Election Results - August 2005

All the votes are in. As stated in another thread, the Costume Party (CP) is not eligible to hold seats in the RA, as they didn't meet the minium membership requirement. In the voting analysis post following this one, I'll discuss why the CP was included (but not counted) along with a discussion of our current voting system.

The SDF has earned 2 seats and the MPP has earned 3 seats. I have contacted members individually according to the faction rankings to see if they wanted to serve. All but one person has responded but I know that they want to serve, so I'm awarding them a seat without confirmation.

Below is a summary of the results for the vote. As you know, factions were rated from 1 to 3 with more "points" going to those who were higher rated. The equation which calculates the score gives the highest ranked faction a "1" and the lowest ranked faction a "0". Factions in between receive fractional amounts. The equation is

score = (number_of_factions - rank) / (number_of_factions - 1)

where a rank of "1" gives the highest score. Because we had only two eligible factions, the Borda method of ranking has no effect.

The Sainte-Laguë method was used to distribute RA seats. The table used to calculate the seats is shown below as well. Please see the Wikipedia entry for details on how the method is applied.

Faction Vote (Borda Count)     Score    Percent
  Moderate Peoples Party          11      64.7%
  Social Democratic Faction        6      35.2%

Faction Seats (Sainte-Lague Method)
  Votes         MPP     SDF     Seat
 --------------------------------------------
  Seat 1        11.000  6.000   MPP
  Seat 2        3.667   6.000   SDF
  Seat 3        3.667   2.000   MPP
  Seat 4        0.733   2.000   SDF
  Seat 5        0.733   0.400   MPP
 --------------------------------------------
  Seats         3       2 
  Percent       60%      40% 

The RA will be comprised of the following people listed in alphabetical order:

1. Sudane Erato
   
2. Pendari Lorentz
   
3. Gwyneth Llewelyn
   
4. Eugene Pomeray
   
5. Satchmo Prototype

Thanks to everyone who voted!

Up next ... the analysis.

~Ulrika~

Below is a quick analysis of the vote. I think it's very important for everyone to read and understand it, as I'd like to make some changes to the system, inform people about the benefits and detriments of tactical voting, and discuss ethical issues. If there is anything that is not understood, be sure to ask questions.

As a disclaimer, I do not know who casted what vote. The votes are anonymous, save for a reversible hash included in the file name and receipt.

Tactical voting
I added the Costume Party (CP) to the ballot, even though they were ineligible, to see how pervasive tactical voting would be. Tactical voting occurs when voters misrepresent their sincere preferences in order to gain a more favorable outcome. An example is members of the MPP ranking the CP over the SDF to gain an advantage.

The effect of this tactical voting can alter the vote dramatically, especially with small groups such as ours. Unfortunately, sometimes in small groups tactical voting can have the opposite effect intended. I'll follow up with more details in my next post entitled "Tactical Voting".

Tactical voting is a problem in all deterministic voting systems (nonrandom), however it is especially acute in ranked systems such as the Borda count. Thus I'd like to change the method of ranking to mitigate the effects of tactical voting. It will require some discussion but I'm leaning towards Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping (CSSD). I wanted to revisit this after the first election but never got around to it. When we're working on improving the quality of elections, let's add the replacement of the Borda count to the agenda.

Voting Fraud
Finally, we had one suspected and later cleared instance of voting fraud due to a duplicate IP address. It might be in our best interest in the future to use votes weighted by the amount of owned land to get around the problem of trying to verify that one person receives only one vote.

Additionally, a voter was successful at casting two ballots this election! I was unable to reproduce this bug. Note that had we not had hashes in the receipts, I would have had to invalidate the election as we would have had 18 votes with only 17 citizens! (That's an excellent argument for hashes.)

Next up ... tactical voting.

~Ulrika~

In this post, I'll show what would have happened if the Costume Party (CP) had not been disqualified due to membership limits and take a closer look at the effects of tactical voting.

Based on the votes we received this is how the election would have turned out using a Borda count and the Sainte-Laguë method, if the CP were an actual party.

