Election Security in a D&D/PF world

[JMS]

Alright. Let us say that we have a nation that feels like it needs a democracy of some sort. Let us also say that magicaly influencing the vote is a problem, and we need to avoid that. How would we do it with tools of both 3.5 and PF? (I'm just going to ignore RAW Diplomacy, let us assume that the voters are harder to sway then that.)

If you want to bring in reasonable homebrew, or PF spheres or psionics, that is fine by me.

The big things to block are divination to forecast the vote, Enchantment and illusion to influence people, and any sort of meddling with vote count needs blocking.

[Gnoman]

The simplest way? Research a spell that creates ballots that cannot be interfered with.



Less glibly, consider the level of power that's needed to interfere in the way you intend - and make sure that they will actually interfere. Most 3.5e/PF spells I know of that could foresee the outcome of an election specifically allow for the "if action is taken, the outcome will change" issue. In such cases, the divination spells aren't really a problem - they'd act more like highly reliable polling data that influences the actions of the candidates. Illusion, on the other hand, is potentially a major problem - but not necessarily - it depends heavily on if the "mass media" exists in your world. Before we can discuss how to prevent the votes from being tampered with directly, we need to figure out what sort of tampering is possible.


In other words, before you can ask "How do I prevent somebody from using magic to cheat in an election?", you first have to ask "How do you cheat in an election with magic?".

[Anonymouswizard]

It depends on how high magic the world is. IME in your standard D&D world magic tends to be somewhat isolated, you might have magic academies around but you'll mostly have a couple of low level mages a city. In that case any attempted tampering is unlikely to be off a scale to affect elections, unless your city happens to be the one with the country's magic school.

For initial discussion I will ignore divinations, as that's a whole mess of stuff not directly related to influencing the way others vote.

Assuming a more magical world, say one magical academy every few cities instead of one per country, then the question becomes one of how entwined the mages are with normal society. Are we talking about something like the Prince of Nothing trilogy (although I hear not the later books), where magical schools are relatively seperate, or something more like the Forgotten Realms where magic often appears in everyday life. In the former more effort is probably given to keeping the academies out of elections as a whole, although you still have the problem of unaligned mages, and other countries using their mages to influence elections. The more involved mages are the closer we get to the idea of permanenced Anti-Magic Fields covering polling stations.

But all of this has been assuming a relatively modern democracy, where everybody over the age of majority gets a vote. We can also lessen the danger by restricting the vote (somewhat counter-intuitively, because it means less people need to be influenced). If we assume that items that protect against illusions and enchantment are common enough to be bought than ownership of such an item or a certain level of income might be a prerequisite for voting (similar to how land ownership used to be a prerequisite). Although unless said restriction directly increases access to anti-tamper magic among the voting population it just becomes easier to deal with.

Which brings me to my final point. To pull this off you either need to have a high level custom enchantment/illusion spell to effect enough people, probably one designed specifically for this purpose, or a large number of mages to effect enough people with low level spells. If you have enough of the latter to influence the election why aren't you taking over the country more directly? Assassinate the government, mind control the heads of military long enough to consolidate power, replace people in positions of power with people favourable to you ASAP, maybe install a puppet head of state instead of being it yourself. You have hundreds to thousands of mages at your disposal, you could have mind controlled the existing parliament months ago. If you can do the former, do you really care about who's in power unless they're trying to interfere with your tax haven demiplane?

[gkathellar]

Have a large number of clerics cast Commune to ask a god with fair elections in their portfolio. Portfolio sense means the god will know if any tampering took place.

[J-H]

Do what they do in the real-world countries that are serious about election security (which does not include the US) - semi-permanent dye applied to the thumb after you vote. Doesn't come off with readily available solvents/soaps, and naturally wears off over the next month.

A first level spell could bypass it - for one person - but only for one person at a time. Also, make sure the vote proctors know the people for their precinct to reduce the chances of ID fraud.

The real challenge is securing the ballot boxes or records, transporting them, and tallying them without interference. If there are a few hundred voting stations, it's likely too much to mass-scry for surveillance and remote counting.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, the best thing to do would be to ignore the silly ''world" rules in D&D.

Then you could have a world with 13th farmers, 12th level blacksmiths and 10th level tailors. This would make it difficult to use much magic to effect anything, as even Farmer Bob would have a good save.

Then you could have lots of magic items and counter magic. Like everyone having rings of mind protection.

And more so you can up the fantasy to 11, and have things like a 'voting ward' or an 'election myhtral' or a 'Honest Dragon'. And other such fantasy things.

[JMS]

Do what they do in the real-world countries that are serious about election security (which does not include the US) - semi-permanent dye applied to the thumb after you vote. Doesn't come off with readily available solvents/soaps, and naturally wears off over the next month.

A first level spell could bypass it - for one person - but only for one person at a time. Also, make sure the vote proctors know the people for their precinct to reduce the chances of ID fraud.

The real challenge is securing the ballot boxes or records, transporting them, and tallying them without interference. If there are a few hundred voting stations, it's likely too much to mass-scry for surveillance and remote counting.
that's brilliant - let me go look at arcane mark! Takes care of any tampering with vote numbers, illusory voters, ect.

Have a large number of clerics cast Commune to ask a god with fair elections in their portfolio. Portfolio sense means the god will know if any tampering took place.
Ah, right, the after election reveiw.

It depends on how high magic the world is. IME in your standard D&D world magic tends to be somewhat isolated, you might have magic academies around but you'll mostly have a couple of low level mages a city. In that case any attempted tampering is unlikely to be off a scale to affect elections, unless your city happens to be the one with the country's magic school.

For initial discussion I will ignore divinations, as that's a whole mess of stuff not directly related to influencing the way others vote.

Assuming a more magical world, say one magical academy every few cities instead of one per country, then the question becomes one of how entwined the mages are with normal society. Are we talking about something like the Prince of Nothing trilogy (although I hear not the later books), where magical schools are relatively seperate, or something more like the Forgotten Realms where magic often appears in everyday life. In the former more effort is probably given to keeping the academies out of elections as a whole, although you still have the problem of unaligned mages, and other countries using their mages to influence elections. The more involved mages are the closer we get to the idea of permanenced Anti-Magic Fields covering polling stations.

But all of this has been assuming a relatively modern democracy, where everybody over the age of majority gets a vote. We can also lessen the danger by restricting the vote (somewhat counter-intuitively, because it means less people need to be influenced). If we assume that items that protect against illusions and enchantment are common enough to be bought than ownership of such an item or a certain level of income might be a prerequisite for voting (similar to how land ownership used to be a prerequisite). Although unless said restriction directly increases access to anti-tamper magic among the voting population it just becomes easier to deal with.

Which brings me to my final point. To pull this off you either need to have a high level custom enchantment/illusion spell to effect enough people, probably one designed specifically for this purpose, or a large number of mages to effect enough people with low level spells. If you have enough of the latter to influence the election why aren't you taking over the country more directly? Assassinate the government, mind control the heads of military long enough to consolidate power, replace people in positions of power with people favourable to you ASAP, maybe install a puppet head of state instead of being it yourself. You have hundreds to thousands of mages at your disposal, you could have mind controlled the existing parliament months ago. If you can do the former, do you really care about who's in power unless they're trying to interfere with your tax haven demiplane?
True. That is one whole can of worms. Let's assume our nation has some way of protecting leaders, it's just not cost effective to mindblank the whole nation.
Also, Tax Haven Demiplanes - that is a hilarious idea.

The simplest way? Research a spell that creates ballots that cannot be interfered with.



Less glibly, consider the level of power that's needed to interfere in the way you intend - and make sure that they will actually interfere. Most 3.5e/PF spells I know of that could foresee the outcome of an election specifically allow for the "if action is taken, the outcome will change" issue. In such cases, the divination spells aren't really a problem - they'd act more like highly reliable polling data that influences the actions of the candidates. Illusion, on the other hand, is potentially a major problem - but not necessarily - it depends heavily on if the "mass media" exists in your world. Before we can discuss how to prevent the votes from being tampered with directly, we need to figure out what sort of tampering is possible.


In other words, before you can ask "How do I prevent somebody from using magic to cheat in an election?", you first have to ask "How do you cheat in an election with magic?".

Hmm... Mass Suggestion or similar would be quite effective, necromancy and some effective disguises might be a way to get a lot of free votes... I am sure planar binding can be used somehow. If you have a caster who aims to alter the election in favor of one people, antipathy/sympathy or some such?

[Gnoman]

Hmm... Mass Suggestion or similar would be quite effective, necromancy and some effective disguises might be a way to get a lot of free votes... I am sure planar binding can be used somehow. If you have a caster who aims to alter the election in favor of one people, antipathy/sympathy or some such?

Mass Suggestion would allow a mid-to-high level caster to win an election. As long as you're talking about a voting margin under 1000, and nobody who could possibly figure out what's going on. Necromancy offers little advantage over just disguises, as undead voters simply add more ways to get detected. These methods are not all that effective, and the caster can probably find something much better to do with the spell slots.

[JoeJ]

Mass Suggestion would allow a mid-to-high level caster to win an election. As long as you're talking about a voting margin under 1000, and nobody who could possibly figure out what's going on. Necromancy offers little advantage over just disguises, as undead voters simply add more ways to get detected. These methods are not all that effective, and the caster can probably find something much better to do with the spell slots.

The best use of mind control magic would be to use it on the vote counters, not the voters.

[JMS]

The best use of mind control magic would be to use it on the vote counters, not the voters.

