starts in-game.
I believe I have a solution though, that hopefully returns trust in forum and congress.
Rather than giving each congress member signed up to the forum a vote, and voting using a quorum, let's change it to have a party representative, for instance the Party President, and have him cast the votes the party received in every vote we have on the forum.
For instance, if a party gets 10 votes, the Party President can cast 10 votes for Yes on a CoC election.
I don't think all votes are required to be cast on one option though, so if a party is divided, a representative could cast 7 on Yes and 3 on No, for instance.
The benefits in my opinion:
- Parties can follow policies
- Parties now discuss among themselves, rather than being a group of random people voting along their own ideas.
- Congressional votes on the forum will now represent the in-game votes by the citizens for the congress.
- Quorums are no longer necessary.
- Citizens can now judge how parties are doing and vote on the one they thing is doing best according to their values. In short, parties are held responsible for their actions.
- Parties are not hurt by candidates that are blacklisted, inactive, don't have a forum account or are otherwise unavailable during a vote.
- Votes are less influenced by who is around those 24 hours, meaning results can be better trusted to be the same every time. Changes can only occur through discussion and not timing.
I won't say this is the perfect or only solution, and if someone has a better one, I'd be happy to hear it, but we can't deny this works better than our current system and would truly represent our citizens.
I hope the parties that walked away from congress see this suggestion for reform and would agree to rejoin for constructive continuation of our eCountry should it be inacted.
- Revvenge
Facebook
Twitter
Discord
Comments
No
Thank you for your eloquent and well argumented reply.
Don't waste your time with the people who left the game.
It would be great if you were a bit more open minded.
I am, but you folks are new here, dont know anything. Gdlr is just a screamer. I don't like the idea of party representatives able to vote. A CM is elected to vote. you guys get the whole idea wrong.
Yes I'm still a noob in this game, which allows me to have a broader vision on things. Everything that is on the forum with laws is made up by the people who were elected as CMs. We have the possibility to make things up ourselves, make it even better than the game itself. So crazy ideas will be proposed to get you thinking about those possibilities. It's clear the status quo hurts our country, so something has to be done. Simply saying 'No' is exactly the same as simple leaving the forum and makes you part of the same group as Gdlr. People who don't want to put effort into improving our country.
I don't think 1 member of a party being representative of all is a good idea at all. As seen in vote's party members don't even always vote the same way, and im fairly sure if only 1 person is going to be representative that it will make things better. How ever going along the idea limiting the number of actually forum senators might not be the worst idea, cause noway we are going to get 40 active senators, we should be trilled if we can even pull off 20 active senators.
This way the quorum for voting will be easier reached, as well as having a near always active senate, well preventing from 1 person from completely misrepresenting their "entire" party.
First of all, I am not new, nor does that matter. Ideas are ideas and they are either good or bad, it doesn't matter where they come from. Just saying "I don't like it" and "A CM is elected to vote" are not arguments. Why is the idea bad? Try and address that when you're trying to discuss. That's how discussion works.
As for Fosite, next time read. I've already pointed out the votes don't have to be cast on one option, and as such the party representative can cast the votes in-line with the views in his party, if the party so pleases. Have 3 guys in favor and 2 against? You can reflect that in your votes.
As for "just reducing the amount of Congress Members". While I'm not entirely sure, I think the number is dictated by in-game provinces, but even if it's not, that doesn't fix the issue. We still have issues with misrepresentation, and fewer seats just means it's harder to accurately represent the votes. We will still have problems with activity. In the end the problem is not just the quorum. In fact, it's a smaller issue on the whole. The issue is that different parties have a different level of representation that has nothing to do with the election, but instead with the amount of people willing to sign up and willing to visit the forum more than once every 24 hours to vote.
Congress has nothing to do with the will of the people currently, and it wouldn't with a lower seat count either. In addition outcomes of votes should have nothing to do with things like timing.
You can vote in your party first, and the PP votes according to the wishes of the party. All people still have the power to voice their opinions, so if a PP isn't representing the wishes of the party, it will be known by everyone. Which will result most likely into people switching to other parties where they feel their opinion is represented. So it will fix itself.
But of course, in the first few months you will be right. Then we will probably have some powerful PPs who abuse their power. But it will be limited to one month max. Which is better than we have now where there is power abuse for unlimited time till something is done about it (which should be now).
Less CMs can also be an idea. But than you have to strip the rights of elected CMs ingame and not of others, which will be hard. Of you have to rent some of our regions to get a smaller congress.
