Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Curses => Topic started by: mainiac on November 15, 2008, 08:10:34 pm
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Once you've reached a certain level of power, it's pretty easy to control all the issues and make sure that you win elections. So, to make it so the game becomes harder, not easier, it could be that after society is changed enough, and the liberals have won the previous election, the conservatives start doing voter fraud. To prevent the elections from being overturned, Liberals would have to do strikes against the compounds of corporations like say "Lieboldly" and get the real result to hold up.
Going by the poke fun at both sides principle, it might be worthwhile to add Liberal election tampering as well, getting people to vote more then once and recounts spring to mind though I don't have any suggestions on how they fit in.
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Nah, I think that the conservatives should be the only ones doing voter fraud. The game is meant to portray them exaggeratedly negatively, remember? And of course, it portrays the democrats almost embarrassingly positively.
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Well, the other option is give your Hackers an option to hack electronic voting machines during elections. There should be a chance of them getting caught, with a nice huge media backlash...
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Nah, I think that the conservatives should be the only ones doing voter fraud. The game is meant to portray them exaggeratedly negatively, remember? And of course, it portrays the democrats almost embarrassingly positively.
The LCS displays a lot of negative liberal traits as well; for one thing they're terrorists!
Well, the other option is give your Hackers an option to hack electronic voting machines during elections. There should be a chance of them getting caught, with a nice huge media backlash...
Hacked election things are in popular myth a conservative sin. Liberals are always bitching about lack of accountability and voting irregularities etc, while conservatives perennially complain about liberals voting illegally. Thus if we're sticking to the stereotypical sins, Liberals shouldn't have the option to hack machines since that's a conservative crime.
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Actually, in my experience Conservatives complain about illegal voting, but claim that the electronic voting machines are perfectly secure and technically sound, while Liberals complain about vote counting irregularities, Conservative voter suppression (this is actually the biggest Liberal complaint in this area), and the dangers of "black box" electronic voting.
Hacking voting machines could go both ways, as a Conservative ploy from officials and voting machine manufacturers, or as a Liberal counterploy against shoddily and/or maliciously designed Conservative voting machines.
Remember, we cleave to stereotypical behaviors only up to a point; "stereotypical liberals" would be terrified to pick up a gun, let alone shoot it.
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Hacking voting machines could go both ways, as a Conservative ploy from officials and voting machine manufacturers, or as a Liberal counterploy against shoddily and/or maliciously designed Conservative voting machines.
The Liberal counterploy would no doubt purposely have their fiddling discovered after a while though.
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I can really get behind this.
The real life charges against the right wing, its more than just Diebold machine problems. Voter suppression tactics like some dudes calling registered democrats and minorities finding ways to prevent them from getting to the polling place, or scaring them off altogether. As the LCS, you could help counter this by leading raids at conservative campaign headquarters, maybe finding lists of minorities targeted for voter suppression. Much more action oriented than just breaking vote machines!
On the other side, I'd like to see a few LCS members go get out the vote, like "volunteering" or "activism" is set up. Maybe it only comes into play a few months prior to an election, but you could swing a few points here and there in your favor, in a legit way. Just don't alienate the polling place!
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You know...erm...Republicans are going to condemn the current recounts in Minnoesta for that Senate seat because of fear that the person leading the vote count (the Secretary of State of Minnoesta) may be biased.
And actually, yggiz, the only thing that I heard the Republicans did is basically get people out of the voting rolls, because those people aren't really registered voters (because of fear of "voter fraud"). It is the "let make sure the voters are properly registered" that gets the Democrats very angry and calling it a denial of people's voting rights.
/me shrugs.
EDIT: Here's an interesting idea. Have a brand new electoral position, every 4 years: Secretary of State. Whomever is elected to the position is responsible for counting the votes, and so if he leans C+...well...
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The trouble with using the Secretary of State is that the Secretary of State is only responsible for voting on the individual state level. The US Secretary of State, the federal office, is the head diplomat, and has no role in domestic elections. The US federal government doesn't manage voting at all, really. Furthermore, the US federal government does not have an elected Secretary of State, unlike many state level governments; the US Secretary of State is a cabinet appointee of the President.
