Election Guide

[Salzie Sachertorte]

An updated version of CDS Elections 101 is now posted at the CDS website at http://neufreistadt.info/

[Sleazy_Writer]

Update: I've not heard the details from Chancellor Dnate yet, but from what I heard so far, it seems that Alpine Meadow is not going to have a voting booth and a place for signs. Alpine Meadow residents will probably need to go to the Platz of Neufreistadt or the Forum of Colonia Nova. I've removed the references to voting booths in AM from the text.

- - - - - - - -
Hi,

I've updated Salzie's "Elections 101" guide to CDS elections, it now includes this recent change and amendment to the voting process and something new about Sainte-Laguë seat allocation. You can review the changes I made here and I hope members from all factions and the heads of government will do so.
Since the new voting system is still being programmed, the user interface of it might differ somewhat from this description.

Please post your comments below.
- Sleazy.

- - - - - - - -
Elections 101
 
The new, January '08 version of 'Elections 101'.
 
 
Citizens:
Elections are upon us. In order to facilitate the election process, the CDS has compiled an overview which informs voters of how the campaign process works within The CDS. Of course, being The CDS, we have lots of links to massive amounts of political theory, platforms and such for you to ponder before you cast your vote.
This guide has been reviewed by all current factions for their input and been vetted by the heads of government to ensure its neutrality. Should you have any questions, please post them at the forums so we can discuss the matter.
 
 
Working backwards, under Article 1, Sec. 2 of the Constitution, we find ourselves obliged to begin a new term of the Representative Assembly biannually. Such terms last six months, beginning on February 1st and August 1st of each year. In order to seat this new Assembly, we have to somehow elect them. Art, 1, Sec. 2 thoughtfully requires us to hold open the polls for a 168 hour period somewhere in the middle of January and July, which complicated verbiage setting the date, along with a provision to extend the time period should the grid go down for more than 12 hours. This was done to enable a long period of time to ensure RL doesn't impede one's ability to vote.
 
 
The upcoming election period shall run from noon on Saturday, January 12th to noon on Saturday, January 19th.
How many seats are available? We don’t know. NL 5-17 sets the number. The number of seats in the RA shall be based upon the number of citizens as of the deadline for voting in the election that will elect that RA (per Article V) or the number of citizens as of the date the polls open in the aforementioned election, whichever is greater.
So, we won't know till January 12th how many seats are open. However, we suspect the number will be five, we would need to have 70 citizens by January 12th to have seven seats available in the RA.
 
 
Voting itself is quite easy.
Jon Seattle is currently making an updated election system, it includes both the recent changes in the election process as well as the tested principles of Flyingroc's election system. The voting booths will be available on the Platz in Neufreistadt and on the Forum in Colonia Nova. You can vote in either location, but remember you can only vote once. More on how that works later in this paper. See, very easy to understand.
 
 
What, may you ask, is the Representative Assembly?
Under our Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 1, the Representative Assembly is the branch of government which "is a body of democratically elected factions which represent different ideological views of its citizens. Its governmental role is to pass laws and its service role is to promote the CDS and perform long-term planning."
Who can vote? Art. V, Sec. 3 requires that you must be a citizen for no less than 28 consecutive days prior to the opening of the polls. Please see the CDS website for the list of eligible citizens. So, who are you going to vote for? Here comes the fun part.
 
