One Year On: Northeast Independence Referendum

[Clyde1998]

Just under a year ago, voters in the former-Northeast were asked whether they wanted to become independent from Atlasia. The verdict was a 'No', but it helped confirm that the old constitution was dead. It was the biggest event in the Northeast region in 2015, and, arguably, the most important event in Atlasia that year, as well.

In an interview with the leader of the 'Yes' campaign, the Atlasia Chronicle looks back at what caused the referendum to occur and what would've happen if the 'Yes' vote had triumphed.
Part One: Road to Referendum
Reporter: Thank you Clyde for agreeing to do this.

Clyde: Thank you.

Reporter: Now. I'm sure a lot of people would be wondering, where did this idea come from? Why was there a referendum on the subject in the first place?

Clyde: The referendum idea started out as a devolution vote - where the Northeast would be transferred the exclusive right to legislate over certain issues. This fell apart for two reasons: firstly, we couldn't get the Game Moderator to confirm whether he'd be able to handle one region having more powers than the others and, secondly, the Federal Government confirmed that this option would be unconstitutional for a single region to obtain powers when other regions didn't have those powers.

Specifically, it's an issue with the federal system of government - where the Federal Government can overrule any regional government on any issue. The Assembly vote on the issue only appeared to fail due to the lack of a response from the GM. The proposal would've seen a bill sent to the Senate for their amendments and approval. Following the failure of this, we passed a motion in the Assembly backing the plan and we set out to cause a Constitutional Convention. This didn't get anywhere so, I moved the ball towards full independence for the region.

Reporter: Is this when you decided to create the Northeast National Party?

Clyde: Not quite. While I was away on a holiday, Oakvale stood as a pro-independence candidate for Northeastern Governor. While he failed to get elected, it helped form the basis of a pro-independence bloc that became the Northeast National Party. We had myself, Oakvale and Evergreen as the main three members of our party.

Our specific goal was to get a pro-independence majority in the Assembly, as well as a pro-independence Governor, in order to hold a referendum on independence. We managed the former. Ironically, at this time, the, successful, petition to hold a ConCon had been created.

The independence plan was, I'll admit, partially a backlash for the failure to move towards a devolved system of government - which had support, not just from inside the Northeast, but from across Atlasia, for devolution at that time. The idea being that if the regions are more powerful, then it would generate more activity at a regional level. An independent Northeast would've seen it for one of the region and, hopefully, others would follow us for real life international relations, without the need of the Game Moderator creating a story.

By the end of August, we'd started to debate an independence referendum bill and by early September we'd voted 3-1 in favour of holding a referendum. An amendment to this was passed 3-2. We were set to hold an independence referendum on the September ballot.

Reporter: Could the Federal Government have blocked the referendum, or was it entirely in the Northeast's control?

Clyde: It got blocked, I can't remember by who, under the way that we'd passed the referendum bill. Evergreen changed the plan and made it into a Northeast Constitutional Amendment - which could only be stopped by public opposition to the constitutional change in a referendum. We deleted any reference to the Federal Government and set out a timetable for becoming independent, as the amendment. Additionally, this method of holding a referendum on the subject resolved an issue regarding needing a two referenda to confirm independence - one on independence, the second on taring up the Northeastern Constitution. It seemed a better option to hold a Constitutional Amendment vote on the subject.

Reporter: Was there a time when you thought you could win this referendum?

Clyde: Yes. We were doing our internal numbers - placing where we thought each Northeastern voters would make their mark on the ballot - and at one stage we had 'Yes', the independence vote, at 54%. Right before the vote we had thirteen in favour, eleven against and seven 'unknowns' as our projection for the vote.

We, the Northeast National Party members, thought we were going to win the day.

Check back tomorrow for the second part of this interview, covering the vote and the immediate aftermath...

[Blair]

Beautiful coverage; funny snippet was that as someone involved in the 'In'/'Remain' side we never doubted that our numbers would hold up

[Terry the Fat Shark]

We aren't restarting this movement, are we

[Clyde1998]

Beautiful coverage; funny snippet was that as someone involved in the 'In'/'Remain' side we never doubted that our numbers would hold up

Thanks. I thought that I shouldn't let the first anniversary pass without a mention of it - and given that no-one has really talked about it since it happened, I felt that I'd be the best person to do so - given that I lead the 'Yes' campaign.

Hopefully, this will give a new perspective on what was happening behind the scenes during the referendum campaign.

I'm going to publish the list of where we thought voters would go on the issue, in the next part - it'll be interesting to see what differences you had compared to what we had at the time.

We aren't restarting this movement, are we

I'm not going to, if that's what you're asking.

I think it's much harder now anyway. Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution states: "No Region shall secede from this Republic but by a 3/4 vote of the citizens thereof". Getting to 75% would be almost impossible, IMO.

[Clyde1998]

Part Two: The Vote
Reporter: You said that you had thirteen people who you expected to vote in favour of the proposal. Who were they?

Clyde: The thirteen were: 84285, Alfred F. Jones, Bacon King, Clyde1998, Dallasfan65, DemPGH, Eraserhead, Evergreen, H_Wallace, Hashemite, Morgieb, Oakvale and Peeperkorn. Perhaps I should've seen in the number that something would go wrong. *laughs* But seriously, the main issue was getting people to vote - four didn't vote and one changed sides right at the last minute...

