These thoughts come from my response to ecnad's article No More Senate. I was going to make a posting in the Times BBS, but I figured I'd make an article instead.

But there are certainly drawbacks. Sometimes it can be a popularity contest. When the race gets narrowed down to the top 3 (or 4), you see the faces and nothing else on the voting page -- no link to their platforms!

Everybody can vote, even the people who don't know what they're voting for. In the platform stage, it's all about campaigning, though it does help when people know who you are.

I know there is a lot of cheating going on, whether it's from extra accounts, bribery or whatever. But seriously, have you ever seen someone win who advertises "1000 clams for everyone who votes for me"? I haven't.

As for extra accounts, well, we already have the rule about no voting until you've been on for six months, and I think that's enough of we can do. But below the platform, there's a list with the names of the people who voted for so and so. If you look at that, sometimes you'll see the whole "blahblahblah1, blahblahblah2, 3, 4, 5" thing and know if that person cheated. Of course, this would only be obviously cheating if the candidate's name was blahblahblah0 or something. It could also just be that one person with several names voted for somebody else, and that's not against the rules.

I know some people always talk about how bad the winner was, and that can't be stopped. The people who do this are just jealous and wanted someone else to win. It's not like that's different from real life, of course -- ever noticed how people complain after a real-life election?

You could say that Whyville is a bad thing because it's another opportunity for people to do things like that. Although it hasn't happened to me yet, I'm sure several friendships end up having problems over the elections.

If someone gets mad when they lose, it's definitely a problem, especially when they know the winner. But you could say that about just about everything here. If the Senate Race is so wrong, why don't we just get rid of Whyville itself while we're at it?

Besides, I doubt that THOUSANDS of friendships are lost in the Senate Races; there's not even that many platforms. I'm not trying to downplay that these things do happen sometimes, but it sounds like an exaggeration to me.

I'm sure some are getting fed up with the elections; I mean, they do happen a whole lot. The time that's in between them is even used for advertising the next one sometimes.

The races happen too often, it's true. My suggestion: Why don't we elect all three senators at once, every six months? I think that if they were less common there would be fewer problems.

*Click, click*
Well, I haven't clicked yet, but whatever.
Britrules