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The elections are close so the PTO-ers are again in business.

I know a few things both about PTO and anti-PTO thanks to my former experience in Ukraine, Bosnia, South Africa and Brazil. And while I am sure the eChinese Government knows how to fight the PTOers, I believe this type of knowledge should be shared with the rest of the general population. Because the general population can greatly help the anti-PTO effort of the Government in times of crisis like this one.

The best way to fight PTOs is to make sure the top 5 eChinese parties have Real Life Chinese presidents. But that is not all. In addition to that, each party with a Real Life Chinese president must have enough Real Life Chinese candidates in each province. In the case of eChina, "enough candidates" means each party needs to have one Real Life Chinese candidate in every province, including one in every colony.

If there aren't enough legitimate candidates in each province, it makes no difference if the Party President is Real Life Chinese or Martian. The game mechanics say that the Party President can delete a PTO-er from the list of candidates only if there are more legitimate candidates than PTO-ers.

This means that if a party has in one province only one candidate, and that candidate is a PTO-er, the Party President cannot delete him from the list and replace him with the legitimate candidate.

So the first anti-PTO move would be for each party to have at least a legitimate candidate in each province, including the colonies. And here come the first problems for eChina:

Problem 1) At the begining of day 1554 the last 3 parties from Top 6 were:

#4 - Long Live eChina, with 159 members;
#5 - Too Simple Party, with 129 members;
#6 - Soy Sauce Party, with 115 members.

Even though only the top 5 parties can send candidates for Congress, the difference among #4, #5 and #6 is so small that it is hard to guess which would stay in top 5 on February 23rd when the election lists are closed.

As long as the differences in membership are so small, the PTO-ers could be moving from one party to another in the last minutes before the daychange, making sure the party where they have candidates enters Top 5.

This means the first line of defense against PTO is to make sure each party has a large enough number of members so the PTO-ers cannot change the order of the parties from Top 5 in the last minutes.

Given the size of eChina's active population each of the last 2 parties controlled by Real Life Chinese should have about 250 members. This can be achieved if the Real Life Chinese who aren't members of any party yet join those parties today and stay there until February 26.

It is irrelevant if they like the party they join or if they vote for that party or not. What matters is to make sure the Top 5 parties are stable and cannot be replaced by a party with PTO-ers on the list.

Problem 2 It is difficult for a party with a total of ~150 members to find 40 legitimate candidates and still win some seats.

An ideal candidate would be not only Real Life Chinese but also an active person, who at least during the elections day stays in touch with the Party HQ and works for accomplishing the Party's goals.

If the party is small, 40 people is close to the total number of active people that Party has.

Each of those 40 candidates will be blocked in one province, meaning the party would lack 40 votes in the few key provinces where they absolutely want to win.

This is precisely why most of the time the small parties cannot find enough candidates, so they leave empty slots on their lists. Those empty slots are slots the PTO-ers can take.

This means the general population can help the anti-PTO effort by not only joining the smallest parties today and staying till 26th. They can also put themselves on the list of candidates in the less populated provinces, then send a PM to the Party President, explaining he/she takes part in the anti-PTO operation.

This way the Party President will know how many uninteresting provinces are protected by anti-PTO candidates and can focus the active party members to the other provinces, where the Party really wants to win a Congress seat

I expect some PTO clowns to try to write PMs in Chinese using Google Translate, pretending they are anti-PTO candidates. Most of the time such clowns would be easy to spot since Google Translate sucks.

But when in doubt, a short chat on QQ with them would immediately identify the fakes.

People outside China aren't used to QQ. And even if they install it, very few would be able to write correctly in Chinese in real time.

In addition to the two measures listed above, which can be take by any Chinese player it is important to follow the eChinese Government announcements regarding the anti-PTO measures. Anti-PTO works best when coordinated by a central authority.

Good luck with the Anti-PTO and have fun! Anti-PTOs make the game less boring.