Election In Victonia - Orgahshire Poll

[CountArach]

This poll is one that I said would be conducted on the final day of the game: today. The parties have campaigned for a month now, to try to win the vote of people right across the nation - and now it is your turn to have your say on which party you like the most. Their party platforms can be found in the following places (In order of registration):

Victonia People's Party (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97444)

New Democratic Party of Victonia (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97445)

Union for a Free Victonia (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97446)

Victonia Liberals (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97447)

Socialist Party (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97448)

New Tide (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97449)

Victonia National Front (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97450)

Conservative Parliamentary Party (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97451)

The entire election thread can be found here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=97457), with each debate having its own thread. If you are interested in the msot recent polling data, you can find it here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1826948&postcount=236).

I ask all party members to keep spam in here to a bare minimum. If you have any questions, feel free to ask - I'm sure someone will respond.

[JR-]

New Tide got my vote because they had a sensible Defence policy, even though i disliked the kyoto stance.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hehe, so far mostly the members of the parties seem to have voted. It will be interesting to see how this vote goes, and I wonder how many in orgahshire followed the debates. I guess our party would benefit from those who did, and have great difficulties summarizing our policy in only 10 statements in a bullet list! But if you do take your time reading through the discussions, I think you will vote for VL! Also I would like to encourage the voters to keep in mind to and read the history of Victonia in the Victonia thread, to know why some policies have been picked, as they're not just a matter of own ideologies but also a matter of which policy we thought would fit this fictuous country the best.

Vote for Victonia Liberals!

In short, the party stands for cleverly unleashing cooperation between all layers in society to increase prosperity for all. The idea is, that the working class should have decent lives so as not to become criminals, but provide good labor for the companies, and they should have standards comparable to lower middle class while working limited, humane hours. The upper and middle classes are simultaneously offered great freedom of competition and low company taxes, and thus allowed a massive rise in income, especially if they choose to work hard. By improving at least a little for all groups, there won't be big groups of people who fight and sabotage society, similar to how it is in too socialistic or too conservative societies, where the parties hurt the country's long term strength, GDP and similar by alternating between left wing rulers who screw the middle class and upper class, and right wing rulers who screw the lower class and the middle class. The calculations show that unleashing such a cooperative climate causes such a rapid improvement all over that most expenses for society, such as stress-related health problems, sabotage and crime, and infringements to industry growth, are decreased dramatically.

The end result is, that the policy can in a matter of a few years achieve a society which offers better lives for everyone than even an extremist one-target-group party could offer by having a policy that screws all other groups and long term growth for the benefit of in the short term enriching one group. Our policy thus mainly improves life for the middle class (90% of the population) since they're usually otherwise screwed by both the left wing and right wing

Indeed, if you do screw the workers when implementing a company growth program, you WILL lose the next election, and if you keep screwing those who work hard and don't grant them rewards for it, then you WILL lose the next election. And you WILL damage long term growth, which hurts everyone.

The bold phrase above is the core idea of the party, and it has led to a policy where all policies of one-target-group parties are combined as much as possible, sometimes finding very complex and clever way of solving direct conflicts between these policies. The end result is a policy where the same level of freedom is offered as by near-anarchist right wing parties, but always backup and safety solutions on par with that of socialism. Private companies and competition will provide much, but the state will always be there to fill in holes, providing crucial services which no private source wished to provide at that particular time and place. Here's a short summary of the goals of each society institution:

