Political Parties

[Strider]

Okay, as we've decided to allow Political Parties inside of the Demogame, we need to discuss exactly how they will work. Do we want to tie them in, legally, with the election process, or just make it a kind of sub-game (to find the most dominate party). Also, we need to discuss the possibility of political takeovers, and what should be done about it.

Another thing, should we limit Political Parties in any way? This is our first time trying them out (everyone inside of this group anyway).

 

[GenMarshall]

There should not be any political parties. All they would cause is just hurt feelings and voting blocks.

The only political parties we can have are citizens groups which are esentialy special interest groups that have only little or no influences in the elections.

I personaly dont want to see the demogame to turn into the Model Parlament :-/.

 

[Alphawolf]

Okay, as we've decided to allow Political Parties inside of the Demogame, we need to discuss exactly how they will work. Do we want to tie them in, legally, with the election process, or just make it a kind of sub-game (to find the most dominate party).

I would say neither just treated them as citizen groups, if one party wants to run a single candidate they can but they don't have to. People shouldn't be penalized for not joining a party.

Also, we need to discuss the possibility of political takeovers, and what should be done about it.

Exactly what do you mean by this?

Another thing, should we limit Political Parties in any way? This is our first time trying them out (everyone inside of this group anyway).

What kind of limits are you talking about.

-the Wolf

 

[GenMarshall]

Exactly what do you mean by this?

For example, if one special intetest group merges with another special interest group.

What kind of limits are you talking about.

Limits such as "How much influence can they have over elections" for example.

 

[Alphawolf]

Also according to the unofficial poll about 64.1 are for with 24.5 against. Assuming that this is poll is true and the opinion of the majority is important, I'd say that they're in.

-the Wolf

 

[GenMarshall]

Also according to the unofficial poll about 64.1 are for with 24.5 against. Assuming that this is poll is true and the opinion of the majority is important, I'd say that they're in.

-the Wolf

I beleve they should have limited infuences in the election so that they wont cause hurtfeelings from mudslinging and voting blocks.

I dont go with voting blocs, I go with the individual.

 

[Alphawolf]

For example, if one special intetest group merges with another special interest group.

I see this as a matter for those groups alone.

Limits such as "How much influence can they have over elections" for example.

This is still vague I was hoping for something a bit more concrete.

-the Wolf

 

[Alphawolf]

I beleve they should have limited infuences in the election so that they wont cause hurtfeelings from mudslinging and voting blocks.

I dont go with voting blocs, I go with the individual.

It is an individual's choice to join a party in the first place. I don't think that anyone should be penalized for not joining a party, but by the same token people who join parties shouldn't be penalized either.

-the Wolf

 

[Strider]

Exactly what do you mean by this?

I mean if one party manages to completely takeover. No one is is capable of getting elected, unless they are a part of that party.

What kind of limits are you talking about.

Maybe a Max number of poistions they can hold (or max number of candidates they can put there support behind).

It is an individual's choice to join a party in the first place. I don't think that anyone should be penalized for not joining a party, but by the same token people who join parties shouldn't be penalized either.

They can be penalized with it anyway, wether they should or not. That is part of what this discussion is about, how should we make sure that someone will not be penalized for joining (or not joining) a particular political party?

 

[RoboPig]

I dont go with voting blocs, I go with the individual.

but if the indivual votes one way due to a political party then its OK. Political parties aren't forcing you to vote one way or the other. they are a group of people who tend to vote a certain way who gather to discuss topics from their perspective and to try to talk to elected officials to see their way. if you choose not to vote with them even when you are a member of the party then that fine.

 

[GenMarshall]

Greekguy made a good statement on why we should not have poitical parties or at least limit their influences on elections:

Yeah, and i bet that the people who said yes are newbies and the people who said no are vets (including me). that's because we know the DG is fine without them and they will only make things bad. i know parties might look apealing, but elections should be based on issues not party affiliation. it will degrade elections into whose party has more members.

I mean if one party manages to completely takeover. No one is is capable of getting elected, unless they are a part of that party.

