ForestBoard

Oh, it appears no one noticed this but there was 49.1% voter turnout for the first round. Pretty good given that there area lot of registered voters (120. 59 of them voted.) Turnout for the second round is 52/120, a lower 43.3% turnout. But there's still another day, so more people could vote.

Ruinenlust wrote:

duel to the death to become the Dictator Perpetuo. ;-)

As an admittedly less fun alternative, might I recommend a system of corule?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarchy

Every week, Chan Island and The Cypher Nine would exchange the title and trappings of authority as Forest Keeper. Presumably, the beginning of the week would be spent reversing the actions of the previous week's Keeper. However, by the end of the week, they likely would have managed to make some true progress in governance, just in time for the next exchange of power to occur, followed once again by a lengthy process of striking from the books all evidence of their co-ruler's term.

The best part of this idea is all of the fun terminology that comes with the system: duumvirate, biarchy, biumvirate, tandemocracy, dual monarchy. Lots of potential for creative world-building, there. I personally favor the title "Two Trees," for no particular reason:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Trees_of_Valinor

Corule has great literary potential, but the form you perscribe would unfortunately be quite inefficient. I would think a synchronous office more managable, ecspecially if powers were actually skewed towards the winner of the tie-breaker winner. Both would be in office, but the winner as outlined in the constitution would be the most influential.

It would lack integrity to actually change the rules in the middle of an election, of course, but governmental leadership can be an interesting topic to think about! The future FK could always offer their opponent an office, at their own discretion, making diarchy a moot idea.

Einswenn wrote:

Thanks Arklanda for providing an opportunity to participate in NS event :) I've published the latest issue of Einspostr and mentioned the GreenCup 2021 and players my team has played against

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When i see such masterpiece, I become speechless! I mean what a beautiful work you've done! This gave the game a taste of life. Thank you and Arklanda is honoured to have Einswenn in this tournament. Government & People will warmly welcome you again in future events. Ænse fans were very respectful, patriotic and cheerful and we're ready to welcome them again in our lands!

and yes, Arklanda still respects Tine Sande.

Interesting elections. I feel bound to explain that I am not voting because I haven't had a chance to read through the manifestos of the running candidates and I do not want to make an ill-informed decision. The vote I cast will be little different than random picking at this point.

But I know the candidates and I have no doubt that whoever the winner is will do a terrific job ruling Forest.

Now I wish this was a statement I had the luxury to be able to make during real-life elections.

Pollwatch:
With 30 hours remaining, this dramatic election cycle takes another turn, as one of The Cypher Nine's voters swings to Chan Island. 52 forestians have voted, meaning that 7 more votes could decide this thrilling runoff. Stay tuned as an unprecedented sequence of events, triggered by the collapse of Errinundera, draws to a close in just over a day's time.

Terrabod wrote:

Should criminals be disenfranchised?

I'd say no. Frankly, I don't understand the eagerness to punish criminals in ways that go beyond the court verdict. If a criminal got 10 years in prison for a certain crime, that's it. That is the punishment. Anything that goes beyond that, like disenfranchising the inmates, etc. is beyond my comprehension. It is just institutionalized sadism.

The same goes for cruel and unusual punishments inflicted on inmates, like solitary confinement, or in one particularly heinous example, the female inmate who was left to - basically - be burned to death in a cage in the Arizona desert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Marcia_Powell

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

I'd say no. Frankly, I don't understand the eagerness to punish criminals in ways that go beyond the court verdict. If a criminal got 10 years in prison for a certain crime, that's it. That is the punishment. Anything that goes beyond that, like disenfranchising the inmates, etc. is beyond my comprehension. It is just institutionalized sadism.

The same goes for cruel and unusual punishments inflicted on inmates, like solitary confinement, or in one particularly heinous example, the female inmate who was left to - basically - be burned to death in a cage in the Arizona desert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Marcia_Powell

Umm, the 19th century would like to remind you that once convicted of a crime against Jesus-with-a-Gun and against one's judgmental small town neighbors, clearly the person is irrevocably depraved, wanted to commit the crime in the first place, and has to be forever looked down upon and spurned so that if they commit further crimes for lack of being given a chance, that only reenforces everyone's worst suspicions about them, and they should be grateful to be given a crust of bread once a week. /s

And what if we rehabilitate them instead? Then everyone--yes, everyone, to the last person--will just commit crimes all the time, and society will inevitably meet its demise. Did you know that everyone who has ever committed a crime is in league with both the devil and with fornicators, apostates, and is under foreign influence? Does that even sound like the kind of thing that Jesus-with-a-Gun or small town Victorians could deign to condone? /s

Terrabod wrote:

Should criminals be disenfranchised?