Though it's easier to protect a small group... Mandatory Protection from Serpents continual spell pin when you go into the booth to vote, and find a way to deal with the fairly voting Yuan-Ti?
It gets rid of most problems with low level casters, a few Warlocks, or a Mass Suggestion. If a wizard with enough levels to cast Mindrape is meddling, you have bigger problems.

[Chronos]

Remember that you need ballot security not just after the vote, but before it. Otherwise, if the ballot is supposed to look like


[ ]Fred the Magnificent
[ ]Joe the Wonderful
then a mage working for Joe can sneak into a Fred-leaning precinct and Secret Page all of those ballots so they instead look like


[ ]Joe the Wonderful
[ ]Fred the Magnificent
to everyone but the vote-counters. Now, when a voter makes a check mark next to what they think is Fred's name, it's actually next to Joe's.

[Pauly]

Actually supposing there is no dominant faction and the elections are contested either by 2 major parties or a mess of small parties that form coalitions of convenience there is no reason to do anything.

If everybody is doing shenanigans then they cancel each other out. Plus the populace is aware that shenanigans are going on and take whatever precautions they deem necessary.

It only becomes an issue where one faction is secretly doing magic, But if party A’s mages cast an illusion, you can be sure party B’s mages will cast dispel.

If you look at history it isn’t until the late 1800s that you start getting what we would call free and fair elections. In the Roman republic taking bribes to vote a particular way in an election was considered OK, what was considered dishonorable was to take a bribe and not vote according to the bribe. You have the rotten boroughs in England. In almost every democracy roving gangs of thugs coercing voters has occurred.

So in a medieval or classic setting vote influencing shenanigans is the norm, not the exception. What balances it in game is that all the factions are doing it and all the factions are taking action to prevent it affecting them.

The reason “using magic to affect the election is bad” has become a trope is because in fiction it is presented as asymmetrical. I.e. only one (dishonorable) faction is doing it while the other (honorable) factions get screwed.

[Firechanter]

Some sort of democracy? Oh, that's easy.
Democracy means One man - one vote.
The Patrician is that man, and he has the vote.

Or, you know,
Feudalism -- It's Your Count That Votes

[Kelb_Panthera]

Mandatory voting in a chambers warded with antimagic sigils. If you're not on the census, you're not allowed in but held until the election is over.

Now you just need to secure the ballots and the counters; similar chamber, adjacent to the voting location. Now it's just a matter of faithful public servants. :smallamused:

It's a bit draconian, I admit, but there's just no way to secure the entire adult populace against magical influence while any but an absolutely tiny proportion of them are running around free. FWIW, this cuts down on a lot of mundane voter corruption too.

The biggest problem with this, of course, is that a government that slips toward tyranny gets a golden, shining opportunity to dispose of dissidents every election cycle.

[unseenmage]

Mandatory voting in a chambers warded with antimagic sigils. If you're not on the census, you're not allowed in but held until the election is over.

Now you just need to secure the ballots and the counters; similar chamber, adjacent to the voting location. Now it's just a matter of faithful public servants. :smallamused:

It's a bit draconian, I admit, but there's just no way to secure the entire adult populace against magical influence while any but an absolutely tiny proportion of them are running around free. FWIW, this cuts down on a lot of mundane voter corruption too.

The biggest problem with this, of course, is that a government that slips toward tyranny gets a golden, shining opportunity to dispose of dissidents every election cycle.
Auto resetting magic traps of Break Enchantment and Remove Curse and Restoration on the doorways to these chambers too.

To mitigate potential blackmailing of folks with stuff that would normally just be suppressed by antimagic.

[Feantar]

I think that the spells affecting the voters directly aren't the problem. I wouldn't enchant the voters. I'd diplomance/performance them.

Seriously, with 10 minutes you can turn people into fanatics. It takes a DC 90 to get from indifferent to fanatic. That's...low. Do a couple of public speeches with either diplomacy or perform(oratory) and you can convince people the sky is red if magic boosts you, not affecting them. That's much more serious than a couple of enchantments. Enchantments can be countered with an anti-magic field. This... can't.

[Fizban]

Have a large number of clerics cast Commune to ask a god with fair elections in their portfolio. Portfolio sense means the god will know if any tampering took place.
Close, but why involve the middle man at all?

The "vote" occurs by everyone saying a prayer to the god of fair voting. A demigod can sense anything that involves 1000 or more people, so as long as 1000 or more people cast their vote prayers at the same time such that it becomes a single happening, the demigod can sense it- and a lesser deity only needs 500 people to sense. An intermediate deity can see for a whole week into the past and future, so you can commune a full week before the "vote" is even supposed to take place and get results from the last week leading up to your casting. At this power level they aren't even required to remember it for you, since they can actively sense it at the time you're asking the question.

This method can only be interfered with by deities of the same rank or above that of the deity you're asking, and even then only within a number of miles of an altar. Even if there's no deity with a "fair voting" portfolio, a more general "fairness" or "fair play" statement ought to apply, and any lawful deity would likely be interested enough to remote view the election even if it wasn't within their portfolio (send them a Sending if a simple prayer isn't enough to reach them when they're not looking). So as long as there's a powerful enough lawful deity that their remote viewing can't be blocked, a cleric of that deity could ask them to watch during the vote, after which they can be Commune'd for the answer.

Routing the election results through a deity also pretty well defeats any mortal ability to predict them. The clerics doing the Communing can announce the results from within a Hallowed area, meaning they can't possibly be mind controlled at the time if you don't trust another caster to verify, and/or also submit to truth assurance spells under the usual precautions (from outside the Hallow) if you don't trust the cleric. And if there's a deity with enough power and interested to block this from happening, then you've got problems big enough that no normal vote could be secured anyway.

[King of Nowhere]

I would equip all voting places with some item that can continuously detect magic (sort of like a metal detector), and a ring/amulet/whatever of protection from evil.
The voters would be scanned for magic, then they would be given the ring to ensure that they would be free from mind control.

Those two items should cost a few thousands gp, so they are affordable. There are ways to fool both, but they require high level magic, so it would be highly unlikely to tamper with elections on a large scale.
If your nation has access to powerful divination, use it on a few random places, just to ensure that high level tampering would have a chance of being detected.

Votes are to be counted directly on the location, by a large number of people, and still looking for magic. It's possible to tamper with the mind of a large number of people, but it's impossible to kep it under cover. You either kill all people involved, which will be a major tip that something is amiss, or the moment they put on the ring of protection from evil (or they roll a 20 on their saving throw) they can tell evereryone that they were dominated.
I guess mind rape would be effective, but if you have the resources to mind rape thousands of people across the country in a single day, then I doubt you can be stopped anyway.

[AvatarVecna]

If I was in D&D and trying to interfere in an election in a way that would either go largely unquestioned or would be difficult to stop without attacking a different step of the democratic process, I've got a couple basic ideas that can really add up:

1) Leadership

Okay so the obvious benefit here is that you can have a small group of people vote how you tell them to, but the greater power here is making them a campaigning force - either their bard-wannabes spreading the gospel of the candidates you like, or their objectively uncharismatic unconvincing folk that embody the worst stereotypes of the candidates you don't like. Release them into a community large enough that their presence doesn't cause suspicion, and you end up tipping the scales in that area.

Additionally, even if you learn for sure that this is being done, what can be done about it that isn't even more undemocratic? Stopping false flag campaigning for the enemy is probably an ethical move, but stopping people from campaigning for candidates they support? That's gonna be sketchier.

2) Weather Magic

Screw with the weather somehow; praying to a deity for assistance, buying a scroll of Control Weather the day before the election, or (if you really wanna swing your adventurer **** around but don't want to spend more than a single spell slot on it, cast Fimbulwinter like a week before Election day. Especially if it's already a wintery locale, you might well be able to go unquestioned or opposed save for some occasional pockets where the election folk scraped together enough cash for the Control Weather scrolls to keep their locations calm for one day.

3) Zombie Plague

Locate a single wight and subdue it in some manner (it's CR 3, so probably fairly easy early on), and unleash it upon some unsuspecting town or city in the dead of night, preferably somewhere population dense where people would be asleep and unprepared for combat (slums, apartment buildings, adventurer-less inns and taverns, etc), and leave the wight to have fun procreating. It's recommended you do this somewhere that has a strong lean towards policies or politicians you strongly disagree with that are probably not gonna be swayed by trick 1 or deterred by trick 2. Dead people don't get to vote (well, maybe the vampires), and it's not like whatever nation is doing this will grind the whole election process to a halt just because some random necromancer decided to be a **** somewhere that is inconvenient for one of the politicians - if D&D democracy nation kept the polls open until a major population center wasn't under attack by monsters in some significant fashion, the polls would never close. Just gotta keep things moving, and if adventurers get the zombie plague under control in time for the surviving population to exercise their patriotic duty, then even better...but that's icing, not the cake.

[gkathellar]

Close, but why involve the middle man at all?

The "vote" occurs by everyone saying a prayer to the god of fair voting. A demigod can sense anything that involves 1000 or more people, so as long as 1000 or more people cast their vote prayers at the same time such that it becomes a single happening, the demigod can sense it- and a lesser deity only needs 500 people to sense. An intermediate deity can see for a whole week into the past and future, so you can commune a full week before the "vote" is even supposed to take place and get results from the last week leading up to your casting. At this power level they aren't even required to remember it for you, since they can actively sense it at the time you're asking the question.

