Talk Elections

Yesterday, I made a post regarding the relationship between the House and regional legislatures. The premise, essentially, was simple: Lincoln is supposedly successfully able to carry a 9 member regional legislature, but in turn only has one member of the House. By contrast, Fremont, despite being the smallest region, is the home region of an absolute majority of Representatives (Koopa, TPH, fhtagn, Jimmy, DFW) - and Fremont, as a result, is in a complete candidate shortage for its extremely large assembly.

But this also gets to a larger point: During the debate on that Lincoln amendment, Ninja made a comment that reducing regional legislatures would reduce opportunity for newer players, as regional legislatures serve as the primary entrance point for new players. But of course, there is another institution of government that's also supposed to serve as such an entrance point: the House. The House - as a combination of old and new blood - was intended to be a training ground for newer players on par with the regions. But this has quite clearly not been the case. Since the start of 2018 (that's eight elections), the number of truly "new blood" players elected to the House can be counted on one hand: weatherboy, me, OSR, Maineiac, Alancia. And in the cases of weatherboy and Alancia, both had actually been in the CoD for around a month before joining the House.

The balance of old and new blood in the House has very clearly been tilted towards "new blood". And as a result, we've returned to the pre-reset mentality that regional legislatures are the only training ground, from which one then advances to either an executive position or Congress. The causes for this change are actually quite apparent when you look at it: experienced players being regionally locked from the Senate. Of the five representatives from Fremont, three are right-wingers - two of whom have made numerous unsuccessful runs at region-wide office in the past. In the South - otherwise a right wing vote sink - two of its three representatives are established left-wingers. For players who are in this situation regarding their region, the House suddenly becomes the highest aspiration possible short of the Presidency or VP. And these players start to dominate the chamber's composition - something that's more true now than it ever has been in the past.

The most often suggested courses regarding legislative size have been reducing the size of the House while continuing with or even expanding the sizes of the large regional legislatures. I posit that the better course of action would actually be precisely the opposite - we should be looking at increasing the size of the House while reigning back in the 9- and 8-member regional legislative behemoths. This way, the House can accommodate some of these older players regionally locked out of the Senate while still leaving enough room for newer players to blossom.

Of course, if we actually wish to change the fact that the House is now a final aspiration for many players, then more dramatic changes are probably needed. One particularly radical idea would be something along the lines of the following: In addition to the six regional seats in the Senate, add two at-large seats to the chamber; in order to balance the regional/at-large disparity, convert three of the House seats to regional ones. This way, the Senate can act as the final legislative aspiration of pretty much any player. Instead of many players just being stuck in the House, they can make Senate runs that actually have a chance at winning instead of just being sacrificial lambs for the position. In addition, having more "venues" for elections (regional House, at-large House, regional Senate, at-large Senate) means that there will have to be more serious campaigns that actually fall short - in other words, more competitiveness, thus actually increasing the value of an office by making one have to compete for them.

I'm not necessarily saying something such as the above is the ideal solution, merely something to put out there. But if we don't change things, and we continue with what was essentially the pre-reset status quo with the federal legislature as the final (non-presidential) aspiration for players while the regional governments act as feeders, then I don't really see a point in retaining bicameralism - the House's value as an incubative chamber has been completely lost.

I love radicalism (as in reforming government institutions)! I'm not sure about the House regional seats idea, but increasing the size of the House could be productive. Making the Senate more accessible would also be nice though, as a Southerner I can testify to the Senate being a glass ceiling for anyone who isn't a conservative 'round these parts

I'd support increasing the number of House seats. I'd also like the idea of regions having three senate seats, instead of the current two.

Two at large Senate seats would end up as 1 Labor 1 Fed all the time. Six House seats at large would present a similar problem. Not to mention it would screw the balance of bicameralism.

Also some of your history seems incorrect. Razze and Devout Centrist went from regional legislature to House. So did Ninja. Not any different than WB and Alancia.

Honestly we could increase the size of the House but I don’t want to shortchange regional legislators too much, and during October to December when activity tends to decline and the player base contracts, there’s be a high likelihood of a non-existent regional government.

You beat me to it, but I largely agree with what has been said here. This forming imbalance frankly has played a huge role in my concern for the game as of late and my entrance as a presidential candidate. I'm not sure I agree with expanding the House unless we could curtail the number of regional offices above and beyond even what we did during consolidation (though prior to the final plan in 2015-16, I did support a House with 16-18 members).

The post-reset game was designed with a specific set of criteria in mind and the number of offices (along with the balance between federal and regional) was not chosen at random. The game works best in the current iteration when there are ~40 elected offices; it blows my mind that we now have more elected offices in a 3-region system than we did in 2015 with a 5-region system on the verge of collapse.

One thing is clear, though: the imbalance is entirely on the regions. This was why I also supported a constitutional cap during the ConCon on the number of regional legislative offices that could exist (with a Census-like system that reapportioned every two months and that discouraged strategic registration) - because I knew one day, people would forget and people would repeat the same mistakes in one format or another. Ultimately, this will cause big problems if left unchecked. We can't have 7, 9 or even 11-member parliamentary systems in every region and expect things to be sustainable.