I really like your idea. As I already said to you personally, the longer I think about it, the more I like it. There are a lot of problems which will be solved with this new system.
One of the problems I don't know about how to handle this, is when we don't have a dictator and have to vote ingame. This idea is not in line with the ingame mechanics (it's better than the ingame mechanics), so the ingame mechanics will block this system when we don't have a dictator and everyone is voting ingame as individuals.
At least this idea will give the people what they wanted. The opinion of the people will be important once again. Parties have to be active, and individual people will be less powerful. If there is a problem with power abuse it will be within the parties, which will most likely be solved automatically because of the elections we have every month.
If we are going to implement this system, the first months it will be a mess I guess. I think a lot of people will switch parties, because the differences will be clearer between parties. I do think it will be a less agressive competition between parties.
So a lot of advantages of this system, and not so many disadvantages. The disadvantages aren't as big as the disadvantages of our current system, so that's a good thing.
Thinking about this will already help to broaden the view of how our country could work. We all decide in the end how our country is ruled, so everything is possible. It's good that you show us this. If we can get this system implemented, or parts of the system where a lot of people agree on, then we can together with some law improvements and forum cleansing working towards a better country, which will benefit the daily management and the normal citizens of eNL.
Assuming this new system would still have a lawbook, either updated from the existing or a new one altogether, the in-game votes can be dictated according to the lawbook.
I imagine a law stating there is a forum vote first, according to the new system, and the congress is obliged to vote along the lines of the forum vote outcome.
So for instance if you are personally in favor of something, but the outcome says no, you have to vote no in-game when the vote is up.
If procedures are not followed, congress can be urged to vote one way or another to not damage the country. I assume in most cases this means the vote is no and the vote will be put up again once the procedure is followed.
This would ofcourse give the forum a lot more power, or at least make them very important over in-game mechanics, but I think the charm of eRepublik is that countries can make their own individual choices on how the country works, through means like the forum and other means outside the game itself. In-game all countries are the same, only able to differentiate through affiliated real life nationality, activity, location and size. Adding things like a forum allow countries to become much more diverse, using things like various different voting methods and other things they want in their digital country. The fact ours is currently dysfunctional doesn't mean we don't need any at all. The main thing is we need to update it to the situation, as the actual situation, and the situation the laws were based on have drifted too far apart, in my opinion.
> All this has resulted in people claiming the forum is not representative of the feelings of the people in-game. While I tend to agree, I would say that this issue already starts in-game.
This is where you lose me. The congress is representative of those wiling to give a damn and actually sign up for it. If these 'the people' really feel misrepresented they ought to sign up and should have no problem changing the system from within. We won't need a system change from the top down to boost representation.
Is it the fault of a voter that his party doesn't have enough candidates? The voter might not be interested in running because of issues in the time available to him, or his lack of discussion skills. Whatever their reason is, they might still feel the need to vote for a certain party. And when that party doesn't have enough candidates, they are underrepresented compared to the percentage of votes they've gotten.
In addition, this issue is across the board. If you look in the history of congress, the past half a year every single candidate for congress was elected. That means in all parties either they had just enough or too few candidates in every single election since December. That's not an issue of "Oh, just sign up" or a problem of certain parties. That's a chronic issue across the board.
Your argument is the same as when people in real life feel disappointed by the party they voted for and you'd say "Then go into politics yourself". It's a commitment people are not always willing to make, and while the threshold here is lower, it's still there.
I rather like this as it can (finally) solve several forum issues plus it makes more sure in game preferences of the voters on the congress elections are better translated to actual votes. Not to mention parties finally can make the real difference without having the need to let players run for congress knowing they will never visit our forum...
It could also mean even more "sheep" votes. since many people now already never read the debates and just vote blindly instead of looking why there is a vote going on.
If you want to be a cm is it to much to ask to actually do the job correctly and read up on what you are voting on?
Yup, but therefore you vote on a party. I vote on a party RL too. Not on a person. So party vision and actions become more important and its less depending on the number of players that can be mobilised on certain times on forum.
have you ever seen a rl election? because you actually vote on a person in that party not solely on the party.
and come on.. if you want to be a cm but can't be bothered to do your duty at least once every 24 hours...
I hardly know people voting on a person odan. Most just check the top box as they simply choose a party. Or the first women if they are female. Of course, sometimes people vote on a person to get him/her in, yet most don't and in RL party politics are leading. Local elections sometimes are a bit more personal, yet there also it's most of the time the party that prevails. Unless you know someone personal.