This method can only be interfered with by deities of the same rank or above that of the deity you're asking, and even then only within a number of miles of an altar. Even if there's no deity with a "fair voting" portfolio, a more general "fairness" or "fair play" statement ought to apply, and any lawful deity would likely be interested enough to remote view the election even if it wasn't within their portfolio (send them a Sending if a simple prayer isn't enough to reach them when they're not looking). So as long as there's a powerful enough lawful deity that their remote viewing can't be blocked, a cleric of that deity could ask them to watch during the vote, after which they can be Commune'd for the answer.

Routing the election results through a deity also pretty well defeats any mortal ability to predict them. The clerics doing the Communing can announce the results from within a Hallowed area, meaning they can't possibly be mind controlled at the time if you don't trust another caster to verify, and/or also submit to truth assurance spells under the usual precautions (from outside the Hallow) if you don't trust the cleric. And if there's a deity with enough power and interested to block this from happening, then you've got problems big enough that no normal vote could be secured anyway.

I like it. Really, getting a couple of appropriate lawful and/or good deities involved in your election seems like a good deal all around - the state gets the benefit of unbeatable SDAs and a devoted group of casters for security and confirmation purposes, and the gods in question benefit from the advancement of portfolio elements and the good publicity that comes with their participation and support.

Plus, gods campaigning to be on that year's election commission could make for a worthwhile setting element.

[JMS]

Close, but why involve the middle man at all?

The "vote" occurs by everyone saying a prayer to the god of fair voting. A demigod can sense anything that involves 1000 or more people, so as long as 1000 or more people cast their vote prayers at the same time such that it becomes a single happening, the demigod can sense it- and a lesser deity only needs 500 people to sense. An intermediate deity can see for a whole week into the past and future, so you can commune a full week before the "vote" is even supposed to take place and get results from the last week leading up to your casting. At this power level they aren't even required to remember it for you, since they can actively sense it at the time you're asking the question.

This method can only be interfered with by deities of the same rank or above that of the deity you're asking, and even then only within a number of miles of an altar. Even if there's no deity with a "fair voting" portfolio, a more general "fairness" or "fair play" statement ought to apply, and any lawful deity would likely be interested enough to remote view the election even if it wasn't within their portfolio (send them a Sending if a simple prayer isn't enough to reach them when they're not looking). So as long as there's a powerful enough lawful deity that their remote viewing can't be blocked, a cleric of that deity could ask them to watch during the vote, after which they can be Commune'd for the answer.

Routing the election results through a deity also pretty well defeats any mortal ability to predict them. The clerics doing the Communing can announce the results from within a Hallowed area, meaning they can't possibly be mind controlled at the time if you don't trust another caster to verify, and/or also submit to truth assurance spells under the usual precautions (from outside the Hallow) if you don't trust the cleric. And if there's a deity with enough power and interested to block this from happening, then you've got problems big enough that no normal vote could be secured anyway.

This is brilliant. Well done!
Also love thee idea that you also have to select your vote counting deities

[lesser_minion]

If you're in the right sort of setting to go for the deity option, that's probably your best choice.

For other settings, if your hustings and/or polling stations are within areas protected by Hallow, then most forms of mind control and possession simply won't work (since everyone in the area is automatically under Protection from Evil while they're there). Hallow can also have a Detect Magic effect attached to it, although I'm not sure how it's intended to work. That should defeat most 'easy' options for a mage looking to cheat. I suppose you might also want True Seeing and Arcane Sight or Greater Arcane Sight in play, if you can get them.

While this wouldn't be a perfect approach, it might be judged 'good enough' by a government or society.

[Fizban]

There are powerful lawful deities in every setting, most small and every large or larger city will have 9th level clerics who can cast the spells. The main reasons for it not to work are either the DM being against it, the fact that if the clerics are trusted enough to run elections they'd probably just be in charge already, the fact that like most optimization it relies on information people don't normally have (details of how deities work), or no one having thought of it. So plenty of reasons, but most of them not any worse than anything else.

Regarding the "make a spell to do it" solution, Towers of High Sorcery has a bunch of specific purpose spells including one that. . . sends a message to all the wizards of high sorcery for a vote and gives you the result. They made it a 9th level spell (not inappropriate when compared to Sending after all), so it's even more restricted than Commune, but for people that want a precedent there is a published book with a vote spell.

Personally, I'd expect anyone ready to haul out a bunch of magic to safeguard the people's election ought to be aware of the mechanics involved. If they know enough about divinations and espionage magic to actually address the problem, they can probably guess that the only secure point will be a top-tier deity, unless the "election" is so small it need hardly be called an election. And furthermore that while they're worrying about electing some mortal with all the usual foibles, the planes are full of extremely powerful immortal exemplars of whatever mix of ruling alignments they desire who would probably be better at it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I think that the spells affecting the voters directly aren't the problem. I wouldn't enchant the voters. I'd diplomance/performance them.

Seriously, with 10 minutes you can turn people into fanatics. It takes a DC 90 to get from indifferent to fanatic. That's...low. Do a couple of public speeches with either diplomacy or perform(oratory) and you can convince people the sky is red if magic boosts you, not affecting them. That's much more serious than a couple of enchantments. Enchantments can be countered with an anti-magic field. This... can't.

A) The OP has explicitly said this doesn't work that way for this exercise.

B) The diplomacy skill represents talking to people to sway them to your way of thinking and political speeches are nothing if not performances. This is exactly how you're supposed to win a fair and balanced election.

[JMS]

If I was in D&D and trying to interfere in an election in a way that would either go largely unquestioned or would be difficult to stop without attacking a different step of the democratic process, I've got a couple basic ideas that can really add up:

1) Leadership

Okay so the obvious benefit here is that you can have a small group of people vote how you tell them to, but the greater power here is making them a campaigning force - either their bard-wannabes spreading the gospel of the candidates you like, or their objectively uncharismatic unconvincing folk that embody the worst stereotypes of the candidates you don't like. Release them into a community large enough that their presence doesn't cause suspicion, and you end up tipping the scales in that area.

Additionally, even if you learn for sure that this is being done, what can be done about it that isn't even more undemocratic? Stopping false flag campaigning for the enemy is probably an ethical move, but stopping people from campaigning for candidates they support? That's gonna be sketchier.

2) Weather Magic

Screw with the weather somehow; praying to a deity for assistance, buying a scroll of Control Weather the day before the election, or (if you really wanna swing your adventurer **** around but don't want to spend more than a single spell slot on it, cast Fimbulwinter like a week before Election day. Especially if it's already a wintery locale, you might well be able to go unquestioned or opposed save for some occasional pockets where the election folk scraped together enough cash for the Control Weather scrolls to keep their locations calm for one day.

3) Zombie Plague

(Snip)
I feel like the leadership is akin to the campaign staff of your standard political campaign, and so, anyone with a chance to win would effectively already have it. Second, Weather is brilliant, as is the Whight fear strategy. Those would be the real tools to influence an election, since they are harder to spot.

I would equip all voting places with some item that can continuously detect magic (sort of like a metal detector), and a ring/amulet/whatever of protection from evil.
The voters would be scanned for magic, then they would be given the ring to ensure that they would be free from mind control.

Those two items should cost a few thousands gp, so they are affordable. There are ways to fool both, but they require high level magic, so it would be highly unlikely to tamper with elections on a large scale.
If your nation has access to powerful divination, use it on a few random places, just to ensure that high level tampering would have a chance of being detected.

Votes are to be counted directly on the location, by a large number of people, and still looking for magic. It's possible to tamper with the mind of a large number of people, but it's impossible to kep it under cover. You either kill all people involved, which will be a major tip that something is amiss, or the moment they put on the ring of protection from evil (or they roll a 20 on their saving throw) they can tell evereryone that they were dominated.
I guess mind rape would be effective, but if you have the resources to mind rape thousands of people across the country in a single day, then I doubt you can be stopped anyway.
Cool, this seems very effective as a method. Seems good. (Protection from Chaos may be more appropriate for voting.)

If you're in the right sort of setting to go for the deity option, that's probably your best choice.

For other settings, if your hustings and/or polling stations are within areas protected by Hallow, then most forms of mind control and possession simply won't work (since everyone in the area is automatically under Protection from Evil while they're there). Hallow can also have a Detect Magic effect attached to it, although I'm not sure how it's intended to work. That should defeat most 'easy' options for a mage looking to cheat. I suppose you might also want True Seeing and Arcane Sight or Greater Arcane Sight in play, if you can get them.

While this wouldn't be a perfect approach, it might be judged 'good enough' by a government or society.
This seems to be one of the most comprehensive! Well done.

A) The OP has explicitly said this doesn't work that way for this exercise.

B) The diplomacy skill represents talking to people to sway them to your way of thinking and political speeches are nothing if not performances. This is exactly how you're supposed to win a fair and balanced election.
Yeah, everyone knows about how bad diplomacy is. I felt like the debate would be better if we just acknowledged it and moved on.


Regarding the "make a spell to do it" solution, Towers of High Sorcery has a bunch of specific purpose spells including one that. . . sends a message to all the wizards of high sorcery for a vote and gives you the result. They made it a 9th level spell (not inappropriate when compared to Sending after all), so it's even more restricted than Commune, but for people that want a precedent there is a published book with a vote spell.

Cool spell! What scale?

[137beth]

I'm away from my books now, but I seem to recall Dragons of Eberron has an explanation as to how dragons in Argonnessen voted.

[Segev]

The grand mage-elector steps onto the stage, holding the 25,000 gp diamond selected for this year’s election. Mages of all sorts, official government judges and private hired observers beholden to all sides and interests, watch like hawks for any sort of duplicity.