The difference is time. Razze and DC both spent a substantial amount of time in their regional legislatures before moving to House, they really couldn't be considered inexperienced players.

Same with Ninja - he was even speaker of the legislature before becoming a Representative.

Also in the hypothetical proposal above the at large seats would be split one per class.

I tried to bring back Adam's idea for a cap on regional legislatures in 2017 and it was shot to pieces by several people.

Also while I can see why the House is considered a lower post to some, it is suppose to be an equal branch to the Senate, not beneath it.

Now would be a good time to bring such idea back, given that the large size of legislatures appears to be causing problems of sorts.

I think this is due to the culture of the House as a 9 member body results it in being a place where the two sides (left and right) are pressured too much to obey orders from whoever is the dominant member of their party or ideological hemisphere. That sort of idea isn't really fun, and by the way people act in this game towards disagreement, it's easy to end up getting disengaged as a House member.

I will say that for a (relatively) new player it's also not impossible to make a jump directly to the Senate, nor is it impossible for someone to win an election in an "ideologically hostile" region (though it is getting increasingly hard I believe).

A good example is probably my election against LT. At the time I was still very new, having only served to fill a vacancy in the Southern CoD for like a month. Meanwhile, LT was someone from the right trying to run in a left wing region (though Lincoln is still more of a tossup than Fremont).

End result: We both tie twice; with Lincoln electing both a right winger and a new player to the Senate.

I know right! Labor used to love the Senate as they have the current structural advantage based on regional registration, and that allowed them to take those two Lincoln seats for granted by electing inactive hacks. Now that their birthright slipped from the palms of their hands they want to change the Senate. Sad!!!

Don't worry, Labor will fix that mistake in June ;)

You mean not supporting me in February? ;)

If not:
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Lower in terms of importance, no.

Lower in terms of average seniority, yes.

I think the point is more that the lower chamber is the people's House, and its members are supposed to be drawn from the ranks of the commons—not the established elites.

I agree as I've never ever got a message about a house election.

In some ways the stepping stone process mentioned in the OP has impacted the Senate as well, at least in the regions where favorable winds prevail and thus we have had Senates in the last year or so that were nearly completely composed of relatively new people with maybe one or two exceptions in a given chamber where this the case overall. 

Let's just make a new branch of government and 5 people are elected to it. The new branch will be called the Iron Branch and the speaker of the branch sits on the Iron Throne. 

(Couldn't resist. I might as well attempt to chronicle tales from Atlasia in ASOIAF style one day)

Can you write a chronicle about the events between Nov 2018 and today? That would be a great read.

This is the best thing I have read all day on this forum!

If elected President, I intend to make it my mission to put together some coalition at the federal level to revisit this and engineer a solution in some way, shape or form. Things are getting out of control.

I'd rather like to at some point, but it does seem too soon to try and make sense of that whole period. I do want to write something ASOIAF themed, but I need to settle on an appropiate subject.

Here’s how I view political mobility


New User——>State Legislature

State Legislature——>House of Representatives

State Legislature——->Governorship

House of Reps——> Governorship
House of Reps——>Senate

Governorship——>House of Reps
Governorship——->Senate

Senate——->Position in Executive or Judicial Branch

Reducing state legislatures eliminates new politicians, also new users need practice rather than being forced to run for federal government, with no experience

But, this creates electability issues, for example I can’t just run for the federal government right off the bat, and expect to win, the electorate would vote for a more tenured politician

This is why I’ve floated House expansion in there - this way new players can actually compete with older ones on a more even footing.



This is a mostly accurate mobility map right now, but the main point of my argument is that it should not be - new players should be able to run for at least the House much more often than they do.

Also you don’t need “practice” in a regional legislature before you can go to the House. I can attest to this myself.

I agree with YT. With a good and active enough campaign, people don't care about experience that much. Going directly to the federal house or Senate is doable

While there are a lot of fun topics that can only be addressed federally, I found being a Regional legislator much more enjoyable and every bit as impactful as being in Congress. No one should think of Regional legislature as any less prestigious than Congress.

Yes, and a key portion of this is to stop thinking of regional legislature as the "only place where you can start before going to the federal government". It should be just as possible and acceptable to start in the House and then go to regional government.

Same. My current tenure as Lincoln Councillor has been just as enjoyable, if not more; than my Senate half-term. That might be because I'm speaker as well; though I do find the proper speaker jobs (bringing bills to the floor, keeping the noticeboard uptated, opening/closing votes, etc) to not be all that fun and be quite time consuming.

This. While I haven't served federally, I love serving Lincoln and think there's a lot we can address here.

I'll just point out that as designed, getting elected to the House versus a regional legislature presented roughly the same amount of difficulty to players following the reset - primarily in the number of votes needed to win. Since the rapid expansion of regional legislatures, however, we have once again made the House a less appealing venue for newer players, who may feel obligated to work their way up through a region before running for such a thing (in part you now only need like half the votes to get elected to a legislature as in an at-large House race).

Thats what I hated about the Senate. Updating a notice board no one reads. And in the 13th session we passed more than 60 bills and resolutions which got super tedious to keep up to date.