That would be totaly unfair since this would just have political parties more influence in the elections. What about the ones who are unaffiliated/independent? are thet bared from running in elections? I would say that you dont need to be in a political party in order to run in an election, just to be fair to all citizens, political affiliated or not.

Maybe a Max number of poistions they can hold (or max number of candidates they can put there support behind).

Again this one is quite unfair since again this places more influence in political parties. There should not be a max number of poistions they can hold. This is the reason why we dont have political parties in demogames past, is that it creates too much headache, too much hurtfeelings, and too much mudslinging.

In summary of my argument, I feel that Political Parties should only have little influence during elections. I feel that people should be alowed to run in elections regardless of there political affiliation. This is not the Model Parlament (a game that used to be here in CFC), I lost interest in the Model Parlament because it was to heavily based on political parties and perfer ther non-political party atmosphere of the demogame.

I come to the citizens that political parites should have limited influences on political parties and have a person's skills have more influence on elections.
1. A political party should be an equivelent to a special interest group
2. There should be no limits on how many party members are in the elections
3. Elections should solely be baised on the person's compitance and skills, Not their party affiliation.

 

[Armed_Maniac]

I would say neither just treated them as citizen groups, if one party wants to run a single candidate they can but they don't have to. People shouldn't be penalized for not joining a party.

-the Wolf

I agree, one should not have to belong to a political party to be elected.

 

[GenMarshall]

I have done a bit of research into past Demogames in regards to Political Parties. I have already posted it in the poll entitled "Political Faction".

Since this topic also deals with Political Parties, I should post a copy here to .

I have done some research on this (Its quite limited since TF has turned off the search for the forums and have to rely on Google search). I have gathered several posts regarding to this issue.

I believe parties are banned, because it is against the rule of CFC being one big happy family. We aren't exactly one big happy family anyway and you could see that in certain forums; however, the political parties COULD make the demogame horrible.
Original post

The CFC Demogame for the most part has avoided of "Political Parties" in a certain sence.

Political Parties as I'm refering to, is an entire organization which, tells it's members (as a organization) to vote for a particular candidate, or use the organization as a campaign tool for specific nominees (Debate Groups wouldn't be under this). Organizations which work twoards trying to fill the government with only members of their own "party." As I saw you mention elsewhere, this is one of those "unspoken" and often debated "rules." I use Rule loosly there.

However, Citizen organizations which support certain goals, but do not, specifically tell their members "vote for him!" do not come under this definition. And individuals (who may be leaders of organizations), however are allowed to put support for nominees in their signature, asking people to vote, in general, but not within the scope of the organization itself.

Now, poltical parties have been done elsewhere, not totally familiar with how they worked out.

But, the general I feel the reason against it is, it encourages mudslinging, it encourages "elitist clubs" discouraging new citizens from running for office.

But, like I said...this is a rather general, loose "rule" can't tell ya how many times I've seen someone try to promote the creation of Political Parties wondering "why not?" and thus starting a large debate about whether we should introduce 'em and see what happens or leave it as is.
Original Post

Citizens are given the right to assemble but not to assemble in such a way that breaks the rules of the forums, which political parties encourage. Not to mention all in all can decrease the "fun" in the game and causing a Demogame Failure.

There is nothing wrong with Citizen's groups who band together with a common goal, and discuss how events effect their goals, and rally behind a cause. Trying to work to inform people to vote for their option (ie. declare war on Egypt or rush culture instead of upgrading units), this promotes discussion, and interest in the game.

It's a far cry from Groups which encourage members to only vote for members of the same, or allied organizations, and would attack members of opposition organizations.

Essentially Political parties deal with people, candidates.
Citizen Groups deal with Ideas.

