We're updating our policies in regards to elections. This is largely in regards to the arbitrary rules many organizations have made in regards to who can contest who, and so on.

Ultimately, we feel that such rules go against the spirit of the politics system. Everybody should be free to contest without taking the risk of repercussion, assuming they meet the specified mechanical requirements. Going forth, that will be our new policy, and it applies to all organizations except for clans. Org leaders, you'll need to update your laws in order to reflect this change. To clarify, this is only for positions you obtain through the CONTEST command. Ministers, Secretaries, and whatever else you have can still be handled as you wish.

We do recognize that some of these rules exist to give a measure of stability to org leaderships, without having to suffer back to back contestations, and as such we're updating the mechanical rules surrounding contesting, and vote weights, to compensate as follows:

1) After an election, there is now a 2 real-life week 'hard' cooldown on contesting that same position/person. This includes someone keeping their place in that position, or someone taking over that position.

2) In addition to that, once the 2 week cooldown is over, there's a second 4 real-life week 'soft' cooldown. The position can be contested during this time, but should the person being contested remain in the position, a longer 6 week 'hard' cooldown will go in place on them being uncontestable.

3) Both of the above two rules immediately become void if the person in that position goes 1 real-life week without logging in.

4) Vote weights will now also factor in the time you've been a member of an organization for. This will subtract from the vote weight you get from play time as follows:
< 1 (real) week: -4 to vote weight (effectively 0).
1 - 2 weeks: -3 to vote weight
2 - 3 weeks: -2 to vote weight
3 - 4 weeks: -1 to vote weight
4+ weeks: no effect

5) This is still subject to admin oversight, and anybody abusing the cooldowns to the detriment of their organization (e.g. stealing gold/credits, mass deleting help files) will see us intervening. If you feel this is the case, you can bring it to our attention by filing an issue.

Small note, this is not retroactive. i.e. the cooldowns aren't applied to existing leaders, and all current members in an organization are treated at 4+ weeks for their vote weight.

Penned by my hand on Closday, the 25th of Midsummer, in the year 460 MA.