Faction Vote (Borda Count)     Score    Percent
  Moderate Peoples Party        13.5      52.9%
  Costume Party                    3      11.7%
  Social Democratic Faction        9      35.2%

Faction Seats (Sainte-Lague Method)
  Votes         MPP     CP      SDF     Seat
 --------------------------------------------
  Seat 1        13.500  3.000   9.000   MPP
  Seat 2        4.500   3.000   9.000   SDF
  Seat 3        4.500   3.000   3.000   MPP
  Seat 4        0.900   3.000   3.000   CP
  Seat 5        0.900   1.000   3.000   SDF
 --------------------------------------------
  Seats         2       1       2 
  Percent       40%     20%     40% 

As you can see, even though the CP received only 11.7% of the ranked vote, they took 20% of the seats.

Finally, here is a demonstration that will be of great interest to everyone. The MPP tactical votes, which rated the CP second and the SDF last (members of the SDF didn't do this at all for some reason), would have cost the MPP one seat and their majority! Had the CP been in the election, the tactical voting would have had the paradoxical effect of costing the MPP a seat in the RA! Let that be a lesson to you tactical voters. (I say this every election.)

By the way here's the percentage of party members who engaged in tactical voting. Factions with high tactical voting should be careful if a third party does emerge next election.


~Ulrika~

Finally, to build confidence in the current implementation of the voting system, I recommend third party validation. This can be done by submitting your voting URLs to a third party to have them generate the results independently once the receipts are in hand. As a faster alternative, I could submit all the receipts I have on the server to a third party at once, they could then generate the results independently, and then randomly request URLs from citizens to see if they match what's on hand.

I'll leave it to you to decide who the third party will be (I recommend a Linden) and what method you'd like to implement (URLs one at a time or all at once plus sampling).

~Ulrika~

A few first reactions ..

Congratulations to all winners. Well done

I still regard the inclusion of the Costume Party to have been unfair. It was on the level of a trick designed to shame people. I seem to recall this being unacceptable behaviour. In any case it is not for you to declare what is and what is not tactical voting, even if it seems that way. You may pass comment but that is all.

I am not satisfied with third party verification. The whole process should be in the hands of a neutral third party. We are asked to put our trust in one person who is an avowed member of one of the factions. Regardless of any personal feelings, this is plain wrong.

Weighting voting according to owned land? Are you serious? What happened to equality of citizenship?

I would argue that the SC has every right. The SC's main function being the protection of the Neualtenburg Constitution.

Furthermore voting systems employed by Neualtenburg are Guild provided and SC sanctioned. I think you are failing to see the one of necessary checks and balances the SC and the AB provide to RA dominance.

Neualtenburg is a three branched government.

How does the SC have every right to declare what another person's voting intentions were? Comment is a different matter.

I'm not failing to see anything. The SC ought to have no political affiliation.

So. All this drama because Satchmo and Digi voted from machines using the same IP address. !!*$#!

Is it not crystal clear now that the residents of Neualtenburg should not be in the business of ferreting out RL identities of various avatars? In the name of enforcing the "law", we have briefly (thank god!) experienced an episode of McCarthy-esque threats, to wit, that should the supposed "perpetrator" not come forward, that person's right to voting privacy would be violated, their crime assumed before it was in any way clear that a "crime" had been committed, and they be "made" to justify their innocence under presumption of guilt. I'm sorry, but this is "Animal Farm"!

Lets be really clear what's just happened here. Satchmo and Digi are, for ordinary SL purposes, and by their credible word, 2 RL people. Easily possible that they even share a credit card. Yet, because they access SL from machines hooked to the same router, their identical IP addresses caused the election administrator to urgently propose that election "fraud and abuse" had occurred. And that the only proof positive way to remove that suspicion of "crime" was for the perpetrator to reveal their identity to the election administrator, thereby conceding the "All Votes Are Private" principle prominently displayed in the voting system.

