I think there are two important things to note with this feature:
1. I think that the amount of gold it costs to "rig" an election should be variable. One should be able to put as much gold as they want into rigging the election, and by placing more gold on it, they increase their chances of winning the election by rigging it. This would be on a percentage basis, with a standard minimum and maximum chance of failure.
Ex: The game gives you a "minimum required gold" level in order to bribe the election offices, and this would result in perhaps a 50% chance of failure. However, you could put more gold into the bribe in order to reduce the chance of failure down to a minimum threshold (let's say 10%?) chance of failure. This gold increase could operate on a logarithmic scale or some such where the more gold one puts in the less % deduction as the % chance of failure approaches the limit.
I see your point, but it looks more complicated to implement - I tried to keep it simple.
2. There should be a way to "insure" an election. In other words, place money on the election, not to change the results, but in order to counteract bribes and attempts to fix the election. This would operate by someone seeking to insure the election placing X amount of gold into the election pot in order to make sure the results run true. This increases the chance of failure of any attempt to "bribe" the officials by a % equal to the fraction (X/Y)*100 where Y is the amount used as a bribe. If X > Y, then there is a 100% chance of the person bribing the officials of being caught. Also, if (X/Y)*100 + Z > 100, where Z is the % chance of failure by method 1, then there is a 100% chance of the person bribing the officials of being caught.
In other words, I want a method whereby I can ensure that an election proceeds true. If we have a feature where people can use gold to buy things, I want a feature that helps others with gold stop it. If not, everyone can simply put 200 gold towards bribing into an election and its random chance who wins. The actual values, and percents, can be discussed and decided upon by the devs, but I think this is a decent method of setting it up.
The best way to insure your election is to stab your opponent. I wouldn't want this feature to have the end result of requiring constant investments to run a democracy.
If you're worried it would happen too often, increase the price and the probability to get caught.
It was never my intention to make a system where buying the election every month is a viable strategy. It should be a rare and risky event.
