Bromo --
I welcome you to the CDS community, although your choice of party is somewhat lamentable. 
First, I am not opposed to openness and disclosure to the public. However, how information comes from a Party to the public really depends on the nature of the Party. The Simplicity Party does not speak for its members and does not guide or control its members' actions to try to muster them into collective action in support of a complicated agenda that most of them don't personally support. Therefore, I leave it to each member of the Simplicity Party to communicate their candidacy to the other citizens of the CDS. I have done so. Aliasi has done so. I am not sure that that the SP has other candidates -- but if any other person is running, I expect that they will make that fact known.
I tend to agree that the voters should be informed, by the PIO or the Dean, of who has announced their candidacy. This is for two reasons. First, only people who have communicated their candidacy to the Dean are truly candidates -- and announcements from sources other than the Dean may be in error. Second, I think that requiring Parties to speak for their members favors (inappropriately) Parties that follow a centralized power model (as CARE has historically done) as opposed to Parties that follow an individualized model (as the Simplicity Party has done).
Finally, I do not believe that I was making inappropriate person attacks in my post. I was rather using political science terms (central committee; totalitarian) advisedly and in their usual academic sense. If we cannot categorize our opponent's political methods using the terms of art designed for such categorization, we will be limited to banal, milquetoast, anemic language that is ill-calculated to achieve the kind of knowledge and exchange of ideas we need in proper political debate.
To understand where I am coming from, please reread the discussion of CARE's methods and tactics in the last election -- and the posts of Michel's inactivity while on the RA and his bullying proposals of stalking-horse legislation once he resigned.
I have never disagreed with CARE's general rhetoric or its glowing statements of principles. However, I have, from the beginning, noted that this rhetoric does not accord with the specific policy directions or centralized power commitments that CARE puts into practice. When rhetoric does not match practice, I see hypocrisy -- and I never hesitate to call out hypocrisy where I see it. Where you see a political attack, I see a straightforward and appropriate political assessment -- the kind of assessment that is necessary and proper in civil political discussion. Being nice is not the same as being civil -- i will be civil, I will not be nice.
Finally, I have, from the beginning of CARE, been hopeful that people of goodwill (and there are many such in CARE -- and I hope that you will prove to be one) who are attracted to CARE by its rhetoric and stated principles, will rescue CARE from its centralizing tendency, both within the Party and within the CDS through the Party. I continue to hope that CARE will reinvent itself in its own rhetorical image. However, at present, and contrary to the nature of politics in the CDS, CARE is set up as a political machine, on the Tammany Hall model, with Michel cast as Boss Tweed. A perusal of the excellent election statement, last edited by Salzie, will show that this model is one that the CDS specifically hopes to avoid. I hope that the CDS will continue succeeding in this regard.
Beathan
Let's keep things simple enough to be fair, substantive enough to be effective, and insightful enough to be good.
