Politician Archive

i agree in principle, however the reality would be a nightmare

as it stands i lead a city of 70 people and im in constant "tell hell" ive had to ask my constituents to mail me with questions and only send tell when it is important or they need information that can be aquired from another source (such as politician skill questions or city growth questions which can be found in the manual)

the reality is people forget not everyone who plays is an adult used to living up to responsibilities i know many middle aged people with lots of life experience behind them who still dont realise the importance of voting and in a game you have little chance of a reasonable amount of people remembering or even bothering week in week out

it is simply not practical to expect me to speak to all 70 (and still growing) in my city and cajole or simply remind them to vote every week

whilst your point is a good one practicallity and reality have to be considered first

Real life mayors are voted this way, as usually only 30% or less turn out to vote. the other 70% have voted by default by not voting

Well, I was democratically elected...on my PA forums. Ok, don't shoot.The main problem is the politician doesn't bring a lot to the city in itself. He's a building placement guy, really.

What can a politician argue that would make him better than the other guy? Not a lot of things, especially since current Mayors are PA mates or RL friends most of the time. You'd throw a PA mate out of office for an unknown guy? And yes, I know the "cities are not a PA thing" quotes, the thing is, a lot of them are, whether you like it or not. My PA has trade orientations, and we don't want a bunch of other guys to put it a a stronghold specialisation mode, which is of no interest to us.

Why not Emperor or King/Queen? It's not much of a mayor position either if you think about it.Default votes go to the encumbant? I suppose taking a minute a week to go to the voting booth is too much to ask? Am I the only one who was looking for the 'Politician' profession to be more of an administrative or even democratic position, and not the town's default king? Politicians are supposed to represent their constituents, mayors are politicians, but so are city council members, senators, etc. Politician Profession in SWG=Mayors For LIfe which reminds me too much of a dictatorship.

Imagine if our real life cities were run by mayors for life who get elected by default votes?Not too much fun to say the least, that's why there are no default votes, and term limits for a person.

Do you agree or disagree?

ironmike, you're wrong. the other 70% simply did not vote, end of story.

Let me ask you this. If you got it changed so that your constituents had to run or fly out to vote every week, without exception, if they want their mayor to get experience, would they still vote for you? I know I wouldn't.

I would like to see the non-votes give the incumbent xps, but not count in determining who won the election.

Slugeater is 100% right. Mayors aren't Politicians, there is nothing that resembles a Mayor in this game. Politicians is a building placement profession. Its like a crafting profession that can't even craft. The best cities are PA controlled, they can organize them much better than a loose collection of people. Also, in the rush to get cities, PAs were the fastest since they had multiple people working on it. At first I was really excited to be mayor for my PA, the more I play it the bigger a pain it is.

Nothing is like a mayor, thats the simple truth. Whether guy A or B is mayor is negligable, you can always move out if you don't like the place. If you aren't in a PA and not a crafter I really don't see reason to be in a city, you're just paying extra for crap you can always use.

The only way I could see this profession really being like a Mayor is if they don't require you to be a resident to run in a city and they don't make EXP so slow to get. But that would cause unimaginable about of complaining if they did the first.

Not voting is a vote for the status quo. It is true in real life and it is true in this game.

If you didn't vote for the mayorial racein the last election (unless you just hit 18 like me) then guess who you voted for? The current mayor. Why? Because you didn't vote against him, to get his ass out of office. Disagree? Well your wrong and apathetic so odds are you'll just argue with me then forget about it and stop caring no matter what my points are to the contrary.

Now as for the make people vote every week idea. If we could vote absentee from any major city on any world yes I would back this...however we can't. So in order to vote for me (after I get a city hall) you have to wait10 minutes to shuttle over to Corellia. Wait 3 ish minutes to load the world. Wait 12 minutes to walk out to our location (6k from Coronet and roughly that much from Kor Vella), it is a little less with mounts and vehicles coming out soon but it is still time none the less. Then wait 5 minutes if you get aggroed when close to the hall. So to tally it all up a worst case scenario means half an hour to give me 100 xp that you really don't care about since you lost half an hour (oh and need to return to your point of origin most likely) of gaming, spent a few k just to give me the xp, and unless my town really takes off at the start and we get a fun political rivalry going you didn't have to vote to keep me in office since my 1 vote was enough. Gee that sure makes more sense then having that person default to me anyway. Oh and lets not forget if you die halfway there, ctd, or go ld. Plus people do have real lives so they may be away for a week, in a coma, on vacation, attending holiday gatherings. I think I prefer the system as it is even if I was ousted from my future office.