Holding the diamond aloft dramatically, the grand mage-elector declares in a loud and clear voice, “I wish for the person who would win if every eligible voter were to vote freely, without duress or compulsion, with full knowledge of the way his vote were to effect the election, to appear in this circle on this stage right now!”

The diamond crumbles to dust, and in the circle appears the winner of the election.

[AvatarVecna]

The grand mage-elector steps onto the stage, holding the 25,000 gp diamond selected for this year’s election. Mages of all sorts, official government judges and private hired observers beholden to all sides and interests, watch like hawks for any sort of duplicity.

Holding the diamond aloft dramatically, the grand mage-elector declares in a loud and clear voice, “I wish for the person who would win if every eligible voter were to vote freely, without duress or compulsion, with full knowledge of the way his vote were to effect the election, to appear in this circle on this stage right now!”

The diamond crumbles to dust, and in the circle appears the winner of the election.

Let's assume this a fair use of Wish that isn't over the line, and is granted without any twisting. I as a play could accept this conclusion, but the average peasant knows far less about the mechanical capabilities and limitations of Wish than I do, but even if they intellectually understood that a Wish was capable of what you just used it for...

..."what you just used it for" is "declaring you've received the results of the election without actually holding an election".

EDIT: Ignoring the direct consequences this would deal the area's morale through the damage done to the "election's" transparency, and ignoring how going about "electing" people in this manner could very well threaten the peaceful transition of power, it feels like this would be easy to fake for either an 2) individual capable of 9th lvl spells in general and Wish in specific, or 2) an unethical governing body.

[Fizban]

Let's assume this a fair use of Wish that isn't over the line, and is granted without any twisting.
Well finding the person is already within the capabilities of a 5th level spell, and transporting the thing you desire to you is fairly common use of wish by theorycrafters (due to it being an example of what a wish for "too much" might cause in the first place), I don't see much room to twist it that doesn't qualify as direct DM interference. Either it's possible, it's not, or the DM decides to screw with you. Either way, you'd just find out whether it's possible before trying it in the first place. Probably via magic. "I wish to know if the following wish is possible to fulfill via the wish spell without twisting" seems like a pretty easy sell to me, assuming of course that you can't just Divination/Commune/dupe the answer to begin with.

Ignoring the direct consequences this would deal the area's morale through the damage done to the "election's" transparency
You can't get any more transparent than "I cast the most powerful spell and it did the thing." Unless you're suggesting this would replace all campaigning, but it wouldn't. Even if the wish is artificially applying full comprehension and votes to the many people who wouldn't bother voting or wouldn't fully comprehend the ramifications, people would still have to campaign just to be known well enough to qualify.

I would expect the knowledge that their rulers are chosen by application of the most powerful magic in the world in spite of any attempts to mislead the public would vastly increase morale. Absolute faith in your leadership? Guaranteed by an independent observable process that simply works, observed and reported on by potentially dozens of independent experts who can verify it? Now that's conviction.

The only morale loss I could think of would be knowing that anyone *not* elected via absolute magical/deific voting, was not chosen absolutely. Knowing that the top ruling is chosen perfectly doesn't remove the long chain down to the bottom upon which corruption will inevitably accumulate. But if you think about that in the first place, you probably had no faith in any leaders, so one is an improvement over none.

and ignoring how going about "electing" people in this manner could very well threaten the peaceful transition of power, it feels like this would be easy to fake for either an 2) individual capable of 9th lvl spells in general and Wish in specific, or 2) an unethical governing body.
Uh, any "election" staged by an unethical ruling body is easy to fake. That's kinda the whole point of shifting the process. it does not matter one whit what sort of ballot safety measures you might employ if even a small number of the people running the show have decided to turn. A wish isn't as easily cross verified as a deity, but you'd still obviously have a collection of other high level casters from across the land and beyond who can verify that what happened was a wish and not something else. And instead of ballots and counters and transportation to tamper with, the only point of attack is through the specific individually magically powerful people who do the verifying, who are probably trusted implicitly by the regions who sent them to participate.

The main hole in the wish plan is that there are a number of (frankly ridiculous in my opinion) ways to say lol I rolled a skill check and you can't tell what spell I cast with spellcraft, but no spells which explicitly tell you what spells are being cast- because spells which help you identify spells as they're being cast get written as extensions of the spellcraft skill. Which makes sense because the core spellcraft skill has no counters, so they hold up until someone decides bluff or sleight of hand or perform should let you fake a spell.

But even then, Detect Magic doesn't care. How many 7th-9th level Universal spells are there? If there is exactly one lingering strong universal aura, then it could be Limited Wish, Greater Arcane Fusion, or Wish (maybe a couple others, but I'm pretty sure none of them could "fake" anything). Fake it by duping something? Continuous aura means you fail. Arcane Sight will even tell the observer what is your most powerful available spell, so they can see that you had a wish, and then you cast a spell, and then you had no wish.

Unless of course, that casting wish doesn't involve stating your wish in a detectable way. Nothing in the spell actually says it has to, but most people assume so for obvious reasons, and if it doesn't then sure the whole plan is a non-starter. Either way you can just ask a god whether the wish worked as advertised. Even if you can't leverage knowledge of deific mechanics to just run your election through a deity, you can certainly ask the god of magic if the person who cast the most powerful spell the other day actually did what they said they were doing. If told that you can't ask that question directly, you ask questions about the effects of the magic, and continue drilling down until the DM admits that they don't want you to use Commune for xyz.

As for the transition of power, dunno how this would be any different. The people who know they have a chance of being picked will be prepared to assume power if chosen, with their picks for offices and whatnot. Using magical or deific voting method doesn't mean any changes to the rest of a presumed functional democratic system.


Let's be clear: any attempt to safeguard an election against magical tampering is obviously dependent upon the people doing the magic, which can only be verified by other people with magic. The only question is how many people can foil the greatest amount of potential tampering with the least amount of power, so that the fewest number of trustworthy people are required while being verifiable by as many people as possible (oh, a bunch of magicians are claiming their verifications show foul play even though yours aren't, now we're back to the intrigue of whether people believe you or your enemy). Running it through an appropriate deity via Commune can be performed and verified by any 9th level cleric of that deity, who can themselves be vetted in any number of ways. If no deity is considered appropriate, you can instead use a single trustworthy source of wish to manifest the results in a locally verifiable way, and by doing the deed directly with magic you've now made any god with the Magic potrfolio an appropriate god for Commune verification.

The next best idea I could put forth other than a direct purpose spell would be something that directly uses Sending to reach every voter (Sending cannot be redirected) and tally their responses. This would be a custom item, subject to the trustworthiness of its creator, and could be verified by. . . people capable of unimpeachably identifying items. Identify can be messed with, so you need Analyze Dweomer, which is a level above Commune. I suppose as a stationary item it's easier to bring people in to check on when convenient, but I wouldn't trust it any more than the rest.


Holding the diamond aloft dramatically, the grand mage-elector declares in a loud and clear voice, “I wish for the person who would win if every eligible voter were to vote freely, without duress or compulsion, with full knowledge of the way his vote were to effect the election, to appear in this circle on this stage right now!”
The question is, was the grand mage-elector supposed to say his?

As always, the fun part is that once you've drilled through the magic, you can see all the human ways that plot still happens. Maybe the eligible voter clause did the job, but maybe it didn't, and maybe that will have implications. Maybe someone decided to legislate a voting body out of those observers to officially confirm the results, who are now corrupt and claim fraud, when the independent observers don't, or vice-versa. Maybe the last mage who could cast the spell died and no-one can take their place. Maybe someone says they should be replaced with an outsider, even if they're not dead. Maybe burning diamonds on elections for years and years has become a drain on the country's resources. And so on.

[OgresAreCute]

snibety snab

You made a lot of points, but I just want to address the thing about faking the spell so it can't be figured with spellcraft, which is that it obviously isn't in the wizard casting Wish's best interest to make it hard to tell what spell he cast. He wants it to be as obvious as possible. That is unless one of those skill check things can make it so it's not only impossible to tell what spell was actually cast, but it also looks like something else was cast, in which case it's different of course.

I also agree that "magic can be faked" isn't a good argument. Someone told me that when I said something about Zone of Truth in court hearing, and he said that the mundane commoners observing the trial have no idea if that's an actual Zone of Truth or not. Sure, but they also have no idea what the investigators, forensic team, judge, lawyers or the coroner are doing behind the scenes either. If there is undetected corruption (or everyone is in on it) then of course the process is going to be bunged up, magic or mundane doesn't change that.

[Fizban]

You made a lot of points, but I just want to address the thing about faking the spell so it can't be figured with spellcraft, which is that it obviously isn't in the wizard casting Wish's best interest to make it hard to tell what spell he cast. He wants it to be as obvious as possible. That is unless one of those skill check things can make it so it's not only impossible to tell what spell was actually cast, but it also looks like something else was cast, in which case it's different of course.
The guy who's not faking is just casting wish normally, yeah. The fake would be to cast an illusion spell of some sort to make the person you want to win appear, while faking that it looks like a wish. Or fake that something is a wish while that person teleports into position at the correct moment. I don't have a list, but normally they do let you pretend you're casting a specific spell in place of what you're really casting (else the person observing would roll, know they should have identified it, and be suspicious without an answer, even though forcing a null result has plenty of value without causing game problems). But there's no way to muck with magical auras aside from the Magic Aura spell, which can't even be cast on lingering auras, so while you might fool the Expert observers who only have spellcraft skill you'll still be caught by anyone with Arcane Sight and many of those using even just Detect Magic. Any aura of illusion, conjuration, or really just any school other than universal in the spot where the person appears is a red flag.

