Given the recent nonsense with foreigners posting on our RMB about the Delegate election, and the discussions about it on the NS Gameplay Discord (clearly in favor of one candidate over the other), I'm proposing the following amendments related to electioneering in TSP elections. Our elections should be free from foreign meddling, and they should be conducted in fair and honest ways.

8. Electioneering Activities

(1) Members of The South Pacific may campaign for or against any candidate for office in general, so long as the campaigning does not violate reasonable moderation policy.

(2) No electioneering may be done via mass telegrams, scripted telegrams, or mass forum private messages, which are to be considered forms of spam. Individually-sent manual telegrams and private messages are not considered mass telegrams for the purposes of this section.

(3) No Regional Officer may use their powers to campaign for or against any candidate for office.

(4) No items of monetary value may be used to campaign for or against any candidate for office.

(5) No foreign person may engage in electioneering for or against any candidate within The South Pacific, or enter The South Pacific for this purpose, nor may any foreign embassy post any message on the Regional Message Board related to any political campaign.

(6) Any violation of the aforementioned rules of campaigning may be preemptively removed or suppressed by Regional Officers, Forum Administrators, Discord Administrators, and other relevant officials, and may be grounds for criminal referral under the Criminal Code or, if extraordinarily severe, security action by the Council on Regional Security.

 

1. Crimes

(1) Treason shall be defined as plotting against the Coalition, seeking to lower the delegate's endorsement count without his or her consent, breaking the endorsement cap after receiving an official warning, aiding any entity which the Coalition is taking defensive action against, or any entity against which a state of war exists.

(2) Identity fraud shall be defined as a deception made of one's self, or knowingly abetting in another's claims to a false identity, wherein this fraud threatens the security of The South Pacific, or circumvents the laws and legal processes of The South Pacific.

(3) Espionage shall be defined as an act of or attempt to obtain information that is confidential or not made publicly available for use by oneself or an entity one represents. Distribution of private information that originates in official South Pacific discussion areas, excluding private messages, without the express written permission of the relevant officials or institutions shall be considered Espionage.
a. The Chair of the Assembly shall be the relevant official for information from private discussions of the Assembly.
b. The Council on Regional Security shall be the relevant institution for information from private discussions of the Council.
c. The Cabinet shall be the relevant institution for all other private information that originates in official South Pacific discussion areas.

(4) Blackmail shall be defined as demanding private gains from a player in return for not revealing compromising or injurious information.

(5) Miscarriage of Justice shall be defined as a deliberate perversion of the justice system - conduct which prevents the judiciary from reaching a true and just result.

(6) Organised crime shall be defined as involvement in a group or association with the intent of committing an unlawful act in The South Pacific.

(7) Corruption shall be defined as the misuse of public office for private or personal advantage.

(8) Electoral FraudVoting fraud shall be defined as a manipulation of the democratic process in The South Pacific, wherein an organised body of abettors conspire to obtain legislator status with the intent to vote for private or personal advantage.

(9) Unlawful electioneering shall be defined as the violation of any campaign and electioneering laws of The South Pacific.

(810) Bribery shall be defined as the receiving or offering of undue patronage by or to any individual in order to influence behavior that the recipient would otherwise not alter.

(911) Vexatious Charges shall be defined as the filing of criminal charges against another player despite the filing party's knowledge that that said charges were meritless, frivolous, repetitive, and/or burdensome.

(1012) Conduct violations shall be defined as breaking in-game NationStates rules.

(This post was last modified: 07-18-2018, 07:53 AM by Roavin. Edit Reason: Amended title )

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Discord PMs (or PMs anywhere really) should be held to the same standards as forum PMs. Lord knows people spam with them

I thought about this, but I think Discord Admins should need to consent to adding that here. We haven't usually regulated off-site chats in our laws.

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I think that as long as we're still allowing for manually sent widespread campaigning across the NS and Forum platforms, which is a more than commonplace way to campaign, I don't have too many issues with this. Forbidding script and stamp usage is a good way to level the playing field, as it ensures that nobody is disenfranchised for lacking access to funds or scripts.

There is the matter of this specifically only allowing individually-sent telegrams which I'm a bit mixed on. Nationstates allows for any player to send up-to eight telegrams at a time, so I don't think we should really be forbidding a manually-accessible free resource. On the flip, I'm really into the mentality of "If you want to campaign, you should put on your campaign shoes and knock on those doors one at a time". I think I'm tentatively in support of it, but don't feel too strongly one way or another.

