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Questions for the Candidates

Posted March 18, 2019, 10:30 a.m. by Robert Archer

Posted by Admiral Joe P (Election Coodinator) in Questions for the Candidates
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?

Overall I think Louis and I have done a good job in posting as much as we can within our real life demands allow. We have put up our campaign hq posts, detailed what we plan to do in this coming term and overall answered questions to the best of our ability. We’re new to much of this yet so we want to discuss with each other the ideas and responses we give, and aligning that with our free time of life takes time sometimes.

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

Simply put? I don’t got the skills for it. If I had the skills I would make the time to get something up.

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

Roughly speaking about mid-late February 2019 I asked Louis and from there we started planning things out.

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

Roughly speaking Louis and I talk in general on this election almost every day or so.

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

Given that I view campaigning outside the election ship asking for votes as you outlined above with Drew in poor light (I personally didn’t like it at the time and thought it a cheap tactic) no I don’t plan to campaign off the election ship just to ensure I don’t break any rules by certain wording or in in group sense (like discord) contact someone who didn’t want to get contacted. Call it being rule shy but I would rather err on the side of caution then cause issues.

  1. 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

I think we have presented persuasive arguments for favoring us. Louis and I have posted our HQ posts here https://www.star-fleet.com/core/command/election/notes/31915/ here https://www.star-fleet.com/core/command/election/notes/31916/ here https://www.star-fleet.com/core/command/election/notes/31917/ and here https://www.star-fleet.com/core/command/election/notes/31918/ all of which outline our plans for the coming term I feel in a solid easy to understand light. I do think it is necessary to provide a persuasive arguement so the club at large knows what they are getting into with each candidate.

Hope this answers things for your Joe thanks

Robert Archer


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