I've always felt that you should be required to have some basic, tertiary (i.e. University level, though not neccisarily degree length) political science and economics education in order to be allowed to vote in the first place.

Democracy is all well and good, but people are stupid and do not know what they want. All you have to do is turn on the evening news to see this.

I know that even my idea is not infalliable, people would still vote crappily, BUT, with a basic knowledge of the facts, they'd be less susceptible to economic scare tactics, such as John Howards reelection campaign here in Australia.

I'm a socialist and proud of it, but unlike most of my idealist comrades, I am personally anti-democracy, at least as we consider democracy now.

None the less I imagine when the gods designed Serenwilde they imagined it to be fairly self-regulating and unified in a sense...at least I hope they didn't plan for us to be a seething den of bitches and vipers on purpose x.X

Nikua tried to do the best thing by the people and actually listen to their concerns (hence why he seems to backtrack, he merely acts quickly, then evaluates his situation). I think he's too nice for his own good. He ought to be an ironfisted dictator, and kick out all those who disagree with him. That would solve alot of problems, short term and long term. But still, regardless of what he does, he's a champ in my mind. I don't envy the multitude of people questioning every single step he takes.

Democracy is good as long people vote the person that better represents their ideas and not:
- The most vocal
- The guy with a better adverticing campaign
- The most agressive againts the other contestants
- The one with a nice name (yes, I've heard people saying they voted for soembody just because they liked the name and didn't know any of the contestants)
- The most popular
etc...
Currently people looks at voting the same way they look at wich soap to buy in the supermarket. Bright colours in the envase, good smell, good adverticing, and easily reachable.

Yes but in the Western Capitalist societies we live in, none of the candidates represent that. Its like we're deciding whether to kill ourselves by hanging or drowning. Its always old money that gets in, and thats not going to change until some significant revoloution takes place...

The problem, which I have seen apply in other IRE games in addition to the real world, is the voting system. The mathematical properties of "first past the post" voting lends itself (when used in political party conventions) to nominating the most mediocre candidates for office and then electing the most mediocre candidate when the people go to vote; read this and this. So it's the voting system, not the political structure. This sort of problem existed in America during the early 1800s when the northern states were nearly a capitalism and the southern states more feudal-like, during the US's mercantilist stage of the mid and late 1800s, the US's socialist era of the early and mid 20th century, and continuing on today. So these sorts of voting complaints seem independent of the economic structure, even the degree of capitalism (and indeed the west right now is all mixed economies; the capitalist lobbies in 2004 general ranked the east, like Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, etc. as "more capitalist" than most of Europe and sometimes even the US by their standards).

But if you are aware of this characteristic of the voting system then you can use it to your advantage. I recall in Achaea's Ashtan an archon once got elected through an advertising campaign. He spent time to get a list of every citizen in the city and tried to filter out those not of voting age. Then he messaged each one a friendly message asking for their support and offering to spend time to discuss the issues with them if they wanted. Many people were annoyed, but when people went to the polls, his name stuck out to all the voters who had never heard of the other candidates, and he won...with only minor lipservice to his actual platform!

And then that happens in Eleusis, with actual letters, and everyone jumps to cry for reform because the person used underhanded methods of influencing people.