Settlement Election Integrity

[Queen Titania]

The 1 in 3 is really rare. In fact, I don't think it has ever happened.

The elections since and prior then recently in every other settlement? No issues. Of those with instances of no RP voting, the winner was extremely dominant, and the number of no RP voters was always countable in one hand, often no more than a couple.

This was the first where it was not only probably the largest amount I've noticed, but also so close it mattered significantly.

The message is more for PC voters so they can avoid losing the ability to vote. As a DM Team, we check every election, and will always make sure the result is fair and correct.

[ScalesofEquilibrium]

Or we could be rationale, acknowledge that the audit caught the behavior (I would be shocked if anyone genuinely thought no efforts to attempt this kind of thing ever happened), realize that this is what a working safety net looks like instead of using a rare moment of transparency as a platform to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Then for bonus points we could expect the same of our fellow players.

It is rational to expect common behavior. It is rational to call out common and expected outcomes; this isn't the first election with inconsistencies on Arelith, sure it is an outlier as far as the sheer volume . . . but many people on this thread have cited instances and have not been rebutted - even confirmed. Results have been postponed. Votes removed or recounted. This has happened a number of times in Cordor and Guldorand that I've witnessed personally - however that is besides the point and anecdotal anyway.

This moment of transparency is not to spread fear or uncertainty - it is to curb it here and now.
As stated prior, something similar to this has already happened - quarters and shops. The Auction system was the response after the favorable 'this is a one instance' leniency was met with players testing the system more and more.

A reasonable, rational solution that respects the rules and spirit of the server has been proposed - term limits. As a player, you get your opportunity to be a settlement leader, then move on and do other things and give that opportunity to others.

[perseid]

Or we could be rationale, acknowledge that the audit caught the behavior (I would be shocked if anyone genuinely thought no efforts to attempt this kind of thing ever happened), realize that this is what a working safety net looks like instead of using a rare moment of transparency as a platform to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Then for bonus points we could expect the same of our fellow players.

It is rational to expect common behavior. It is rational to call out common and expected outcomes; this isn't the first election with inconsistencies on Arelith, sure it is an outlier as far as the sheer volume . . . but many people on this thread have cited instances and have not been rebutted - even confirmed. Results have been postponed. Votes removed or recounted. This has happened a number of times in Cordor and Guldorand that I've witnessed personally - however that is besides the point and anecdotal anyway.

This moment of transparency is not to spread fear or uncertainty - it is to curb it here and now.
As stated prior, something similar to this has already happened - quarters and shops. The Auction system was the response after the favorable 'this is a one instance' leniency was met with players testing the system more and more.

A reasonable, rational solution that respects the rules and spirit of the server has been proposed - term limits. As a player, you get your opportunity to be a settlement leader, then move on and do other things and give that opportunity to others.

Just because people are likely to do something doesn't mean it's rational to validate it by calling for the perspective's consideration. Also, votes being recounted in the past would be an indication that in the past audits have been effective at catching this sort of behavior too. Others have already pointed out the more practical limitations with term limits but frankly my main criticism would be that it's essentially rewarding cheating by changing the system in response to incidents like this since the point of the behavior was already to subvert the incumbent. Sure, I have no doubts there are plenty of people who will feed into negative premises like that it's all rigged somehow. But I don't see why that necessitates considering their viewpoint as anything other than willfully dismissive of the effort being put in by staff. We can still just call it out for what it is, especially when it sounds like so far audits have been effective at their job.

[Cthuletta]

And let's be honest here. Every single election, no matter where or who, someone is calling for a recount when it's over.
Even if DMs didn't automatically check the numbers every time, someone would ask them to anyway. I've heard of an election's results changing because of fraudulent voters twice in my 3+ years on Arelith, the first being when I was brand-baby-new here. That's... not a lot. As far as I know, attention was called to that first instance as well as this one, as it should be, a reminder to 'Please don't do that, it's not nice.'

I'm also unsure why people think Discord-coordination to win is that rampant? I've personally never had it happen, and I've been friends with winners AND losers that were competing in elections in RP. None of them ever tried to sway me to vote one way or the other as a player... most of them we never even spoke about the elections at all- too busy sending cat memes or talking about the latest mechanics update announcement of the time.
I realize I'm only one person out of a couple hundred, but surely if it was that prevalent, there'd be more evidence of it to which the team could address it?

[D4wN]

It is rational to expect common behavior. It is rational to call out common and expected outcomes; this isn't the first election with inconsistencies on Arelith, sure it is an outlier as far as the sheer volume . . . but many people on this thread have cited instances and have not been rebutted - even confirmed. Results have been postponed. Votes removed or recounted. This has happened a number of times in Cordor and Guldorand that I've witnessed personally - however that is besides the point and anecdotal anyway.

You're assuming this is common behaviour when DMs have called out that votes are always checked and as far as I know or for as long as I've played I've never seen a message like this on this server nor the DMs changing the outcome of an election due to an issue with voting integrity.

Could it maybe just be that other settlement leaders won because they were better prepared, had a better/stronger reputation, put in way more IC effort, or maybe that people genuinely like them as a leader? I'm not saying that you don't have people who will log in onto inactive characters, but this happens for a variety of reasons. Not just because their buddy might be running in an election but maybe because they're keen to see a change in the settlement they've been removed from or don't enjoy the politics of. They come back because they're hoping that things will change if another character becomes the leader so they feel they can play in that settlement again and when or if they lose they all shelf again because nothing changed. Existing leaders also get challenged a lot by those types of anti-current establishment players/characters. And clearly it doesn't happen so much or so extremely that DMs have felt the need to intervene as they have this time.

To say your own comment is anecdotal and besides the point when you're using that as a vague example of where it happened before is also a little strange and makes me wonder what point you are trying to make?