Speaking Historically here, even George Washington (the first US President) told the Nation in several of his speeches to Beware of Political Parties and steer clear of them at all cost. Now there are MANY people who just vote the party line, ignorant of the candidates themselves, (I wish to avoid a real life poltical Debate here) it's just as bad for Republicans to vote for Bush "just because he's a Republican" as it is for Democrats to vote for Kerry "just because he's a Democrat." Voting needs to be based on policy and ideas NOT which party you belong to.
Original Post

Secondly, I do not like political parties. They, in my opinion would only cause division among the ranks when we are trying to develop a more coheasive environment (albeit containing debate). One of the major problems with political parties is (as stated above) block voting. In all four Demogames, this was only really tried once, <snip>. This initiated a Public Investigation, as Private Messages were sent out to indiviuals asking for votes for candidates within the STG. All that did was make people mad because they come here to have fun, not be recruited.

So there, I DO NOT WANT POLITICAL PARTIES. But there should be mention of the Ban of political parties in the Constitution. Not in the Preamble. But somewhere.

Original Post

political parties=This was discussed and strongly squashed in the first demo game, and I never quite understood why it was not allowed. I think there is the possibility of political maneuvering going overboard and people feeling personally attacked or rejected. As GN pointed out, this is a great forum for building community and we don't want to jepordize that or create hard feelings between fellow CFCers. With that warning in mind, I think having different political parties, or something to that effect, could add a whole new element to the game that could be quite fun, and give folks who don't quite have a grasp on the game itself for whatever reason a way to get involved and participate. I think it's an idea worth continued discussion, anyway.

Original Post

And finaly, from the Duke himself:

The initial reason was based on the fact that political parties basically excluded particular people. Since the political 'party' would be based on nothing more than who is friends with whom. It wouldn't be based on anything like ideals or game concerns. Once that 'party' is able to get enough friends together, they can basically stuff the ballot box and elect whomever they want.

This would lead to people not even trying to run against them and thus stop playing the game.

In one of the Civ 3 DG, we had 'guilds'. These guilds basically satrted to act as political parties by recommending their favorite people to the rest of the guild.

The main concern is that political parties would effectively exclude people from the game and thus cause the game to lose players. The first is technically against ther forum rules and the other thing we did not want to happen for the game.

Hope that helps.


DoM
Original Post, quotations in Oct's post since it was done via PM between him and Duke

Wow, they are backward. I think having no political parties puts us a LONG WAY ahead of other demo-games, they all dengrate into in-fighting and mud-slinging. Poly had 2 parties and that was bad, these guys have half a dozen!!
Original Post

Even our own Duck of Flanders placed in more disadvantages of a political party

wel ,i gave this some thought ,and i guess political party's have their advantage's and disadvantages.

Advantage's:

-People of same oppinion's cangather under a coman party.
-The party can represent the oppinion of their member's by objecting to the decission's made by leader's and not in line with the oppinion's of the party.

Disadvantage's:

-Member's of party's can seriously influence ellection's as member's can conspire to vote for eachother
-Party's wouldn't always be balanced ,meaning that almost everybody would like to be with the most powerfull party.
Original Post

The problem with political parties is that people won't get their true say. The head of the party might say "Vote for XYZ leader". If they have 20 people in their party, that's 20 votes for them. But, not all of those people might agree with the decision. It might be 13 votes for that person. And if a person goes against a party, then that's a formula for trouble.Original Post

I also expressed my own opinion in regards to political parties in Demogame past:

I wouldn't say shot down, 15-20 isn't that bad....

Also I want to point out to everyone, if we don't ban political parties in the constitution they are allowed because of article A... actually this game political parties were legal(I think someone wanted to but a mod didn't allow it.... *sigh*)

All I am saying is its an idea worth exploring

Political Parties will spawn elitism, which is against the forum rules. Block voting is also not that fun also with groups of people just voting on the party lines just because the person is a member of that party while the more qualified person gets gybbed.

All I see in Political Parties is an elitist fraternaty group that will only accept people, as Chieftess pointed out, that only agree to the party's beliefs and thus becomes exclusive and elitist. It furthers becomes elitiest when voting blocks comes into play.

If we do establish a political party system (Which I hope we do not), then I will form my own political party based on the ideas of the Independent Party of the United States giving citizens an opportunity to associate and hold beliefs in different spectrums of the demogame. Also, my party will not advocate voting blocks and the member is free to vote for a person he or she feels like voting.