PS I'm from Chicagoland and we do have a mayor king. The Daley's are about as close to that as you can get, hell he even closed down mig's in the middle of the night with bulldozers just because he didnt like the place. Oh and terrorists!!!!!!!

Chipmunk you really don't know much about the voting process. If you do not vote it is a null, in essence you are giving your vote divided equally to everyone else that is voting. So if out of 100 people eligable, 1 guy voted, the other 99 gave him their vote, since he is the only deciding factor. In real election if you don't vote it simply lowers to possible votes and lowers the requirement for a majority. In essence it favors the winning party, but you could argue it favors neither. Either way, it doesn't really matter, not voting is NOT giving your vote to the incumbant.

Guys, you are arguing real live vs. a game. Where in SWG do you see reality? I don't see it anywhere, there simply isn't any reality in SWG. (Hell even gravity isn't adhered to).

If you want to argue reality, then the votes would occur once every 2 to 3 years and people might turn out for it. This is a game, the voting is don't EVERY week. That's a lot of voting to do, far more than you are expected to do in real life. You try turning out to the local school each week to vote, and see how old it gets.

Now in my country, we're forced to vote whether we want to or not, at least in America you get a choice to be apathetic. We don't. We have to vote, but at least its once every three years (twice if you include the state elections). Our local government though is rife with corruption... why? Because we don't have to vote, and most people don't bother. So these weasels usually get in on a few votes. Which is what would happen on SWG.

Someone would get all his mates together (You'd only need 5 to be safe), they'd all turn up to the voting booth with a few minutes before cycle time, vote, and get you kicked out of office with seconds to spare on the vote. The rest of your playerbase wouldn't realise there was any need to vote that week, wouldn't bother (hell they've done it on 50 other weeks, they want to go hunting for a change), and bang, city hall gone.

At least with the current system, there is no real change unless the majority of the playerbase has really had enough and can't stand you anymore. It creates a more stable system. Sure you can't flip politicians on a weekly basis, but would you want to?

Unstable governments all over the place would end up making SWG look like the middle east. Democracy has beauracracy. Without the civil service, politics would move too rapidly. The reason that democracies/governments work in general, is that they are slow, they don't respond with emotion (by the time they respond, people can't remember the emotion) so it smooths out the highs and lows.

I agree that there needs to be more involvement from other politicians, there needs to be a city council, there needs to be other things that the political class can do, maybe some more checks and balances (You can't destroy the city hall unless the majority of the council votes in favour, etc, etc). You can do all of that without screwing up the voting system, because I guarantee that it would just allow the griefers to go around and wipe out one city after another. Only incredibly vigilint PAs would be able to stop someone from destroying their city....

But then maybe you're one of those that missed out on a city hall and want just that?

It's harder than some might think to get people to come vote. Our city is not based on a PA or even people that all know each other. It's a series of mutual arrangements and flat out strangers. Fact is, some people simply don't want to take the 5 minutes required to vote. Take away the default vote for the incumbent and you'll have to add some additional method for gaining politician xp. I shudder to think how much xp I'd get this week if the citizens had to actively vote. It's easy to get people to run missions from our city mission terminals, shop at our shops, use city structures etc etc. But to get them to take the 5 minutes to go into city hall to vote? Not so much.

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ToranTT wrote:

I agree that there needs to be more involvement from other politicians, there needs to be a city council, there needs to be other things that the political class can do, maybe some more checks and balances (You can't destroy the city hall unless the majority of the council votes in favour, etc, etc). You can do all of that without screwing up the voting system, because I guarantee that it would just allow the griefers to go around and wipe out one city after another. Only incredibly vigilint PAs would be able to stop someone from destroying their city....

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I like the council idea. We are organizing a city council, but it would be great if there were positions for politicians that were real designated positions, elected positions, other than mayor. That would be pretty sweet.