This is absurd. I access SL from several locations, which of course have different IP addresses. Should I wish to "conceal" the fact that Rudeen is my alt, it would be a no-brainer for her to vote from a different one than Sudane. Conversely, Daniel Robertson is a RL business colleague, who has an office in the premises of my business, from where he frequently accesses SL. That gives him the same IP as one of my access points. (Our business firewall is configured to present one address to the internet). Using the IP address of the origin of the vote as a vote validation is ridiculous, and should be tossed out immediately. I simply cannot believe that this episode has occurred under this presumption.

Let me be really clear how I feel about this (if it isn't already). One avatar; one vote. Ulrika, if you want to go divide your lot into 20 pieces, just so you can get a controlling vote in the RA, then go do it. I think there should be stated the principle that no RL person (being the "owner" of more that one avatar) should possess more than one citizenship. But, under the current SL software and LL procedures, there is absolutely no way in which we can enforce this. Trying to do so leads to the abuses which we have just experienced.

Here's the problem with the voting system. May I have a show of hands of those who understand it? Please. I'm serious. Other than Ulrika, please post here if you understand the mechanism of our voting system.

I have absolutely no doubt that the voting system, in principle, is fair. I have been more than willing to invest my confidence in that. But every voting system is subject to bugs, both intentional and unintentional. The only remedy is for all participants to understand the voting system and to understand how when something goes wrong it went wrong. (Case in point... Aliasi... the Florida chads. Everyone understands what happened, thanks to intense media scrutiny.)

If everyone fully understood the voting process, none of the dramatic issues that we have just experienced would have occured. There would be no double votes. There would be no suspicions of one person voting under two different names. The issue of the Costume Party would be irrelevant. People would understand that voting for a non-existent party is throwing your vote away. Obviously, those who voted for the Costume Party did so feeling that they preferred to give SDF a ranking of 1 rather than 2. That's understandable, IF the higher mathematics of the voting system are opaque to you.

Obviously, the test of a valid voting system is that it have the confidence of the participants. Since the mechanism of the system is opaque to most of us (still waiting for any hands to come up), the confidence of the voting system therefore must rest in the creator and administrator of that voting system.

I have been very willing to invest my confidence in Ulrika's system, based on her obvious familiarity with the esoterica of such systems, her enthusiasm for the system, and her other fundamental and substantial contributions to the formation and sustaining of the Neualtenburg Projekt.

However, her error in judgment in issuing a stream of voting "fraud and abuse" threats, and threats to violate "vote privacy", based on an easily distinguishable faulty vote validation technique has called my confidence into question.

I reluctantly propose that the voting system be re-created. That the system of the new voting system be simple and clear, even if compromises must be made regarding the application of the vote to the resulting configuration of people. Our tiny, fragile experiment demands a system that everyone understands.

It should incorporate:

1) One avatar, one vote. This shall be validated ONLY by reference to a Voter Regsitration List, which shall be published.
2) Votes are permanently, un-retrievably, private.
3) People run as individuals. They are welcome to combine as political associations, but names will appear on the ballot as individuals.
4) On the ballot form, the voter ranks the candidates as they do now. Except! You do not need to apply a ranking to every candidate. If there are 5 candidates, the voter can apply any of the numbers 1 thru 5 uniquely to each name. They do not need to use all five numbers, and they can leave any number blank. In this case, the voter actually gets 5+4+3+2+1 votes to cast. They can cast anywheres from 0 to 15 votes.
5) The person with the most votes wins. In this example, the top five vote getters are elected.
6) In the case of a tie for the 5th position, a variety of options exist.
7) The SC is appropriate to administer the election, but it must be an SC configured as dis-interested. Since I feel that the institutionaliszed faction system is unworkable, I propose that the SC itself be re-configured with with convincing dis-interestedness. Again, a variety of options exist.

I believe such a system is clear, easily understood by everyone, and appropriate for an organization such as Neualtenburg. It happens to be the system used by a national advocacy organization to which I belong, so that we know that it is functionally scalable to many thousands of participants.

We now have a new RA which with excessive struggle we have arrived at. Let's install a system which can work smoothly and is simple to understand. Fundamentally, that is the only safeguard against abuse.


Sudane

How was what was stated anything other than an analysis of data?

