NationStates Jolt Archive

http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=371106

The proposal seeks to set the voting age in all member nations to 16.

The problem occurs when we have dictatorships in the UN -who presumably, do not vote.

Questions have been raised about if this is a Game Mechanics proposal (forcing all UN nations to be democracies) or simply not worthy of the UN (voting age and requirements should be up to nations). I, for one, would not mind a mod ruling on it. I have nothing against the proposal, but I would like the author to have some warning before he gets an official one.

The proposal seeks to set the voting age in all member nations to 16.

The problem occurs when we have dictatorships in the UN -who presumably, do not vote.

Of course they do. Citizen Rule Required:

UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION #8
Citizen Rule Required

A resolution to increase democratic freedoms.


Category: The Furtherment of Democracy


Strength: Strong


Proposed by: Aschen

Description: This is a resolution to require all nations to grant self-rule to all citizen on some level. Local, Regional, or National is no matter, just so long that all citizens have some say and control over the way they are governed. These measures would promote international peace and serve as a deterent to the formation of so called "rouge nations" that to this day threaten all nations.

Votes For: 11,546
Votes Against: 7,233

Implemented: Fri Apr 4 2003

My nation uses a complex system of imperial rule, but allows citizens to elect their city governemts directly.

Hmm. Ok, then. Thanks, Hack.

Question:

Do UN thingies actually affect my nation in any way?

Because as far as I can tell, I'm still pretty much a dictatorship.

I took away my people's right to vote a longass time ago.

Yeeah... that's the only contradictory bit about that. If you are in the UN, that resolution should be affecting you. Which I guess would in turn mean that choosing option three on "Should Democracy be Compulsary?", which bans elections, would be equivalent to dismissing the issue.

Hack, a bit of clarification, if you wouldn't mind?

I get the feeling that UN shit is mostly RP, and doesn't actually do anything.

It doesn't do much, but it does mess around with your nation's stats a bit, and sets guidelines for future proposals. For example, Citizen Rule Required would have increased Political Freedoms a bit, but would not have banned elections, as the game can't read the Description.

And please censor your posts while in the mod forum.

Sorry.

Well... that's the rub.

Citizen Rule Required, Abortion Rights, Gay Rights, Legalize Euthanasia and Legalize Prostitution all have issues associated with them, which means you need to do some logical backflips to make things work at times. In all honesty, Citizen Rule Required was the easiest to get around.

[RP side story: My nation was technically a democracy as its Political Freedoms was 'Excellent'. Unfortunately, I'm in the Non-Democratic Alliance, which means I can't be a democracy. I got around this by stating that while there was an elected Senate, it was effectively powerless, my president was elected for life, and my world leading Apathy rankings (~400 in the world) ment that while I was a democracy on paper, I was anything but in practice.]

The above example is the kind of nonsense some UN nations need to do to match issue selection with UN Resolutions. Pre-migration I had suggested that we find a way to make it so that UN nations couldn't get certain issues. The problem is finding an effect way of doing that, as rewriting every issue after each new Resolution was be... difficult, to say the least. We had kicked around a couple ideas involving an automatic update, but nothing's come of it, and I believe that [violet] and the Salsa-man have much more pressing things to deal with.

Currently, this sorta means that the UN is looking the other way, or is satisfied with dictatorships as long as there's some kind of election somewhere, even if it's just elections for, say, Chairman of Garbage Collection.

In all honesty, Citizen Rule Required might not pass legal muster if it was proposed today, as it could be viewed as outlawing a political viewpoint. Just as we don't allow the UN to outlaw communism or capitalism. Mandating democratic elections is tantamount to outlawing dictatorship or pure monarchy. Of course, in this light, I'm put in a tough spot of deciding which is more important, the Enodian Law or Case Law...

All right, thanks.

BTW, isn't forum multiing a warnable offense, Hack? :p ;)

BTW, isn't forum multiing a warnable offense, Hack? :p ;)

No. Lots of people do it all the time. It's frowned upon, but, it's not warnable.