Election System suggestion

[Professor James Cade]

With the next minister for magic election on the horizon I'd like to propose a slight change to how we elect the positions of Minister and Deputy Minister. Rather than the winner and runner up taking the positions I'd like to propose a running mate system similar to the some notable presidential systems in the real world. There's a couple of reasons I think this is a good idea.

1. Right now candidates can be a one person operation, recent elections have seen more candidates hiring staff which has been cool but I think it being a team effort between the minister/deputy candidates will encourage more roleplaying between the various candidates, it could lead to some interesting dynamics and it opens the door for people to get more involved. A rper (or even a character since they have minds of their own) might not want the responsibility of being the minister so might not enter for fear of winning, being the deputy brings less responsibility and the chance to be involved in the election as a candidate without the chance of winning the top job could encourage more people to take part.

2. It will put more of a spotlight on the role of Deputy Minister. Currently the role feels a little like an afterthought, it's less something to win and more of a consolation prize for the most successful loser (speaking as someone who's candidate became deputy). Currently, becoming deputy is a little deflating for characters who were aiming for the top job and fell short, under this system the successful deputy minister will have been aiming for the job the whole and both IC and OOC will have a more positive feeling heading into taking the role.

Potential concerns.

1. It isn't how politics works in New Zealand. Agreed, however our current system doesn't mirror the real world system either and it would be incredibly difficult to do so. We don't really know the position of minister is chosen in the HP books, references are made to the minister being both appointed and elected so who knows. Our current site election is run like a presidential election already so this would mainly be a change to how the deputy minister is elected.

2. How will deputy minister candidates be vetted by staff? My suggestion would be on the normal form for Minister for magic candidates there be a section for running mate character/rper.

3. What if you want to run and can't find a running mate? I think this could be the most interesting part of the change because we could get unexpected pairings if they are chosen through plot requests. Two people wanting to get involved throwing their characters together to form an odd couple-esque ticket could lead to hilarity, or fisticuffs, either way win win for rp entertainment.

I love a good fictional election and I thought this might be a fun way to spice things up. Feel free to offer questions or concerns and I'll try to answer them.

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

Hi Dan,

Thank you for the suggestion. While we can understand that adding a running mate could create an interesting dynamic, we foresee a few issues with this suggestion.

Related to the vetting process, we could easily add questions to account for the deputy candidates. However, having to make decisions based on two candidates would be a challenging prospect on our end. If say, we feel the Minister character app is well explained and seems to make sense in line with their character or if one character is well established and we don't feel similarly about the deputy minister they've chosen, we'd be hard pressed to approve that 'ticket' through. The same is true if there's an imbalance in activity - say one RPer/character is very active and the other less so. To add to the activity bit, we already struggle with candidates being able to remain active through the entire process due to real-life commitments. We could potentially be doubling the risk of that happening.

A benefit of the current system is that the Minister and Deputy Minister typically end up being from different friend groups on HNZ. This has led to interesting roleplaying dynamics, though that is more dependent on individual RPers than admin. With what you're proposing, aside from those folks who choose to team up 'randomly', we imagine people would team up with their friends on HNZ to submit an app. We'd end up spreading the wealth with a running mate system far less than we do currently.

What we'd encourage is for folks to work with the Minister to define the role of Deputy Minister in line with your character. Looking at it as 'the most successful loser' is an unfortunate way to look at it. There's so much potential there! The position is what you make of it. It could/should be different depending on the dynamics between the pair. Do they work together? Does the deputy quietly undermine all the Minister's efforts? Does one focus on the ministry and the other on the community?

We appreciate that this could make things interesting, introducing a different type of dynamic, but for the time being, the system we have works well for IC and OOC reasons, and is also a little closer to the political system that exists in NZ.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

What we'd encourage is for folks to work with the Minister to define the role of Deputy Minister in line with your character. Looking at it as 'the most successful loser' is an unfortunate way to look at it. There's so much potential there! The position is what you make of it. It could/should be different depending on the dynamics between the pair. Do they work together? Does the deputy quietly undermine all the Minister's efforts? Does one focus on the ministry and the other on the community?

Wanna second this - having the current Deputy, I've had a really good time figuring out how Rupert feels about the role and approaches his job. I've never looked at it as most successful loser - it's not the job Rupert was going for, but it's its own unique and interesting position to play with, and comes with all kinds of interesting dynamics. REALLY quickly after the election I became much happier as Deputy than I would have been if he had won, because it's a role Rupert is better suited to. That's not going to be true of every character obviously, but Deputy isn't automatically an afterthought or consolation prize, it's just a different position with its own unique aspects.

The activity stuff is also really a factor that can't be overstated imo - Deputy generally winds up going to an RPer who was quite active during the campaign, and whether they choose to keep that up or not is up to them, but it's still a reward for that activity. Having the Deputy tied to the Minister would mean that people who put in a ton of work through the campaign might wind up with nothing, while a Deputy who was attached to an active candidate but posted very little got to cruise into a spot & then do nothing with it. I'd be really gutted if I'd worked hard on my campaign and watched someone who'd barely been active get dragged into a position alongside a more active friend. Deputy is a nice reward for people who've done a good job in the campaign, even if they didn't win the top spot, and taking that away from the main candidates would definitely be a bummer imo.

Not really saying anything new, but wanted to add my 2c as the current Deputy