 
You have two votes. Your first vote is a vote for a faction (you can rank them). With your second vote, you rank the candidates from your highest-ranked faction.
Please note, as the votes are in secret, you can be Machiavellian and not vote for your own faction. It's complicated. Let's take this step by step
 
 
First - what is a faction?
Our Constitution, under Art. IV, gives lots of information about what factions do, yet never actually defines what one is - perhaps an issue to be rectified by the next Assembly? I digress. So, turning to dictionary.com we find a faction can be defined as:

faction n 1: a clique (often secret) that seeks power usually through intrigue [syn: cabal, junto, camarilla] 2: a dissenting clique [syn: sect]
I, speaking for myself, find that absolutely hilarious; however, that is an entirely different discussion regarding the history of our fair sim and does not fall under the "politically neutral" content of this paper. So, we move on to a definition more on point,

fac·tion1 (fk sh n) n. A group of persons forming a cohesive, usually contentious minority within a larger group.
Fair enough - the Constitution then goes into some minutia about factions. If you find great joy in reading the verbosity of the Constitution, don't forget to cross-reference the articles with the subsequent Amendments.
To summarize:
A faction is a group of CDS citizens with common goals who run for seats in the Representative Assembly based on their general philosophy and future goals for the CDS.

 
No citizen is required to be part of a faction and cannot be a member of more than one faction at the same time. Factions must have at least three members. Please note that the factions page at the website lists the active factions, in alphabetical order and provides a link to their respective web pages which gives further information about each. Each faction also has its own message board at the forums, with which to discuss its business. So you are encouraged to study these sources to learn all about factions and their positions in the upcoming elections.
Now - if you are a member of a faction, pay attention as this pertains to you!
According to the Constitution, you must report to the SC Dean - Gwyn - no later than 15 days prior to the opening of the polls your willingness or unwillingness to serve in the RA. This has been interpreted to mean that you need to let Gwyn know your intentions:
I want to serve,
I don't want to serve,
I'm reluctantly willing to serve if nobody else in my faction will, a/k/a I will serve if you twist-my-arm.
Also note that Art. V, Sec 2 states "Citizens may not serve simultaneously in the Representative and Philosophic branch." so please take that into account when deciding whether or not you wish to declare.
 
 
So, let's review. If you want a crack at being a bigwig, er, member of the RA, you need to be a member of a faction and declare your intent to serve on or before the 15th day before the start of the election. Oh, dear! You just realized you aren't aligned with a faction. How do you join one? If you want to join a faction, you must contact the current head of the faction (see faction's web page for that info) and indicate that you wish to join the group. He/she will then invite you to the group. Make sure you have a group slot free. This procedure is done not to cause hardship to individuals or to disenfranchise anyone, rather it is to avoid griefers and to ensure members of the faction groups are CDS citizens, as required by Art. IV, Sec. 2.
 
 
So, the elections have been called, people have indicated their willingness to serve, and the campaigning begins! Officially, campaigning to the masses can begin in earnest 15 days prior to the opening of the polls, or 29 December.
No mud slinging, please! Actually, the Constitution, Art. IV, Sec. IV, lays out strict rules for campaigning. These have been the subject of much debate in prior elections and have pretty much settled on the following interpretation: Signs may distribute notecards. The rationale is that a notecard comes with a dialogue box which allows the av to "keep" or "discard", thus implicitly giving permission to receive the same. There is a well established tradition of signage. Information signs regarding the factions traditionally stand in a public space near the voting booth: outside the Rathaus and on the Forum in Colonia Nova. Anyone may hang a poster or sign on their own property. No rules that prevent this, though please take into account your neighbor's sensibilities and the covenants prohibiting floating, particle emitting, or rotating signs. The no shouting rule was put in place to allow people the choice to not listen to campaign speeches. This doesn't preclude a rally in a public square, rather it imposes polite behavior on the mob. These rules might seem rather restrictive, so we must the historical rationale for them - they were created to keep factions from spamming new citizens into Boss Tweed style party electioneering. So, the factions campaign and we all set out to vote on the appointed days. There is an election booth near the center of the Platz and the Forum.
 
 
Most of the voting process is actually done on a website. The voting booth is there so that you can get a password that you need to access the website.
To get the password, simply enter the booth and touch the panel. The booth will send you an internet address and a password via IM. Simply log in with your SL name, and the password provided. The website will guide you through the rest of the process. Should you have a problem obtaining a password or logging into the website, please contact Gwyneth Llewelyn or another SC member for assistance. If you are unable to get to the website or loose your password, you can always go back to the booth for a new one.
 