I understand the voting system very well, and the details of how it works are already contained within the Neualtenurg forum.

Sudane,

I respectfully disagree with you (strongly) about your proposed changes to the voting system. "Your one AV one vote system" of personal politics and cult of personality candidates would absolutely change the governance of Neualtenburg for the worse.

I would say let's remain with the current Voting system and have the Guild serve as a counter balance to the SC in matters of oversight.

Nor would the eliminations of factions prevent personal interest and goals to be pursued by participants. Quite the reverse, your methods would ensure that private interests gain an unfair stranglehold on our governance.

The ONLY thing I'd agree to in your proposal is that the voting system remains a private affair. Frankly it is already --as leaders of the SC and AB are ineligible from serving on the RA. Which is why Ulrika and I do not serve on it, or are entitled to run for RA.

The tactical voting issue (an experiment of the SC) is a non-issue, as anyone voting for the Costume Party necessarily did it for tactical reasons -- where was Costume Party literature? Who was it's candidate? Was it merely an issue of tactics? I think not --a vote for the Costume Party would have merely reflected a no-confidence vote on the part of a citizen.

I'd probably have replaced "Costume Party" with a "No-Confidence" entry, but that would have been the only difference I'd have made to the voting system.

You would throw the baby out with the bath water.

I'm happy to see that the new RA will have lots of work to do in the next months Congratulations on all who won, and let's meet soon in-world

Now, I'm not knowledgeable enough to be able to do an analysis based on the numbers, beyond verifying that the formulas were applied correctly (they were ), but I feel I should comment a bit on the hubbub during the election procedure.

Firstly, it's the SC's job to oversee the elections (although it's up to the RA to set them up), so there is no other option than having the SC comment about things that happened, unless the Constitution gets changed in the future. This time, however, some of the issues were aroused by the fact that comments appeared before the election results were announced. This is something that should not happen.

Secondly, I was a bit disappointed in watching threats made publicly to "root out fraud". I'd prefer that to be done in private - there is drama enough on the forums, we don't need it in Neualtenburg as well. This is only a suggestion. As Sudane pointed out, this even led to people revealing RL data - something the ToS disallows, and our Constitution makes clear we accept the ToS fully. Although we can disagree if there was any violation - people are free to reveal their RL data if they wish - a veiled threat that somehow prompted someone to freely reveal their data is, well, bordering on what is acceptable. I'd prefer to avoid that in the future.

Thirdly, I'll be pressing the RA to pass a bill to eliminate the Costume Party from the election procedure, simply based on previous bills that clearly defined the rules for elegible factions. Only two factions were elegible this time; only two factions should appear for voting; no "experiments" should be done on the "valid booth", although I have absolutely nothing against having separate booths for experimental purposes - assuming they're clearly labeled that way without any chance of people mixing them up. Theoretically, the inclusion of the Costume Party, against the RA's will, would be enough to warrant an annullation of the election procedure. But I won't propose that.

Fourthly, for several reasons, I'm against a "partyless" system, and I won't get into my old arguments from one year ago. It's just not a question of not promoting "personal politics and cult of personality candidates" like Kendra pointed out very correctly. Factions/parties are also the first level of compromise. I disagree in several points with my colleagues of the SDF, sometimes in very sensitive areas. They, in turn, also disagree with me in several points. However, this doesn't stop us to work together with a common platform with which all party members agree and then promote. The same, I believe, also happens in the MPP. So, encouraging working together and making compromises is the first lesson in democracy - either in Neualtenburg or elsewhere. A RA with 5 members, each of which supported by a limited group of people who happen to agree with some of their ideas, will be much harder to coordinate, and will reflect much less "compromise", and more "personal choice". Although I understand that perhaps the "overhead" for such a small population may be large, I still don't see any convincing argument against factions/parties (except for overhead).

To make this more clear, the voting site should have a list of all the party members running for election (either appearing randomly or in alphabetical order), so that there is no doubt on who you're voting for. The citizens had this time the added benefit of being able to read each party's manifesto and program for the next term. This was extremely useful and exactly what I mean by "working out a common compromise" before the elections. Citizens vote for ideas, and not for people (since when you vote for one faction, you never know who is going to end up at the RA). That is, in my opinion, the best way.