Regarding foreign interference, I'm kind of surprised we didn't have any provisions for this prior. I think we had an eerie amount of embassy cross-posting today regarding the election. If folks want to be involved in our election, they should genuinely get involved in our region as actively-participating  citizens. I assume this wouldn't be affecting people with multiple citizenships though, right?  We have a lot of folks like that, and I wouldn't want to suddenly see a huge part of the region suddenly accused of unlawful actions.

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Formerly Banned For Still Unspecified "OOC Toxicity"

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That provision only affects cross-posting and people who come to TSP for the purpose of electioneering. It wouldn’t apply to TSPers who are here in good faith.


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I'm somewhat indifferent to the TGing stuff, but can we include a line that says people can't use RO powers for election purposes? Certainly the TG bit would stop most of the communication powers, but there are certainly other ways the powers could be abused.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I'm somewhat indifferent to the TGing stuff, but can we include a line that says people can't use RO powers for election purposes? Certainly the TG bit would stop most of the communication powers, but there are certainly other ways the powers could be abused.

I agree with this, RO powers should not be used for election related purposes.  I also agree with preventing the use of scripts although perhaps there should be some better tracking of scripts? 

I think the use of manual TGing (whether individual or the game allowed 8) should be allowed and is fine.

Escade

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I'm somewhat indifferent to the TGing stuff, but can we include a line that says people can't use RO powers for election purposes? Certainly the TG bit would stop most of the communication powers, but there are certainly other ways the powers could be abused.

I’ll definitely add this. It’s probably something we would ban under the last part of the RO Act, but it makes a lot of sense to do it explicitly here.


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  I also agree with preventing the use of scripts although perhaps there should be some better tracking of scripts? 

There's no real way we can track people scripting outside of an honor system, but the game kind of does it for us. If you're sending over the API, you need to tag the telegram as an API telegram, and it will come up for those receiving it as an API Template. Beyond that, Administration has ruled that it is completely illegal to manipulate the telegram sending, the telegram interface, or anything of that sort, whether it be through hotkeys, automation, or anything else. Anyone scripting outside of the API parameters in regards to telegrams would be breaking not just our rules but the game's rules.

[Image: Lj1SunN.png]
Formerly Banned For Still Unspecified "OOC Toxicity"

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  I also agree with preventing the use of scripts although perhaps there should be some better tracking of scripts? 

There's no real way we can track people scripting outside of an honor system, but the game kind of does it for us. If you're sending over the API, you need to tag the telegram as an API telegram, and it will come up for those receiving it as an API Template. Beyond that, Administration has ruled that it is completely illegal to manipulate the telegram sending, the telegram interface, or anything of that sort, whether it be through hotkeys, automation, or anything else. Anyone scripting outside of the API parameters in regards to telegrams would be breaking not just our rules but the game's rules. 

I mean how do you punish someone if you can't keep track is what I'm wondering? Like NHC, on Discord, stated that he used a script to target voters. It wasn't malicious in any way but it seems like the kind of thing people don't want. Therefore, I'm wondering how people will check and make sure no one breaks the rule.

Escade

~ Positions Held in TSP ~
Delegate | Vice Delegate 
Minister of Regional Affairs, | Minister of Foreign Affairs | Minister of Military Affairs
~ The Sparkly One ~

My Pinterest

 

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  I also agree with preventing the use of scripts although perhaps there should be some better tracking of scripts? 

There's no real way we can track people scripting outside of an honor system, but the game kind of does it for us. If you're sending over the API, you need to tag the telegram as an API telegram, and it will come up for those receiving it as an API Template. Beyond that, Administration has ruled that it is completely illegal to manipulate the telegram sending, the telegram interface, or anything of that sort, whether it be through hotkeys, automation, or anything else. Anyone scripting outside of the API parameters in regards to telegrams would be breaking not just our rules but the game's rules.  

I mean how do you punish someone if you can't keep track is what I'm wondering? Like NHC, on Discord, stated that he used a script to target voters. It wasn't malicious in any way but it seems like the kind of thing people don't want. Therefore, I'm wondering how people will check and make sure no one breaks the rule. 

Scripted telegrams have to be written via an API template, I believe, which should then show tag:api in the telegram when it arrives to a voter. Then all you really need is one telegram as proof that it's occurring, no? @Roavin or @Somyrion might be able to speak accurately on the topic matter, as I could very well be wrong about how scripting TGs works.

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Formerly Banned For Still Unspecified "OOC Toxicity"

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