Politician Archive

i've seen them referenced, and described in tangential ways, but nothing that addresses this subject directly. can our lovely correspondent, or someone else in the know please post info describing how elections work. here are some questions i have:

if elections are weekly, can people vote at anytime?

are only individual politicians able to run? is there such a thing as party affiliation (imagine planet or galaxy governments loyal to the empire or rebellion).

is it possible to corrupt an election (vote twice or mobilize out of zone voters to the ballot through dirty tricks)?

is city hall the only place people can vote?

are we expecting real elections? or just popularity contests a la high school?

will there be campaign fundraising outside of taxation? do contribution to political campaigns result in tax rebates?

what about the legalization of marijuana?

Heres what I've gathered from both my time roaming around Test Center and from reading stuff in the various forums and dev chats. Hopefully I can save Plinka a little time (unless I screw this all up) by answering some of your questions.

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Laotan2 wrote:

if elections are weekly, can people vote at anytime?

Yes, you vote throughout the course of the week leading up to the "election".

are only individual politicians able to run? is there such a thing as party affiliation (imagine planet or galaxy governments loyal to the empire or rebellion).

There is no function that has been coded into the game at this time that allows for a party system. However, that does not mean that through a little bit of role playing and good old fasioned ingenuity you couldnt set up a party system. Also, we have heard several times that politician and player cities are not yet finished. There may be a future patch that will allow for such a system.

is it possible to corrupt an election (vote twice or mobilize out of zone voters to the ballot through dirty tricks)?

No, itis not possible to vote twice. Every person in the galaxy gets one vote per week total. So you could not run around to several elections voting for different people. However, you could get your friends in another town to come over and vote for you, but they would be a member of your town for the week in which the voted for you. The reason for this is that you have to own a declared residence in the town in which you want to vote. You can only declare your residence in a new place once every week. So even if you vote somewhere and move your house to a new location the day after, you would not be able to declare your residence there until a week after the last time you declared it. But back to having your friends vote in your election who normally dont live in that town. You could have them move in for the week to vote you in, but as soon as they left, you would likely lose to the former mayor who had the majority of votes before your friends moved in. So in order to stay in office, your friends would have to keep their residency in your town. So in effect, they just moved to your town and nothing "corrupt" has occured. So the answer to your question is no, there is no way to corrupt an election. (except those who certainly will find an exploit or scam, but there is no NON-CHEATING way of corrupting al election)

is city hall the only place people can vote?

Yes, the voting terminal is in the city hall and one must go there in order to vote.

are we expecting real elections? or just popularity contests a la high school?

lol, I guess this would mostly be an opinion. I guess it really depends on the maturity level of the people who reside in your town. Whether or not they want someone who can address the issues and be the best for their town, or just some one who has the most friends. I have faith that my town has the maturity for it to be a good election, but having seen many others on SWG I'd definetly have to go with popularity contest as the general rule of thumb for the game. But hey, I guess politicians are supposed to be popular anyway, right?

will there be campaign fundraising outside of taxation? do contribution to political campaigns result in tax rebates?

Once again, no officailly coded campaign fundraising programming; however, it would be very easy to do something yourself. Get an architect to make you a bunch of tables and chairs, set them up in the city hall, and host a banquet. With a little creativity (and some rich friends) you could host a very nice banquet and give a little "please give me money" from the stage in the city hall. You might raise a good bit. It is my understanding that anyone can donate to the city treasury, but if not, they could just donate to you and you could put it in the treasury. Also, there is room for a little dirty politics here (my favorite part of being mayor will undoubtably be this). Say it comes time to place the shuttleport. Lets see, I could place it nicely here in the middle of town, making it convenient for all, or I could put it smack dab in front of one of my citizens shops, getting her all the business. A few bribes here and there do well to grease the wheels of politics and player cities

what about the legalization of marijuana?

lol, if they coded marijuana into the game it would be far to powerful, it would have to be nerfed. So dont even bother trying to get it legalized within your town, it would be useless within a week of its release.

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Well, thats all Ive got to say. Hopefully that was some help to you. Feel free to ask anymore questions you have, hopefully I'll be able to answer them

Thanks! that was awesome. i've got two follow up questions:

can multiple people declare their residence within the same building? i.e. can there be families? and can those families vote differently? or do only "home owners" have the ability to vote? what about the homeless, and what about people who live in a house someone else owns? tennant rights? i assume that women and children have the right to vote, but do they need to own a home to do so?

i also find interesting the notion of zoning rights and where to place public buildings. it seems to me that the political power of the politician may indeed be in the ability to place a spaceport or cantina outside of a particular vendor's establishment... but what other special powers might a politician wield? i agree that role playing will make a great politician, so let's speculate on what type of role playing can give same politician even more power...