Eventually, the "list order" for the faction should/could be done independently of the general elections for the RA. This is something which we could discuss. The current system is more practical - just one election period - and is similar to what's used in Australia. You vote for the faction and for the preference of candidates in that faction. In our case, only party members vote on that list order. I'm sure this can be changed or not, depending on the feeling of the RA.

Fifthly, I'm appaled by the suggestion of tying votes to the amount of land owned. Any political system that is clearly based upon the ability of buying in your votes is condemned. I never claimed that a representative democracy was a "perfect" system. But it's far better than a plutocracy in any case!

Of course, I'm sensitive to Sudane's argument that you could, under the current system, get 20 alts to own deeds and thus get 20 votes in the process. That is, sadly, a limitation on SL's system (well, you're limited to 5 alts per card, anyway - and in some cases, LL has restricted this further to 5 alts at most). Still, from a point of view of Neualtenburg, a citizen is just a citizen, with one vote per avatar. You cannot root out alts. Since the alternative is "who owns more land gets to vote more", I prefer the current system. It allows a poor member of Neualtenburg who is willing to do a lot for the City but hasn't got enough money to buy land (and, thus, more votes) to be elected as any other rich member (who would be able to buy whole sims anyway...).

And last but not least, we should discuss more the issue of party affiliation at the SC or the Guild level. Eventually we could determine that you had to leave your party if you wished to be part of either of those structures in order to become more "neutral". This was thoroughly discussed last year, and we just decided that if you hold "voting responsabilities" in either branch, you cannot have them on any other of the two, but you can still be part of it.

Answering Sudane, yes, I raise my hand saying that I understand the current voting system, despite some surprises this time. It's still not clear for me if there is an actual way to distinguish a valid citizen vote or not at the booth level (note that alts can be perfectly valid citizens). And I definitely oppose the inclusion of unexisting parties or unexisting members just to "test out" things like tactical voting. It was interesting to do that in the past, for merely experimental issues, but this time, the "experiments" should have been discarded. At least for the RA. The other branches, if they wish, could do some experimenting by themselves, since they still haven't done proper elections (and they should have done so, according to the Constitution) and I think it's still "fair game" for them to do their own testing.

Great post, Kendra.

Yes, Kendra. The one-person one-vote requirements were on the first page of the voting system not only this time but the first time we all voted (including Sudane). As a matter of fact in the first vote and analysis, we had a nearly identical implementation, outcome, and analysis. I'm curious why a veteran player is suddenly generating so much confusion, amnesia, and outrage?

I absolutely agree. I personally see it as an attack on the constitution to consolidate power under the guise of making things simple for those who are confused.

Let's not say, let's do.

I fully expect the SDF, some members of the MPP, the Guild, and the SC stand firm against these undemocratic and unnecessary modifications to the constitution.

Yes! This is exactly the case, Kendra. This is why we chose a European method of allocating votes. It's especially important is such a small group to give all members a chance to have their voice heard and to participate in the government. It should be the job of the majority party not to win by homogenizing the RA but by crafting arguments that convince those in other parties.

Hear hear! This society belongs to all of us, it should be implemented by us. Given that all results can be validated by a third party (see my instructions above) it makes such a request moot.

Great idea! I'll do that for next time!

Please not to throw babies in bath water.

It seems like exaggerated confusion and selective memory are being used as reasons to rewrite the constitution to allow single-party rule and undemocratic elections. I wonder if this is what the other members of the MPP had in mind when they joined?

~Ulrika~

You're opposed to the undemocratic process of allocating votes based on land ownership but you're not opposed to the undemocratic process of allocating votes based on the creation of alts?

One is at least verifiable is tied to something that truly helps the city -- land ownership. The other is something that cannot be tracked and provides no benefit to the city.

I want to let you know, if the one-person one-vote rule is abandoned, as a protest I will be voting with twenty alts next election. Seriously.

