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

Thanks, Pro.In this debate, imabench is reccomending that we change the status quo (if not seriously, then at least for debate's sake). Therefore he must demonstrate why his propositions would lead to a more positive outcome for the site in terms of electing a DDO President. I'll begin by responding to Pro's individual points. Due to character limits, I will ONLY respond to his points in this round. Considering it's a 5 round debate, I will use the next round to make my case on why I think this requirement could inhibit the democratic process, and/or more realistically prove frankly unnecessary. 1) Pro says that users can too easily create an alternative account to nominate themselves. The reality is that it takes just a few minutes to create an account, so Pro brings up a good point. However, considering how easy it is to create another account, then I don't see why someone who would go through the trouble of deception to create one alt. account wouldn't simply just create a second. It'd take them an extra two minutes. Now, Pro says the point of having two nominations is to prevent a candidate from being nominated with a dummy account, and trying to use two dummy accounts would raise enough suspicion to realize the fraud that has taken place. However, wouldn't the same suspicion be raised with one new (dummy) account? Obviously the community at-large would notice a new member with a sudden interest in the site enough to nominate a particular member for presidency. The point is, I don't see how requiring 2 accounts solves this potential problem of dummy accounts, or creates a more favorable solution. I do think there are alternative options that I will address later on. 2) In his segment about why endorsements should be required at all, Pro points out that a lot of new members created forum topics and whatnot advocating their run for the presidency. Apparently for every legitimate candidate, he says there are three non-legitimate ones. I'm not sure how this is a contention in favor of the resolution. If his point is that DDO is being bombarded with campaign threads, that would not necessarily change even with a two endorsement requirement. It wouldn't be particularly hard to get two people to endorse you, so there would probably be just as many. Keep in mind there is a difference between endorsement so someone can run and actually voting. I might think someone should have the opportunity to run, but that doesn't mean I actually want them to win or plan on voting for them myself. Another thing to consider are the numbers Pro posted. Right now innomen has 31 votes compared to jimtimmy with 6 and socialpinko with 5. Even if you combined the numbers of every other candidate (including all of those tied for 4th place), innomen would still be in the lead. This means more candidates on the ballot splitting the votes isn't really affecting the outcome. Furthermore, even if it were, voters could choose to change their vote and cast it for someone with a better chance at winning. This happens in real life politics all the time (hence why we are limited to a two-party system despite all our options). 3) Pro brings up problems with spamming, but doesn't explain how that would significantly decrease with his proposition. He says that if candidates had to be nominated to campaign, the amount of spamming of new topics posted to the forums would go down significantly. However that is mere speculation with little factual basis. If a n00b wanted to run but needed endorsements, they might just spam the forums instead with pleas to be nominated. They might still post their platform to specifically explain to people WHY they should be nominated or endorsed. The same amount of spamming (if not more) would likely occur. Moreover, policing the forums has never been the intention of DDO. I haven't visited the Debate.org forums much lately, so I've been oblivious to the various threads Pro is talking about. However, I also tend to avoid other forums with the same monotonous topics (Religion) and likewise other members can do the same. Everyone on this site is entitled to create a thread about anything they want so long as it does not violate the TOS, regardless of whether or not people find their threads interesting. So, here we see that not only can Pro prove that "spamming" would decrease with this policy, but that the threads may not even constitute as spamming and in fact their threads may be legitimate and justified. People create threads about all kinds of things. The mafia game threads might not be considered intellectual (as Pro says intellectual threads are the purpose and backbone of this community), yet some members enjoy them and participate. Likewise, if people want to participate in others' threads, that's their prerogative. I know I personally would ignore any thread about the presidential campaign made by Viper-King (or any of the 1-voters), and everyone else could do the same if they were truly disinterested.4) Finally, Pro says that this system would eliminate some potentially good candidates, however it could eliminate a very large number of ill-informed candidates who spam the forums and their platform for changes to the site. A few things on this. First, Pro concedes that this might inhibit some potentially good candidates. As far as bad candidates, we don't need to inhibit them because they inhibit themselves. Obviously the community at large is not going to vote for a silly, inexperienced or unqualified President (we hope... but if they do, it's their decision to make). The fact that nobody has voted for them proves this.Second, the site could benefit by exposure to the platforms and ideas of as many people as possible. Even if innomen wins, he might notice something in another's platform that he previously did not consider and employ it in his own administration. For this reason a sharing of knowledge and ideas can prove to be beneficial to the entire community at large.Back to Pro for now...