We'd made our list based on what we were being told by people and whether we thought we could convince them to vote in favour. But also we checked every voter to see if they would be eligible to cast a valid ballot - we didn't want the posting requirements to screw us over.

This was what made us more confident of winning - we had eighteen names on the 'No' list, but six could've cast a valid ballot - due to the posting requirements. Of those who could vote, we had: Blair2015, Cinyc, ClarkKent, Homelycooking, JoMCaR, Pikachu, Polnut, RGN08, Rpryor03, Smoltchanov and Winfield on the list. There was one invalid ballot from this group and one didn't vote. Two of the six ineligible voters did end up voting - which could've cost the 'No' vote on another day. I remember seeing our first "projection" of where voters would go that I got sent - it had Blair on the 'Yes' side. *laughs*

We had BaconBacon, Bore, Bronz4141, GM3PRP, MATTROSE94, NHI and Thinking Crumpet's Crumpet as people who we didn't know how they'd vote - although none of them ended up voting.

What we forgot, until after the voting booth had opened, was that there were two recently re-registered voters in the Northeast that we had forgotten to add to our list. Discussing it, we felt they'd both go No - and both JBach717 and Poirot voted that way. We would've had 13-14 on the eve of poll otherwise.

Had these two had not voted - it would've been 10-8 to the 'Noes', making the person who changed their mind at the last minute really important.

Reporter: Surely though, had that person voted 'Yes' instead of 'No', you still would've lost the referendum?

Clyde: Officially yes, but we would've claimed that Atlasia didn't have a mandate to govern the Northeast - as 50% wouldn't win a referendum asking the reverse question to what we were asking. This would've likely ended up in a second referendum - something that we were trying to avoid - to get a result with one side ahead.

Reporter: Ultimately, you lost 12-8. When did you know that you'd lost the vote?

Clyde: After the sixteenth cast ballot, Oakvale contacted me saying "I plan to spin what's looking like a likely defeat for independence as not a No but a "Not Yet'". I agreed, stating that we hadn't had a shock vote - at that time - and we felt that we were only losing through our potential voters not casting a ballot.

I was just waiting to see if any of our non-voters were going to cast a ballot when the 'switcher' messaged me saying that he'd be voting 'No' on the basis that it could pass by a "razor thin margin", which would annoy a lot of people. The message also confirmed to me what I'd felt all along, that people could support this, if they could be convinced: "[...] this is not dead. Read ilikeverin's post. That's like a mantra for independent regions. [...] there just needs to be broader support for it."

He was right - I did the numbers and I found we won a landslide from the left, but we'd failed to convince others. Any movement towards independence needed a broad base and we just didn't have it at that time.

Reporter: Following the vote, you resigned as Northeast National Party leader.

Clyde: I did. I passed over to Oakvale, as I felt he would take the party forward. The party fell apart shortly after, as we had nothing to keep us together after our failure and people left Atlasian politics.

About six weeks before the vote, I messaged the NNP members that I might even leave the game if we'd lost the referendum:

"I just wanted to let you know that if we lose the independence referendum, I'll probably leave the game. I fear that my position within the game would become untenable - especially if people won't respect [...] the reason why we feel that independence would bring greater activity and more interesting gameplay to the region and the game as a whole. The way people are commenting about this makes me feel that I may become the story - and I fear that I could hurt any future push for changes to the game. [...] It's not that I think we're going to lose the vote (I think we'll win), but I feel that I should make my position clear to you before the referendum."

I decided that I would stay in the game to help with the Constitutional Convention and I've remained part of the game. The main reason for this is that the independence issue fell off the radar very quickly after the vote.

Coming up tomorrow, part three on what would've happen if the Yes vote had won and the future of the independence in Atlasia.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Reporter: Could the Federal Government have blocked the referendum, or was it entirely in the Northeast's control?

This was discussed quite seriously by the Senate in the weeks preceding the vote. One of the pro-union senators suggested in private that a resolution be passed disavowing the referendum as unconstitutional. I argued against that line of attack on the grounds that it would hand a moral victory to NNP, who would then be able to argue that the Reform Government was actively seeking to silence the opposition, while a defeat at the polls would lead to the collapse of the independence camp (as indeed it did).

[Clyde1998]

Reporter: Could the Federal Government have blocked the referendum, or was it entirely in the Northeast's control?

This was discussed quite seriously by the Senate in the weeks preceding the vote. One of the pro-union senators suggested in private that a resolution be passed disavowing the referendum as unconstitutional. I argued against that line of attack on the grounds that it would hand a moral victory to NNP, who would then be able to argue that the Reform Government was actively seeking to silence the opposition, while a defeat at the polls would lead to the collapse of the independence camp (as indeed it did).

We had to change the way we went about holding a referendum; we changed the bill at the last minute to be a constitutional amendment - to prevent any sort of veto before the vote. Although, blocking independence following a vote in favour would've caused a bit more than a "moral victory", as you'll see in part three...

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Beautiful coverage; funny snippet was that as someone involved in the 'In'/'Remain' side we never doubted that our numbers would hold up

For those on the Federalist side, and I would note we took this very seriously from the beginning, we operated on the assumption that the yes side had an advantage. Our information painted a much dire picture.

Our concern was two fold. 1) this look like round two of July, since many of the players were the same or were their allies and 2) it would have destroyed the constitutional convention had the NE actually successfully pulled out since many of the leading participants were registered in the NE.