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Questions for the Candidates

Posted March 16, 2019, 9:27 p.m. by Admiral Joe P (Election Coodinator) (Joe P)

This is for everyone and I would like an answer from both Presidential candidates. I don’t really want to hear from VPs.

I have been in the club for a little less than 9 years. This is the 14th election that I have seen in that time, but I think it is the first one in which neither ticket seems to be actually making a real effort to demonstrate they would actually be good at being President and that they should be chosen over the other people on the field.

Some of you are new here, so I think it may not be obvious why I or other people who have been in the club as long as I have might think that. So I am going to pick out several examples of what people have done during prior campaigns, that sets our expectations for what is typical.

The first election I saw was in April of 2011, and it was between David Wonderly, Sidney Parker, and Kendra Kerr. Kendra ran a joke campaign about pancakes, I forget Sidney’s exact message that (but he did have one), and Dave said he was going to get the government focused on role playing again. All three of them posted new content on the Election Ship daily. Sidney lost to Kendra and Dave in the primary, effectively making Dave President before the final, but Kendra and Dave still posted content until the end of the race, even though one of them was a joke who had no intention of winning and the other one knew they had the whole thing in the bag.

When Lindsay Bayes and I decided to run, we made that decision 4 months in advance of the start of election season. We spent quite a bit of that time figuring out what we were going to do, and what we were going to say, and how we were going to say it. We also posted almost daily on the Election Ship, even though the contest was not terribly competitive and it didn’t take much effort to persuade people to favor us over the other ticket.

When I ran for President with Jen Herr as my running mate, Jen was of the opinion that I was underprepared for the election because I did not have a campaign website, campaign motto, and campaign theme song. All of these things used to be common features of elections when she had ran for President quite a bit before me. At one point during that campaign, I was unusually busy at work for 3 days; on the 4th day, Larry Garfield was under the impression that I was ignoring a particularly long and difficult question and impatiently asked in public if I intended to answer it.

When Drew and Sidney ran against each other, things were excessively competitive; both tickets were going around asking people privately via email for votes and endorsements. Julia (Sidney’s running mate) also created a campaign website laying out exactly everything that they were about. Again, there were new posts almost daily. At one point, things were slightly slow, and Jack Dipper privately complained to Drew that he hadn’t written enough content on the election ship, because Drew didn’t say enough things that Jack could use in an endorsement, and Jack wanted to write a positive endorsement based upon things the candidates were saying.

I could go on, but I hope by now that you see where I’m coming from. So, I would like to know the following:

  1. Do you think that the expectation you campaign in a similar fashion as described above is a reasonable one to have? Why or why not?

  2. Why isn’t your ticket posting new content on the Election Ship on a daily basis? Irrespective of answering questions, why have you not made HQ posts at least once every three days?

  3. Why don’t you have a campaign website?

  4. When did you and your running mate decide to run?

  5. How much time have you spent outside of publicly viewable election season deciding what your message with your running mate?

  6. Do you actually plan to do any campaigning besides answering questions on the Election Ship?

  7. Do you think that you have presented a persuasive affirmative argument for favoring you for the Presidency over your opponent? Do you think it is necessary to do that? Why or why not?

Joe


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