Phulish wrote:the sidhe can use plain ole ugly bigotry, especially if shipments of prole goods are diverted or hijacked, "They get food and liquor that should be ours!" At least the internet let's us explore these, I'd rather hear from citizens than trust a google for some data when it comes to mood and "feel".
All good ideas there! I agree about t'internet as utility, although of course it can be used for evil purposes as well as mere information retrieval...which is where we come in of course
Lee Williams.
"Superstition is the name the ignorant give to their ignorance"
I think the most likely candidates to buy votes are the big, well-respected parties. In Britain New Labour and the Conservatives. I think it is not very likely that the corporations would directly buy the votes. If some law forbids political parties to buy votes because that would be very un-democratic, my guess is that there would be new corporations specialized in buying votes, rather than let’s say, Tesco going out all by themselves to buy the votes. I think it will be very similar do modern day lobbing or fundraising. Since Linden came up with the great idea of marketing vote-buying as an act of chivalry I use this whenever I can in my campaign. Vote buying will have a very negative Image, like prostitution. Nobody will really like to get involved in it.
I see it as votes being purchased by 3rd parties to be cast for their preferred political grouping. To continue the supermarket example I gather Sainsburys in the UK are supporters of the Labour party. Thus if a similarly inclined supermarket corporation in DC world was running a ballotman estate all the residents' votes would go to Labour (or if using Lee's Republic of Britain setting, a detoxified successor to the SPP). In the event that Labour were returned to power, or at least achieves a prominent place in any coalition, the corp would expect something in return. I think the situation would be akin to the donations system we have at present, but even more corrupt and insidious - though entirely legal under the UK's version of the Voting Rights Act 1997.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
Sorry but I'm slightly ignorant of the UK. But the national governments get backed to the brink and are staring at the abyss. Fausts and Igors in these bodies create this situation and its unnatural cure, leaving citizens to go "WTF?". Two real world inspirations: Nancy Pelosi(D-Cal)," We to pass this bill(Obamacare) to see what's in it." and in 1934 FDR declared a national emergency and seized private gold. Regardless of one's stance on these it shows how one can craft the "Prole Act". BTW, Obamacare was 3600 pages of legalese!
Zvezda wrote:
Does anybody have some real life statistics on how many votes (in total) are needed to have significant influence on what level?
In the UK I think it varies pretty much on the region of the country. As my old history teacher once said: Down south they vote Tory (or Liberal in the South West). Up north they vote Labour. Who gets to be in government really depends on how people in the Midlands are feeling. It's got a lot of marginal constituencies where a relatively small number of votes (usually in the low thousands, but sometimes in the hundreds) can make a difference. This is something of an over simplification, but there are regions in the UK where traditionally the big three parties have been able to count on safe seats. That may not be the case anymore though as the rise of the SNP in Scotland and the election of George Galloway in Bradford has shown. It's also worth noting that UKIP, a relatively small party is eroding the Tory vote in what were once fairly safe seats.
If we're seeing a fragmentation of traditional voter loyalties then smaller blocs of votes may become important. Could be fertile ground for the DC corporations and their ballotman estates?
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
Indeed. If a few thousands of votes can change a lot the system could work very well. If we look at the past elections in Greece, they too now have more than the traditional two parties of western democracies. The more parties really get a significant share of the votes the more important are smaller contingets of votes.
It becomes even more interesting as the "prices" for the votes will rise with every prediction.