Which is certainly a point of interference of course, having someone sneakily cast a spell into the area so it looks like more than just the wish happened. And if casting wish doesn't involve stating the wish out loud, then observing to ensure they actually cast wish doesn't matter as much since you'll have to verify what they cast the wish for anyway- and if they're under truth magic or Commune investigation then you can already find out if they cast wish. But multiple layers are always more secure (at the cost of more points of interference) and the initial "yes they cast wish and that was the only magic involved" is pretty strong.

[Quertus]

Alright. Let us say that we have a nation that feels like it needs a democracy of some sort. Let us also say that magicaly influencing the vote is a problem, and we need to avoid that. How would we do it with tools of both 3.5 and PF? (I'm just going to ignore RAW Diplomacy, let us assume that the voters are harder to sway then that.)

If you want to bring in reasonable homebrew, or PF spheres or psionics, that is fine by me.

The big things to block are divination to forecast the vote, Enchantment and illusion to influence people, and any sort of meddling with vote count needs blocking.

OK, so, I haven't finished reading the thread, but... why do we care about the bolded bit? I mean, **** everything else, just allow the bolded bit, and forgo the entire election process. Bang. Done.

"We want to elect a new president. Divining the Will of the People, we see that the winner is..."

[AvatarVecna]

Contingent Wish created before the competition: "I wish that {insert politician} would appear in the Election Circle", contingent upon the destruction of the selected "gem" (and this Contingent Wish was powered with the diamond procured for the purpose of the election). The wizard then takes the resulting dust and "Polymorph Any Object"s it into a replica of the diamond that dust originally was; the dust probably doesn't count as the same size, or as related (since, if it was still like...diamond dust, it could be used as a valuable material component for other spells, so more likely it's just a loose pile of carbon dust that isn't particularly diamond-like beyond being the same element), so that ends up at +7 for a one-week duration. The wizard can use piles and piles of divinations to make sure he gets this timing perfect, or he can cast Foresight the day of the election so he'll have some forewarning about the exact moment it's gonna return to dust, at which point he can spend a free action talking to "make his wish". Oh, and toss in Magic Aura so the diamond itself doesn't register as magic. Or alternatively, just have the Elector take "Arcane Thesis: Wish" as their 18th lvl feat and Silent Spell any time before that, and then they cast a Silent Wish. Now all they need to do is make a mental Wish while speaking a different "wish" aloud, but they control which Wish becomes reality. So as long as this Wizard has a nice solid Concentration skill, he's fine.

In both of the above cases, that is a way for the Mage-Elector, without outside influence or assistance, to fake not the casting of a Wish spell, but to disguise what Wish is actually being granted. And that gets infinitely easier if they can work with a corrupt politican whose direct watchers are also corrupt. But that's not even the ****ing point, and I know you know that because you left it out when you were "fact-checking" my post, so I'll spell it out in clear English:

It does not matter if the Wish is perfectly granted with no twists. It does not matter if no politician attempts to interfere in this process. It does not matter if the Mage-Elector is uncorrupted or unbiased or unwilling to sway the election for personal reasons. It does not matter if there's a thousand other mages watching everybody like a hawk with divinations and skill checks. It does not matter if the people in charge of watching the politicians are all uncorrupted as well. What actually matters is that, from the perspective of the people in this democracy, nobody actually voted in this "election". If people whose politician didn't win came up to you afterwards enraged and convinced that their vote wasn't counted, you could not say that they were wrong, because you didn't count their vote, because nobody counted their vote, because nobody actually cast a vote. You have ensured that nobody (well, not nobody, but basically nobody) can interfere in the election...by not actually holding an election. You have protected democracy from being attacked by corrupt and power-hungry politicians by destroying it yourself.

Even if the process actually goes off without a hitch, and nobody's corrupt or trying to cheat the system (or they caught if they do), it doesn't matter, because to the people, it looks like this one dude just declared who the winner is without any actual input from anybody. Sure, all the people who were in charge, and all the people currently in charge, insist that everything is on the up-and-up, but that doesn't change the fact that neither you, nor anybody you know, actually got to cast a vote, they just got told what the results would've been if they'd voted, if they'd gotten to participate in democracy. If magic was discovered to be real next year, and a democratic nation attempted to adopt this method as their means of protecting democracy from magical interference, even if they 100% intended to keep it fair and balanced, there would be riots in the goddamn streets.

EDIT: And yes, while there's other ways of making sure these methods of "cheating the system" could be dealt with (like a Zone Of Truth to determine what spell the Mage-Elector cast), and there's ways around that (like Ex Glibness-mimicking class features that could be sniped in some fashion), and there's ways around that (like having a High Inquisitor with tons of Sense Motive boosting items), and there's ways around that (by having the Mage-Elector have their memory altered so they actually believe they cast normally), and there's ways around that (determining whether the Mage-Elector's memory has been altered by them or anybody else), and on and on and on, but that doesn't change that the end result, even if it actually works out perfectly with no hang ups, look suspicious as ****.

[Fizban]

Contingent Wish created before the competition: "I wish that {insert politician} would appear in the Election Circle", contingent upon the destruction of the selected "gem" (and this Contingent Wish was powered with the diamond procured for the purpose of the election). The wizard then takes the resulting dust and "Polymorph Any Object"s it into a replica of the diamond that dust originally was; the dust probably doesn't count as the same size, or as related (since, if it was still like...diamond dust, it could be used as a valuable material component for other spells, so more likely it's just a loose pile of carbon dust that isn't particularly diamond-like beyond being the same element), so that ends up at +7 for a one-week duration. The wizard can use piles and piles of divinations to make sure he gets this timing perfect, or he can cast Foresight the day of the election so he'll have some forewarning about the exact moment it's gonna return to dust, at which point he can spend a free action talking to "make his wish". Oh, and toss in Magic Aura so the diamond itself doesn't register as magic. Or alternatively, just have the Elector take "Arcane Thesis: Wish" as their 18th lvl feat and Silent Spell any time before that, and then they cast a Silent Wish. Now all they need to do is make a mental Wish while speaking a different "wish" aloud, but they control which Wish becomes reality. So as long as this Wizard has a nice solid Concentration skill, he's fine.

In both of the above cases, that is a way for the Mage-Elector, without outside influence or assistance, to fake not the casting of a Wish spell, but to disguise what Wish is actually being granted. And that gets infinitely easier if they can work with a corrupt politican whose direct watchers are also corrupt.
Requires a ruling that Magic Aura continues functioning when the object changes from an object to a creature, and is easily negated by plenty of other verification steps like oh I dunno, walking the "person" through an Antimagic Field? Or the simple and obvious requirement that the caster not have any continuous auras that can be linked to contingent magic upon them when they cast. Or both, etc. "Silent" faked Wish requires a ruling that that works, you've even assumed that Concentration will let them speak one thing while casting another, which is a ruling. And still does nothing about Commune verification. The moment anyone actually uses a Wish (or casts any spell really), the god of magic is now in play, and clerics of that god can ask questions regarding the portfolio of magic, such as "did the mage-elector actually wish for what they told us they did? There's no reach in needing a god that cares about elections, by hinging it on one publicly cast spell you narrow it down to one yes/no question asked of a being that cannot be fooled by mortal magic.

So your premise assumes that the mage-elector is corrupt. If the one person capable of casting the Wish wasn't trustworthy no one would have chosen this method in the first place. Further, your premise requires that all casters capable of using Commune or Limited Wish who worship the god of magic, gods of law, or racial gods of the people they're trying to fool are also corrupt or compromised, and that every person capable of verifying their trustworthiness is also compromised. If things are that bad then no election was ever going to work. You are essentially assuming that this one high level wizard is able to just do what they want, because no one is bothering to check on them. Gee, no one's taking steps to verify if the election has been faked or no one's listening to the people who have? Guess what happens then? Attempts to rig the election succeed regardless of the method!

Except in order to rig the one-wizard Wish, you have to go through that wizard, period. If that one person isn't corrupt, then everything else is completely moot, even if for some reason no one is going to verify it with Commune. Any plot that doesn't involve that wizard can do nothing more than cast doubts, because they still made the correct wish. Dealing with the fallout of such a scheme is plenty interesting.

But that's not even the ****ing point, and I know you know that because you left it out when you were "fact-checking" my post, so I'll spell it out in clear English:
. . .What actually matters is that, from the perspective of the people in this democracy, nobody actually voted in this "election".
. . .If magic was discovered to be real next year, and a democratic nation attempted to adopt this method as their means of protecting democracy from magical interference, even if they 100% intended to keep it fair and balanced, there would be riots in the goddamn streets.
No, that's your perspective, based on the assumption that people need our real-world election trappings to feel like they have been counted, as you literally admit yourself in your example. That is not the premise. In a world where reality warping magic and observable all-powerful gods exist, it is simply not true. The only way it happens is if you assume that the people were specifically hyped up for a ballot election, then switch them to a magical/deific method after the fact. If they were originally sold on the magical/deific voting method, if they've already been using this method, then that's just how things are done. Heck, you want to play on "oh the people don't know how magic works" so much, then just feed them a ritual that makes them feel participatory and they'll probably believe you even more. And it will be true, because you can word the Commune or Wish in a way that makes it true.

The very first time it's employed? Sure, there's gonna be unrest. The same way there would be unrest the first time a people switched to democratic elections in the first place. Doesn't seem to have stopped them from continuing.

