With about a month to go until GEXIV, I thought it would be a good time to dig up some old corpses from the disaster that was GEXIII.

This was my first GE, as it was for quite a few people and I was very excited for the results announcement livestream. Then, when the final results were coming out u/Estoban06 said in #announcements "The Results are wrong" and we had to wait another 2 hours for the real results to come through and when they did, there was a shitstorm.

I won't go through them, but here is the results post for those who need to jog their memory.

Now, when this came out, many of us in Labour (as I was at the time) were absolutely fuming and I expressed my anger with several very angry messages in Discord and on the results post. Tbh, I'm still angry. I could not believe the fact that I had lost a seat to LPUK when the LPUK candidate made exactly 2 posts, whereas I had made all 5 and had received a number of visit posts. But that wasn't the result I was most mad about. I was mad for my very good friend u/david_johansson and the result in Cambridgeshire, which must be biggest case of daylight robbery in MHOC history.

As pointed out by u/ThePootisPower in this comment on the results thread, David posted all 5 of his posts, including this megapost which I know he worked on for over a month to complete as well as receiving 5 visit posts and endorsements from the Lib Dems and TPM. That should've been more than enough to turn Cambridgeshire red, but instead months of work had been wasted because of the excuse "campaigning doesn't matter as much as polling". Let me just say, that is a bullshit response.

u/purpleslug who ran against David as the Tory candidate and standing MP said in response to Poot's comment above said and I quote:

I didn't campaign hard because it was a safe seat with a polling majority of over 30%. Meanwhile David ploughed out spam posts which weren't even representative of the constituency. Sorry hun, stop crying.

This is quite frankly an insult to the hard work David put in to his campaign and shows the general apathy that some standing MPs show towards their re-election campaigns.

Furthermore, Labour ran the best and most expansive campaign of all the parties, making exactly 49 more posts than the Conservatives (Labour with 232, Tories with 173), yet saw exactly ZERO CHANGE IN THE RESULTS. If you look at the last set of polling before the election and the results, the number of seats to the percentage of the vote is exactly the same, meaning that in the week between those polling numbers and the GE (which might as well be a month in irl terms with how time frames are skewed in MHOC) with all the campaigning going on, not even 1% of the population changed their minds? As a case study of how the electorate changes its mind during the course of a GE campaign, I will guide you to the polls during the 2017 General Election. When the election was called, Labour looked dead and buried with just over 25% of the polls and the Tories were on 44%, but when the campaign was over just over a month later, Labour won 40% of the vote and caused a hung parliament. This is the best example in modern times of how a general election campaign can change the minds of voters and potentially swing the election. Why don't we have that here?

So, here are some changes I propose for either GEXIV or GEXV (depending on whenever Quad decide to acknowledge this because usually they ignore this kind of thing):

• Change the ratio of polling to campaigning to 50/50 or 40/60 so that campaigning actually matters

• Get rid of the idea that standing MPs polling over 30% are "safe". Ideally, no one should be safe unless they have a massive lead over their opponent. It would make things more interesting and would address the fact that most standing MPs don't give a damn during GEs because they expect to be re-elected no matter if they've campaigned or not. This would also tackle the lack of activity which has been troubling MHOC since before I arrived. Standing MPs would actually have to do shit to get re-elected, rather than simply turn up to vote at least 3/4 of the time and occasionally comment on debates. Constituents don't want apathetic and lazy representatives and that should be reflected in the results.

• Add more voter fickleness to the equation. To be quite frank, people are dumb. Most people couldn't give a toss about politics, so it is natural that they will vote for whatever candidate they think is more personable or simply campaigned the most or ran the best campaign in their eyes.

And before people say I'm salty, I'm just trying to make this game more realistic and more fun. Why should we have to settle for a Tory government every term? Is it so hard to believe that people would simply get tired of Tory governments year after year, election after election? I know a lot of people in Labour are, both irl and in MHOC, and so am I.