~Ulrika~

Ulrika, I'm for a one-person, one-vote system, not against it. I'm sorry if I have given the wrong impression. It was not intended.

What I'm against is a land-based voting system, that's all.

There is, sadly, no way to fully verify alts (except through Linden intervention), and define what alts really are - I definitely disagree with the issue of one IP address, one vote. But perhaps I could suggest another procedure. Let's change the ownership deed to have a statement that, upon your honour, you state that you don't already own a share in Neualtenburg under another alt. In that case, people usually logging in with many alts will have to pick one to own a share in Neualtenburg and are bound by their honour not to use any other alt to own another share.

This cannot be verified easily, of course. But if you happen to get proof of people voting with alts (and by this I mean Linden verification and not hypothetical technical conjectures), that would be a serious offense to the City of Neualtenburg (making false claims deliberately) and a pretext for immediate expulsion without a refund after a hearing by the SC.

Would this make sense? I'll withdraw my agreement to allowing alts to vote and I won't propose that ever again.

I see no such confusion, amnesia and outrage being propagated. If this is an attempt to divide members of the MPP it's not going to work.

That's almost worth digging up my old credit cards for. I quite like creating avatars so I could get very busy indeed ...

I'd just leave Neualtenburg completely. Altenburg would develop it's own personal SIM under total rule of Die Gilde.

Hmm, revolution?

Confusion.. amnesia.. I'll leave that for others to judge. Outrage, absolutely: ...





Sudane

I understand this arguement, but just to make it clear, I have no issues with revealing that I am blissfully in love with Digi in RL. Everyone who knows us in SL, knows we are really open about it. So while I understand the theoretical arguement, no foul play was had here.

But lets quit the bickering and have a real discussion on what needs to get done.

I think Sudane can defend herself here, but is it really necessary amongst a groups of supposed comrades to use this kind of inflammatory personal attack language? If one wants to talk about people making exaggerations that end up causing confusion, perhaps there are others more at fault than Sudane.

As for the suggestions, I am also not currently in favour of eliminating parties, (still thinking about it) but particularly not without some kind of wide support. In Canada there is a political concept of "mandate." It's all unofficial and based on honour, so of course its hardly applied nowadays, but the idea is that it is not fair to make sweeping changes to the political structure with just a bare majority of support.

I would hope that regardless of the rules and who ever is responsible for what, that any basic changes to the system would be discussed by all of us, at open meetings, with everyone who wants to giving input. Anything less would be a joke. I dont personally care if the Guild or the SC technically has the power to do this or that, or whether they "feel they should." I will certainly judge them and judge my involvement with the NBurg project by what they do.

I still believe that the election we just had is techniclly invalid, as I think Gwyn admitted.

In a RL election, my personal information is private and never can be revealed, as is my vote. I have no confidence in the SC in that regard. Even though IP's are trivially and regularly revealed in SL, talking about them and about folks RL situations is just rude, and it's entirely unecessary. Whether such actions can be defended as technically not in error, or technically within the letter of the law, is irrelevant to me. It does not make it right.

I dont know how the SC is created or managed (yet), but if it is ultimately under the direction of the RA, I would suggest it be disbanded, or that managing elections be removed from its mandate. From an "new persons" point of view it seems to be a completely ungoverned body yet one with great influence.

I have several problems with what happened in this election, and concerns about future elections that I would like to see discussed at least. A simple statement to the effect that the SC or the guild or the RA has the power to do "what they wish" or that they (technically) did nothing out of step with their mandate, is just not enough for me.

I am not willing to be led by just anyone. Being elected or serving in a leadership role to me means that you act like a leader. This should be true of the RA, the SC, the guilds, in fact everyone who has power. The person who does that has my vote next time.

In this particular case I think it means covering over wounds instead of picking at them, and of including folks in your decisions whether you think you "have" to or not.

.

Perhaps I was not clear with my position, so I'll try to make a second attempt at clarifying things.