Actually the biggest sticking point is probably that you're assuming the DnD world people came up with this idea and massed around it before asking how it could be done, and then some big caster tried to take that away from them. And sure, if that's how it went then no amount of magic is going to appease them, because apparently the assumption is that there are no casters they trust of any significant power, which means that they cannot possibly secure themselves against magic, so you've already decided the exercise is doomed from the start.

But far more likely is that there is, at the very least, a dominant religion- which a significant portion of those people will implicitly trust, which will have one or more powerful enough clerics to Commune hack, and can be verified by any local branch with the same. And by independent arcanists with Limited Wish. And if there isn't a religious power, there's probably a mage power, or a trade power that has mages they trust, etc. Democracy doesn't just come out of nowhere. It requires an existing body which is trusted enough to run the elections, and in DnD that body will be in charge of the magic, and the magic will be trusted as much as the body itself.

Heck, how are they even going to know fast enough for it to matter if they don't like the results? How are they even going to organize and demand a person by person vote on anything larger than their local city in the first place? The only sources of long-range instant communication are the very casters that you've apparently decided no one trusts. This is a faux-medieval setting, 90% of people are farmers and don't actually care who's in charge unless and until it personally affects them for decades. The only way they have of even knowing the results before snail mail shows up is via the very mages they apparently don't trust. So the very idea that they would care about everyone's votes being counted is predicated on the required trust in casters capable of making it happen. So they send their trusted local casters, and when those people say it was fairly done and all their votes were counted via magic, they trust it as much as anything else and grumble through it if they don't like it, same as always.

The actual most likely scenario? A Player Character decides they want the best possible leader for a region, so they organize the Commune election or Wish for it. They have already convinced the required sub-leaders of the country to accept this decision, and everyone else goes along with it. Because they either weren't against the existing government so that's good enough for them, or they were against the previous leader and the PCs actions represent an attempt at reform specifically to help them. The player looked up online how to do so securely, the DM decided whether or not there was anyone who could and would interfere, and the plot either continues or changes accordingly.

If people whose politician didn't win came up to you afterwards enraged and convinced that their vote wasn't counted, you could not say that they were wrong, because you didn't count their vote, because nobody counted their vote, because nobody actually cast a vote. You have ensured that nobody (well, not nobody, but basically nobody) can interfere in the election...by not actually holding an election.
Yes, you did. You used the most powerful magic or ultimate godly vision to get the data instead of lining people up. If questioned under truth-magic you can absolutely answer that you did count everyone's vote, by the most expedient and secure method possible. The gods themselves can attest to this.

I wonder if you would even accept a different magical method, like the Sending spam+readout box. Is that good enough, or is it too "easy" to tamper with by some unknown force even when there are actually no mechanics for interfering with magic item function at all?

Even if the process actually goes off without a hitch, and nobody's corrupt or trying to cheat the system (or they caught if they do), it doesn't matter, because to the people, it looks like this one dude just declared who the winner is without any actual input from anybody. Sure, all the people who were in charge, and all the people currently in charge, insist that everything is on the up-and-up, but that doesn't change the fact that neither you, nor anybody you know, actually got to cast a vote, they just got told what the results would've been if they'd voted, if they'd gotten to participate in democracy.
You're focused waaaay to much on the use of the word "if." So change the wording to something more specific if that's what it will take to appease these people, have the spell only count people who wrote their votes down or stated them out loud or whatever it takes to make them feel better. But you'll have to warn them that by doing so they've decreased the effectiveness of the election, because that requirement means tons of people won't actually be counted, and it opens the "ballots" up to tampering before or after the fact to cast doubt upon the already 100% effective magical or deific system.

And further focused on the idea that it's just this one government guaranteeing the results. But as Segev said the first time and I've repeated, there are any number of independent verifiers. If you don't trust the government, then send your own mage to make sure they aren't faking. Ask a bunch of people from other countries to show up. The more the merrier. You seem to think that it's a small number of people that can be easily discredited or turned in order to undermine a wish or deity, but it's not. It is literally every witness who showed up with Detect Magic or better, including non-casters equipped with magic items by neutral parties, and magical outsiders hired for the job, and foreign observers, and remote observers using magic, plus every cleric capable of communing with the god of law and/or god of magic, including non-casters equipped etc, etc.

If there is a sufficiently important election that all eyes are upon it, it's not getting faked, period. If you want a chance of pulling it off, this first demands that you are already the DM and thus can define a small enough amount of attention to make it so, or you have specifically prepared the ground over time by corrupting the system and weeding out anyone who could stop you.

EDIT: And yes, while there's other ways of making sure these methods of "cheating the system" could be dealt with (like a Zone Of Truth to determine what spell the Mage-Elector cast), and there's ways around that (like Ex Glibness-mimicking class features that could be sniped in some fashion), and there's ways around that (like having a High Inquisitor with tons of Sense Motive boosting items), and there's ways around that (by having the Mage-Elector have their memory altered so they actually believe they cast normally), and there's ways around that (determining whether the Mage-Elector's memory has been altered by them or anybody else), and on and on and on,
Still with the assumption that magic can just get away with things somehow. It is almost trivially easy to ensure that a single person is acting in good faith, to ensure that they are not (and even have not previously been) magically tampered with. That's why a single point election is so much more secure under this magic system. Unless the DM is allowing some stinky cheese (somehow swiping an Ex Glibness ability, really?), all you have to do is strip the magic off them and watch for unauthorized magic. Anyone acting in good faith will obviously consent to such simple and completely non-invasive procedures. This cannot be done to the entire chain of a ballot election, but it can be done to a single person, and anyone who cares can send their own verifier who is put through the same procedures. In fact, trying to secure the entire chain of a ballot election would just be the exact same insurances you would use to ensure trust of your own verifier, but with the people in that chain chosen by the apparently suspect government rather than any and all interested parties.

The simplest and most effective method of ensuring the sacred ballots haven't been messed with and the sacred ballot count wasn't messed with is. . . still to just Commune for it. But no amount of complaining will change the fact that some people have the magic, and some people have no way to tell if magic has been used to mess with them. Modern elections have plenty of votes going through magical boxes where no one can truly say there was no tampering without referring to a trusted expert, and even with all physical ballots nothing ensures any one person could go and count them all to make sure none were missed- some people are in the position and have the skill to check, and some don't, you have to trust someone in the position to do the counting, to check the magic box, to verify that the magical/deific vote count was done correctly. Every complaint about these methods is the same complaints that are leveled at voting and magic in the first place.

The only serious counters are those that function on the same tier. A wish to interfere with someone's upcoming wish, combined with an opposing deity of sufficient power to block vision from the appropriate gods (which itself can still fail if you use 3+ wishes in multiple locations simultaneously to counter interfering wishes- trying to interfere via wish just makes it resources vs resources, the resources of both sides determined by the DM). At which point the clerics know that someone was blocking sight and things may have been tampered with. The best your interference can ever force is doubt over the results, not a successful fake, not in a world with Commune.

but that doesn't change that the end result, even if it actually works out perfectly with no hang ups, look suspicious as ****.
If you don't know anything about magic and don't trust anyone who does, then sure. The same way a ballot election result can sound suspicious to anyone who doesn't trust the people running it. If you're on the losing side and you don't trust the people who won, everything is suspicious.


So by all means, if you want the people to refuse any election that doesn't include actual physically counted ballots, then have them do so. They're basically shooting themselves in the foot, but it's understandable because they don't know the details of magic and godly power. You'd still be best off using Commune and/or Wish verification before and/or after the counts to be sure that you actually weren't interfered with.

[AvatarVecna]

I am not assuming the mage-elector is corrupt, merely that they are politically opinionated, and has an objective measure of their own intelligence, especially relative to the populace at large. You will not find a person on the planet who thinks they know better more than a wizard so knowledgeable of the inner workings of the universe that he can grant his own wishes. But that's beside the point; it doesn't matter if he's corrupt or not, arrogant or not. Every time I bring up a new issue or way around a check, you introduce another check, but all that does is give the entire process more and more points of possible failure. The single draw of the original premise was its simplicity: one mage, casting one spell. The fact is that even if it's done perfectly (as Segev assumed then), it looks to every commoner like you're blatantly spitting in the face of democracy. You're gonna have aura-detecting magic? Let's use aura-detection-fooling magic. Getting the gods of fair play and magic involved? The gods of deceit and trickery might also get involved. Craft an epic spell to ensure the process can't be messed with? Craft an epic spell to ensure you're an exception to that first epic spell. The whole system of magic is built on checks and balances, mutually assured destruction.

The longer you make the chain of verification, the easier it is to weaken a single link without notice. Who watches? Who watchers the watchers? Who watchers the watcher's watchers? At what point in that chain do you start getting deities involved, and are the deities ideologically opposed to those deities just gonna sit on the sidelines and let things play out? Even if we wanna trust that the alignments in D&D are perfectly balanced across the multiverse, that just means for every 1 uncorruptable bastion of political integrity you can jam into your election, there's one person of equal power somewhere out there in the multiverse addicted to raping the democratic process whenever they can. You get epic magic involved, so can they; you get deities involved, so can they; you get 9th lvl spells involved, so can they.

