Atlasian Public Acts - Publication of the Game Engine

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

If we are voicing our opinions, Ill add that I also support scrapping the concept. I am unfamiliar with these legislative elections. I wasnt in the game during the brief period where these were done, but as it was explained to me last night, basically whoever posts the most amount of useless spam gets rewarded with improbable NPC results thus incentivizing useless spam. Using the results from 2 years ago make no apparent sense in light of the current in game situation.

Also there isnt anything in the federal or Regional constitutions requiring elected legislative governments. IIRC Scott mentioned that in Fremont the Regional government has assumed basically all State and local taxation, powers, and functions. As I read the constitution, Regions in game are to States, what States in real life are to counties i.e. sovereign to constituent subdivision. Hypothetically I dont see any reason why Regions couldnt just essentially abolish state and local governments within the region or say make such governments subject to appointment by the Regional government.

Im not going to knock anyone for trying new ideas just because they didnt work, im just going to say imo I dont think this works at all. Especially when it results in nonsensical outcomes that are still being treated as in effect 2 years later.

I'm not speaking for the entire team, but if the Senate were willing to repeal the act creating the state NPC elections AND declare all officeholders null and void, and all storylines covering said officeholders as non-valid, it would get no objection from me.

You wouldnt happen to know what the federal law is called/when it was passed do you? Im not finding it.

I would not. I've been in and out of Atlasia for several years and this is my first time holding any kind of office. Weatherboy might, and I'm pretty sure anyone who was around at the time (Scott, for example) would know.

Upon further review, it was a bunch of legislation in the South and Fremont.

This was the Fremont Legislation:

AN ACT
to bring state and local elections in line with parliamentary terms

Section 1 (Title)
i. The title of this act shall be, the "Local Electoral Calendar Act."

Section 2 (Electoral calendar for state and local elections)
i. Hereafter, all officers of the states (or territories) and municipalities of Frémont shall serve terms of six months commencing on the first Monday following their election.
ii. All regular state (or territorial) and municipal elections in Frémont shall be on the ultimate Saturday of the month in which they are given by the laws of those states (or territories) to proceed.
iii. The filing deadline for all state (or territorial) and municipal elections in Frémont shall be thirty days before the election.

Section 3 (Amendment to the Universal Suffrage Act)
i. §4(ii) of the Universal Suffrage Act is amended to read as follows:

No sooner than thirty days before the election, and no later than fifteen days before, the ministry of elections will send to every non-apparent citizen an envelope prominently labeled: "CONTAINS ELECTION MATERIALS."

This is the Southern Legislation:

Quote from: Southern State and Local Electoral Calendar Act
AN ACT
to bring state and local elections in line with southern regional terms

Section 1 (Title)
i. The title of this act shall be, the "Southern State and Local Electoral Calendar Act."

Section 2 (Electoral calendar for state and local elections)
i. Hereafter, all officers of the states (or territories) and municipalities of the South shall serve terms of six months commencing on the first Monday following their election.
ii. All regular state (or territorial) and municipal elections in the South shall be on the ultimate Saturday of the month in which they are given by the laws of those states (or territories) to proceed.
iii. The filing deadline for all state (or territorial) and municipal elections in the South shall be thirty days before the election.

Section 3 (Postal Voting)
i. Registered voters (Atlasian's Citizens [both players and NPCs] of the Southern Region deemed eligible to vote) in the Southern Region may apply for a postal ballot no later than two weeks before the relevant election/s. People who meet the parameters will be sent by the relevant Southern Electoral body, an envelope prominently labelled: "CONTAINS ELECTION MATERIALS."

Section 4 (Voting Systems)
i. The voting system for state (or territorial) and municipal legislatures will be the same as the Southern Regional system. Unless decided otherwise at the state (or territorial) or municipal level.
ii. The voting system for state (or territorial) and municipal executives will be the same as the Southern Regional system. Unless decided otherwise by the states (or territorial) or municipal level.

And Lincoln:

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=370693.0
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=392614.0
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=423315.0
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=441705.0

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Likewise I'm really not keen on having the full NPC McCoy come back unless people are actually interested.

The other thing that stands out to me is if we really need to revisit the issue. All these NPCs and the state legislature breakdowns and partisan details and stuff were invented purely in service of a playable activity that would be unfeasible at the moment. If we're at the same situation as prior to NPC elections, when we assumed all these state and local governments did their own thing without specifying which name from which party did what, do we return to that original assumption, that sort of thing.

I'm not against some kind of simulation happening or whatever but the NPC elections concept exists purely to put names to faces at this point and that's something that a) we got along fine without prior to July 2020, and b) would be a pretty big effort by the GMs for not a huge amount of return in terms of augmenting the canon since we always assumed those governments were in the background anyway.

A couple of questions:

1. How is the GM team going to proceed with the NPC elections-related events going forward? There's mention of an upcoming NYC election. Will all the NPC legislatures and offices gradually update?

