DDO Presidential candidates should be openly endorsed by two people before being able to run

1) Ill break down this point into two discussions in response to the con's arguments - 1 - The point of mandating two endorsements means that now only the most committed fraudulent presidential hopefuls will go through with creating two dummy accounts just for endorsements. It is a second step that may (or may not, depending on the will of the person) deter them from continuing with running the campaign. Causing fraud candidates to create two dummy accounts will deter some people from hacking their way into the race. - 2 - 1 dummy account would indeed be suspicious, but the odds that a newbie being promised a presidential position if he votes for someone cant be ruled out, it is like noob-sniping except a candidate would be sniping for an endorsement. with 2 endorsements though the odds of 2 brand new users endorsing a candidate they just met are much steeper, and if they joined at the exact same time and endorsed the same candidate they did not know at the same time then the odds the candidate is not creating dummy accounts is almost negligible. 2) - 1 - " If his point is that DDO is being bombarded with campaign threads, that would not necessarily change even with a two endorsement requirement" Number of campaign threads created by candidates who received multiple votes = 1 Number of campaign threads created by candidates who only received their own one vote and would most likely be at risk of not being allowed to campaign = 4 (3 for viper king 1 for tyler90az) there was also a thread of someone asking who all was running because of the influx of one vote candidates, so that thread added to the others, number of spammed threads because of write in voting = 5 5 less threads spamming the DDO forums isnt necessarily a huge benefit, but it is a benefit nonetheless - 2 - Now it is true that the number of votes that could be freed up wouldnt have a large impact on the main race, but this endorsement is meant primarily to clean up the campaign not to channel votes to more legitimate candidates. Also since the actual candidates would not be impacted by the voting, then there would be no harmful impact, but that is only true for today. If next election Innomen retired then that would leave jimtimmy and socialpinko, two candidates who minus the independent voting would CERTAINLY be affected by the new number of votes. The idea that the number of votes wouldnt affect the race is only true if Innomen were in the campaign, if he were to retire then that would create a very close race following his retirement and the number of independent votes would now have a very crucial impact. Imagine the Bush-Gore campaign, two completely new candidates following the retirement of Clinton, each ran a very close race where an independent possessed enough votes to change the outcome of the campaign. The same could happen on DDO if say Innomen were to retire and the main candidates were not jimtimmy and socialpinko. 3) If the endorsement deal were put in place, the number of potential candidates would be limited to only legit candidates. That means candidates who spam the forums would be greatly reduced, so all those threads advertising for their campaign would not be created since the candidates wouldnt be allowed to run. Pro brings up a good point about how some people dont look at the threads anyway and that policing them is not a policy of DDO, however there would be a small benefit for users who do actually go on the DDO forum about DDO and that is a benefit nonetheless. This policy would reduce spamming in the DDO forum about DDO, not all forums on DDO, I concede that. But the mafia thread is limited to the forum about games, not DDO. Also the mafia thread is enjoyable to a good number of users on DDO, the spammed campaigns however are not. 4) The Pro raises some good points about adopting platform ideas and how the bad candidates limit themselves. Really the only counter argument I can offer against this is the case where if an election was a very close race that came down to a very few number of votes, then these candidates voting for themselves would be potentially allowing the lesser candidate to win over the better candidate. (I know its not the best counter argument but its better than nothing and at least keeps this argument relevant) :)