I got an idea today

unibot

unibot

TNPer
Hey I got an idea today for a possible system, how'll about a legislature that has an unfixed number of seats, but the proportion of seats is allocated to each political party on the basis of elections (which also decide, inadvertently who is the delegate).

So we'd run elections by running the vote among all region members (they'd vote via a Zetaboards website so they wouldn't have to log-in but to vote their IP would be logged and they'd need to submit an authorization code spit out by an auto-telegrammer (which logs the authorization codes it spits out).

If the Reform party picks up 64% of the vote, New Democratic party picks up 33%, Conservative party picks up 3%.

Reform Party gets to include all the members it wants into the legislature -- let's say they have eight members, then we can calculate the legislature should have 12.5 members, round up to 13. New Democratic party would get four representatives, Conservative party would have one representative.

The beautiful part about this elected legislature is, if you're a new member, you're not completely deterred from getting involved before an election -- if they want to join the Reform party and the Reform party will accept them.. it's as simple as them joining the party and being added to the legislature -- one more seat is added to the Reform party and now, the legislature would be expected to be 14 members large, so New Democratic party would be allowed 5 members and the Conservatives would be unrepresented. If the New Democratic party didn't have another member, the legislature would run 9-4, until a fifth member is found, if ever -- but the incentive to increase the size of the party is there.

If you really want to be a New Democratic party MP or a Conservative MP, you could possibly convince someone to join the region would would join the legislature for the Reform party -- as apart of a deal. But definitely one of the big benefits to being the plurality party is you'd be able to set the size of the legislature for your own end.

Parties would be allowed to accept new MPs (legislators) on whatever basis that want (vote, appointment, torture).
 
I agree that the legislature should have elections, but I have 2 main problems:

1. This would force regional assembly members to join a political party in order to stay in office which at the very least seems unfair, As political party's would just get members who only joined to stay in office, and don't care about the party platform.

2. The dominant party being able to adjust the seats in the regional assembly when they want sounds alot like the makings for a dictatorship
 
I don't like the idea of an elected legislature. This may work though. Not saying I like it just that it could work.
 
An elected legislature has it's benefits but it can be a double edged sword.

On one hand, it would be capable of handling a large amount of participants and make things easier to manage.

On the other hand, it could cripple the government if participation suddenly drops off and, given the level of participation we have at this time, it would only add another level of complexity to the system we now have in place.
 
1. This would force regional assembly members to join a political party in order to stay in office which at the very least seems unfair, As political party's would just get members who only joined to stay in office, and don't care about the party platform.
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That would be to the party's detriment, since it would have dark horses in their party who don't toe the party line.

2. The dominant party being able to adjust the seats in the regional assembly when they want sounds alot like the makings for a dictatorship
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There would need to be a quota of how many members it could limit parliament too, yes.
 
unibot:
1. This would force regional assembly members to join a political party in order to stay in office which at the very least seems unfair, As political party's would just get members who only joined to stay in office, and don't care about the party platform.
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That would be to the party's detriment, since it would have dark horses in their party who don't toe the party line.
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Exactly that's the problem.
 
I would be for an elected legislature to increase who has a say in things, if it was designed properly and supplement by a system of binding referendums and petitions so that one did not have to be in it to affect legislation.

As for the electoral system proposed, party-list voting is the simplest method of proportional representation out there, and any elected legislature should absolutely be proportional. However, the particular variant proposed appears to be closed-list and does not allow independents to run. These are problems, but both can be easily remedied. I would propose the following variation of party list voting as an alternative:
  • Candidates may run as a member of a party or as an independent. Independent candidates would be treated as if they were the sole member of their own personal party.
  • Voters pick a single candidate. Their vote is counted as both a vote for the candidate and their party.
  • Each party is allotted a share of the seats in proportion to its vote (ideally using the Sainte-Laguë method since it's kinder to smaller parties), and the candidates with the most votes from the party get to fill those seats.
  • The size of the legislature would be set, and parties which do not have enough candidates to fill all the seats they won would simply relinquish them.
This would allow voters to support individual candidates within a party and independents to run, while still providing a simple way to accomplish proportional representation which creates a legislature which accurately reflects the electorate.

As a final note, it is possible to accomplish proportional representation without voting for parties using the single transferable vote, but it's more complicated. Doable, but still more complicated.
 
The reason why I said the legislature size should not be set is, if more people want to join the Assembly in a legislator fashion.. one of the main problems with elected legislatures is traditionally that you need to wait for an election to get involved.