Yes, I'm against alts voting (I know, this seems to be a change of opinion). Neualtenburg is made of people, not of technical entities (and for me, an alt is just a simple way to change your avatar's profile and name when you're into roleplaying). There are strong technical reasons for having alts: more groups, holding more land, separating business areas (all off-world systems, from Ginko to SL Boutique, use alts for accounting - and so does Neualtenburg). All of these are actually shortcomings of SL that LL takes ages to address. All of the above could be abandoned for more transparent systems like having "shared bank accounts" tied to groups, and a group system that actually works, instead of being more a nuisance than a tool.

If all of these technical limitations were overcome, you'd have alts just for roleplaying. Even so, right now, some people are actively proposing a system where you could have multiple profiles and multiple names tied to a single account. This is somewhat similar to the PayPal system - you have a "master" personality but you can attach as many different personalities as you'd like. From PayPal's point of view, it's the same account; from your point of view, and the people you deal with, they're independent accounts. That is what I would like the alt system to be. You would have some sort of "account key" tied to your RL data (which nobody but LL knows), and several alts (each one with a different avatar key for object ownership). All voting issues - on group proposals, on forum polls, in Neualtenburg - would be dealt with the "account key" and not the "avatar key". How exactly to prevent people from finding out the relationship between the account key and the avatar key is beyond my knowledge...

However, we currently have none of these, so there is the question of how to verify alts. There seems to be no technical way to do that - or the many off-world sites would already have found out a way to deal with that. The notion of one person (unrelated to the alts that person owns) is blurry and shady in SL - you can't really know for sure if someone has multiple alts or not. All technical suggestions I know of are prone to failure. I happen to even know people that share the same computer to log in (they can't afford a second computer), and they're definitely not "alts" of each other. So, even if you could get a special key to uniquely identify your PC or Mac (there are tools to do so), it wouldn't work.

Also, there is a shady area, if you use one of your friends' accounts to log in to SL, buy a share on Neualtenburg, and instruct your friend to vote always according to your desires. There is simply no system that will prevent that from happening.

My suggestion of having the deeds bound by honour is just an artifact. In RL, people forge signatures and assume other names. That's fine, unless there is malicious intent behind it - an intention to violate rules or commit crimes. Binding deeds to the deeder's honour is a weak way of making sure he/she fully understands that alts voting is a crime under Neualtenburger Law - if you get caught, you're expelled from the City.

I only disagree with the way alts are "found" since I've never found a technically sound method to do so. More "innocents" are found that way than real alts trying to abuse the system. A system based on mistrusting its citizens is, in my opinion, flawed. I'd prefer a widely more optimistic system - one that assumes citizens are intelligent enough to understand what is against the law and rules and that binds them on their honour that they'll abide by these laws and rules.

I understand that prevention is the best form of dealing with abuse. I never encountered an abuse-free system in my life - no matter how technically bullet-proof a system is, very ingenious people will find a flaw with it, if they really, really want to abuse it. The best we can hope for is to appeal to the matureness of our citizens and accept their word that they won't abuse the system, because they fully know the consequences of being caught.

I now see that I have written a serious mistake in my previous post: quoting myself, "Still, from a point of view of Neualtenburg, a citizen is just a citizen, with one vote per avatar." I should have written "one vote per person" since everybody knows that each alt has one avatar as well, and this was a statement endorsing the contrary of what I defend now. It seems that I really do need to do a revision of my own posts before I write them, specially on such sensitive issues. But then again, I'm very open to change my mind on many issues, provided I can be shown the error of my ways - which was the case.

I apologise for my mistake. I definitely think that we should keep the rule of one vote per person, and that you can't root out alts based on arbitrary technical procedures. If there is an alternative to binding people upon their honour, let's hear them. Ulrika already suggested a land-based voting system and her arguments in favour of that proposal; I personally disagree in principle (I wish citizens to be recognized for what they do for the City, and not for the amount of money they have invested in Neualtenburg; as the owner of Neualtenburg's tiniest plot, I'm naturally concerned), although this doesn't mean that Ulrika's suggestion doesn't address the issue and proposes a working alternative to "rooting out alts". It certainly works. But I'm still entitled to my principles, am I not?

