New Voting System?

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Another idea from yours truely....

The next elections may be held as a PM vote.

With the recent specualtions around some polls that have happened this is the easiest and most full proof way to assure everything is done properly.

Each person would send me one PM with their election choices for all positions. Those ballots would then be tallied and shown in a result thread (as it is now).

Basically the only change would be that people would not vote in actual thread polls.

Ideas/Comments?

 

[disorganizer]

the disadvantage would be that you dont see tendencies before vote. and that it gets the excitement out of the elections when returning many times to look who advanced a bit.
or do you post forecasts every hour? ;-)

 

[Shaitan]

I agree with disorganizer. It's exciting to check back to see how a poll is progressing. Especially the presidential election in term 3. Hotly contested up to the finish line - quite an exciting race. Compare the participation level of that poll with the presidential election from term 4. In term 4 Chieftess had an obvious lead from the start. Much lower participation resulted.

 

[donsig]

I guess I'd like to know the results of the investigation of the term three elections and the PI#6 poll. I do not advocate major election changes based on recent speculation.

 

[disorganizer]

also, the pm-vote wont hinder ppl from misusing multiple nicks to cast invalid votes. you wont be able to see it, as you get a normal citizen pm. you would only notice wheter the pms origin from citizens or not, which you will also be able to see from the poll.
the prevention of duplicate nicks will be the problem in validation of votes.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Originally posted by disorganizer
also, the pm-vote wont hinder ppl from misusing multiple nicks to cast invalid votes. you wont be able to see it, as you get a normal citizen pm. you would only notice wheter the pms origin from citizens or not, which you will also be able to see from the poll.
the prevention of duplicate nicks will be the problem in validation of votes.

When I get the PM I can see each person who has voted and make sure they are indeed a citizen. Plus I can check to make sure they are not a DL (Double Log-In) much easier.

As far as it only being recent specualtions; This is the second term that people have contested/questions/had doubts/felt uncentain/felt cheated/not tursted the system. 2 of 4 terms. I've tried to let the game saty as normal a course as it was, but strange things seem to be happening. I'm thinking of doing this so that I won't have to be adding new polls to investigate each time we have an election. Once people don't trust the system, they will doubt it more often.

I could post updates, but they wouldn't be every hour.

 

[Chieftess]

If there's a way to tweak the board so that you can't view the poll until you vote, then you could do that.

Maybe on the line where it has the link to view the poll, put something like if the user ID/IP doesn't match the one in the poll (meaning that haven't voted) AND the forum is the demogame forum, then they can't see the poll.

 

[disorganizer]

i think we could(!) give this a try for i election. just to see the results of it.

btw:
could we get this neat little excel sheet of yours for the term4-election?

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

I agree with donsig, I would like a public airing of the results of the PI#6 investigation. I do know that you, DoM, have been quite busy and confirmed that you will do so when the job is complete.

Beyond that, I favor your proposal. Daily updates on results should be sufficient. Hopefully all citizens will vote for the candidates they believe in, versus waiting to see what the returns look like.

Bill

 

[Shaitan]

We've got a couple of "leftover" elections from T4. Why not try this out on them?

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

@ Chieftess: No, there's no way to tweak the forums that way. This was the only way I could think of to put any kind of certain control into the elections.

@ Dis: I'll have to clean it up a bit, but I'll add it to the Election Results Thread when it's done.

@ Shaitan: Actually, since we got only one nominee for each open position, they are the automatic winners. Both of them registered just before nominating themselves.



Since the game may be over soon, I'll just leave it to the next Mods to work on. It was mainly going to be short-term temporary solution until we found out about the concerns over past elections.

 

[Homie]

I like voting in the polls, and I see no reason to switch to this PM kind of voting. In addition, it would be a lot more work for you Duke, and we would have to count on you being able to count the votes correctly and post them recently after the elections. With the polls the votes are counted automatically. Regarding this case, keep it the way it is.

 

[Immortal]

im inclined to support the pm system.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Originally posted by Homie
I like voting in the polls, and I see no reason to switch to this PM kind of voting. In addition, it would be a lot more work for you Duke, and we would have to count on you being able to count the votes correctly and post them recently after the elections. With the polls the votes are counted automatically. Regarding this case, keep it the way it is.

Yes, I'm not sure I would trust myself with counting either....

 

[Homie]

Yes, I'm not sure I would trust myself with counting either....

hehe. I am sure you count properly, but when the counting is done automatically it is 100 % correct every time

 

[chiefpaco]

I prefer using online polls because it:
- is surely fair for everyone to see the final results.
- requires less effort from the mod.
- is about a simple and failsafe way of voting we can get.
- won't clog someone's PM box (imagine if that happened).
- does not place a dependency on someone to count votes (i.e. what if the mod were to go missing half-way through).

If we were to implement your proposal, I would suggest not posting preliminary results ever. I think the biggest flaw we have with the current system is that people can consider the poll results before voting, which is an unfair way to vote for someone. While I think polls are exciting to follow, I don't think it is right. I also think they would be exciting to be held in suspense and really exciting to see who the winners are only after the polls close.

 

[Almightyjosh]

Um... I can never see the polls before I vote, how can everyone else?? Am I looking in the wrong place?? Besides, its more fun when you can vote and then see what impact you had, this makes votes feel important and influential, which is one of the best ways to keep people interested. Why do you think so many people are politically apethetic in RL??

 

[Chieftess]

There's a link next to the vote button where you can see the results.

 

[donsig]

Voting in the polls is also easier for the voters. I expect we'd have a lower voter turnout if we have to vote by pm. I'd bet not even all our citizens know how to pm. Heck, I was hanging around these forums for almost a year before I knew what a pm was!

 

[Almightyjosh]

Very true, the polls are simple and everyone understands them, you cant have any sort of complications in the voting procedure, just look at how you yanks stuffed up Florida!!