Voting systems in eRepublik
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by Achab Collins
This is the fourth article of the "Political Science" series. I invite you to read and comment the other three, if you willn find this one interesting.
Voting system is one of the most important features of a political system. With the words "Voting system" we mean the rules and mechanichs governing a country's election.
Nowadays we have to divide elections (and voting systems) in two categories: CP's elections and Congress election.
Country President's electoral system
CP are elected in a very simple manner. Every citizien goes to his ePoll and vote for the guy he thinks will work better. The guy who gets more votes is appointed CP. Simple, isn't it?
In "scientific" words this procedure can be classified as:
-Direct, because there is no one (so called "electors") between the voters and their representative;
-One-winner, because only one person is elected;
-Majority, because is elected the person who gets more votes.
Congress electoral system
Things are a bit more complicated (not too much though) for Congress (or Dail, or Parliament, or howdoyouliketocallit). Every one goes to the ePoll: The only vote allowed by the system is for the List (corresponding to a single party), made up of candidates appointed by Party Presidents of the top five parties.We cannot choose to vote for the single candidate we like.
At the end of the Election Day, the amount of votes got by each list is compared to the total votes expressed, calculating percentages.
In scientific words, the system is:
-a pure proportional system, because the lists get a number of seats corresponding to the percentage of votes. Such system is very democratic, representing in full the will of the voters;
-a "locked list" system, because the order of priority is set by PPs and can't be modified by voters expressing votes for a specific candidate. This means i cannot choose to support a single candidate. I have only to vote the party list and hope my friend will get in;
-a limited fragmentation system, because the fragmentation of the Congress into numerous party-groups is limited by the treshold imposed by the "Top 5 Parties limitation". This allows an easier handling of political problems, cause CPs and other members of the instituition have to cooperate/coordinate with a smaller number of groups. However, this limitation can make Democracy a bit lame, causing ideas of the "smaller" parties to remain outside the Dail.
Another feature abolished in the electoral system reform, good for in-game democracy and representativity was the system of the regional lists.
Judging the whole system, we can say it is a good, democratic system. Representativity can be improved by providing the chance of expressing a preference about which candidate we want to represent ourselves (so called open list system).
In the end, we want to remember to every citizien the important role they play: they are voters, required to do their duty every month, for the sake of eDemocracy and fun.
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Comments
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Actually, a lot of people aren't happy with the current Congress system, because it's made it too simplistic. The old system was more exciting with voters being moved to regions where they were most needed whereas now it's just a set and hope. Pros and cons for both methods.
that's true, i partially agree. I prefer to express a vote to the single candidate, but moving voters on Election Day is a trick I, as a democratic, cannot accept
It's an interesting dilemma. People now vote for parties rather than individuals, but, from a game-playing point of view, election day is now pretty tedious whereas it used to be quite exciting on IRC on election night.
It is different now. But the main reason for the change was to keep individuals from getting elected using multis. The admins got tired of having tickets after every election. One of their many changes to make life easier for them. lol
interesting , Voted up my friend, nicely done! o7
Voting for a party instead of individual creature is the most retarded change admins did in thi game....besides economic module of course.
Now a lot of arseholes get in on account of few solid candidates....
Nice article. I have not had a chance yet to read the other articles. I will though.
Boated
Great article.
I actually much prefer the new congress election system to the old one. In my opinion the old system was completely broken and was the result of older features that had been removed like regional government features. This lead to a system where a candidate could be elected with one vote, while another could get 4 votes and not get in...
That's a pretty terrible system when you consider that there's no political representation on the regional level, meaning that while there may have been lots of strategy involved, there was very little democracy or good government as a result.
good job