Citizenship
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by Thore Thoreson
There has been much talk/discussion/propaganda regarding the granting of citizenship lately. Let's be honest, eBelgium is overrun with so-called "Tactical voters" in many of the parties. In fact, here are the results of the last Congressional elections:
Click here
The Free Belgian party (the so-called PTO party) received a total of 107 votes from a party member ship of 27. Even if we assume that every one of those extra votes was a Tactical voter and not someone from another party voting for a FB candidate, that is a grand total of only 80 "tactical" votes.
The Belgium for Belgians party (the so-called real Belgian party) received a total of 305 votes from a party membership of 179. Again, assuming that every one of those votes was a Tactical vote and not someone from another party (trying to keep these comparisons even-handed), that is a total of 126 "tactical" votes. This is more than the ENTIRE number of votes cast for FB. If FB is a "PTO" party, it is not doing a very effective job, in my opinion.
In an effort to combat the tactical voter threat, Rod Damon proposed the Belgian Limitation Talks (BLT) here. The only problem is, when FB followed thru with their end of the agreement, BfB did not.(here) In fact, even 2 months later, a full 40% of the indivduals BfB had self-identified as their Tactical voters are STILL VOTING IN BELGIAN ELECTIONS!
Perhaps you may ask yourself, why is that? I ask myself the same thing.
In an effort to combat any more of these tactical voters, I will be proposing a Constitutional Amendment until this problem gets back under control. I propose that all Citizenship requests must require the consent of TWO Congress Members of different parties before approval.
I challenge BfB to support this proposal and work towards getting rid of the foreign influence in their own ranks. If you call yourselves a Real Belgian Party, make sure your members actually reside in Belgium! Right now, it looks like you are the "Real Hungarian-Belgian Party". Make me happy and prove me wrong.
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Before everyone starts trying to lay claim to swaying the recent baby vote.
I am running some of the numbers
15% of the Belgian population is still born. The accounts were created and never even played.
38% have not reached the level to vote
So over half the population was not even able to vote.
I'll be factoring out the dead and dying of those who could vote and will be posting that soon
hmmmmm
Interesting what things you see when you start looking at people who are just in the background.
I think we may see some tickets being sent to Admin soon 🙂
Nice discussion-starter 😉
Rod Damon, I am sure that you keep track of this but can you tell us the spread of the population when you started the BLT talks? I know it was based on eRepTools.net but I can't find it again.
This would be interesting to compare the number of PHX tactical voters and the evolution. Or does someone have the amount of votes for BfB/FB during the first elections?
I am quite sure you would see that the number of PHX tactical voters (or at least people with Belgian citizenship living abroad) diminushed faster (percent wise) than EDEN.
Thereby : PHX did not diminush the number because they had no trust in EDEN. Why? Because in every single previous election, FB congressmen gave citizenships in order to get more people in. If PHX abandonned all their tactical voters, they would probably lose Belgium as EDEN has the advantage of timezone and could, by this, have more last minute voters.
I think the problem is the global distrust and also that we don't communicate all the information to each other. I had access to PHX orders concerning Belgium and citizenships, giving those through in the press is not allowed but you would see that PHX did indeed diminush his number of tactical voters 😛
@Apotygma
That the Hungarian Takeover Unit may have diverted some of its Tactical Belgians to their Takeover activities in the Czech Republic is quite likely.
The fact is that the agreement that was reached, called for a specific list to be given, verified, then citizenship was to change, and the process to repeat.
Phoenix failed to do that.
I have been in communication with the new people in charge, who indicated that they did want to resume, and offered a new list, that I verified. As of the last time I checked, only 1 of that list had bothered to change.
The entire premise of the BLT was to have a process that was easy to track and review.
It can still work, it just needs Phoenix to actually live up to things it agrees to.
There is a large percent of belgian citizens who didn't join a party yet. But these people voted. Are they tactical voters ? What do you mean by tactical voters ? Does a tactical voter is a foreigner voter ?
