I posted a thread in Gameplay that was closed after I was inactive for a few days and not present to respond. The Confederation still sees this issue as one of utmost importance, and it was recommended we take the discussion to Technical rather than Gameplay to show it's not something we're using as a form of regional advertisement.
My original post is shown below for those who have not seen it:
Greetings NationStates,
I'm ShrewLlamaLand, WA Delegate of the Confederation of Corrupt Dictators. The Confederation is, and by extension, I am, by all accounts a nation wielding significant influence within the voting block of the World Assembly. At the present moment I have 121 WA endorsements, which as WA Delegate of the Confederation gives me 122 votes for any proposal that reaches quorum. This means that my vote alone, is worth 122x that of any other WA nation within the Confederation, and indeed 122x that of the vast majority of nations within the world who are not WA Delegates. Even among other WA Delegates, as a relatively large region by population, we exert far too much power over the voting process; yet we aren't even close to influence of many other nations, Delegates of large and powerful regions comprising the so-called WA elite, members of which individually hold voting power equivalent to thousands of nations.
And yes, before you bring it up, I am acutely aware of the reputation the Confederation has developed among NationStates, and yes, we deserve some of that reputation. But some things are bigger than stalking the forums to bring up what some could argue is a "shady past", and today I speak not to look back at this past, but to protest the present, to protest the enormous influence that a few influental magnates serving as WA Delegates of sinker, feeder and the largest user created regions exert over the World Assembly voting process. Almost all voting power within the World Assembly goes directly to the top one percent of powerful WA Delegates. There is something profoundly wrong when, in any given vote within the World Assembly Security Council or General Assembly, the top two-tenths of one percent, not one percent, top two-tenths of one percent, of voting nations control up to 50% of all votes cast. This is immoral, wrong, and represents a grotesque level of inequality between nations, and indeed regions, of the World Assembly, allowing such a powerful few to exert their excessive, unjust influence over the relatively powerless many.
Today, I ask you to join with me in protesting the current system of governance within the World Assembly. When so few nations hold so much power, we are no longer talking about democracy, we're talking about an oligarchy and this has got to end.
The Confederation has a long history of rallying against the current voting system within the WA, and we have a little something planned. Please telegram my nation, ShrewLlamaLand, if you want to help bring this unjust system to an end.
In solidarity,
ShrewLlamaLand
Confederation of Corrupt Dictators
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1328927
To address one of the core arguments against reforming the current voting system, some have pointed out that the current quorum requirement helps to alleviate the influence of large WA Delegate votes. This is not true for various reasons. First, the approval of proposals is limited to WA Delegates, meaning non-Delegate WA members still have no influence over the process. Second, approving a proposal requires only 6% of WA Delegates to approve, and it is entirely possible that a proposal benefiting the more influential delegates, who tend to be more active, can make this threshold with their support alone. Third, large regions tend to have significant interregional influence, including various voting blocks that "encourage" smaller regions to follow their voting and approvals. The quorum system doesn't solve the problem; in fact by limiting approvals to WA Delegates, rather than all WA nations, the current quorum system may well be making the problem worse.
It was also brought to my attention that similar reforms have been suggested many times before. I've read through a collection of these threads, and most don't offer a realistic solution that addresses the core issue of WA Delegate influence. I've addressed some of the more common suggestions below:
WA Delegates should be exclusive to founderless regions.
WA Delegates should absolutely not be exclusive to founderless regions. This would make the problem even worse, as feeder/sinker Delegates would have an even larger influence over the voting process without most large foundered UCRs being able to counter their votes.
WA Delegates should be removed entirely.
WA Delegates themselves aren't the problem. I personally think the process of voting in a nation via endorsements to represent your region in the World Assembly is a very good system. The problem is not with WA Delegates themselves, it's that they have such an excessive amount of votes, and hence influence, over any given proposal.
Every nation should have a number of votes proportional to their number of endorsements.
Allowing every WA nation - not just WA Delegates - to have a number of votes equal to their number of endorsements is an absolutely terrible idea and makes the problem many times worse. This would by far benefit the most populous regions most, i.e. the five Pacifics, and would allow these regions to almost compeletely control every proposal at vote.
Feeder/Sinker Delegates should be removed/banned from voting.
Ultimately this wouldn't address the core problem, as now instead of feeder/sinker regions having the greatest influence, large UCR Delegates would control the vote (admittedly to a slightly smaller extent). This proposal also isn't equitable to feeder regions or their delegates, as of course they do deserve to have a say in the WA, again, the problem that their influence is greatly exaggerated in the current system.
WA Delegate votes should be delayed.
Not allowing WA Delegates to vote on a proposal until day 2 or 3 of a proposal being at vote helps to address the "lemming affect" and is a good idea in principle. Such a change would help to increase the influence of indivudual nations early in the voting process, but I don't agree with it in practice. Aside from technical concerns - what happens if a region's WA Delegate changes mid vote? - this doesn't address the core problem that large delegates still control thousands of votes.
So, to address the problems with those formerly proposed solutions outlined above, and to provide my own, alternative solution:
WA Delegates should be given a total number of votes proportional to the square root of the number of their endorsements, plus one.
Under this system, ultimately not much would change, and that's a good thing. The "WA Delegate" vote for a given region would still show on the voting page, and the influence of the WA Delegate on the votes of their own region is preserved. The "Show Delegate Votes" button would also still exist, so nations, if they choose, can still see the breakdown of WA Delegate votes - just with greatly reduced voting power.
What this would end, however, is the tremendous influence that WA Delegates of feeder, sinker, and large user created regions have over the current voting system today.
Under such a system, the largest WA Delegate, currently of The North Pacific, would receive 34 votes rather than 1064. To give a current example of the impact such a change could result in, under this system the current GA at-vote "Disease Naming Compact" would have the "For" vote leading, rather than "Against" by over 800 votes.
As a final note, the exact function used does not have to be a square root, and could instead be modified if it's thought that taking the square root of the number of endorsements is indeed too limiting on Delegate influence. For example, the number of endorsements could be raised to the power of 2/3 rather than 1/2 (e.g. which would give TNP's Delegate 105 votes), or a logarithm could be used that better represents the opinion of the community on how influential WA Delegates should be.
Cheers,
ShrewLlamaLand