New:
 
On the website, you will be able to rank the factions in your preferred order, as well as rank the candidates of your highest-ranked faction.
Firstly, the factions can be ranked from 1 to n and there is also the option to not rank a faction; this will act the same way as a last place vote in the Borda count.
Secondly, you rank the candidates of your highest-ranked faction. The higher the ranking, the more points a candidate gets (Borda count) and the total resulting points for the candidates determines who gets a RA seat for that faction.
 
 
With a bit of luck, "I voted" buttons will be available, which you can wear with pride. Also, if you see a fellow citizen without one, please remind them to exercise their right to vote!
On January 19th, the voting period will end, the polls will close and the votes will be tabulated. Now the fun starts: How do we count the votes? Representative seats are chosen by means of the Sainte-Lague method using scores generated by Borda-count ranked votes cast by citizens.
Huh? Let's start with Borda counts. Factions receive points based on how they are ranked by each voter (this is also how it works for ranked candidates). If there are only two factions A and B, Borda count voting looks no different than non ranked voting. The faction you rank first gets one point, and the faction you rank second gets zero.
Say we have 4 factions, then the Best ranked gets 3 points, 2nd place gets 2 points, 3rd place gets one point, and last place gets no points. If a faction is not ranked, it will get zero points, like a last-place ranking.
 
 
The seat allocation, which fortunately is automated by the voting system, works as follows:
The Sainte-Laguë method is a way of allocating seats proportionally for representative assemblies with party list voting system, it is a divisor method. After all the votes have been tallied (the Borda-count points), successive quotients are calculated for each faction.
The formula for the quotient is ( V /  (2*s + 1) ) where V is the total of points of a faction and s is the number of seats that a faction has been allocated so far, initially 0 for all factions. Whichever faction has the highest quotient gets the next seat allocated, and their quotient is recalculated given their new seat total. The process is repeated until all seats have been allocated.
 
Wikipedia shows a good example of this, but to make it a bit more tangible for us: Each faction has a large beer stein, the total of Borda-score points determines how much of that stein is filled with Neufreistadt beer or Colonia Nova wine. RA seats are allocated one by one, and for each 'round', a seat is given to the faction with the fullest stein. After the winning faction gets a seat, the amount of beer in that stein is recalculated with the formula above. After emptying the stein of the winner a bit, we take a new look at the steins for the next seat, and repeat the process until all seats are allocated.
 
No hanging chads in the CDS! Rather ironic, isn't it, that our little virtual country has a better election system than the Leader of the Free World. Oops, disregard that last statement - not politically neutral. So, after all of that, the scores are announced, everyone scratches their heads as they translate points into people and then wild victory/defeat parties break out in the streets of the CDS!!!!!
Once everyone has sobered up, we find we need to figure out who is the new leader of the RA. So after the convoluted methods describe about, we find that the process for this is literally child's play, as outlined in Art. 1, Sec. 3: " The Leader of the RA is the head of the faction which receives the highest Borda Count score.  In the event of a Borda count tie between two or more factions, the tie will be broken by one (in the event of a two way tie) or more (in the case of a three or more way tie) best of three games of Rock, Paper, Scissors among the faction heads/founders. The games shall be overseen by the dean of the SC, who shall be the custodian of the official CDS RPS device. " Child's play indeed!
So, on 1 February, the old RA dissolves and the new one takes over.
 
 
But, while I still have your attention before you run off to read up on platforms and make an informed choice, a few other things to consider:
Other RA facts:
* Due to problems which arose during their last term, the RA enacted NL 4-25, the Vacancy Act, which outlines the steps to be taken should Representatives resign their seats, thus assuring a smooth transition between elections.
* Any citizen can ask any Representative to introduce legislation for consideration by dropping a note card in world on the Representative.
* This guide is updated by a volunteer, the Scientific Council is the authority deciding on precise details and interpretations of the CDS Constitution and laws.