"I am quite sure you would see that the number of PHX tactical voters (or at least people with Belgian citizenship living abroad) diminushed faster (percent wise) than EDEN."
I can appreciate that, by percentage, Phoenix has diminished faster, the problem is, elections are not decide by percentage but by total numbers. I would love to see an end to the whole Phoenix/EDEN thing, but as long as the number of tactical voters on both sides is what actually determines our elections, we never will.
The tactical voters, in the way you use this term, didn't determine the last election. Belgians citizens did. They choosed to give their voices to others belgians and to have trust in them to have belgians managing Belgium. And i'm quite pride of that...
@ ThomasRed
I defined tactical voter as all those that voted in excess of the party membership (as has been done in BfB newspapers whenever FB receives votes greater than our membership number). I am not trying to accuse anyone of anything, I just want to inform Citizens that our electoral process is flawed, and see an end to ALL tactical voting.
@ThomasRed
If the Belgian voters decided the last election, what was the payment to Phoenix Headquarters for?
http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/donate/list/1458618/3" target="_blank">http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/dona[..]618/3
I never thought I would defend ThomasRED but it could have just been because he is a Phoenix supporter. That doesn't mean the BfB are, just him.
Again, I am not accusing, just trying to educate. ThomasRed has painted all of FB with the same brush as he paints Rod Damon. If people want to start casting aspersions on others, they need to make sure they are squeaky clean.
So according to you Thore Thoreson, the Belgians voters didn't decided the last election because I, ThomasRed, donated 2 gold to Phoenix Headquarters 16 days ago ? And because i donated these 2 gold the BfB is a Phoenix party ? It's a lack of respect toward the BfB position and stance on neutrality !
Oh, and you have showed soo much respect to us!
ThomasRed - I think what he is trying to say is that this donation is indicative of a larger pattern which shows that you, the BfB party leader, along with some (not all) other prominent BfB members, have an allegiance to the Phoenix alliance. Everyone is allowed to have their biases and opinions, of course, and having foreign ties doesn’t necessarily mean that eBelgium does not come first for you, but what makes this troublesome is that the party you have been elected to lead persistently claims to represent RL Belgian interests. This may have some truth to it (particularly for domestic issues), but clearly it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Why do you think Phoenix operatives troll so hard in the eBelgian media prior to elections? If you are going to hold FB accountable for its foreign influence as you did so effectively in the last election campaign, you should at least man-up to your own party's foreign influence. A lie of omission is still a lie. That is the point of this article I think. But of course I could be wrong.
I think Stilpo's explanation covers it all. In extent I think it's pointless to campaign in elections being the only true eBelgian party since foreign influence is permanent, in all parties.
btw, FB had 30 Croats let in a month ago, but mostly they dropped their Belgian citizenship to go to Slovenia, which is much more important for them to TO. That may partly explain the decrease in EDEN tactical voters.
@daniecox
Another thing I wonder is why you, as a member of the Phoenix military, a citizen of the UK and currently residing in Brazil, feel the need to comment in Belgium, which is supposed to be neutral. It's funny how all of your posts are for one particular party, too.
Stilpo is much more eloquent than I in expressing what I was trying to get across. I just wonder what would happen if some people put as much energy into solving problems such as low birthrate, loss of citizens and a general low activity level, as they do trolling other political parties.
Assuming that "tactical voters" are all people who are not member of a party, but who are voting for that party, would be strongly distorting the picture - level 6 players can vote but can't join a party, while some older citizens don't feel the need to join a party, but will vote for someone they know or like. For example, it wasn't very tactical to give Sandy so many votes, but the reasons why she did get those votes could be easily explained 😉
But to deny the existence of (quite some) PHOENIX tactical voters would be turning a blind eye on this aspect of eBelgian politics. Just as the tactical eUS voters, their interest in the course of our elections is very understandable, and we shouldn't forget that not every PHOENIX vote is Hungarian one - historically, there are quite some RL Belgian players who support PHOENIX and live abroad, who feel the strong urge to influence the election outcome, with or without official orders.
