Guide For PTO and ATO

What is a PTO?

PTO is a Political Takeover in the most general terms, is the manipulation of the game's election mechanics by an outside or minority individual or group to win an election over the voting power of the controlling majority of a country by take a seat in congress or become president of the country or a party president.

We have had many similar events in real life elections. Stuffing of ballot boxes. Dead people casting ballots. Intimidation or violence to stop groups of people from voting.. A PTO is just the eRep jargon for any similar type of election fraud.

In a normal fraud-free election, everybody has one vote to make their voice heard, and whosoever campaign won the support of a majority of voters wins election.. A PTO prevents this, "winning" an election for a candidate whose ideas actually swayed only a tiny minority of supporters, or sometimes for an outside candidate who ran no campaign and has no actual supporters.

How do PTOs work?

PTOer actualy get votes without having actual supporters in a country or party.. Many of the same ways real life election fraud works:

1. Bribery: Gold/weapons/food for votes..

2. Fake multiple eRep accounts: Multis in eRep jargon. "Dead" people voting..

3. Importing voters from another party, or another country: Bigger parties or bigger countries with spare votes their own leaders don't need can tell some of their supporters to go vote elsewhere so they can have two parties, or they can conquer a country without an actual war.. RL example: sending a busload of voters from one state where the election isn't close to a neighboring swing state.

4. Lies, or attempting to confuse voters into voting for a candidate they actually don't support.


Why do people try PTOs?

The general reason is because PTOers can't win elections through an actual campaign on qualifications and ideas in a short words they do that because they fakes.. If honestly left up to voters, they could easily get no more than their own 1 vote to their name. But there are a few typical types of characters who choose to be PTOers instead of running fair campaigns.

1. PTOers who want to destroy stuff: Example: someone who can't buy a milk ask milk from someone who have by force and he throw that milk to a trash so no one can drink that milk.

2. PTOers who are insanely jealous: Similar to the boy that don't have a milk, they want to take what they can't have.. But additionally they are jealous of someone else for what they have built with their time and effort.

3. PTOers who have to win at all costs: It doesn't matter that they are ruining the game for hundreds or thousands of other people, or if their actions leave the game in ruins, they must win.

The vast majority of eRep players agree that PTOs are really bad. eRep is a game based on community, what is fun about the game is a result of what players have spent years of hard work building. PTOs by definition seek to steal what others have worked hard to build, or to destroy the underpinnings of a community. PTOers aren't building things, they aren't creating community, if they could build something and create a fun community that's what they would do, but not only can't they successfully build anything for themselves, they are so angry that they make it their mission to prevent anybody else from building things or being part of a fun community.

The ATO. How to stop a PTO.

Paired with PTO in our alphabet soup is ATO. Anti-Takeover is our shorthand for the work we all do to stop PTOs, from the individual voter all the way up to the Party Presidents and Country President organizing and coordinating to protect the communities we have built in eRep. For those of us who choose to protect the fun eRep, with great communities and great metagame creations from players built up over years of gameplay in every country around the globe, this is how we fight.

We fight with our votes: Everybody only gets one, so we need every one to count.

1. Listen for what’s going on: Listen to the information that will be coming from your elected government officials that here for a long time ago like articles, messages, forum posts and shouts will be plentiful between today and election day. Know who to trust.

2. Coordinate your vote when you are in PTO attempt, hold your vote on the 15th, 25th and 5th until as late in the day as possible.

3. Come onto IRC to the official channel for ATO, shortly before you have to leave eRep for the day to find out where your vote is needed.

Thats all can Help us all keep eRep fun for everybody!

We play eRep because it's fun. We want eRep to be fun for everybody, from the oldest player to the newest. We want eRep to have a future, and for that future to be full of community fun.

That's why we build things in eRep to make the game fun. That's why we work to create great communities in eRep. And that's why we work and vote for a game where people can build things, be a part of great communities, and have fun. We need your help to protect what has been built and what can be built next.