For this topic, I am assuming that the Asgardian government will be a representative democracy. This assumption might be wrong and if anyone wants to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of representative democracy, please start a new topic. If we are to election representatives for government, I would like to suggest the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. I have worked in elections using similar forms of preferential/alternative voting and it is significantly more fair that many other systems. It’s also very easy and satisfying to count because you can literally see people's choices being represented. This video give a good explanation of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI Does anyone disagree with this style of voting?

I saw a couple of posts both here and on Facebook regarding contacting Aliens to help Asgardia get off the ground (pardon the pun) and I bagsy the ambassador to Aliens communities role. Should we try at some stage (obviously not this second) to contact Aliens after all Youtube and the Internut (yes you heard me) have proven time and again their out there, regardless of your personal beliefs.

I would like to discuss the possibility of changing how democracy is upheld in Asgardia, by inviting you to review and assess a system designed to remove as much bias and unsuitability as is physically possible from the election process itself. I have no doubt that many of you have seen how democracy and politics are currently handled by our modern politicians, and the problems inherent with such a system; a single person campaigning for popularity, regardless of the promises they make and then never being held accountable. The whole process often swamped in enormous donations to fund a campaign of rallies, speeches, and advertising. My question to you is; what does any of that have to do with running the country? It is my firm belief that Asgardia should work to remove such fallacious thinking from our politics, and instead convert to a system deliberately designed to combat popularity, advertising, and lies. My recommendation for this is the system I propose below (with a link to the original, formatted document at the bottom of this post); a system that anonymises candidates to remove popularity bias. The system removes the whole aspect of money and funding from the democratic process by removing campaigning altogether. The system has only one potential flaw in the form of bias, and that would be through the individual candidate examination and results package. Finally, I am aware that many people will argue that such a system, with such little public attention drawn to any one particular candidate or set of policies may not be truly be proportionally representative, and to you I ask how are the current systems any better? They have very, very similar flaws in that the public is swayed by lies from the candidate, smear campaigns by their opposition, stories in the media that may not be relevant, and advertising designed to trigger psychological processes. People who are not often interested in voting are brought in by promises that may not be upheld, or by the mass outrage caused during the campaign process. I argue that this system at least reduces the number of false positives to those who are truly interested in the democratic system and are willing to debate the finer points that actually matter, E.G. a set of policies, or a candidate's suitability based on relevant information, rather than their gender, age, or stories from the press. As such, please see below for the system I propose.   #**Asgardia Blind Voting system proposal** ####Concept developed by Stephen Skepper, written by Adam York, edited and approved by Asgardians. *Note: Currently, viable candidates should be selected by the Asgardian administration, however in the future, selections for individual ministries should be handed over to the ministries themselves for approval by the public.*   ##**Proposal Submission**   Any Asgardian may submit a single proposal to a democratic process board consisting of a group of individuals responsible for running the election in question. The makeup and rules of this board is to be debated separately. The proposals may be revised three times over the course of the election, but final drafts have a final submission deadline of midnight, four weeks (28 days) before the beginning of the debates. Within each proposal must be an overview statement of purpose their plans for the future of the nation and/or ministry and how those plans would be implemented and how the budget proposals would function. Each proposal must contain the following sections; -*Overview*; outlining the mission of the candidate. -*Major Goals*; outlining the direction they wish to take the ministry/nation. -*Primary Plans*; a list of UP TO THREE major full-term objectives that become legally binding; achieving them or not will not be judged, but the candidate should be held to accountability for the words they use, and unwillingness to follow the proposals they make should come under scrutiny to avoid false promises. -*Secondary Plans*; a list of UP TO SEVEN long-term objectives that may or may not expand on the primary plans, but are equally legally binding. -*Tertiary Plans*; a list of UP TO TEN non-legally binding short-term objectives that may or may not aid in the previous objectives, and are not legally binding. -*Budget Plans*; a detailing of how the Ministry/nation's budget will be used to achieve the plans. -*Expected Outcomes*; a list of results that the plans are expected to achieve in their implementation. -*Failsafes*; a detailing of how the candidate expects to counter any problems that may occur through implementation of plans. -*Summary*; a brief run-down of the key points of all of the above. The proposals would be made public record through the democratic process board such that each citizen not only has the right to read over each proposal, but the free and limitless access to do so. This subsection would take roughly one third of the total process.   ##**The Debates** Once the proposals are submitted, verified for requirements (regardless of their seriousness) and made public, an interactive forum will be opened to allow the national media and Asgardian public the right to debate any given proposal. While candidates themselves may have no hand in answering questions directly or indirectly to retain anonymity, current and previous ministers may make interpretations based on the proposal using their relevant knowledge to attempt to answer media and public questions. This would be an open question and answer platform that all citizens could participate in, to remain open for a period of time no shorter than a third of the total process.   ##**Candidate Suitability** Candidates must then be examined themselves for their suitability to the role. This is a multi-step process that requires all candidate data to remain anonymous, and thus be controlled by the democratic process board. It is important to note that this section, while it may take some time to complete, must be updated regularly as we learn more about psychology and suitability. *Step One* - all viable candidates are interviewed by a committee of dedicated interviewers with a set of criterion and given scores and comments based on the individual job requirements/candidate's target role. Candidates are also interviewed on their depth of knowledge of current issues that are pertinent to their target role. *Step Two* - each candidate is given a psychological evaluation to determine their political and economic system positions, their ability to handle stress, their willingness to be subversive, and any other personality evaluations as they become pertinent through research and development of psychology. *Step Three* - a candidate’s educational background is researched and included with the results, minus any and all detailing about their particular teachers, and the school they attended. Only the grades, scores, awards and honours are to be included in their entirety. *Step Four* - the results for each are given to the democratic process board to strip all identifying information and amend any evaluations/interview results to remove words like "he" and "she", and match psychological evaluations to interview results, and then to their respective proposal. As each set is created, it is assigned a number through a random number generator. *Step Five* - the re-written, numbered results packages are then given to the Asgardian administration to publish no fewer than two weeks (14 days) before election day via all available media outlets and begin the final procedure. During the entire process, media outlets and the public are prohibited by law from publishing candidate details that may have leaked accidentally.   ##**The Voting Stage** During a formal voting procedure on election day, the public goes to their respective polling stations and chooses a candidate from the numbered list. After the election, results would then be released to the public for examination.   *Developer’s Note: It is important to recognise that this system can be applied to local council/senator/governor/representative elections, national elections and more! It is designed to be an independent system specifically to remove showmanship, favouritism and bias from the democratic process.*   The original document can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F88mS3r4yr56mmmadKFNYCqQ7uN9goJmjWI5GRzq9HE/edit

