Talk Elections

Look guys, we all know this game is dying. A cancer has afflicted Atlasia and hope is far, far away. But I believe that we can reach for hope and grab it, therefore I am forming this caucus.

It's not a politically-partisan caucus, rather, it is dedicated to reviving Atlasia and making it interesting again. Making it fun.

Who's in?

I'm in.

:)

:)

I believe that term limits can save Atlasia and inflow new blood. Opinions?

Might as well join.  I'm willing to do most anything it takes to promote activism here.

I strongly oppose term limits.  The parties already seem to be having a rough time recruiting candidates for special elections, as it is.  Term limits would just lead to new vacancies and would inevitably have to be repealed for the game to survive.

But veterans running for one more 9001st term would just alienate newbies.

Which we don't have many of right now.  Regions that lack a sufficient number of active players would suffer for this if no one in a region is able to run.  And personally, I oppose term limits because I feel it should be up to the voters to decide if their officeholders have been in the government for too long.  If anything, this issue would be better left to the regions and not the federal government.

Lets say I did retire and you ran to replace me Pingvin, how would you running unopposed be any different then me running unopposed?

Just swapping the chairs has limited mileage, and in a primarily elections sim you need competative elections. Barring a group of people from running in a game where we can barely find people to run as it is, isn't going to increase the number of competative elections.


Keep in mind that with Duke and bgwah now gone, this issue only applies to one person. :P

Right now the problem (at least in the Senate) is definitely not a lack of new blood; it's all the old blood leaving en masse. Kicking Yankee out the door would only exacerbate the problem. We've had such a varied membership in the Senate over the last month it's been difficult to keep track of who's even there right now.

On the regional level, a lot of the problem is that by removing the parties, we've also removed most of the infrastructure that reminded people to vote and recruited new members. We no longer have the two parties offering to do goodness only knows what to try and get some old, marginally active voter to hang in there a little longer and vote.

One "stir up the pot" proposal has already been implemented. I think we should be very carefull to embrace future such ideas on that basis alone.


For the record: I never "offered" anything, I just asked them to vote out of the kindness of their own heart. :P Then JJ went bananas early last year and that policy was canned. The RPP voter role became segregated based on "Risk of PM backfiring" and people deemed such were not contacted as part of "party-wide" GOTV efforts. That worked out very well when it came to losing all those 1 and 2 vote margin elections. ;)

By "offering" I was more imagining what lengths bgwah must have gone through to find those one or two votes the RPP always lost by at 11:57 PM Sunday night :P

For the record, I do not mean to accuse anyone of anything that may be or has been illegal. This is all hypothetical conjecture on the sudden drop in Atlasian turnout. ;)

I'll run unopposed only two times and retire due to my principles.

He "got the job done", you might say. :P

What hurt us the most in this recent problem was the lack of Senate debate. There normally is a lag and a reluctance to start bills untill the PPT takes over because they can't controll the threads and so forth until they cycle out and that can stifle a debate or lead to votes not being done quickly do to the headings being out of date. The problem is this time, the PPT never took over the job. He just vanished.

Beyond that is that lack of participation and involvement by the citizenry. I think there is a desire to please and a desire to not offend, coupled with a desire to not tank one's political ambitions down the road and thus it is "safer" to be silent. That leads to boredome and to even more inactivity.

The official caucus holds no opinion, as the focus should be to just revitalize the game.

I personally believe term limits are up to the individual politician, whether or not they want to continue. If The People continue to elect a particular politician, so be it. It's the will of the voter.

Too bad you guys don't have some evil party boss recruiting "zombies" to run for office, or run the Senate for you, or maintain the Wiki for you.

     I don't think term limits would accomplish anything, given the apparent lack of interest from anyone. I posted that I was thinking about retirement after this term. Thing is, nobody seemed to notice it & the people who I have been considering for a successor have been hardly any more active than myself.

i'll join this caucus if it's about Atlasia making statements about moderation and miscellaneous effect on forum business/policy, so involving is into some actual power.

I think part of problem is that ideology is an essential component and atleast as far as the right is concerned, it is a practical impossibility. Hence what I meant about it being safer to be silent. I believe it was bgwah who wondered aloud where the Conservative opposition was to certain bills when he was surprised to see the unanimity or near unanimous voting on those measures. This is partially why such "controversial" items in RL are either sailed through with broad support or receive negative votes without much arguments against the bill.


The other reason for those types of results is the fact that there is little concept or desire frankly for a unified conservative movement intellectually more or less politically. When I was chairman of the RPP, I had American Conservatives (especially on the religious right) wonder why we had so many moderates, liberals and OMG Europeans. I also had certain moderate/liberal/OMG Europeans wonder why far right American conservatives had a right to exist more or less get a seat at the table.

I would like to ask a question of this Caucus: do you feel we have the luxury to wait for the next batch of elections in order to light the fuse of a transition of power; and, if so since the current governmental structures have so plainly failed us, why are we still obligated to abide by them?

I smell treason, Tweed. :P



Also, if the caucus wants to help. Contact your Senators to demand action. This no work on weekends sh**t is over. They can't take it, they should resign. An active presiding officer can only do so much. The Senators have to start debating and discussing what I have put up so far. It is a mix of old stuff and newer bills sought by the administation.

Contacting me will be redundant, but I promise to make it interesting if you do. :P

I personally believe we should not have to wait for activity, it should be demanded of leaders to do it without asking. The next President/group of senators/etc should be active ones and if not, revolution may be necessary.