You're right, I wouldn't trust any magical solution. If I'm living in a setting like this, I can't trust that anything I think I know is actually true, including anything about my own mind and body. Anything random item in my home could be a PAO'd great wyrm that's about to turn back; my treasured childhood memories could be replaced at any moment and I might never know. That rodent problem in the basement could get even worse when it turns out the mouse is a high-level druid who's angry about the poison thing. Nothing is impossible to do (or un-do), so nothing is certain. My entire life could be an elaborate prank by an immortal illusionist. Those politicians could be robots, they could be clones, they could be robots controlled by clones controlled by the real wizard while he's banging all my female relatives.

If the voters can't be mind-controlled or unfairly influenced, the method of voting can be messed with; if it can't, the people ensuring it can't be messed with can themselves be messed with; if they can't be messed with either, then you could turn on the politicians themselves. Wait until 6 months after the election (to be out of Portfolio Sense range for all but DR 24+ deities paying attention), then Teleport Through Time to find the politician who won when they were a child, and Mindrape them to be unquestioningly loyal to the wizard (with no other changes), then return to the present the old-fashioned way (with some kind of time capsule, possibly), and now you've got an unquestioningly loyal politician in your pocket.

You cannot, and will never, convince the populace as a whole that this Wish method of "election" is any more fair than any other method; if you're not actually taking their votes, there will always be suspicion. You cannot convince me that the populace at large would automatically understand and accept the process unquestioningly when they didn't even get to cast a vote. The less they know, they less they'll trust the process, but also the more they know, the less they'll trust the process. Because you can't trust anything in magic-world, you just have to hope that a **** wizard isn't messing with anything in your life too badly.

I don't know what it's gonna take to get it through your thick head: how fair the election process looks matters as much as if not more than how fair it actually is. The only way to remove all ways of interfering with the election is to make it so every creature and object even tangentially involved with anything involved in the process is now and has always been impossible to change in any way without the express permission of the target, including through epic magic and social skills...but then everybody is locked into however they think until they decide they want to be influenced by outside events, and at that point, calling it a democracy is laughable. The better way, the only real way, is to hold a regular election, one that looks trustworthy to the populace and seems fair enough without getting magic involved in offense or defense of liberty, and hope that the forces of the universe balance out in the end and the result is a neutral effect on your election.

But there's no way to know for sure.

[Fizban]

The single draw of the original premise was its simplicity: one mage, casting one spell. The fact is that even if it's done perfectly (as Segev assumed then), it looks to every commoner like you're blatantly spitting in the face of democracy.
Because you're giving the peasants your view of democracy, which seems to require physically cast ballots. Spitting in the face of democracy? DnD peasants don't have the same background as you that gives that phrase any bite. You haven't actually supplied any alternatives either.

You're gonna have aura-detecting magic? Let's use aura-detection-fooling magic. Getting the gods of fair play and magic involved? The gods of deceit and trickery might also get involved.
Those are terminal points. If (and only if) there is an opposing god greater in power than all those of law, magic, etc, then it still terminates, with an "unclear" result, which again based on Deities and Demigods can only happen because those other gods are involved. So you know this, and know that you'll have to find a different mode of election. Pick a setting and you can tally up the gods and figure out whether it's even possible without the DM effectively telling you certain gods are acting outside of their normal influence. Do the research in-setting and you can know beforehand if it's even possible to fail, once again by simply asking your god "If I have all these people vote via prayer/note/whatever can I be sure you will be able to tell me the results without interference?," even the caster didn't technically know how godly senses work to begin with.

This is not a "check" you can get around. It is the end point, with a single spell. It does not fail because "magic can fake things," it only fails under DM authority.

Craft an epic spell to ensure the process can't be messed with? Craft an epic spell to ensure you're an exception to that first epic spell. The whole system of magic is built on checks and balances, mutually assured destruction.
If you have to go to epic spell crafting to justify something, you fail. Especially to defeat a 5th level spell.

The longer you make the chain of verification, the easier it is to weaken a single link without notice. Who watches? Who watchers the watchers? Who watchers the watcher's watchers? At what point in that chain do you start getting deities involved, and are the deities ideologically opposed to those deities just gonna sit on the sidelines and let things play out?
At literally the first point? Step 0: Commune to appropriate god to confirm that election plan is functional and if there are even any deities that could force an unclear result. Step 1: Commune to the appropriate god for election results. Step 1a: use a Wish as a focal point if necessary, making the god of magic (there's always a god of magic) an appropriate god and *giving* people a big visible non-deity-specific production they can send people to watch over.

You're right, I wouldn't trust any magical solution. If I'm living in a setting like this, I can't trust that anything I think I know is actually true, including anything about my own mind and body. . . .
Then you would probably be pretty miserable in a fantasy setting. The rest of the population is not this paranoid, and live relatively normal faux-medieval lives, as put forth in essentially every DnD book ever.

You cannot, and will never, convince the populace as a whole
Which populace? You have a very specific idea of populace that seems to be rooted in modern real-life concepts opposed to the default given in the game. If anything, the default populace is more likely to be suspicious of an "election" for anything bigger than their local area, no matter how you suggest going about it, because that's not how kings are chosen in the faux-medieval period.

Local rulers are an exception, because those are already small enough that they can be done easily with physical ballots, secured with the obvious magic detection, trust, anti-compulsion, compartmentalized information, etc, assuming that elections are actually a thing they do there. But when almost any place of 5,000+ population has access to Commune, it is only those of 2,000-5,000 that even need worry about that much. Because what happens when you drop below 2,000? You stop having high enough level casters to interfere with anything other than Charm Person, for a few hours at best, as well as any high enough to do more than Detect Magic in order to secure it. So if you've got a high level caster messing with the elections of <2,000 pop towns then congratulations, good for them, big score.

In fact, you know how rulership is actually written in the 3.5 DMG? Every pop center large enough to be a city has two, three, or four different power centers, which at the upper ends are increasingly more likely to be powers behind the throne or magical groups. The idea of an "election" being so important is completely absurd in context, because anyone who worries about "corruption" is already correct. The power long since passed out of any single people's election already. So no, they won't be rioting at the idea of a Wish or Commune based election, because they're probably already grateful that their rulers are considerate enough to make the display rather than just rub their noses in the fact that the church/guild/etc is in control of things, even if they don't believe the casters are choosing anyone but their own puppets.

Life goes on.

You cannot convince me that the populace at large would automatically understand and accept the process unquestioningly when they didn't even get to cast a vote.
I think you will find that throughout human history, blind acceptance of things they do not understand has been not just common, but really more of the norm. In DnD, where the gods grant the literal ability to mend wounds, cure diseases, or slay a man with a touch, the idea that you couldn't convince the population at large that a god heard their voice is laughable. Even if the people aren't of the same religion, they know full well that there are plenty of gods. The only thing stopping them from believing that the gods heard their voice, that magic read their mind, is your assumption of overarching paranoia.

how fair the election process looks matters as much as if not more than how fair it actually is.
Did I not say you could put on all kinds of shows? Yeah, I did say you could do that.

The only way to remove all ways of interfering with the election is to make it so every creature and object even tangentially involved with anything involved in the process is now and has always been impossible to change in any way without the express permission of the target, including through epic magic and social skills...
Yeah no, again, that level of citizen paranoia is not supported by any supplement or setting, you're just imposing it yourself.

The better way, the only real way, is to hold a regular election, one that looks trustworthy to the populace and seems fair enough without getting magic involved in offense or defense of liberty, and hope that the forces of the universe balance out in the end and the result is a neutral effect on your election.
Seriously, that's your response? "Stick your head in the sand and very definitely do not do anything but hope it works out?" What happens when someone, oh I dunno, asks the question of election security in this magical world? That's your answer?


I do not find your input useful to the premise of the thread.

[AvatarVecna]

...Time Travel powers defeats the concept of democracy, so I'm just going to pretend that's not an option...

...Epic Spellcasting defeats the concept of democracy, so I'm just going to pretend that's not an option...

...deities opposed to democracy damage the concept of democracy, so I'm just going to pretend they're kept in check...

This is all any of your posts look like, and you're still missing the point because of it. Reality is as false and real as collective mages allow it to be, anything is possible, and nothing matters. This thread asked the question "what can be done to ensure that an election is fair and un-tampered with" and the answer is "nothing, because there's nothing in the game system that can't be done, and nothing that can't be undone by something else, up to and including deific intervention, rewriting all of existing history, molding the physical/mental/spiritual form with ease, and epic magic". Pretending those options don't exist because they undermine your argument is childish and stupid, and you know it. Pretending the setting that exists in the books is a realistic depiction of the world that would result from this rules system is laughable.

[Fizban]

This is all any of your posts look like, and you're still missing the point because of it. Reality is as false and real as collective mages allow it to be, anything is possible, and nothing matters. This thread asked the question "what can be done to ensure that an election is fair and un-tampered with" and the answer is "nothing, because there's nothing in the game system that can't be done, and nothing that can't be undone by something else, up to and including deific intervention, rewriting all of existing history, molding the physical/mental/spiritual form with ease, and epic magic".

Well it would appear the OP disagrees with you, considering-

If a wizard with enough levels to cast Mindrape is meddling, you have bigger problems.

Yeah, everyone knows about how bad diplomacy is. I felt like the debate would be better if we just acknowledged it and moved on.
So I'm pretty sure I'm safe assuming they don't care about epic magic either. The premise is that you can have an election, and it can be secured to a lesser or greater degree, and the question is how to do so.

Pretending those options don't exist because they undermine your argument is childish and stupid, and you know it. Pretending the setting that exists in the books is a realistic depiction of the world that would result from this rules system is laughable.
It doesn't matter if you don't like the settings presented in the books, those are the settings. You probably don't like the city generation rules either, but those are the rules. You want to complain about epic level spells? Turns out cities don't have epic level spellcasters unless the DM specifically chooses to switch to the epic generation table. In fact, they normally don't even have 17th level wizards to cast Wish (or Mindrape, or. . .) at all, which is why figuring out how to leverage Commune is so huge.

