Citizen Poll - Change in Article I of the Constitution - The Census

[donsig]

OK, here's the post from Rain that I was thinking about earlier (it is from the PI#6 guilty.not guilty poll):

This being my last post in this silly enterprise - i'll just point out once again that this is no longer seems even to be an imitation os a serious proceeeding but is simply as someone else described it - a popularity contest. Now that the War-Church is scrounging up votes for Donsig - (we have no parties) i expect the whole proceeding to be overturned. Well its good to see the spirit of OJ has found a home.

Now we have this from Cyc:

Bill, if I had an answer to this social club circus that sometimes rules our polls, I would have spouted it long ago. I have noted that I'm usually the lone ranger on this subject, and frankly I'm tired of fighting for every inch of ground I can gain on it. I don't see a conclusive answer at this point.

Shaitan says PI#6 ended with a wimper. It's more like "the song is over but the melody lingers." And that melody is basically the cause of this whole amendment, just as the Deputy Debates (and the resulting legislation) were spawned because an aqueduct wasn't built in Eyr!

I run for president and 45 to 50 votes are cast. Some of us step back and say, "Wow, that's alot of votes. There can't be that many people in the demo game." So we now have this attempt to weed out the *bogus* citizens.

I say the idea is hogwash. More people voted in terms 3 and 5 because they were actually races where the result was not a foregone conclusion. It is absurd to think that we had 45 people in the demo game in term 3 and then many of them went away because I was no longer president, only to reappear again in the term five election because I was running again. I certainly don't have that many friends following me around these forums. And I am tired of the insinuation that I stuffed the ballot box or that someone in my 'camp' did so.

If we'd stop with all this rule making and get on with the game (and issues like optional turn chats) we might actually keep our current players, bring back some we lost and maybe even attract some new people.

I know I'm a broken record - I've been saying this since I used the veto in term 3.

 

[disorganizer]

you should count how often. and again i repeat:
my favor would be to completely abandon any detailed rules and just use a basic ruleset clarifying the sense of the game.
the rest would just be written down how-tos to be easily changed by citizenry.
the main point should be that all things should be polled if anyhow possible...

this post was just to keep up with donsigs postcount ;-)

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Originally posted by Cyc
Bill, if I had an answer to this social club circus that sometimes rules our polls, I would have spouted it long ago. I have noted that I'm usually the lone ranger on this subject, and frankly I'm tired of fighting for every inch of ground I can gain on it. I don't see a conclusive answer at this point.

And I didn't say Rain posessed dignity and class (if you want to re-read my post), I said she left with politeness and class. Even if she was as knee-deep as you during the PI, doesn't mean that she couldn't exit the forums in a polite manner.

Cyc,

I should have toned down my response a bit, so I apologize for that. I do note the incorrect quoting on my part, and that is inappropriate, however I do feel it captured the gist of your comments.

I also take notice of your implied comment that my behavior during those times had hypocracy all over it. Obviously I disagree. but I respect your opinion highly, and thus will not argue the point.

Regarding Rain, I find her departure to not be the honorable (honourable to some of you ;-)) thing you feel it is.

She was an elected leader (having beaten me by a vote as I recall), and I wish she would have stayed and worked on solutions, versus picking up her toys and going home as soon as the vote shifted against her desires. I recall that she had no problems with the process at all in the early days when it looked like donsig would fry.

That's my view, and I have no doubt you disagree, and again, I respect your opinions.

I was asking a serious question though about the voting process. You seem to feel it is something I don't, that being a social club of sorts. I would like to work on ways to eliminate that, and one method is to move away from the polling method, and submit ballots. Clearly donsig was painted with a bad brush on Rain's departure, and there is NO collaborating evidence that any inappropriate votes were cast.

I wonder if others perceive a problem here, and what solutions they would bring to the table?

Bill

 

[chiefpaco]

Originally posted by Octavian X
The above discussion is what I like to call, 'A bunch of old guys on a porch.' They talk about things I know nothing of from the past. This can go on for days, until somebody like me says something. Oh well...

LoL. /me adds this to the Civ3 Demogame Quote Hall of Fame

 

[Cyc]

One thing I would like to make clear is that I in no way insinuated (at least on purpose) that Donsig was to be held up as a cause of the problem. I respect Donsig as a political Leader with integrity and feel he was our best President, hands down. I also respect your opinion Bill, but I always felt the need to defend Rain, as she had the guts to break free of the rules. We need people like that as Leaders (not necessarily rule-breakers but people with guts). I wouldn't have taken my toys and gone home in her situation either, but different people have different breaking points and Rain was fairly new to this forum. I pretty much spent the whole PI trying to calm everyone down and smooth over all the rough edges. THAT was a hard thing to do as the processes we used then were not adequate for the depth and the scope of the game. We are a lot closer now than we were then in this regard. Which is why I have trouble understanding Donsig's objection to this issue (the census).

In regards to your serious question...I thought I gave a serious answer. I don't know if there is a way to have secret ballots and still have unquestioned elections with integrity. Open Ballots may be the only solution. ****JOKE - Why, I myself voted for Donsig 6 times during the PI - JOKE*** It will be one of those issues that may never be answered. I've tried to keep the public aware of the problems I see. If they don't want to see them it's fine by me. It's not really that big of an issue, because people have to be elected to those positions, so it doesn't really matter how they get there, just that someone gets there.

