We have received a lot of questions on why this election has barred active criminals from city council and Mayor this time around. I wanted to provide a quick explanation for it. Feel free to discuss, but just know that the rule will not change. What could change are the different thresholds (I.e. just looking at 6 months vs 1 year) that disqualify characters.

For a long time, we heard about the lack of power and places of influence for those who have characters that are subtly corrupt, neutral, etc. CD caters to active criminals on almost every front. The thought process behind city council was  to provide an avenue for those who wish to show their corruption without overt violence or just RP out the struggle of being a good person in a bad city, unable to change it. We never had the IC qualification in place, but with the sheer number of applicants this time we felt it was a safe way to weed out active criminals and allow the city council and Mayor spots to retain their original purpose. Here are some facts of the basis we used:

• Arrests for repeated felonies committed in the past year, especially if they were in the last 3 months like:
  • Aggravated assaults and rapes
  • Attacks on officers
  • Terrorism
  • Gang Assaults
• ICly known gang affiliations and arrests correlating to those
  • Why? It would not make IC sense to have known violent gang members become leaders of the city
• Character qualification can change from election to election. Perhaps, it seems like your character turned a new leaf? None of this is a permanent barring, but if this is something your character wants then they should put in the long term work towards being eligible
• Obviously, if you feel your character should qualify then reach out and we can see how it can IC make sense without making exceptions and making it unfair to others
• Criminals can still use "good" citizens to be voted in. Get creative and pay someone off who does qualify if you don't
• We are willing to tweak the thresholds. Due to the high number of candidates who wanted to be Mayor specifically (as opposed to council) we opted to test out within the past year. It disqualified 6 candidates, majority who have committed repeated felonies in the past 3 months and half within the past week. We thought about an idea of having a panel IC vote on each candidate, but opted it would be too complicated for a role that has no OOC authority.

Again, feel free to discuss and provide suggestion on different thresholds for the criteria. Please, see the below "Failed Background Check" letter that was ICly handed out. The assumptions made about barring any type of criminal are simply incorrect, but we will be sure to also link this thread in the future. Worry not, we still aim to breed corruption.