But if I understand your suggestion, Gully, I'm interested including independents. I just don't know to include them into my proposed system without undermining the purpose of the proposal. Perhaps if an independent wins more than one seat, those seats are split proportionally among the other parties?
 
It would certainly be difficult to implement. My concern is, wouldn't electing the legislature limit the amount of people that could be involved in the RA? We could run the risk of the same people being elected every time? Which would be bad for activity/involvement of new nations IMHO.

If it does not limit the amount of people involved it becomes little better than an uncontested election.
 
Unibot:
The reason why I said the legislature size should not be set is, if more people want to join the Assembly in a legislator fashion.. one of the main problems with elected legislatures is traditionally that you need to wait for an election to get involved.
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McMasterdonia:
It would certainly be difficult to implement. My concern is, wouldn't electing the legislature limit the amount of people that could be involved in the RA? We could run the risk of the same people being elected every time? Which would be bad for activity/involvement of new nations IMHO.
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That's why I qualified my support for an elected legislature with the need for some sort of system of petitions and binding referendums that would allow citizens outside of the legislature to also get involved.

Unibot:
But if I understand your suggestion, Gully, I'm interested including independents. I just don't know to include them into my proposed system without undermining the purpose of the proposal.
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You are right, what I have proposed does risk reducing proportionality in cases where a single independent candidate is very popular and gathers to many votes, or two like minded candidates split the vote between them. But the way I see it, if the candidates or voters are so stubborn they don't want to form or vote for parties even if it works against them, that's their own problem, and it's an acceptable price to pay for allowing the possibility of independents.

Unibot:
Perhaps if an independent wins more than one seat, those seats are split proportionally among the other parties?
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That sort of transfering of excess votes is something that STV would do, which would be one argument in its favor.
 
mcmasterdonia:
It would certainly be difficult to implement. My concern is, wouldn't electing the legislature limit the amount of people that could be involved in the RA? We could run the risk of the same people being elected every time? Which would be bad for activity/involvement of new nations IMHO.
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That's the point behind this modified idea. It's a way to have an elected legislature but be fairly open to new people who want to be legislators.

If it does not limit the amount of people involved it becomes little better than an uncontested election.
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The election isn't about the people really, other than the delegate -- it's about how the parliament is distributed between ideologies and parties. It's a new way of thinking about elections, granted.

That sort of transfering of excess votes is something that STV would do, which would be one argument in its favor.
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Better than the possibility of a one man legislator. :P
 
peoples empire:
unibot:
1. This would force regional assembly members to join a political party in order to stay in office which at the very least seems unfair, As political party's would just get members who only joined to stay in office, and don't care about the party platform.
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That would be to the party's detriment, since it would have dark horses in their party who don't toe the party line.
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Exactly that's the problem.
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But that's the perennial problem with political parties. :P
 
unibot:
peoples empire:
unibot:
1. This would force regional assembly members to join a political party in order to stay in office which at the very least seems unfair, As political party's would just get members who only joined to stay in office, and don't care about the party platform.
Click to expand...

That would be to the party's detriment, since it would have dark horses in their party who don't toe the party line.
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Exactly that's the problem.
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But that's the perennial problem with political parties. :P
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So do you see political parties as part of the problem?
 
I'd say an elected legislature might be useful if we had over 100 actively participating 'voters' (or in the case that we end up with 100 or more members of the RA.

That is to say, IMHO, unless we get excessive numbers of people in the RA, an elected legislature would be less efficient than what we have now.

The irony is I hear people grumbling on the RMB from time to time that TNP isn't a Democracy because so few people participate in government, yet none of those who complain actually seem to make any effort to participate by joining the RA. Very odd.

As per political parties, I'm all for them but membership in a political party should not be compulsory. The main reason they should not be compulsory is because it results in a situation where you end up with terminal one-party rule in most instances. In a situation where you have a number of 'independents' you have a 'wild card' should the number of independents be sufficient to negate either party's exclusive rule of the RA. And this is a good thing but ironically gives the independent element actual minority control should the parties decide to bloc vote as a party (which can be enforced by party rules as in 'party line' votes in a Westminster Model parliamentary system.


One of interesting things is that political 'parties' or 'blocks' do form and do exist regardless of whether or not you openly name them.
 
Romanoffia:
That is to say, IMHO, unless we get excessive numbers of people in the RA, an elected legislature would be less efficient than what we have now.
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Good, it's not just me then.
 
