If you don't think most of the groups out there vying for the governorship positions aren't already applying such strategies of stringing out votes, trying to bully an opponent out with a strong early surge, or holding out hoping to eek out on the last day, then you are way behind on what is going on. That has been going on since the first election, both Skara Brae and Yew came down to the very last minute on Great Lakes. In the second election, Britain, Trinsic, and Vesper came down to the last minute.
Please re-read what I wrote about strategies. An early surge means votes taken away from other cities, and how does any guild know that their opponents can't overpower that? They can no longer count on x members having x votes in six cities. They'll have to distribute carefully. If they wait until the last minute, opponents can too.
I am very well aware of the math that if you went by everything, (and lets stick to small numbers for simple purposes) a guild with say 40 players essentially has essentially 240 voting power that can be spread at best to 40 per city. However, you missed my point that this is rewarding laziness versus the motivated and coordinated. That guild probably isn't filled with 40 die-hard players, lets say there is probably a core 10, and from there it spreads to different levels of activity. So we know they have a base voting power of 60, limited to 10 per city. From there, that voting power grows at diminishing levels. Someone that only logs on for a few hours a week on weeknights isn't going to spend a lot of time making sure all of their characters have voted for a certain person in a city. Even further, they sure aren't going to go make six characters on several other shards and run them to the city stone to vote.
Actually, it is one-character-one-vote that is "rewarding laziness." A dominant guild simply picks which six cities to throw votes in, and you can't address that simple fact. You can talk about how many "die-hard players" a guild has, but that applies proportionally to everyone else. We aren't talking, or at least I am not, about a dominant guild in terms of total players, but a dominant guild in terms of how many active players compared to others.
Now lets talk about the opposing small group of 15 players. We know they have a voting power of 90 across 15 cities. All fifteen of them are dedicated, so now they are likely winning several of the peripheral, less interesting cities such as Vesper, Moonglow, and Jhelom. The more popular cities of Yew, Britain, and Skara Brae are usually out of reach, but they get a break. Because they are so organized, they are able to coordinate with their friends on other shards, who are also small and pretty organized. With this, they are able to compete for cities they should have no chance at if we went by the basic idea you use as your premise. The system as it is rewards the dedicated and organized. Was the voting maybe geared to the over-coordinated? Yes, some, and is why I argue that increasing the amount of rep needed to vote would be enough for a first phase tested deterrent. Just the first level would cause enough of a time sink to deter anyone but the most determined cross shard voters.
If a guild has 100 unique members, but only 10 active players participating in elections, and at least 11 other players oppose their candidates in union, then the former is hardly "dominant."
That is assuming, however, that the other 11 players have a single mind to get a different candidate in. That would require extreme organization, whereas the large guild under the present system simply throws all its guaranteed votes into six cities. It's easy for a GM to announce over ICQ or on private forums that all members need to cast votes in these six cities, and much harder for non-guilded, non-allied challengers to get that kind of support. Meanwhile all it would take to doom challengers' efforts is a small split.
Dedication and organization of course would mean nothing by themselves, they take players. That is why they are used usually to describe people. A type of people that usually are a benefit for the gaming community.
I
am talking about people. Again, dedication and organization mean nothing. There can be just as much of those, courage and great leadership on a side of evil. In UO, griefers, scripters and dupers can be the most organized players you've ever met.
Not sure what you are attempting to accomplish by bringing in an unsubstantiated argument from real life. I know people like to talk about voter fraud as if it is as common as moon rising each night, but there has been no proof that it has even happened. Most of the Attorney General's when defending new Voter ID laws have admitted they can not point to a proven instance of voter fraud to back their argument for its need. So off topic...
You need to read around. You apparently haven't heard of certain convictions, like that of Melowese Richardson, Butch Morgan and Dustin Blythe. You missed the notorious video clip of the guy who said he was so excited about voting, he was going to go back and do it again. Perhaps you've never heard the old saw popularized in Chicago, "Vote early and vote often."