[Brian Livingston]

Hi all:

I am currently in the process of populating the CDS Portal with all of our various and assorted information and it seems pretty clear that this document is one that should be readily available for both citizens and non-citizens alike. However, upon first glance, it seems to be a bit dated (5 reps, etc). I've made some updates to the document and posted it below. Please look it over and make sure I haven't missed anything!

Thanks!

Brian

--------

Elections 101
Version 3.0


Citizens:
Elections are upon us. In order to facilitate the election process, the CDS has compiled an overview which informs voters of how the campaign process works within The CDS. Of course, being The CDS, we have lots of links to massive amounts of political theory, platforms and such for you to ponder before you cast your vote.
This guide has been reviewed by all current factions for their input and been vetted by the heads of government to ensure its neutrality. Should you have any questions, please post them at the forums so we can discuss the matter.


Working backwards, under Article 1, Sec. 2 of the Constitution, we find ourselves obliged to begin a new term of the Representative Assembly biannually. Such terms last six months, beginning on February 1st and August 1st of each year. In order to seat this new Assembly, we have to somehow elect them. Art, 1, Sec. 2 thoughtfully requires us to hold open the polls for a 168 hour period somewhere in the middle of January and July, which complicated verbiage setting the date, along with a provision to extend the time period should the grid go down for more than 12 hours. This was done to enable a long period of time to ensure RL doesn't impede one's ability to vote.

How many seats are available? We don’t know. NL 5-17 sets the number. The number of seats in the RA shall be based upon the number of citizens as of the deadline for voting in the election that will elect that RA (per Article V) or the number of citizens as of the date the polls open in the aforementioned election, whichever is greater.
So, we won't know until the polls open how many seats are up for grabs. In the past we have had 5 seats, although for recent elections, we have had over 70 citizens, providing two additional seats.


Voting itself is quite easy.
Jon Seattle created our new election system, which includes both recent changes in the election process as well as the tested principles of Flyingroc's election system. The voting booths will be available on the Platz in Neufreistadt and on the Forum in Colonia Nova. You can vote in either location, but remember you can only vote once. More on how that works later in this paper. See, very easy to understand.


What, may you ask, is the Representative Assembly?
Under our Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 1, the Representative Assembly is the branch of government which "is a body of democratically elected factions which represent different ideological views of its citizens. Its governmental role is to pass laws and its service role is to promote the CDS and perform long-term planning."
Who can vote? Art. V, Sec. 3 requires that you must be a citizen for no less than 28 consecutive days prior to the opening of the polls. Please see the CDS website for the list of eligible citizens. So, who are you going to vote for? Here comes the fun part.


You have two votes. Your first vote is a vote for a faction (you can rank them). With your second vote, you rank the candidates from your highest-ranked faction.
Please note, as the votes are in secret, you can be Machiavellian and not vote for your own faction. It's complicated. Let's take this step by step


First - what is a faction?
Our Constitution, under Art. IV, gives lots of information about what factions do, yet never actually defines what one is - perhaps an issue to be rectified by the next Assembly? I digress. So, turning to dictionary.com we find a faction can be defined as:

faction n 1: a clique (often secret) that seeks power usually through intrigue [syn: cabal, junto, camarilla] 2: a dissenting clique [syn: sect]
I, speaking for myself, find that absolutely hilarious; however, that is an entirely different discussion regarding the history of our fair sim and does not fall under the "politically neutral" content of this paper. So, we move on to a definition more on point,

fac·tion1 (fk sh n) n. A group of persons forming a cohesive, usually contentious minority within a larger group.
Fair enough - the Constitution then goes into some minutia about factions. If you find great joy in reading the verbosity of the Constitution, don't forget to cross-reference the articles with the subsequent Amendments.
To summarize:
A faction is a group of CDS citizens with common goals who run for seats in the Representative Assembly based on their general philosophy and future goals for the CDS.