Romanoffia:
As per political parties, I'm all for them but membership in a political party should not be compulsory. The main reason they should not be compulsory is because it results in a situation where you end up with terminal one-party rule in most instances. In a situation where you have a number of 'independents' you have a 'wild card' should the number of independents be sufficient to negate either party's exclusive rule of the RA. And this is a good thing but ironically gives the independent element actual minority control should the parties decide to bloc vote as a party (which can be enforced by party rules as in 'party line' votes in a Westminster Model parliamentary system.


One of interesting things is that political 'parties' or 'blocks' do form and do exist regardless of whether or not you openly name them.
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exactly. :agree:
 
As per political parties, I'm all for them but membership in a political party should not be compulsory. The main reason they should not be compulsory is because it results in a situation where you end up with terminal one-party rule in most instances.
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While I agree that party membership shouldn't be compulsory (hence the alternative proposal) the notion that doing so would lead to one party rule is absurd and baseless. You're ignoring the simple fact that opponents could easily form competing parties which voters could just as easily vote for, and the threshold for any party to enter into the legislature would be very low.

Indeed, contrary to your statement "in most instances" legislatures elected by party list voting are not dominated by a single party. They tend to look like this instead. And when they are, it's because a majority of voters (or very damn close) legitimately support the party in question, in which case there's nothing undemocratic about them getting to rule.

The sort of dominant-party systems you're describing arise not because of parties but because of winner-take-all methods like first-past-the-post which make it impossible for smaller factions which don't win the most votes to get any seats.
 
By the way, Roman. I'm suggesting running the elections without the forums (or at least a system that doesn't require you to post or sign up to the forums), that way we could tap the region for way more voters than we see in our current RA votes.

You can complain all you want about lazy citizens.. but there's a *lot* of them, like any feeder; generally speaking I don't think its an understatement to say 99% of the region isn't really ever on the forums. It's a staple of gameplay to run basically your entire region on the forums and say "screw you" to the other 99% unless you need their endorsements. I think coming to them, instead of expecting them to come to us would improve our game experience. What other feeder can claim to have hundreds of voters and, likely, active lobbying taking place? It sounds more exciting to me than running RA elections ever few months like every other feeder or sinker (minus the Pacific) between twenty people max -- it gets the whole region involved with the election of representatives, which is a good thing.

The problem with most conventional elected legislatures in NS is.. they don't have a purpose. If the people on the forums are electing their representative.. that makes no sense, they can represent themselves, none of us here in the RA currently need a representative.. most of us are here *for* the politics. Whereas the 99% of the region is really the part of the region that needs representation since they've got other things to do than politics, but involving them in the election of representatives would make the region reflect their will a little better -- but I'd expected the people in our RA now would still be the representatives of the future, since we're the people interested in the public administration of the region.

Hopefully this makes sense.
 
@ Gulliver - True, but eventually coalitions form (which is actually the intent of multi-party systems in order to produce a working majority, which, in turn would require party line action to get anything done.

However, this can be made a working system (that is, multi party/coalition based) provided there was some kind of 'vote of confidence' mechanism. The downside is that the Delegate becomes reduced to the role of a Constitutional Monarch instead of an executive and head of government/state.

@ Unibot - This dovetails into Gulliver's points quite nicely.

What you say makes complete sense. What you describe is essentially what we do have in terms of the mechanics of the NationStates World.

For example, how many nations endorsing a sitting delegate are actually involved on the forum in terms of government or anything for that matter? Very few. In fact, probably fewer than 20%, even less for RA participation. Yet, their endorsements, the bulk of which constitute the endorsements a Delegate (or anyone else for that matter) has. Nations that do not join the WA are inert in terms of 'mechanics' and can only have a say if they do join the RA and vote on the forum voting system. See what I mean?

The forum voting method gives non-WA nations the ability to be represented without being able to vote 'directly' by endorsing a particular nation. Unfortunately, since non-WA nations can be held in infinite numbers by one individual as puppets, the only way to assure that someone isn't getting to vote multiple times is to have a forum based voting system and government. It's one of those funky things that are hard to work around.

I do, however, see some very interesting points being brought of that provide much food for thought and make me question my own opinions on such matters. And that is why discussions like this are important because it is from these discussions new ideas and perspectives are formed.

Now, we could have a system in place in which opinions can be directly asked for by the Delegate and directly communicated to the Delegate or RA. Such questions could be asked right on the RMB header as they come up to solicit responses from people who choose not to directly interact on the forum. But again, weight would have to be given to WA nations over non-WA nations out of practical concerns of voting fraud arising from an inability to determine whether or not one person's 200 puppet nations are influencing the vote.

