[08/28/2020] Manipulating voting trends through politics.

Morover

Primarily a Lurker
TNP Nation
Morover
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Manipulating voting trends through politics
Hello, and welcome to the second topic of the World Assembly Symposium 2020! You can also see the live discussions by joining the Discord for the event from 5PM-8PM EST today, August 28.

While the topics are intentionally broad, we also introduce subtopics for the interested:

  • Blocs and their place within the World Assembly
  • The lemming effect and how it's used
  • Informational Dispatches and their effect on the voter psyche
You can leave any longer-length essay-style responses here, if you like, or you can just wait for the actual live discussion on the Discord!
 
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I feel that Information Dispatches (IFVs) and Voting Blocs have a really large part to play in the current situation in the WA. Both serves rather different purposes, playing different roles in deciding whether a proposal gets passed through the halls or is voted down.
IFVs are mainly due to the voting demographics. Not everyone is in the WA because they study the proposal to the finest detail and say, "Eh maybe this proposal is not that good I am voting against." The utilisation of IFVs would really help the voters understand some of the reasonings behind a certain leaning. Some of the people may just look at these IFVs and follow them blindly. Others may gain new insights that somehow "convince" them to vote that way. After all, you would always think experienced people know what they are saying with these Dispatches.
As for Voting Blocs - they are an entirely different beast, swaying the way the votes are being casted in reality. The psychological effect of early stomps is really huge - you simply sway voters to jump on the bandwagon and follow the trend.
 
In the World Assembly - both GA and SC, though arguably to different extents - we have the difficult problem that out of probably a little under 10,000 regular voters, only a handful put any effort into informing themselves about the resolution at vote, whether by researching the topic online for the GA, finding out about the players and events involved for the SC, or by reading the WA forum discussion in general. The game's solution to this is to have regional WA delegates whose votes are weighted by number of endorsements. The top few delegates all hold significant power in determining the way a vote goes; this power gives them a responsibility to vote in an informed manner and I think it's fair to say it is therefore at least an attempt to make the actual outcome more reflective of each resolution's quality. In practice, most if not all of these powerful delegates are leaders in a region which will have a government set up on an external forum and their vote might be decided by a WA ministry, or by citizens, or whatever. And so, especially where the former or something similar is true but even with the latter, big regions also get a louder voice to project their political views and stances and their foreign agenda; this is particularly relevant to the SC but can also apply to GA proposals depending on authors.

That comes into effect in the actual voting - as Fregerson says, an early stack or stomp can really leave a mark - and in IFV production too. I don't think I can really get numbers to back this up but I suspect that a lot of people's votes follow the IFVs they see. That's a good thing in that an IFV dispatch will definitely inform a voter more than they would otherwise be, but often the perspectives the average voter will get might be pretty one-sided. Right now in the top 20 dispatches we have TNP IFVs for the GA and SC at vote, a Europeian IFV for the GA at vote, and a TRR IFV for the SC vote which just ended. And that's it. That gives those regions' WA ministries quite a bit of sway in quite an unbalanced way, so any region which puts together a dispatch program and a well-organised UpVoting team has good opportunities there.

Voting blocs can certainly help push or block a resolution via a stack or stomp respectively. They will likely always be made up of similarly minded regions so on a regular basis probably do little to change the situation, but as necessary can be helpful for setting up a concerted effort to get an early stack or stomp, and I think on the voting floor that's their chief value, as well as helping gather/prevent approvals on submitted proposals.
 
Blocs: Grey County supports voting blocs as it gives more power to regions that are smaller as they can work with other regions that has similar ideals to their own but negative effects is when a group goes early it contributes to the lemming effect.
Lemming effect: Well as I stated before if a large group goes in and votes at the beginning then their votes can make others just vote with the majority (that bloc). I think its not helpful to have the lemming effect as it can make nations not read the proposal or vote for what they want which can give to much power to blocs or big delegates that vote early.
Info dispatches: I think that info dispatches can help inform the voter especially one that gives both sides of the debate
 
I did. It's unclear whether those are reasons for blocs, lemmings or IVFs.
They seem to be mostly reasons for lemmings. Although I'm not sure what the "Can appeal to a group of people who can be convinced with argumentative exchange rather than simply sending telegrams" means
 
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