I never try to deny the existence of tactical voters that came from either the Phoenix or EDEN alliance. Anyone who does try to deny that is a liar or a fool.
I am disappointed that the "new" people in charge of the Phoenix tactical voters seem to be following the pattern of the previous people, in promising and failing to deliver.
I just checked the revised list, and still no change other then the 1 who went to the USA to PTO there.
@ Aldous
I understand that not every excess vote was from a tactical voter, that's why I stated in my article: "Even if we assume that every one of those extra votes was a Tactical voter and not someone from another party voting...", BfB newspapers use that standard when discussing votes cast for other parties. I just used the same logic to analyze the situation. I am currently developing a list of all Citizens, party membership and their movement pattern during and after votes. It will take a little bit to get it in a publishable state as I don't have mad skillz when it comes to things like this, and RL sometimes intrudes too. lol
Our party didn't use this standard of course. The word "tactical voting" was even never used in our last BfB articles. A tactical voters is someone who vote with a efficience goal. Whar you're talking about is PTOvotes, ATOvotes, foreigners voters. That's not exactly the same thing.
@thomasred
Any voter in a country's election who does not live in the country, work in the country, does not participate in the running of the government or its programs, or contributes in a meaningful way to the dialogues of the country is a tactical voter.
The only reason they have citizenship is to vote here. Whether PTO/ATO/foreign/whatever, it is a tactical voter.
FB has benefited from USA and EDEN voters in the past, BfB has benefited from Phoenix voters
We have not the same definition...
The Belgian definition of a tactical voters, please belgians correct me if i'm wrong, is someone, who is in a party or not, who vote according a rate efficiency of his vote. He will prefer vote for the candidate with 5 votes, even if he prefered to vote for X, who have already 22 votes, because his vote will be more useful to his party as this player vote for ideas and values rather than for candidates.
There are also "some" Belgians living around the world. More often in Phoenix country : eNL, eHungary, etc
There are still Belgian...
Yes, It's the definition we are always using.
We called other PToers (Eden) or Atoers (friends of Phoenix)
I do agree there are a few Belgians around the world in other countries.
And by few, I am using the exact definition of few.
Anyone following the direction of the Hungarian Takeover Unit, can't really accept that they are "Belgian". http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/eln-kv-laszt-si-v-geredm-nyek-1288648/1/20" target="_blank">http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/eln-[..]1/20
The same can be said of the people following the instructions of other nation's tactical voting groups.
It is time for ALL tactical voters to be reduced equally to maintain the balance and to allow the country to remain a Independent and Free Belgium.
@ ThomasRed
Please stop writing as if you speak for ALL eBelgians. As has been pointed out (and abundantly I might add), no matter where in the world you live (in RL), if you are here in eBelgium, you have eBelgian Citizenship, and are contributing to eBelgian society in a constructive manner, you are eBelgian. Making distinctions regarding RL location is counterproductive. As a case in point, I believe some of the most effective Phoenix leaders actually reside in the US in RL. And I can think of SEVERAL RL Belgians that are members of what you call "the PTO party".By your own admission, "The Belgian Party is a society builder, a country builder, and have fought all his live for the right of Belgians !" (http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-thomasred-a-belgian-story--1184070/1/20)
Does this include ONLY RL Belgians?
I used the term "tactical voter" as a way of showing that such voters are not actual, productive citizens, but are "citizens-of-convenience". I apologize if we are at cross words because of differing definitions, the term just seemed to fit better and get my point across better.
You said : "Bfb newspapers use that standard [about tactical voters]". It's just wrong and that's what i wanted to correct.
On the other way, i'm glad you decided to learn a bit of the story of the Belgians ingame, at least the story view by a BP insider. 😉
To use your own words, ThomasRe😛
"We can guess that all these first votes have been casted by Belgians citizens, as they are matching with the numbers of members of each party."
I know you don't use the words Tactical Voter" but the meaning is the same.
(http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-belgium-for-belgians-election-day-1320910/1/20)