One of the ideas might be to encourage as many nations as possible to have WA membership, collect votes via TGs to various RA member nations who would represent that constituency in the RA. Lemuria, I believe had such a system or partially so.

The one problem that could arise is WA nations flooding in to affect a vote or even overthrow the government which is precisely why most regions of any size have forums to conduct governmental business.

But I do like the concept of a republic styled government if it could be made workable.
 
McMasterdonia:
True, but eventually coalitions form (which is actually the intent of multi-party systems in order to produce a working majority, which, in turn would require party line action to get anything done.
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How is this functionally any different than a majority of independents having to agree and cooperate to achieve some goal? The requirement that a majority needs to reach an agreement is always going to be there unless you just give one guy exclusive legislative power.

And at the end of the day there's always doing to be a single party, coalition or faction ruling at the moment, because, well, having several parallel governments running at once to give everyone what they wanted just wouldn't work. Whether the ruling majority chooses to identify itself by some name doesn't practically change that fact, as you yourself pointed out. So long as there are constitutional limits on the majority's right to rule, real competition and a chance they may lose power, it's still entirely fair and democratic.

McMasterdonia:
However, this can be made a working system (that is, multi party/coalition based) provided there was some kind of 'vote of confidence' mechanism. The downside is that the Delegate becomes reduced to the role of a Constitutional Monarch instead of an executive and head of government/state.
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I don't understand this at all. Why would that be necessary to make it work? How the legislature would be elected and the relationship between the legislature and the executive are two entirely separate questions.
 
Romanoffia:
For example, how many nations endorsing a sitting delegate are actually involved on the forum in terms of government or anything for that matter? Very few. In fact, probably fewer than 20%, even less for RA participation. Yet, their endorsements, the bulk of which constitute the endorsements a Delegate (or anyone else for that matter) has. Nations that do not join the WA are inert in terms of 'mechanics' and can only have a say if they do join the RA and vote on the forum voting system. See what I mean?

The forum voting method gives non-WA nations the ability to be represented without being able to vote 'directly' by endorsing a particular nation. Unfortunately, since non-WA nations can be held in infinite numbers by one individual as puppets, the only way to assure that someone isn't getting to vote multiple times is to have a forum based voting system and government. It's one of those funky things that are hard to work around.

I do, however, see some very interesting points being brought of that provide much food for thought and make me question my own opinions on such matters. And that is why discussions like this are important because it is from these discussions new ideas and perspectives are formed.

Now, we could have a system in place in which opinions can be directly asked for by the Delegate and directly communicated to the Delegate or RA. Such questions could be asked right on the RMB header as they come up to solicit responses from people who choose not to directly interact on the forum. But again, weight would have to be given to WA nations over non-WA nations out of practical concerns of voting fraud arising from an inability to determine whether or not one person's 200 puppet nations are influencing the vote.

One of the ideas might be to encourage as many nations as possible to have WA membership, collect votes via TGs to various RA member nations who would represent that constituency in the RA. Lemuria, I believe had such a system or partially so.

The one problem that could arise is WA nations flooding in to affect a vote or even overthrow the government which is precisely why most regions of any size have forums to conduct governmental business.

But I do like the concept of a republic styled government if it could be made workable.
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The forum voting method gives non-WA nations the ability to be represented without being able to vote 'directly' by endorsing a particular nation. Unfortunately, since non-WA nations can be held in infinite numbers by one individual as puppets, the only way to assure that someone isn't getting to vote multiple times is to have a forum based voting system and government. It's one of those funky things that are hard to work around.
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This is why I suggested my particular system.. we send information on elections using an official auto-telegrammer that tells each nation their randomly generated verification code (e.g., "xfdijnf78957dfiumf4567") and record that verification code.

When they want to vote during voting week, they go to the website page (through Zetaboards, but you wouldn't have to sign into the region), where they need to type their verification code and then submit their ballot.

This system would record IP information to make sure people aren't muliting. The system would be painless for the voter, they wouldn't even to sign-up to our forums (which is my mind is a good thing). For the admins, the system will be a little more complex, but I think once the infrastructure is built, it shouldn't be that difficult to maintain.
 
An interesting plan.

It would be good to find some kind of one off referendum issue to test this on to see what kind of take up it would have.

edit - errant carriage return
 
You can actually use open ID to let people log into user created scripts using their nations, if the user configures their nation's settings correctly, which isn't difficult.
 
