Should we reduce the number of regions to three?

[Yelnoc]

This is not a new idea; I believe The People ran a poll about it sometime last year.  But I think it is  an idea that would make playing at the regional level much funner.  We simply do not have enough active participants for both federal and regional races to be competitive.  We've seen how uncompetitive the senate races have gotten, while in many regions we have to scramble to fill that last legislative seat.  By reducing the number of regions, the individual regions will have more people, and thus more competition.  I know that the main reason a lot of us play is for the exciting elections.  This should go a long way towards fixing that problem.

I also have to say I like the way the borders look, especially in this proposal.  I always thought the five region map was ugly.

[Yelnoc]

Damn, I didn't expect it to be popular, but I also didn't expect such a visceral reaction.

[Yelnoc]

I'm not saying it's perfect, but the Northeast has obviously had more competitive elections than any of the other regions. This is quite clearly because it has double the population of the other regions.

It's not a huge deal to me, really. But I haven't heard any good arguments against my reasoning.

It's also fairly ideologically diverse. The proposals in reducing the regions have almost always just combined the Midwest with the Pacific and the Mideast with the South. This solves almost nothing, and even for the sake of argument you were proposing merging the Mideast and Midwest and South with the Pacific, people would hate the idea, because those in the Mideast, especially, love having complete control over the region.

It would also necessitate a return to districts to continue electing the same number of Senators, which I just plainly don't see the point of.

I'm not opposed to change, but I don't like proposals that make big changes like this in trying to force people to be more competitive, which is different than the proposals I bring forward, which are more focused on encouraging certain practices or are improvements related to the governing side of the game. You can't force general competition or activity like this. That sort of stuff comes and goes on its own.

Why don't we combine the Pacific with the IDS and the ME with the Midwest.  A Heartland Region and an Outer Rim region.  Whaddaya think?