Feature Request: Buy elections

[vonGenf]

What if you could buy elections through family gold instead of regions?

By that I mean that when the election is run, you could pay gold for a chance to simply decide what the results will be. The outcome would be one of:

-You fail, nothing happens
-You fail, you get caught, the realm is aware (maybe you get thrown in jail)
-You succeed, the election runs its course but instead of displaying the counted votes it shows whatever you want it to show. The realm is unaware anything happened.

This wouldn't work for appointed posts, of course, but that's fine. On the other hand, you could buy a government position if you were so inclined. And in most cases it would be seen as legitimate. There are cases where it won't be seen as legitimate because it flies in the face of everything the characters expected, but this will be an IC indignation and not meta-gaming.

Mechanically, I think it could work like this, although many details could be modified maintaining the core idea:

-When an election of any kind (including referendums) occurs and you go to the voting, you sometimes get a link to "Influence the results...". This link should only appear if you have over a certain prestige (15?).

-If you click it, you get a boilerplate warning. Then you get to write down what you would like the result to be. This probably requires some interface where you assign number of votes. I think you should be able to decide the votes, not just the winner.

-It costs you 6 hours

-It costs you an amount of gold that depends on the size of the realm (10 gold/noble?). It should be easy to rig the vote in a two region realm where the vote counter is your cousin Billie Joe, it should hard in a 100k+ people realm with multiple cities.

-As a refinement, it could be paid by family gold.

-If you get caught, you get caught immediately.

-If you don't get caught, the votes goes on. You're still not certain if you will succeed.

-The probability to get caught should be fixed; I would say 20% caught - 40% fail without getting caught - 40% succeed.

-I can't see any skill it should be tied to, but in theory it could.

-When the vote terminates, either the results you've decided or the actual result, depending on your success, appears. Everyone just sees the result as normal.

-If multiple people try to rig the election, the successful one (if any) should be randomly chosen and race conditions avoided.

I think that's it!

[Telrunya]

Hmm, just as brainstorming, why not make it less clear-cut and allow someone buying the election to buy/change a few votes instead of fixing the entire election?

[egamma]

I think it should show that you won by one vote, or maybe the election committee will let you vote for all abstentions--they just fill out the left over ballots.

I think there should be a chance that more votes than you have nobles appears in the results, so that observant people might do a count and know there was money business.

[vonGenf]

Hmm, just as brainstorming, why not make it less clear-cut and allow someone buying the election to buy/change a few votes instead of fixing the entire election?

That could be simpler, yes. You could have a box to "Buy x votes", and you pay, let's say, 50 gold per vote? Then it would be easier to tip a close contest.

[Tom]

from an implementation POV, the easiest would be to let you pick who you want to be the winner - and then at the end of the vote, your "winner" and the real winner get exchanged. That way, all the votes work out, very little special code is needed, and you have the maximum amount of plausible deniability, while it is still possible to work out that the election was rigged (e.g. if those voting for the real winner talk amongst each other and figure out that he should've gotten more votes than he did).

[vonGenf]

from an implementation POV, the easiest would be to let you pick who you want to be the winner - and then at the end of the vote, your "winner" and the real winner get exchanged. That way, all the votes work out, very little special code is needed, and you have the maximum amount of plausible deniability, while it is still possible to work out that the election was rigged (e.g. if those voting for the real winner talk amongst each other and figure out that he should've gotten more votes than he did).

If the person you pick as a winner would have arrived second place anyway, this works out perfectly. However, if the person you pick was going to receive zero or very little vote, then your plausible deniability is gone.

That's not necessarily a bad thing however, as it would force people to pick and choose their fights.

And if it's simpler than adding x votes, I'm all for it.

[Velax]

I would totally use this to get Sundar in as Imperial Magistrate of Arcaea. Would be so much fun.

[Dante Silverfire]

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.

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.

[LilWolf]

How would you handle a situation where two or more people rig the election?

[JPierreD]

How would you handle a situation where two or more people rig the election?

One succeeds, the other fails. Unless both are trying to achieve the same.

[Chenier]

The more money you put into it, the higher the chance of detection should be, as the more people you have to bribe.

Like financing rebels it should be, I would say. More gold = more impact, but more risk.

[Dante Silverfire]

How would you handle a situation where two or more people rig the election?

For my system, any gold used to insure the election would could towards reducing both of them in a manner befitting the gold put forth. However, it would be related to the fraction that each of them put forth to rig the election.

I.e. If person A rigs with 250 gold, and person B rigs with 500 gold, and I set forth 100 gold to insure the election. 33 gold would go towards reducing the chances of A and 66 gold would go towards reducing the chances of B, based upon their respective fractions.

[Shenron]

You know what I LOVE about this? It makes elections a far less viable system of government and that is just !@#$ing ossim.

Shin is gonna love this: "How can you prefer these corrupt democrats over our highly disciplined nobles traditions?"

[egamma]

You know what I LOVE about this? It makes elections a far less viable system of government and that is just !@#$ing ossim.

Shin is gonna love this: "How can you prefer these corrupt democrats over our highly disciplined nobles traditions?"

Even tyrannies have elections, just not as often--whenever the tyrant dies or pauses.

[Chenier]

You know what I LOVE about this? It makes elections a far less viable system of government and that is just !@#$ing ossim.

Shin is gonna love this: "How can you prefer these corrupt democrats over our highly disciplined nobles traditions?"

I too like this. Would make democracies and republics feel a lot more medieval.

Even tyrannies have elections, just not as often--whenever the tyrant dies or pauses.

That's beside the point, imo.