Gulliver:
You can actually use open ID to let people log into user created scripts using their nations, if the user configures their nation's settings correctly, which isn't difficult.
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I know, but I found OpenID to be kind of confusing, a verification code is fairly simple for the person using the system and most people are pretty used to copy and pasting verification codes.
 
Namyeknom:
An interesting plan.

It would be good to find some kind of one off referendum issue to test this on to see what kind of take up it w
ould have.
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*nods* Sounds like a good idea, although a referendum probably won't generate as much interest as an election.
 
unibot:
Namyeknom:
An interesting plan.

It would be good to find some kind of one off referendum issue to test this on to see what kind of take up it w
ould have.
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*nods* Sounds like a good idea, although a referendum probably won't generate as much interest as an election.
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I agree, but it's better than setting up the whole system only to find it is still only forum goers that vote.

The middle way then...

Perhaps, if this was something the region (forum) wanted to investigate, then an election of a Minister of the RMB (codename Cheese if you wish) would be a good test.

At least then it requires very little legal jiggery pokery to implement; the Delegate can appoint/remove whoever they want any way, so the election could be held without any officialness and the delegate can just implement the result.

Also, it would then at least be a vote that would have some impact on the non-forum members of the region.
 
Actually, sounds like a good idea. Shouldn't be that complicated of a script to make. Very intriguing idea.

Oh, why didn't I think of this one - create a single sub-forum in which people who are not registered on the forum can post/vote using the poll feature for referenda, etc.,,,?

That way, if the code for this forum is like other Zetaboard forums and such, will record not only the votes, but the IP address of those who voted - and do this with some kind of verification code?

Or - set up a page that requires some kind of 'captcha' scheme that makes it impractical for people to vote hundreds of times.

It would be an interesting thing to try just to see what kind of response we might get in terms of participation, and it's also a good indicator of how many people actually look at the RMB/Header to see what's new.

We could get a lot of useful information from a project like this just to help determine and test ideas for getting more people to participate in general.
 
It would be an interesting thing to try just to see what kind of response we might get in terms of participation, and it's also a good indicator of how many people actually look at the RMB/Header to see what's new.
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My idea used an auto-telegrammer to generate authorization codes specifically for each person.
 
Unibot:
I know, but I found OpenID to be kind of confusing, a verification code is fairly simple for the person using the system and most people are pretty used to copy and pasting verification codes.
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I never found it difficult to use, and "copy and paste this into your settings" and "copy and paste this code to some place" seem about equal in complexity. Unlike verification codes people aren't limited to logging in only at predetermined times when they'll receive a code. For example, one could allow off forum citizen registration and allow people to update their info whenever necessary, which might be more secure and be more flexible in who is allowed to be considered a citizen and vote through it.

In any case it's probably not prudent to draw a conclusion from the anecdotal evidence of two
 
Yeah, but Gully, people have to find where OpenID is, on NS, and its well hidden in the Settings page.
 
There are a number of really good ideas here being presented.

The verification issue (to prevent people voting multiple times with puppets) shouldn't be that hard to handle.

For instance, we could have people vote via a link in a game TG to a routine hosted on the forum. Send a TG to a given nation (WA or not) with links to vote one way or another on an issue or whatever the vote is. That way, you get IP addresses and other identifying factors to eliminate people voting multiple times (a simple database program could eliminate multiple votes by the same person), not a big deal.

You know, if we could pull something like this off, it would be a first in NationStates and something absolutely unique.

OOC:

And, if it works well, it could be something that could be integrated into the NS game and regional forums if it works well.
 
Gulliver:
Unibot:
I know, but I found OpenID to be kind of confusing, a verification code is fairly simple for the person using the system and most people are pretty used to copy and pasting verification codes.
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I never found it difficult to use, and "copy and paste this into your settings" and "copy and paste this code to some place" seem about equal in complexity. Unlike verification codes people aren't limited to logging in only at predetermined times when they'll receive a code. For example, one could allow off forum citizen registration and allow people to update their info whenever necessary, which might be more secure and be more flexible in who is allowed to be considered a citizen and vote through it.

In any case it's probably not prudent to draw a conclusion from the anecdotal evidence of two
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Good point.

It might be better to a run a closed(ish) trial first time round then, two test votes using each system and then a brief feedback questionnaire to see what people thought of both.

I'm sure with the forum users, and a selection of TNP nations we could hope to get up to 50 different people trialling it.
 
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