No citizen is required to be part of a faction and cannot be a member of more than one faction at the same time. Factions must have a membership that is at least as many as 10% of the CDS population. For example, if we have 80 citizens, a faction needs 8 members. Please note that the factions page at the portal lists the active factions, in alphabetical order and provides a link to their respective web pages which gives further information about each. Each faction also has its own message board at the forums, with which to discuss its business. So you are encouraged to study these sources to learn all about factions and their positions in the upcoming elections.
Now - if you are a member of a faction, pay attention as this pertains to you!
According to the Constitution, you must report to the SC Dean - Claude Desmoulins - no later than 15 days prior to the opening of the polls your willingness or unwillingness to serve in the RA. This has been interpreted to mean that you need to let Claude know your intentions:
I want to serve,
I don't want to serve,
I'm reluctantly willing to serve if nobody else in my faction will, a/k/a I will serve if you twist-my-arm.
Also note that Art. V, Sec 2 states "Citizens may not serve simultaneously in the Representative and Philosophic branch." so please take that into account when deciding whether or not you wish to declare.


So, let's review. If you want a crack at being a bigwig, er, member of the RA, you need to be a member of a faction and declare your intent to serve on or before the 15th day before the start of the election. Oh, dear! You just realized you aren't aligned with a faction. How do you join one? If you want to join a faction, you must contact the current head of the faction (see faction's web page for that info) and indicate that you wish to join the group. He/she will then invite you to the group. Make sure you have a group slot free. This procedure is done not to cause hardship to individuals or to disenfranchise anyone, rather it is to avoid griefers and to ensure members of the faction groups are CDS citizens, as required by Art. IV, Sec. 2.


So, the elections have been called, people have indicated their willingness to serve, and the campaigning begins! Officially, campaigning to the masses can begin in earnest 15 days prior to the opening of the polls, or 29 December.
No mud slinging, please! Actually, the Constitution, Art. IV, Sec. IV, lays out strict rules for campaigning. These have been the subject of much debate in prior elections and have pretty much settled on the following interpretation: Signs may distribute notecards. The rationale is that a notecard comes with a dialogue box which allows the av to "keep" or "discard", thus implicitly giving permission to receive the same. There is a well established tradition of signage. Information signs regarding the factions traditionally stand in a public space near the voting booth: outside the Rathaus and on the Forum in Colonia Nova. Anyone may hang a poster or sign on their own property. No rules that prevent this, though please take into account your neighbor's sensibilities and the covenants prohibiting floating, particle emitting, or rotating signs. The no shouting rule was put in place to allow people the choice to not listen to campaign speeches. This doesn't preclude a rally in a public square, rather it imposes polite behavior on the mob. These rules might seem rather restrictive, so we must the historical rationale for them - they were created to keep factions from spamming new citizens into Boss Tweed style party electioneering. So, the factions campaign and we all set out to vote on the appointed days. There is an election booth near the center of the Platz and the Forum.


Most of the voting process is actually done on a website. The voting booth is there so that you can get a password that you need to access the website.
To get the password, simply enter the booth and touch the panel. The booth will send you an internet address and a password via IM. Simply log in with your SL name, and the password provided. The website will guide you through the rest of the process. Should you have a problem obtaining a password or logging into the website, please contact Claude Desmoulins or another SC member for assistance. If you are unable to get to the website or lose your password, you can always go back to the booth for a new one.

New:

On the website, you will be able to rank the factions in your preferred order, as well as rank the candidates of your highest-ranked faction.
Firstly, the factions can be ranked from 1 to n. Secondly, you rank the candidates of your highest-ranked faction. The higher the ranking, the more points a candidate gets (Borda count) and the total resulting points for the candidates determines who gets a RA seat for that faction.