As I said before, Political Parties were bad news in the Civ2 Demogame and were imediately removed because it caused nothing but mudslinging and mini flamewars inbetween the party lines. I do hope that we never see any political parties to make an apperance in DG7.

<snip, Quote from the Duke is already been quoted>

I personaly hoped that the subject of political parties in the demogame would be "the old horse that's been beat on that subject a million times can be put away." (Octavian X). I guess some people want to intergrate the Model Parlament (Which has political parties) into the demogame.
Original Post

With these reasons, I beleve that Political Parties should have no influences in elections since it will cause more hurt than good.

 

[Octavian X]

I don't see what the fuss is about. By the argument of exclusion and hurt feelings, well, you can't honestly expect to go through life and be accepted into everything you want to join. I mean, I can argue and cry all I want that I deserve to go to Yale, but I will still have to accept their final decision. Anyway, by the same token, even elections are exclusionary, because only one person wins no matter how many people are running.

But, I digress. Parties should simply be recognized as a citizen's group. Actually putting a party label in election polls, I think, steps too far toward unfairness. This should only be done in campaign posts.

 

[Tboy]

I agree. Allow them to call themselves political parties if they want, but they're essentially just groups who tend to look the same way.

 

[I am the Future]

Parties should not be an official part of the goverment.
That is the basic idea.

A party is nothing more then a setup group of people who have decided to vote the same on one or more importanat issues. If a party decides to then they can nominate a leader of the party, or they can nominate a person to goverment. If someone within a party wishes to run against the party then they can be do so and face the concequences that the party decides.

In other words, parties should be treated as nothing more then a citizens group. A very big citizens group.

 

[Gloriana]

Parties should be allowed for the very simple reason that there are people who think alike, and those people will find each other somehow and will try to help each other achieve common goals, parties or no.

Having said that, it might be a wise idea to create something of a "Supreme Court" consisting of say 2 or 3 people, that have the binding right to dissolve a party (or something less extreme than that..) in case it becomes discriminating, too elitist or whatever you describe as "bad" to put it very simply. Those belonging to the Supreme Court of course should then not be member of a party, or at the very least members of very different parties.

I see an option here for the proposed Triumvirate Government proposed in the polls; this could be another task of the judiciary system which would be realistic if it not only held a check on leaders but also on citizens, especially because parties are not part of the government (unless by popular vote one party happens to control all seats of power of course).

 

[Strider]

The concept of political parties are far to open to abuse and mania for me to easily accept them. I see two things that will happen, if we decide to go with political parties.

1) They will fall apart and become inactive and useless
2) They will gain power, untill the laws are changed to make a party based election system.

I wouldn't mind #1 all to much, but #2 is unacceptable. I've played in Demogames that allowed political parties, it's horrible. Fighting, insults, and constant outbursts make the game near impossible.

If I had a choice in the matter, I would say ban them all.

 

[Alphawolf]

Having said that, it might be a wise idea to create something of a "Supreme Court" consisting of say 2 or 3 people, that have the binding right to dissolve a party (or something less extreme than that..) in case it becomes discriminating, too elitist or whatever you describe as "bad" to put it very simply. Those belonging to the Supreme Court of course should then not be member of a party, or at the very least members of very different parties.

I see an option here for the proposed Triumvirate Government proposed in the polls; this could be another task of the judiciary system which would be realistic if it not only held a check on leaders but also on citizens, especially because parties are not part of the government (unless by popular vote one party happens to control all seats of power of course).

This is probably this best idea since you can't ban political parties outright and still have citizen groups (A. where is the distinction? and B. it's wrong to have one and not the other since the only difference I see is in the name). It's best to have an in game check and balance system to deal with them. See the new Triumvirate gov v3.0 HERE it has a check for political parties

-the Wolf

 

[TheDuckOfFlanders]

Personally i only have 1 big reservation with party's and that's the exclusion wich probably would ocur ,wich could be against forum policy's and lead to trolling.