I think having to raise reputation is more of a annoying time sink than you do. I'm not inclined to lie, I play Atlantic, Great Lakes, and sometimes Chessy or LS to pvm. Great Lakes has been my main shard since returning with guildmates. Playing other shards allowed me to trade votes because i saw the offers in chat. Since I've done it, I can tell you it is a pain in the butt to do. Having to raise their rep and organize getting the 4000 boards to each character would be discouraging. I would probably still do it, but I know of several that would discourage enough.
Personally I find that unethical, but whatever floats your boat. And don't you see that requiring minimum loyalty would cut down drastically on this vote trading? Then we'd know the people doing it with ease are likely dupers.
Limiting it to one per shard only rewards the wealthiest players and dupers. Trinsic came down to the wire on Great Lakes because Ching a Ling was offering one million gold per vote. I'm willing to bet he paid out close to 75 million, on my low end guess. With only one vote per shard, it would be even harder to counteract a person trying to buy an election.
In fact, one vote per shard, and especially one vote per account, would greatly cut down on that. That guy could no longer count on people holding one character's vote in reserve. They'll have their own friends, allies or favorites to support.
I've never heard of anyone buying votes like that. How long has he been doing that, and what's his source of income? That sounds like a player who should be specifically checked for duping, and if these activities are provable, he should be removed as governor. It's completely unethical.
First, for the sake of having reasonable discussion/argument, can we not resort to putting words in the other's mouth? I did not say it was "my" council. I have several friends who managed to win seats on Great Lakes, but I also have two that won on Atlantic.
You got your knickers in a twist too readily. I said "your" in second person plural, as in Great Lake's council, not yours personally.
Now, my reasoning on why it would wreck the Great Lakes council are pretty simple. Several of the current city governors are from smaller guilds on the shard that banded together. I'm willing to bet they probably got twenty or so players from other shards to help. With the new system, the largest guilds will be able to easily swipe all but maybe one or two cities. These smaller guilds now are going to have to choose between each other who gets sacrificed so they can fend off and maintain control of hopefully those two. Who has been rewarded? Large guilds. Who has been punished? Small guilds.
When you type out "from other shards," did it not occur to you that one-shard-one-vote would fix this?
Under one-shard-one-vote, if there are 35 active players out of a shard's 100 active players, and they support one candidate, their candidate
should win. That's the whole point of an election. Your -- meaning
Great Lakes' -- council will have to work that much harder to retain the offices. Too bad incumbency won't be the surety it once was!
As it stands right now, 35 active out of 100 active means they automatically have 35 votes across six cities. Under the new rules, they can throw all 35 into one city and still not be assured of a win, and that's a good thing.
Having it your way with term limits would be the death of this system. Most shards can't even fill every city. On Great Lakes, we had two cities where they were completely unopposed. The only shard this would ever work on, would be Atlantic. You can't build a game solely for one shard.
Actually, the real reason many go unopposed is that would-be challengers saw what happened in the first election and no longer bother. It's the same reason that with Congress overall having a very low approval rating, individual incumbents tend to win. It's extremely hard to mount a challenge against someone well-entrenched, and in UO the entrenchment happened just with the first round of elections.
Personally, I think it's pretty easy to counteract with work and dedication. I think this could have been handled better by slowly phasing in deterrence and seeing if they work before going so heavy handed.
Then how can opponents do this "work and dedication," when even you have mentioned (seeing nothing wrong with it) doing cross-shard trading?
Read again the math QMSair and I presented. One-shard-one-vote will cut down on overwhelming dominance of a large guild, making its votes count no more than anyone else's. One-account-one-vote takes care of it completely.
You must have missed the two or three threads that popped up after that patch that were filled with governors complaining about mostly having to pay the trade deal entirely out of their own pocket. There are examples in some cities of large donations and events to fund them, but most cities can't find a governor that will run such events or fund the trade deals entirely by themselves. Most suggested a fee for use that would go into the treasury would be great and act as another effective gold sink.
I did see the proposals for individuals paying fees, which received very little notice. It's a minor gold sink and still doesn't affect dupers.
As far as any governors complaining after taxation was removed, show me. I can only surmise they were in fact so few and of such little insignificance that they received even less notice than the proposal of individual payments.