[The GrumpyCat]

To my knowledge, as said, this has happened twice... maayyybee three (I've a nasty feeling there may have been a third time? But if so this is going back many many many years) in all my time of playing/DMing (15+years of playing, probably nearing a decade of DMing) so that's not a whole lot. I don't think it's endemic. But I will agree that the amount in the last election is worrying.

IMO there are three levels of rules enforcement

The first is just asking people to Not Do The Thing. You'd be suprised how often this works! Most of the time saying 'hay, don't do this!' is dicinsentive enough.

The second is more heavily policing The Thing. I feel this may kinda be where we're leaning to now? I expect for a time at least we will be heavily watching a few elections for this sort of thing, and making sure everyone is playing by the rules, and more firmly enforcing when they don't. With a little luck, this will be more than enough to keep things fair.

The third thing to do - if that doesn't work, or if that's proved unwieldable due to the amount/style of rulebreak, is considering mechanical options - such as some of the things listed above.
The problem with mechanical options is that they can be an impedement to roleplay, and have other delaterious effects. A great, and somewhat similar, example is the property changes. We were concerned that properties were just being passed from friend to friend over years, meaning a lot of players didn't get a shot. So we introduced the auction process. In many ways this was a good change, but it also has downsides- it hinders the roleplay of certain factions and so on. It was a neat solution to the problem, but not one without its own issues. The same is true of most mechanical soltuions.

It may be that in the coming weeks/months/years, we... instead of getting less... get more and more election rigging issues. If that's so, then we may have to look at more mechanical solutions. But for now it seems small enough I think we can continue to work from a purely DM enforced standpoint.

[98lbs of sad carryweight]

I will frontload this post with the tl;dr. Once election integrity is questioned, once it is revealed that even one election has 1 in every 3 votes fraudulent (to server rules and standards), the proverbial cat (not grumpy variant – pun intended) is out of the bag and is not so easily stuffed back in. I’m sorry but this is election integrity we are talking about. This is not a simple matter – it never has been and never will be.

--

Every single election before and after this one comes to question. The validity thereof. No amount of assurance from anyone in a position of authority is enough. No anecdotal evidence is enough. No reassurance of ‘well guys it is just this one place and time come on’ is enough. It takes action and change – specifically action and change that is transparent, strong, and frankly unpopular to the status quo.

Don’t believe me? Look to any election in any system – fictional or real world – in which the integrity has been questioned – evidence provided or not. How much division and dismissal it creates. How much toxicity emerges, polarization taking hold. I’m not kidding when I say the cat is out of the bag here.

The more a player engages with this community IC and OOC, the more they stand to be impacted by this moment forevermore. When it comes to settlement elections, the most engaged players are the ones who will be impacted. The more they stand to question and doubt the decisions of server leadership, settlement leadership, OOC motivations of players/staff in those positions, and so on. Please tread carefully with any benign assurances.

are you projecting bad behavior or what's this distrust. They said it happend 3 times in 15 years, im here for like 4 and gotten trough like a dozen elections and even at the same ratio it still would've been ok. I guess they could make the votes public but im sure somehow people will claim alts or rulebreaks or ooc money because they are ready to do that themselves and the world is dark.

i really like politics and the dynamics of it in the sandbox that is roleplay - because it doesnt matter. Its a game, we can make mistakes or play out some theatre-esq character and nobody will be hurt because we play together right. Unlike real life votes and systems that have a real material impact on us this is entirely a game.
And yet some volunteer lil person spents hours combing through our non stop vitriol to make sure we all play nice and turns out - we do? cool!!!

Lots of doom spiraling. Used you as a quote piece because the 'no matter the assurance this is a principle matter of trust' rethoric threw me off. Lots of cool things are entirely shattered by the assumption the other player is evil, hates you, wants to destroy you. Idk if its ever true but thats just not a good way to approach everyone playing.

[Kuma]

And yet some volunteer lil person spents hours combing through our non stop vitriol to make sure we all play nice and turns out - we do? cool!!!

Lots of doom spiraling. Used you as a quote piece because the 'no matter the assurance this is a principle matter of trust' rethoric threw me off. Lots of cool things are entirely shattered by the assumption the other player is evil, hates you, wants to destroy you. Idk if its ever true but thats just not a good way to approach everyone playing.

i really like your attitude on this and i would like to amplify it

[Amateur Hour]

Lots of cool things are entirely shattered by the assumption the other player is evil, hates you, wants to destroy you. Idk if its ever true but thats just not a good way to approach everyone playing.

This is the root of so many problems. The server only works if we're willing to largely assume good-faith on the OOC level. Almost everything that happens could be OOC motivated, it's true, but giving ourselves the opportunity to investigate the possible IC motivations is so much more healthy.

[Cthuletta]

Lots of cool things are entirely shattered by the assumption the other player is evil, hates you, wants to destroy you. Idk if its ever true but thats just not a good way to approach everyone playing.

This is the root of so many problems. The server only works if we're willing to largely assume good-faith on the OOC level. Almost everything that happens could be OOC motivated, it's true, but giving ourselves the opportunity to investigate the possible IC motivations is so much more healthy.

You want me to give people the benefit of the doubt? The nerve!

... On a serious note, the amount of times I've run into someone who's OOCly scheme-y or cruel, I could count on one hand and they never lasted long. Hate a character all you want- but I'd put money on their player not being like you expected. Give 'em a chance. I doubt they're explicitly planning against anyone. If they are- that sounds like a them problem.
I have no other points and this is very off topic, just a little rainbow-sprinkle of 'Let's all try to think the best of each other and work together on this 20+ year old game we're all nerds on, hm?' Might be surprised!