2. Related to that, if the terms of office are all six months long are we assuming that everyone elected between February and August 2021 has been in office for between thirteen and nineteen months?

3. Is Hurricane Ian canon?

I have another question about the Ukraine development but the profanity filter won't let me post all of it apparently.

1. Weatherboy and I are still working out the fine print, but there's a reason I chose to schedule the NPC election for the same day as the player elections. That way scoring would be minimal if we can't agree on a system.

2. The New York City office is term-limited specifically, based on the IRL two term limit. I personally lean towards the state Governors, not having term-limits, but Weatherboy and Forumlurker might have different feelings about that.

3. Previous GM's (Lumine in particular) have ruled that real life natural disasters still happen. There may or may not be a story about the impacts of Hurricane Ian, but assume Ian was the same storm as IRL.

"Based on the IRL two term limit" means the mayor would have termed out by last September. He was elected in July 2020, reelected in February 2021. Or is the assumption that every state government has been stuck in carbonite for a year? That itself would contradict some recent stories.

Not every IRL disaster has happened exactly the same way, or at all, the GMs have leeway to decide on those things. Off the top of my head Harvey hit a different part of Atlasia and another hurricane that season (Irma?) didn't happen at all.

If we are voicing our opinions, Ill add that I also support scrapping the concept. I am unfamiliar with these legislative elections. I wasnt in the game during the brief period where these were done, but as it was explained to me last night, basically whoever posts the most amount of useless spam gets rewarded with improbable NPC results thus incentivizing useless spam. Using the results from 2 years ago make no apparent sense in light of the current in game situation.

Also there isnt anything in the federal or Regional constitutions requiring elected legislative governments. IIRC Scott mentioned that in Fremont the Regional government has assumed basically all State and local taxation, powers, and functions. As I read the constitution, Regions in game are to States, what States in real life are to counties i.e. sovereign to constituent subdivision. Hypothetically I dont see any reason why Regions couldnt just essentially abolish state and local governments within the region or say make such governments subject to appointment by the Regional government.

Im not going to knock anyone for trying new ideas just because they didnt work, im just going to say imo I dont think this works at all. Especially when it results in nonsensical outcomes that are still being treated as in effect 2 years later.

Respectfully, I rather enjoyed my "useless spam" because I like writing speeches.

But yes, the parties that ran the best campaign tailored to a specific state always won by varying margins. The Utah campaign was by far the most memorable. However I do agree that it's unwise to delegate these legislatures as permanent. It's unfair to other parties, and I say that as someone whose party controls the majority of statehouses and governorships.

Fremont is different from Lincoln and the South in that we absorbed state services, so local governments do have less of a role but they are nonetheless allowed to enact laws primarily affecting social/law-and-order issues within the context of regional law. This wasn't the case for Louisiana, where the Labor governor had to raise taxes because the South does not assume funding for the states.

Which is rather ironic, because Tmth criticized Fremont for "triple taxation," even though we're the only region that eliminated this problem. As far as I know, states in the other two regions are fully responsible for their own budgetary situations, and their residents pay SALT in addition to regional and federal taxes.

This is ultimately why Fremont is in a better budgetary situation, where we basically have a 1950s tax code that is quite high but also not an impediment to economic growth, since only a few people pay anything close to the top rate.

I think the exact situation in Lincoln, based on the laws that get passed, is basically: "State Governments exist, but all land is primarily owned by Lincoln. If the region wants to build something, it can, and it doesn't need to compensate the state. States are also reliant upon the region for many programs."

Of course, I prefer Lincoln's tax system, which has been trending lower with each budget, but still runs a very healthy surplus. We don't abuse the people's money. Others should follow our example. Fremont's system might not reduce economic growth much, but it effectively employs a maximum income (100% of money beyond 10M is given to either the regional or federal government) which seems to at least say there should be a limit on such growth.


I agree we can't run NPC elections anymore, at least not the way we used to, but we also have to deal with the reality that we passed legislation mandating their existence, which has now generated a lawsuit stemming from the lack of such elections.

I don't care much what we do as long as we are consistent about it. If the GM Team wants to continue it in some fashion, the best way would be to declare that there were failures in holding elections for roughly the last year, so the most recently elected officeholders were allowed to remain in office. They would then run new elections, fully simulated and without a need for campaigning, according to a schedule they would create. This avoids having to re-write or repeal anything.

The main other option, if the Senate can still repeal stuff, is to have the regions repeal their NPC laws, and then the Senate repeal any NPC-related Canon since the last formal NPC elections (I think either June or August of 2021, someone should do some research.). Then we simply don't mention these governments going forward.

The lazy option is to just declare that everyone in NPC offices is serving an infinite term and lives forever, but I'd recommend against this since it seems to go against the democratic nature in which the game has been consistently run.