But...w-w-w-what if they vote for the...Democrats? :-O

---

But yes, in the real world. I think that once reasonable sentences are served, nearly all such people should be enfranchised and reintegrated into society to the best of everyone's ability. It's the only viable way forward, and addressing root causes is much better than simply trying to stamp out symptoms of societal ills. Now, that may not work to the last person, and you will always have exceptions that would have be dealt with differently, but by and large, I would say yes.

Wow, I picked a bad week to walk away from NS. I shall cast my vote within the hour after reflecting both candidates positions. A lot of good candidates this year!

Ruinenlust wrote:

But yes, in the real world. I think that once reasonable sentences are served, nearly all such people should be enfranchised and reintegrated into society to the best of everyone's ability. It's the only viable way forward, and addressing root causes is much better than simply trying to stamp out symptoms of societal ills. Now, that may not work to the last person, and you will always have exceptions that would have be dealt with differently, but by and large, I would say yes.

So you think criminals should be disenfranchised? I don't mean ex-convicts, I mean people completing their sentence. Or by "yes" do you mean "no"?

Cuillin wrote:

I think it gives someone who is on a journey to rehabilitation a reason to have a stake in society. Most people who are detained will one day make their way back into society at some point, and it is in everybody's interest that they feel part of that society.

As someone who believes the primary purpose of prisons should be rehabilitation, I very much agree. You've put it in a better way than I could, but that idea of prisoners still feeling they have a stake in society (giving them a meaningful sense of purpose on the road to desistance) is extremely important. That and also I think the right to vote should be inalienable for those with the competency (legally speaking) to do so regardless of their circumstances. After all, as The Cypher Nine says, the decisions of the legislature directly affect criminals as a group, so it's important that their needs as a group are represented by them (not for them) at a regional and national level.

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

Frankly, I don't understand the eagerness to punish criminals in ways that go beyond the court verdict. If a criminal got 10 years in prison for a certain crime, that's it. That is the punishment. Anything that goes beyond that, like disenfranchising the inmates, etc. is beyond my comprehension.

Well put. And regarding your second point, this is also a concern of mine. It's pretty much common knowledge that infectious diseases - including those considered to be diseases of the developing world like tuberculosis - are rife in prisons, yet very little is done to combat their spread for reasons that amount to "prison is supposed to be a punishment". As you've mentioned, when a criminal is sentenced to ten years' incarceration they are not implicitly sentenced to degrading and often subhuman conditions. For authorities to turn a blind eye to the spread of infectious diseases in prisons makes them in my opinion not just negligent but complicit, and that use of infectious disease as punishment is tantamount to corporal punishment (which I hope we can agree has no place in the justice system).

The really laughable part of all that is that infectious diseases don't respect the boundaries imposed by a prison cell; those diseases inevitably make their way into the wider community via prison staff and visitors, making this a problem that affects all of us, not just the convicted. That's without even beginning to consider that prisons are a breeding ground for antimicrobial-resistant superbugs which again do not discriminate between criminals and the general public.

EDIT:

Valentine Z wrote:

-snip-

Wait-- is that-- the NationStates Issues *SPOILER ALERT* photo?

Terrabod wrote:

Should criminals be disenfranchised?

No

Look, among the other arguments already put a lot more smarterly by Frieden-und Freudenland, not only are inmates still in one sense or another living in society, they are also living in a specific part of society few people have access to: prisons. In nations where prisons aren't private at least, the conditions the prisoners are kept in are directly tied to the current political administration, for better or for worse. In that sense, denying them the right to vote is denying a citzen - criminal or not, they're still citzens - the right to control the ambient they live in. I will once again point to the mess that is my country's prisonal situation since around the 80's and gesture towards the fact that one of the main things every one of the larger criminal factions have in common is having the right of prisoners to vote in their political program*.

Hey, Roless became the only forestian in the Semi-Final. Good luck for all!

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Ruinenlust wrote:

It's much worse than that; it's a vast conspiracy to drive me into anxiety at the prospect of having to be the tie-breaker, which I absolutely don't want to do. ;__;

What a weird conspiracy!

All of the conspiracies I've launched have been aimed at getting you to give me money, not anxiety. There's no profit in that.

How many Amazon Prime subscriptions do you even need, anyway?!