I also have no problem trusting people's words. I mean, our treasurer could have gone for a vacation with all the money she got to rent the private sim of Neualtenburg If there wasn't a complete trust in her own word, Neualtenburg's sim wouldn't even be possible

And despite everything, I'm much more concerned when people don't post their ideas and thoughts and remain silent about the things they dislike. As an optimist, I truly believe that it's only through talking that we can reach understanding and eventually even settle compromises on our differences. Thankfully enough, we all think differently so let's hear suggestions...

Cant this be fixed by simply allowing alt votes if the alt has land?
Ownership of land (to me), makes you a citizen.
If you have land and a house and you live there as your alt and pay the same fees why should you not get a vote?
Note this is not land based voting, but ownership of land as a requirement of citizenship.

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Well, technically, yes, as a party was listed in the election which did not qualify according to the last RA meeting before the elections. Notice that none of the people present at that RA meeting knew or were informed that a third "bogus" party would be included in the voting procedures. We were only informed afterwards.

However, as said, the "bogus party" is a feature that we had on the last elections, so, the last RA has no excuse for not explaining things properly. I mean, the RA agreed to use Ulrika's system, and last time it included the bogus party, so it was natural that the same software would be used again. If people weren't informed properly, I still think it's the RA's fault of not having provided enough information. Yes, I know; I'm accusing myself. (In truth, I had completely forgotten about the bogus party!)

That's the problem with "technicalities" and "legalese": in this case, it could go both ways.



Well, yes and no, Dianne. The SC is "managed" by appointing people that have contributed successfully in explaining the issues about Neualtenburg, both inside the City and publicly outside it. For the "honour" of serving in the SC, they forfeit any active role in the RA, "where laws are hammered down", or an active role in Guild matters. To the best of my knowledge, we just had 3 members in the SC - Ulrika, myself, and Chandra Page for a short while. A fourth one was invited, but had conflicting interests with other branches of Government, so declined the offer. My own participation in the SC was suspended during the previous term, and will continue suspended in the forthcoming term for the same reason: holding an office in the RA.

The SC is a "meritocracy" - you earn the right to be part of it by doing things, it's not elected, and has no connection with the party system whatsoever.

It also does not wield "great influence". It can veto any bills from the RA that are deemed unconstitutional, but it's subject to impeachment by the RA, if the SC members are not behaving as they should So, there is no "lockout" - ie. the SC cannot hold at bay the RA and prevent it from working. If the interpretation of the Constitution is not fundamented properly (ie. it's just arbirtary ranting ), the RA will certainly not hesitate in impeaching the SC's members. So far, the SC only exercized its power once - where the RA passed bills creating something like a "Finance Ministery", which is clearly unconstitutional - the Guild deals with the economical & finantial aspect of Neualtenburg (but the RA votes upon a budget), and the RA cannot interfere directly on that by passing laws. The Guild created the Office of the Treasurer instead, and this time the SC approved that decision.

The RA is also responsible for setting its own term and preparing the elections. Since this could lead to self-perpetuation of the parties in power, the SC supervises this operation.

So, while definitely not perfect, the system has quite a few balances built-in. Neither the SC, the RA or the Guild have "absolute power" - each branch can put the other in check.



Yes, I'm more comfortable with that position myself, specifically with very sensitive issues. I mean, if the Guild builds a new canal in Altenburg (since they have been comissioned to improve that quarter), we don't really have much to say about it. If people don't like the canal, they know where to bring their complains to - either to the Guild directly, or, if the Guild doesn't care, to the RA (who has comissioned the work) or even the SC (which can act as a court of appeal for that purpose, if the RA ignores the complain). But that is not a "sensitive issue" - it's part of Neualtenburg's life.

The election procedures, on the other hand, are very sensitive issues. Defining citizenship (something that was often hinted at but never truly approved in writing) is another area. And so on. These should be discussed at least. And if they're not being discussed properly in the RA, citizens should bring the issue in public, and demand that the RA clarifies it.



I cannot agree more

You don't like the canal?