 

[donsig]

The insinuation may not be that I'm the cause of the problem but that there is a problem nonetheless. I have been advocating an open ballot since these ballot stuffing allegations were first made. I've got nothing to hide and I would certainly like to see confidence in our electoral process restored. An open ballot would also give us a truer census. We would actually be able to see how many different citizens voted in ALL the elections combined and tally them up. A census should be a counting of the people. It should not be a measure of *active* citizens. If we can get 51 people to vote in our presidential election then it seems to me that we have at least 51 citizens. Is my logic flawed?

If some citizens choose not to vote in certain other elections we should not discount their citizenship.

By taking the average number of votes in a term's elections we arrive at a number that is lower than that in the election which received the most votes. We are in effect saying that x number of citizens aren't active enough in the game to warrant including them in the census.

The main effect of all this will be to make it easier to change rules. That is why I am against this amendment Cyc.

 

[Shaitan]

The intent is not to make it easier to change rules. The intent is to make rule changing, quorums, etc. reliably constant. We can make the approval percent for changes as high as we want but for quorums to work we need a reliable figure to base them on.

 

[Shaitan]

I'm surprised that nobody has asked for a T-shirt yet...

 

[Raven1er]

the game is over. forget it

 

[Octavian X]

This change would affect the new game, also. Last time I checked, we weren't scrapping the constitution.

 

[disorganizer]

hmmm. could we come back to topic again?!?

*sigh*

i found another point when determining active citizenry from the poll-counts:
abstain should be excluded, as this could also be non-citizens just wanting to see the results ;-)
so if a election is 10-20-with 5 abstain, the active citizen count should be 30, and not 35 like now ;-)

this would influence the quorum as it would be 15 in the first and 18 in the second example.

 

[Shaitan]

If someone wants to see results without voting they use the "view results" link.

 

[disorganizer]

they wont. people are lazy.
if i go to apo, in the big polls i vote "abstain" and state this as post.
then, i can come back every now and then and just click the thread to view the standings...

 

[Shaitan]

Selecting the "view results" link is simpler than choosing an option and voting and definitely simpler than choosing an option, voting and then posting that you abstained.

I don't think this is a very big problem, dis. As there's also no way to verify that it is done, eliminating all of the abstain votes disenfranchises our own citizens.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Shaitan
The intent is not to make it easier to change rules. The intent is to make rule changing, quorums, etc. reliably constant. We can make the approval percent for changes as high as we want but for quorums to work we need a reliable figure to base them on.

Then let's use the election that garners the highest total votes. this way we will not be excluding citizens from the census simply because we think they are not active enough.

Better yet, let's do away with the secret ballot in our elections. By having everyone openly post their votes we will then have some raw, hard data for checking claims of inactive or non-citizens voting in our elections.

 

[Zur]

Bill:She was an elected leader (having beaten me by a vote as I recall), and I wish she would have stayed and worked on solutions, versus picking up her toys and going home as soon as the vote shifted against her desires. I recall that she had no problems with the process at all in the early days when it looked like donsig would fry.

Maybe that's because she felt it was not worth her time working in/fighting against this kind of system? I don't believe (without knowing her well) one can say whether what she did was honourable or otherwise. I choose to stay because I believe there is still hope.

Octavian:The above discussion is what I like to call, 'A bunch of old guys on a porch.' They talk about things I know nothing of from the past. This can go on for days, until somebody like me says something. Oh well...

Sorry, Octavian, I can imagine how you feel, but hopefully from the discussion and quotes here, you could make some sense of the issues here. If we do not recognize the problems, we are liable to make the same mistakes again. This goes out to the many citizens who joined after term 4 or 5.

 

[eyrei]

I can't believe I missed this discussion. Anyway, a few thoughts:

I have no objection to a public voting procedure where everyone posts their vote.

I still firmly believe that PI6 was a result, not of bureacracy, but of people feeling that their power was threatened by a president who felt stopping a turn chat was preferable to making a major decision based on a poll of a very small number of citizens.

Rain's resignation was a result of the egocentric thinking that most of us are guilty of at times. Because the group did not come around to her way of thinking, she assumed that there was some sort of conspiracy.

 

[chiefpaco]

I like the averaging. Am I missing something? Are we assuming the Presidential election will always attract the most votes? And, what happens when there is no Presidential election - i.e. the President runs unapposed? I think this covers all scenarios nicely. I think it also encourages total participation (i.e. voting more than once).

 

[Shaitan]

Actually, there is a flip side which seems to be ignored. There are times (Term 4) when the Presidential election has very low turnout. A runaway election just doesn't attract the participation that a contest between 2 or more popular candidates does. In that case, the "census" was very low. Averaging corrects both high and low attendance in the single election.

When there is only one candidate for President the plan was to have an election anyway with the choices being Candidate 1 and Abstain. This would likely lead to an abysmally low attendance.

 

[disorganizer]

I have another proposal... why not use the 95th percentile of the participation?
This will give a even more realistic view of it.
;-)
or a modulo... maybe we could even use a gauss curve to calculate the optimal value. fact will still be that the 26 seems to be too high compared to the average poll participation in the normal polls. we should really do an average on the poll-participation of every term and then compare to the election results to get a calculation for a value fitting this average.