One might rightly point out that the US federal government also doesn't have ballot propositions which the public votes on the way LCS does, but changing that would slow down the game even more. :P
I like the idea of breaking into campaign HQs to steal plans on voter suppression tactics. I also like the idea of being able to have the LCS pull some nasty tricks itself -- at the price of juice and heart hemorrhaging for those who engage in it, and possible leaks or defections that could backfire horribly.
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And actually, yggiz, the only thing that I heard the Republicans did is basically get people out of the voting rolls, because those people aren't really registered voters (because of fear of "voter fraud"). It is the "let make sure the voters are properly registered" that gets the Democrats very angry and calling it a denial of people's voting rights.
They're best known for using this as a cover, but then going very overboard with it. E.g., purging felons from voter registration lists based on name alone, so they end up purging people who happen to share the same ("ethnic-sounding") name as felons... often felons from other states, even states where felons are not denied the right to vote (which is, um, a Constitutionally dubious act even when they get the right people). Then there's the attempts at misdirection in Democratic neighborhoods by posting notices that polling locations/dates have changed, phone workers calling to say much the same or that voters can "vote by phone", posting extremely aggressive "challengers" at polling places to attempt to dissuade voters in "questionable" districts, providing inadequate numbers of voting machines in "questionable" districts, overloading the telephone switchboards of Democratic "get-out-the-vote" efforts on election day, etc. Some of that's exaggeration, certainly, but some is well-documented, and some has even lead to criminal prosecution.
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Some of that's exaggeration, certainly, but some is well-documented, and some has even lead to criminal prosecution.
Then surely you can throw up a few reliable URLs so I can look at them. Because the fact is, I can't accept exaggeration on the face of it.
And, anyway, there is always the possiblity that those incidents are isolated (but blown out of proportion), in the same that false ACRON registerations are also isolated incidents, but taken as an example of a terrible liberal conspiracy.
But it's best not to discuss this. At all. This is a game. Not real life.
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The odds of false registration overturning an election are miniscule. An individual person could only cast ten or twelve votes over the course of a day, even if they were able to avoid getting noticed for their false registration. For that they'd be risking felony charges which would without a doubt be persecuted to the maximum extent of the law. Even if you knew to anticipate a florida 2000 event, it would still involve a rather large conspiracy to overturn even such a slender margin and to overturn a typical election margin would take hundreds or thousands of people.
Rigging the election from within the system is much easier. The US does not have a national election authority and leaves the matter to a hodgepodge of underfunded state and local groups with little acountability. Even though it's known and publicized that security flaws are built in (http://www.engadget.com/2004/09/27/floridians-beware-monkey-can-actually-hack-diebold-voting/), nobody cares and we still don't demand a paper trail. Given the current opportunity of not only overturning an election but getting off scott free, a rigged election is a legitimate concern.
One is possible. The other aint.
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Some of that's exaggeration, certainly, but some is well-documented, and some has even lead to criminal prosecution.
Then surely you can throw up a few reliable URLs so I can look at them. Because the fact is, I can't accept exaggeration on the face of it.
Phone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_New_Hampshire_Senate_election_phone_jamming_scandal) jamming (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/16/AR2006051601712.html)
Felon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File) purging (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E6D6143AF935A25754C0A9629C8B63)
And (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_voting_controversies#References) so (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression#References) on (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15603344/), etc (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080696).
(Note that the Wikipedia cites have external references.)
[e] I concur that these don't have the look of a massive national conspiracy, but rather local opportunism. LCS would be best served by ignoring that, however, and presenting any such things it might incorporate as a colossal centrally organized evil plot.
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I have to agree that I've read mainstream and reliable reports about cases of many the things E. Albright described. If we're looking for election mischief, fraud, and accusations of such, these kinds of issues seem like fair game to be satirized.
What this tells us is that setting aside the electronic voting machine business, for evil election actions, the LCS would more likely be stuffing the ballot box with forged Liberal ballots. Absentee, of course; nobody actually goes to the polling place to commit voting fraud. And sufficient ballots would have to be stolen from the election offices or printed using a printing press. Meanwhile, the CCS would be more likely harassing legitimate Liberal voters. Neither effort, if undertaken, would go unnoticed by the press.
It would be interesting if news of voter intimidation by the CCS forced you to decide whether to compensate for the scared off voters by "voting for them", or just try to minimize the CCS interference, by anticipating and intercepting their actions. Bad Things happen if you participate in the vote rigging rather than just trying to block it, but hey, you reap what you sew.