Hi!
The Rhydin Election of 2007 was started by me on the RoH. I made a joking comment at some point that G was going to run for Governor. (I'm going to just replace "G" with "I" for simplicity's sake.)
I don't know exactly when I made the original comments, but it was something I did mainly during live RP. Then at one point, Amaltea approached me to write something in the Oracle about it. I thought it was a good idea and so I came up with something. Shortly thereafter, she IMed me again discussing the possibility of doing a real election. That Talomar had apparently heard of this "election" and was interesting in doing something along those lines. Amal wanted my thoughts on it.
Discussing it, it sounded like a really interesting idea for a cross forum SL. My original intentions when I discussed this with Amal was to just run it as a simple 2 person election for the first time. With myself representing the RoH and Talomar representing the RDI. It was a good idea. The basis for this was to see how interested people might be for an actual "Governor of Rhydin." If there was enough interest in the first one, then my intent was to have another election after one years time. It was always going to be a 1 RL Year job for the elected character.
In the 2008 Election, keeping in mind this is what I had thought and talked with Amal about months before the 2007 election, we hoped for candidates from both forums, multiple ones from RoH and RDI. Then, we would hold a primary. I wanted to whittle down the candidates who entered from whatever number down to two, like how they do it in the presidential elections. Then those two would enter a period of standard debating, slander, etc. that politicians do, etc. until the final elections were held. We would then have a single Governor from 2008 to 2009.
There were problems that started in the 2007 election. I found myself having some trust issues and with how things were seemingly played out. Then, when Kitty left G'nort's election campaign to run on her own, I was taken a bit by surprise because I had no idea that she either wanted to do that, or was feeling driven to go on her own. It didn't bother me that she left, that's very important. However, there went my initial idea that this first election go only between 2 people. Still, 3 people wasn't a bad thing. After all, the Dems and Repubs have to deal with that Independent party all the time. But then Imp, Easter Bunny, Superman and Illyona entered and suddenly I wondered where this was headed. My intent was for it to be more of a fun but serious SL, and seeing the Bunny and Superman entered confused me and had me wondering what the point of the Governor deal was.
So anyway, half-heartedly, I continued with the Governor Election SL with stories and "Hey vote for me" things in both the RDI *and* the RoH. It's important to note that The RoH was involved too, it wasn't just an RDI thing. Amal set up the votes(We had decided like, in September or October that it'd be best to start the campaigning in December, and hold the votes at the end of January.) Anyway, she set up the votes in both the RDI and the RoH. We would then combine both vote tallies and see who would win. Each character was only supposed to vote ONCE on ONE forum. That's important to note. There were some who voted on multiple characters on both sites. Like Bob voted with Bob, Lou and Jim on the RDI, and then voted with Bob, Lou and Jim on the RoH. That was against the rules we had set up. So, those votes were dumped. There was another trust issue damaged.
In the end, Kitty won the election as I knew she would. She probably deserved it anyway not just for popularity, but because she did a good job in her campaigning. I think Kitty's player has done a phenomenal job with the Governor post after her election, and admittedly with how I was at the time, she probably was more active *as Governor* than I probably would have been. Now is a different story, though.
Anyway, It's December 2007, and we are going to hold another Election. G'nort is announcing his Candidacy in the Oracle in his article for that publication. So, we can look forward to another set of posts on the RDI and RoH of political drama. Hopefully, we'll do a better voting booth thing than the way it was before.
In short, I came up with the Election in 2006, Tal was interested and Amal brought us both together to start it running, more people entered, and to me, I think that it was a successful cross forum SL event that people still play off of today, which is great. Yes, it has it's bumps and bruises along the way, but it was still good.
I can get around to editing some of that Wiki entry once I'm approved for editing if you want.
Thanks!
