I think we all like elections, and I agree they’re pretty cool! Unfortunately, elections where nefarious actors can easily interfere are a lot less cool. There is no good way to protect regional polls from foreign actors easily manipulating the results.
We currently limit participation in Local Council election polls to native World Assembly members. That, frankly, is trivially easy to bypass.
- A ‘native’ resident is just one that has more influence here than in any other region; for instance, a nation that has only ever been in the South Pacific is a native resident. I’ve only ever been involved in our region, but if I wanted to become a native resident of, say, the North Pacific, I can just create a new nation, move it there immediately, and wait at most half a day.
- Each player is limited to one World Assembly nation at any given time, but there are no restrictions on having many nations and changing which one is a World Assembly member. To turn my new native nation into a World Assembly member, I can just leave the World Assembly on my current nation and join it on my new nation.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this seems a bit alarmist. We don’t exactly have alarm bells ringing from foreign interference every time we hold a Local Council election. Nevertheless, the risks increase significantly if we move from electing RMB moderators to electing people integrated into the Cabinet who could potentially access information that currently only the Cabinet can.
An easier solution is to just ensure the Ministry of Culture coordinates in-game activities and events (which it has, but if it’s a concern we can codify it explicitly) and encourage those who are active primarily in-game (regardless of whether they primarily frequent the RMB, their issues page, the factbook editor, etc.) to make their voice heard in Minister of Culture and/or Cabinet elections. This isn’t that hard, and we have discussions in progress that would make it even easier. Hold candidates to account, ask them the tough questions, and make sure your voice is heard! That’s what elections are all about and that’s why we enjoy them.