- Education: to provide people with the knowledge needed to be able to contribute to making our industry competitive. The students should make tests anonymously for fair grading and their opinions protected from inquisitions by teachers or others in school so as to preserve personal integrity. Private and state driven schools coexist for maximum freedom and competition.
- Juridical system: the purpose of the legal system is to protect innocent people from crime, by the method that achieves this best both in the short term and long term. We use the policy that at the time seems the best to achieve this. At present, that means a progressive scale (starting low enough to allow an increase) for repeated crime, and an effective police force that can capture all crimes, even small ones. No sentence should be high enough to give incentive for a criminal to murder a witness in order to hide a previous crime. Focus is on telling the criminals they're kept locked up because they make themselves a problem, i.e. a practicality, and not a condemnation of them. They are offered fair chances to reenter society, but if they don't take them, after enough chances they will not receive any more. Many sentences will also be directed at trying to repair the damages caused by the crime. If you steal a $100 item, you have to work until you can repay it, for example, or if you refuse to work like that you get a regular prison term (but slightly longer than the time it took to work to earn that amount of money). This has the bonus that victims of crime can usually be compensated for the damages without needing to pay for expensive insurances. Above all, an effective police with high capture rates must ensure crime is made both a more uncertain income source and a lower income source, than the lowest paid jobs, to meet up the policy of making life suffiently good for the poorest, or the latter will have no positive effect to crime reduction.
- Law rewriting: simplify the law so all people beforehand can tell whether they'll commit a crime or not when choosing an action. Current law often has many duplicates and many aged laws, and many contradictory laws. Law also needs to be formed with beforehand a good idea of how an offender can be distinguished from an innocent easily, by defining good borders for what is valid proof and not.
- Health: all should be allowed to choose health care. Private health providers must be backed up by state hospitals in regions where no private providers want to settle. In some regions, competition can be increased by parallelly offering state and private hospitals. Privatisation doesn't work if there's only one private alternative in each geographical location. Health care becomes universal and no extra administration is needed for insurance companies above it. Queues are shortened by prioritization by disease/injury type in too troublesome times. Work-related injuries and emergencies are treated first in such cases. Cosmetic plastic surgery is only done in private clinics and not subventioned by tax. Low-level administration by journals etc is reduced to a minimum to increase efficiency.
- Taxation: stimulate companies by lowering their taxes. Focus the tax lowering on companies on employment costs at times when it's needed to stimulate employment. Other taxes are lowered as allowed by massive reduction of administration and greater efficiency among any and all state funded projects. The state will spend wisely and responsibly, and leave as much money as possible to the citizens to choose how to spend.
- Military: a conscripted militia must provide counterweight to the professional core. This militia is much more effective than a rabble of revolver owners granted by gun control laws, at preventing despotism. The militia is however excluded from duty of service abroad, because if not, there wouldn't be enough volunteers for this important task. This militia is relatively cheap to upkeep and so offers much bang for the buck in terms of securing the democracy.
- Gun control: all who are registered in a hunting or sports society with guns (and also people with special protection needs such as people with protected identity), should be allowed to own one, if they know the basics of gun handling. By registering them, spreading of guns to criminals can be tracked and stopped. By in this way restricting guns only to those who have valid reasons to own them, the police can be empowered to confiscate disallowed guns among criminals before these guns are used for crimes, and so improved crime fighting.
- Personal integrity: all systems strive to maximize personal integrity, and ensure no police state arises. Surveillance will be heavily restricted and regulated for instance. The military will not be bound by oaths to carry out orders that go against the constitution. The militia representants of the people act as effective counter-weights to despotism. Etc etc. In all ways possible, this will be increased in every single system. Always make sure those who represent the people have the freedom and control, and make sure they are also counter-weighted properly so as to make sure they don't become too powerful to stand above criticism and pressure from the voters.
- Family values and church-state separation: the nation of Victonia is a country mostly consisting of people with conservative values. So, the problem is hardly moral stance of the population, when divorce etc. increases, but the economical dangers that tear families apart. Victonia Liberals will focus on empowering the people to live by these moral values. The state will not control the church and be an authority on what is sin and not, as in CPP's program. Instead, the church is authority in church matters. Children will be exposed to neither religious nor anti-religious sentiments from school and other state institutions, but only by their parents, their own choice, and their church. Family values are thus maintained by solving the major problem: economical uncertainty and stress.

[Zim]

:laugh4: I think it's funny to see that the "little" parties are in the lead so far, although as most of the vote are probably still from party members it may not mean anything.

If I were to go solely from the debates, it would be hard to pick a party, but I think the VNF was in many ways quite impressive. Despite a rather interesting platform that might not be popular among ORG members in a real life election, they have taken it remarkably far. They participated in every debate, putting their views forward well. They reacted well when others prefered ad hominem attacks on them rather than real debate. While most parties ended up with one "spokesman", they even worked hard to back eachother up in debates, especially the earlier ones. I was impressed. :2thumbsup:

[Rodion Romanovich]

OOC: Hm, I think I agree, but to be honest, in a real-life election unless among very desperate people or at a time when a majority of neighboring countries are dictatorships, their extremely impressive rhetorical skills probably wouldn't have saved them from the damages their deliberately insane party program would cause ~:) Though, Evil Maniac From Mars did some quite great attempts of turning it into a more serious-looking program on the surface by disguising it by a horde of good-looking details, he's the man I would really fear :wink: :bow:

[Caius]

I fear all those people that claim nationalism is the best way to rule a country. Thats why you have to vote UFV, we give you freedom. The VNF doesnt.

[Tribesman]

I would like to remind people here that they are not Victonians and as such is foriegners , we at the VNF don't like foriegners .

[seireikhaan]

Vote VPP, we offer a uniqe blend of socialism and free market, we are the best for the future of Victonia by reducing dependency on foreign oil, investing the most and best into education, guaranteeing everyone's right to health care, and protecting the rights of the people to prevent tyranny.

[Caius]

At this rate, 1 seat for UFV, 1 for VNF. Vote UFV, we give you freedom and not nationalist chains.

[Crazed Rabbit]

If you don't want the fascist thugs of the National Front to win, there is only one choice:
The Union for a Free Victonia! Liberty for all!

CR

[Zim]

You might be surprised. I was in Paraguay a while back and by far the most popular party was the one the old dictator had belonged to. Strangest thing I'd even seen. :dizzy2:

Too bad there wasn't an ORG award for the game. Some of the players who carried their parties (like you) or did exceptionally well with what they had (Evil_Maniac) would be shoe-ins for nominations.


OOC: Hm, I think I agree, but to be honest, in a real-life election unless among very desperate people or at a time when a majority of neighboring countries are dictatorships, their extremely impressive rhetorical skills probably wouldn't have saved them from the damages their deliberately insane party program would cause ~:) Though, Evil Maniac From Mars did some quite great attempts of turning it into a more serious-looking program on the surface by disguising it by a horde of good-looking details, he's the man I would really fear :wink: :bow:

[Goofball]

New Tide for me. I like their healthcare and gun registration policies.

[Quirinus]

I voted for the New Democratic Party of Victonia. Their ideals seem pretty close to my own, other than their stand on legalizing drugs.

[CountArach]

Here are the results if anyone s interested:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=99139