With a bit of luck, "I voted" buttons will be available, which you can wear with pride. Also, if you see a fellow citizen without one, please remind them to exercise their right to vote!

At the end of the 168 hour voting period, the polls will close and the votes will be tabulated. Now the fun starts: How do we count the votes? Representative seats are chosen by means of the Sainte-Lague method using scores generated by Borda-count ranked votes cast by citizens.
Huh? Let's start with Borda counts. Factions receive points based on how they are ranked by each voter (this is also how it works for ranked candidates). If there are only two factions A and B, Borda count voting looks no different than non ranked voting. The faction you rank first gets one point, and the faction you rank second gets zero.
Say we have 4 factions, then the Best ranked gets 3 points, 2nd place gets 2 points, 3rd place gets one point, and last place gets no points.

The seat allocation, which fortunately is automated by the voting system, works as follows:
The Sainte-Laguë method is a way of allocating seats proportionally for representative assemblies with party list voting system, it is a divisor method. After all the votes have been tallied (the Borda-count points), successive quotients are calculated for each faction.
The formula for the quotient is ( V / (2*s + 1) ) where V is the total of points of a faction and s is the number of seats that a faction has been allocated so far, initially 0 for all factions. Whichever faction has the highest quotient gets the next seat allocated, and their quotient is recalculated given their new seat total. The process is repeated until all seats have been allocated.

Wikipedia shows a good example of this, but to make it a bit more tangible for us: Each faction has a large beer stein, the total of Borda-score points determines how much of that stein is filled with Neufreistadt beer or Colonia Nova wine. RA seats are allocated one by one, and for each 'round', a seat is given to the faction with the fullest stein. After the winning faction gets a seat, the amount of beer in that stein is recalculated with the formula above. After emptying the stein of the winner a bit, we take a new look at the steins for the next seat, and repeat the process until all seats are allocated.

No hanging chads in the CDS! Rather ironic, isn't it, that our little virtual country has a better election system than the Leader of the Free World. Oops, disregard that last statement - not politically neutral. So, after all of that, the scores are announced, everyone scratches their heads as they translate points into people and then wild victory/defeat parties break out in the streets of the CDS!!!!!
Once everyone has sobered up, we find we need to figure out who is the new leader of the RA. So after the convoluted methods describe about, we find that the process for this is literally child's play, as outlined in Art. 1, Sec. 3: " The Leader of the RA is the head of the faction which receives the highest Borda Count score. In the event of a Borda count tie between two or more factions, the tie will be broken by one (in the event of a two way tie) or more (in the case of a three or more way tie) best of three games of Rock, Paper, Scissors among the faction heads/founders. The games shall be overseen by the dean of the SC, who shall be the custodian of the official CDS RPS device. " Child's play indeed!
So, on the first day of the following month (February or August), the old RA dissolves and the new one takes over.


But, while I still have your attention before you run off to read up on platforms and make an informed choice, a few other things to consider:
Other RA facts:
* Due to problems which arose during their last term, the RA enacted NL 4-25, the Vacancy Act, which outlines the steps to be taken should Representatives resign their seats, thus assuring a smooth transition between elections.
* Any citizen can ask any Representative to introduce legislation for consideration by dropping a note card in world on the Representative.
* This guide is updated by a volunteer, the Scientific Council is the authority deciding on precise details and interpretations of the CDS Constitution and laws.

[Sonja Strom]

No citizen is required to be part of a faction and cannot be a member of more than one faction at the same time. Factions must have a membership that is at least as many as 10% of the CDS population.

Thank you very much Brian for your work on this! It is a tedious job, but keeping this guide current makes it a great source of information.

Personally, I would prefer to have the lines quoted above say:
"No citizen is required to belong to a faction, and no citizen may be a member of more than one faction at the same time. Factions may only have CDS citizens as members. In order for a faction to participate in an election, it must have a membership that is at least as many as 10% of the CDS population."

Only trying to be helpful.