I can deffinatly see why party's could be fun ,deffinaly from a roleplaying perspective.I havn't got any problem with exclusion from a roleplaying perspective ,in most nations with strong party's favouritism is only logical ,so it needs a sopecial aproach to be succesfull in party politics ,and that could be an other level of exitement.

However ,as such thing's go ,from the moment it goes a little wrong the moderaters will intervene and i would more than agree with them.We can however experiment with it ,and it could prove to be fun to ,however we can only have one experiment ,when it fails party's will never be into the Demo game.So if we go into this route i would urge the veteran players to share their view on how such politics should be directed as to create a constructive and fun enviroment.

But i don't want to keep people from experimenting neither ,only by experimenting one can see how it would pan out.But if we experiment we should create a clear system to work from so that we minimilize dangers.

The big problem of party's is preventing exclusion.Now we could limit the amount party's could ellectorally receive ,or limit their members ,but that would then defeat the whole purpose of party's in the first place.You could argue that even if a party got the majority and could apoint an goverment individually ,it would still be up to the achievements of the party trough the term to decide if they would be reelected the next ellection.But if a party has more than 51% of the citizins youll easily end up with a problem ,and vote's could get tottaly dominated.That said ,while people will be member of a party ,it will still be up to the party member to vote this leader ,dissent could easily exist to when the party top doesn't mind it's own members.

I think ,with party's ,you would have to limit the amount of goverment positions to only a few.If there are 20 positions to be gotten ,then a party that seeks for ellectoral dominance will have it easier to get more members behind a single cause ,afterall there are more positions to reward people with.If positions are in minimal amount ,then most party members or a party that tries to be the largest will still only vote a minister in ,not be the actual minister ,wich make's it harder for party's to have a unified vision. (deffinatly largr ones) In addition ,there should be a limit of membership within a party ,a party should never have 50% or more of the total active citizins behind them.

single unified vote

That said ,while i'm not tottaly pro party ,i am in favour of a single unified vote.As it is we vote ecvery person for every position individual ,in different poll threads.Personally i would like it to have 1 vote for everyone ,no voting on a specific position ,but obviously those with most vote's would become the ellected ministers.And that after the ellections the people with the most votes would decide who becomes what.

I made a little poll about that ,just to see the general reaction on it ,don't shoot me plz. (it's not season yet)
If you press this link ,it will make youre life better

I have an idea for change ,though granted it needs to be worked out to be secure.But the thought is to have a single unified voting system ,when ellections come we have 1 vote and one vote only ,we list everyone in a poll who runs for a position ,and people vote their candidate of choice.The person with the highest number of vote's gets the first chance for the highest position ,and possibly so forth untill all positions are filled.

In the past the seperate polls often led to discrepant results ,sometimes because for one position 3 strong members ran ,while an other position only had 2 weaker candidate's for ex. ,deffinatly certain positions were just less interresting and sometimes we had to accept people by merrit of being the only candidate.

Adittion: A unified vote could bring a new perspective to the concept of Party or citizin group ,as every person has effectivly 1 vote.Let me explain this: If a party that say represents more than 50% of the total citizins wants to dominate the ellectoral positions ,then that will be impossible ,at maximum a party will only be able to have it's weight in ellectoral vote's tho give it that percentage of positions.Say for ex that the party wants to be sure that it's candidate s PM ,then it has to have 51% of vote's needed at max to get it's candidate PM ,however this will put all it's vote's on that person and they will ONLY have the pm secured ,all the other positions ,how few votes they even have ,will go to other people.Any dominant party in ellectors my have a few ministers if they spread their votes well ,and even that will be a dangerous game (late determinal voting) and hard to coordinate.But as long as a party doesn't represent 100% of the citizins it will be impossible to dominate the political landscape ,the competition will always be able to lump it's vote's on an other candidate to get him an a secondary position atleast.

It would maybe create a fun enviroment for gameplay ,as voting would be way more strategic , a vote would have way more value then under the current voting system.In fact a unified vote would in general make formaions fo dominance harder ,Under the current system people often win a position by a mile due to few candidate's and people voting the obvious person for that position.