Should we ask any Asgardian Leaders on whether or not we should be allowed to carry either concealed or not, firearms?. There are likely to be some serious questions and answers flying about the place but seeing as most people so far are fixated on space defence I thought I'd ask a more personal question. I have included a poll asking for your opinion but it is pretty simplistic, so feel free to add your comments. I know gun crime is serious but as the saying goes " Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have them". Firearm ownership would or should be more enlightened for a new society as most if not all of the current worlds laws in any country are pretty daft if you ask me, and as someone who had to jump through hoops to get his own license whereas the Royals (yes I live in the UK) can own and carry without license I feel its maybe about time we had a proper choice. So should we ask for the right to own and carry?, once and if we ever get land or property would we be allowed to carry openly or concealed?. My idea is that if we are allowed gun ownership maybe citizens that want them should submit to proper sensible checks, both in safety and storage, undergo safety training, understand that any criminal act involving firearms will be met with an appropriate punishment (ie, murder with a firearm, life with parole, assault or robbery, 5 years in prison minimum, all the way to flashing or brandishing in the course of intimidation 3 months in prison, and any citizen wishing to own must spend at least 6 months (either full or part time) in military service (maybe not frontline but either as police or behind lines active duty?). Feel free to add your comments and constructive criticisms below. If you are in favour please explain why and the same goes for not being in favour as well, (p.s simply not liking firearms is not a good enough reason IMHO)

Greetings to everyone, I am incredibly proud of how far we have come in such a small space of time and look forward to getting to know you all. What we have here is something special and together we can nurture it into something amazing. Peace and Goodwill to you all. David

I'm told that theming is in development, so note that this is a temporary measure until then. (Admins; I felt here would be best as users might look here to ask for a dark theme). I have linked to a CSS file for plugins such as Stylish (exists for Chrome and Firefox), that allows the user to override the styles. I've tried to darken everything used in the forum; only very minor bits remain. If anything changes or isn't working, comment below and I'll update. ___ ### Stylish Theme: Preview: (The very top line in the file informs the addon how to apply based on URL; the regex (describes URL) is "http[s]?:\/\/asgardia\.space\/.*\/forum\/.*" without the outer quotes (") ). Stylish (Chrome): Stylish (Firefox): (If anyone comments with other alternatives I'll edit this post to include them). ___ ### Stylebot Theme: (Thanks FranklindAndrad) Stylebot (Chrome): (Doesn't seem to exist for Firefox) ___ By all means, if you make your own variant, post it here (I might include it in this post).