Should we amend the Constitution to order a minimum amount of debate per day or just hope the will of the people and the lifeblood of the Senate will do it on their own?

I could see an activity-based Constitutional amendment.

why the f do you listen to Alex Jones?

That's kinda like asking a heroin user why they do it...

cuz it's fun.

Im in.

"Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun. But Mama, that's where the fun is"

lol, Manfred Mann :)

"Momma always said life is like a jar of jelly beans...they're all good, 'cept the black ones."

We need the JCP and RPP back, plain and simple. Dissolving them clearly destroyed the game. And I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.

What amuses me is that the main critic of the JCP got bored and left the game once he got his way. lol.

Uhh no thanks.

I can tell you're new, since every D-WA was JCP. EVERY ONE.

Yep. There wasn't a single D-WA avatar that wasn't JCP.

20RP12- are you cutting class?

Please... tell us of your past heroin use.

Nope, I'm on Spring Break :)

---

Well, you see, back in the 90's I sang in a band called Nirvana...

It is kind of like in that Goosebumps episodes where everyone in town was killed by a chemical spill and a new family that is alive moves into town. A bunch of the dead people surround the house and the "friendly neighbors" blame the weird piece of artwork on the wall for attracting them. Frinally the mother succumbs to the pressure and burns the thing. The zombies back away for a second, then come back twice as aggressive and the "neighbors" show off their true colors and let the mob inside stating, "you just destoyed the one thing that protected you".

The problem is, the game was dying prior to the party wars that rose up and occupied most of our time. When I came to Atlasia in 2007/2008, it was pretty much dying as well. The South left the union, created a controversy, and the RPP was formed which united the right for the first time in a while. The left floundered for a while before it coalesced around the JCP, and then the parties went on recruiting and GOTV wars.

By killing off the parties, most of us lost a reason to be in the game so the old timers have left in droves.

Reinstating the RPP might help, but likely we are going through another period like when I first arrived, when the old timers then got tired and left the game, leaving new people to pick up the pieces.

While I knew the game would experience growing pains after the parties collapsed, I didn't imagine it would be like this. Who is even in the senate anymore? Yankee and? Every time I check this part of the thread when I am not on BuskKE's threads, I always see theres a special election going on or someone else has resigned. It's sad.

Come back to the game, dude.  We need old players back.  Desperately.

This is the truth. I mean, the last two at-large senate elections weren't even that competitive. Atlasia is dying. New blood isn't helping, and neither is old blood. Its down to if you arent a member of a left leaning party, you're probably not getting elected.

Yeah, I just read 65 voters turned out for the last election. We usually got 100 or more about a year ago. It's amazing how much the game really relied on a few people to keep it going. The new crop of "leaders" and "bosses" aren't getting it done at all. Some days,  I feel like its time for the adults to come back and show everyone the way, and other days, I think a walk in the wilderness is what the game needs. It certainly is a ghost town at the moment.

Well, you can blame the RPP's relentless negative attacks and desperation for bringing about this sentiment. Anti-JCP rhetoric ruined the game.

Sh*tstorm approaching!

Surreeeeee

The man who led the drive for a more partisan oriented game is now blaming partisan motivated attacks for destroying it. ::)

Since when has any victorious party not come under attack from the minority at some point during any particular cycle? It is natural for the minority to seek to become the majority and that setup is meant to serve as a democratic check on the party in power. It also gives people a reason to participate.  The problem came when certain people in both parties began to read too much into the hype and rhetoric. Also, the JCP shouldn't have taken those attacks on their success so damn personally. Its like you guys thought you were owed deference or something. Creating the potential for competition is what kept so many conservatives in this game and participating, that aren't now. 

Something hurt the game last year to be sure and it in fact drove more people to either leave or want to leave then Hamilton did. Perhaps you should look a little closer to home. :P

     Obvious solution is obvious: bring back the RPP.

NO.

I don't think bring me or the RPP back would solve many things now. I'd love to see the old party come back because I miss it, but I don't know if the consequences will be what we want. The game will see a resurrection one day led by someone new, but now is not the time. It lacks leaders since the old leaders went on self-imposed exile.

How about all of you southern people join the Imperial Bloc?  That will spice the game up.

Does it have a strong leadership group? That's what made the JCP and RPP run things. It was the people in charge of them. They were dedicated, strong willed, intimidating and ruthless. Most importantly, we were ruthless. Without us in charge, look what happened! This was essential to game success. In order to turn things around, people need to take initiative to lead and we will see things tick up again.

While I didn't like being personally blamed for everything wrong with Atlasia, I also wanted to take a break. I'm still around of course, but in less active roles.

The caucus hereby endorses Boss Tweed's proclamation declaring the Government illegitimate. All members of this caucus are strongly urged to join the fight.

x 20RP12

Sorry, but I personally can't endorse treason against my country. :P

How in any way, shape or form is this treason? Are you saying we should continue to function in a system that has produced the increasing inactivity that plagues us today? I'd say not endorsing this movement is treason.

I think we should embrace activism and work to fix this game, by all means.  I just don't think that publicly declaring the government illegitimate will actually do anything. :P

it is not that the act of declaring the government as illegitimate that will in and of itself do anything -- this I have never claimed.  rather it frees us from the legal and other constraints that only at this point serve as a massive roadblock towards achieving what we need to achieve.

This has been done several times before.  All it does is ruin the game and lead to fights.

I have a swath of moral and technical prestige at my disposal that I can exploit.  of which no precursor could've dreamed.  but go ahead, enjoy your not-ruined dustbin.

What are these constraints?