So in your world, where the people don't act like they do in DnD books, where the DM has specifically created epic level NPCs who intend to screw with you via epic magic, where the gods of deceit are stronger than the gods of order, and magic, and the racial patrons, there is no such thing as an election because everyone has already gone mad from the lovecraftian existential dread of existing in the place. Have I got that right? You reject the premise, ergo, I do not find your input useful. I don't think you seriously consider that input useful either. What kind of a setting is it where the answer to the question of "how to we fix this?" is "do nothing and hope it works out?"

Though a setting where everyone is having an existential crisis over magic could be interesting, seems like a perfectly good horror hook.

Cool spell! What scale?
The dragonlance 9th level spell for contacting all the wizards of high sorcery does just what it says, every one of them gets the message and return vote. Whether the DM considers this a categorical function that can be expanded to any number of voters, or a naturally restricted function because there are only so many wizards of high sorcerey, is up to the DM.


Now, the Sending device. That's actually gonna be pretty dang cheap all things considered. 5th level spell at-will starts with a formula seed of 90,000gp. This could be multiplied by as much as 4 by comparing it to other truly at-will or round/level items. Even so, we can then divide the price by 2 or 4 by making it bulky or stationary, as wondrous architecture. Generating one Sending effect per round, this item would be capable of gathering the votes of 144,400 people every 24 hours, waking them from sleep if neccesary as the spell usually does, and being completely incorruptible in its retrieval. The rest of the effect is free- a dedicated purpose item doesn't warrant any price reductions, but also warrants no increases unless it's doing something particularly egregious. Since all it needs to do is be programmed with voter identities, candidates, send the message, and tally the votes, there's nothing here that you couldn't do with the most basic of item functions (making it intelligent seems mean to the intelligence). But if you really need justification you could put Unseen Servant, Secret Page, Stone Shape, Fabricate, etc on the creation requirements list.

So this is a great big stone slab that sits in some prominent place (magically reinforced, etc). Every person of voting age makes a trip to touch the stone and be recognized, after which they receive its Sendings until they're dead or strike themselves from the roster (as a condition of exile perhaps). Candidates are entered the same way, with their names and whatever other identifiers you want displayed publicly and continuously so anyone can see they aren't being hidden or switched. The tallies are displayed, either as they go or at the end (depending on which you find more productive), and you could even make it display who voted for who (though secret ballots have traditionally been considered rather important), or at least let each person check their own. Have it print a physical record if you want, shouldn't increase the price by more than 33% (for adding a 3rd level spell at 30k), to a total of 120,000,

The square where it sits would of course be warded with further protections and guards to ensure no one tampers with it, though the program would be locked once begun anyway, and there is no magic short of Wish that even can tamper with it. Suppressing it via dispel just causes a delay because there are no rules about "magical data storage" so it works how we say it does, or we just add intelligence (and if your DM tries to say that suppressing an intelligent item gives it amnesia, you know they're obstructing) if necessary. You'd vet your candidates via whatever methods you desire before putting them on the ballot of course. Any person capable of identifying magic items can analzye it and find that it does do what they were told it does, anyone can walk up and scan for magic to see if there's an illusion covering the results, etc. You could even set it to announce the results and tallies back to everyone if desired, or build one in every major city and network them so the response time is faster and most people can see the results locally.

120,000 per voter rock, one day per 144,400 people. Can be influenced by magically compelling large portions of the population, which is a fundamental weakness of any vote that isn't Wish powered or held under a Hallow. If you slow down/space out the count and organize it in some way so that you can have a line processing through a Hallow effect when the voters are receiving their Sendings, this would do the trick. You could do a bunch of list making and cross checking to ensure that every person was in fact under Hallow when they were pinged for their vote, but when you consider how hard it is to actually control masses of people vs thousands or tens of thousands of voters, this demand is once again a weakness, making it easier to claim someone's vote should be invalid when the number of possible false votes is actually quite small. A few people patrolling with Arcane Sight active is all you'd need to reveal uses of Mass Charm Monster to see if this is even warranted.

And heck, no reason you couldn't build the voting rock with more functions. Let it do an entire recount and display both results. Let it recount particular people who were suspected of being compelled, and simply ensure those people are under Hallow when they're recounted. Let any individual change their vote by touching the rock (which allows them to mentally Send the rock, which Sends them back [to ensure no False Sendings], and takes their new vote from the return to the rock's Sending)- the rock itself was obviously in a Hallow to begin with.

The security of Sending is another one of the strongest absolutes in the arsenal of magical espionage. If you Send someone, it goes to them, and the response which comes back is from them. Magic items are similarly secure, as even if you find an obscure spell that can confuse them (I know some 3rd party books have them), all it takes is a single watcher to notice the new aura. Not enough security? Give the rock a Magic Aura effect that counters any Magic Aura cast upon it, making it impossible to hide whatever obscure tampering spell may have been found unless they also have a unique effect for doing that.

And when all else fails, if something seems off, Commune Commune Commune.

Edit: Oh, and the Sending Rock of Voting can be crafted by any 7th level Cleric with Craft Wondrous Item, as long as it isn't deemed to require intelligence. I actually got the price wrong 'cause I was assuming 5th level sending form sor/wiz, when it's actually 4th on the cleric list. The Cleric version would be 86,000gp, and could still manage an easily readable physical output via Amanuensis.

Double Edit: Argh, I always forget that stupid 10 minute casting time. Well increase the time factor by 100 then.

[JMS]

Though a setting where everyone is having an existential crisis over magic could be interesting, seems like a perfectly good horror hook.

The dragonlance 9th level spell for contacting all the wizards of high sorcery does just what it says, every one of them gets the message and return vote. Whether the DM considers this a categorical function that can be expanded to any number of voters, or a naturally restricted function because there are only so many wizards of high sorcerey, is up to the DM.


Now, the Sending device. That's actually gonna be pretty dang cheap all things considered. 5th level spell at-will starts with a formula seed of 90,000gp. This could be multiplied by as much as 4 by comparing it to other truly at-will or round/level items. Even so, we can then divide the price by 2 or 4 by making it bulky or stationary, as wondrous architecture. Generating one Sending effect per round, this item would be capable of gathering the votes of 144,400 people every 24 hours, waking them from sleep if neccesary as the spell usually does, and being completely incorruptible in its retrieval. The rest of the effect is free- a dedicated purpose item doesn't warrant any price reductions, but also warrants no increases unless it's doing something particularly egregious. Since all it needs to do is be programmed with voter identities, candidates, send the message, and tally the votes, there's nothing here that you couldn't do with the most basic of item functions (making it intelligent seems mean to the intelligence). But if you really need justification you could put Unseen Servant, Secret Page, Stone Shape, Fabricate, etc on the creation requirements list.

So this is a great big stone slab that sits in some prominent place (magically reinforced, etc). Every person of voting age makes a trip to touch the stone and be recognized, after which they receive its Sendings until they're dead or strike themselves from the roster (as a condition of exile perhaps). Candidates are entered the same way, with their names and whatever other identifiers you want displayed publicly and continuously so anyone can see they aren't being hidden or switched. The tallies are displayed, either as they go or at the end (depending on which you find more productive), and you could even make it display who voted for who (though secret ballots have traditionally been considered rather important), or at least let each person check their own. Have it print a physical record if you want, shouldn't increase the price by more than 33% (for adding a 3rd level spell at 30k), to a total of 120,000,

The square where it sits would of course be warded with further protections and guards to ensure no one tampers with it, though the program would be locked once begun anyway, and there is no magic short of Wish that even can tamper with it. Suppressing it via dispel just causes a delay because there are no rules about "magical data storage" so it works how we say it does, or we just add intelligence (and if your DM tries to say that suppressing an intelligent item gives it amnesia, you know they're obstructing) if necessary. You'd vet your candidates via whatever methods you desire before putting them on the ballot of course. Any person capable of identifying magic items can analzye it and find that it does do what they were told it does, anyone can walk up and scan for magic to see if there's an illusion covering the results, etc. You could even set it to announce the results and tallies back to everyone if desired, or build one in every major city and network them so the response time is faster and most people can see the results locally.

120,000 per voter rock, one day per 144,400 people. Can be influenced by magically compelling large portions of the population, which is a fundamental weakness of any vote that isn't Wish powered or held under a Hallow. If you slow down/space out the count and organize it in some way so that you can have a line processing through a Hallow effect when the voters are receiving their Sendings, this would do the trick. You could do a bunch of list making and cross checking to ensure that every person was in fact under Hallow when they were pinged for their vote, but when you consider how hard it is to actually control masses of people vs thousands or tens of thousands of voters, this demand is once again a weakness, making it easier to claim someone's vote should be invalid when the number of possible false votes is actually quite small. A few people patrolling with Arcane Sight active is all you'd need to reveal uses of Mass Charm Monster to see if this is even warranted.

And heck, no reason you couldn't build the voting rock with more functions. Let it do an entire recount and display both results. Let it recount particular people who were suspected of being compelled, and simply ensure those people are under Hallow when they're recounted. Let any individual change their vote by touching the rock (which allows them to mentally Send the rock, which Sends them back [to ensure no False Sendings], and takes their new vote from the return to the rock's Sending)- the rock itself was obviously in a Hallow to begin with.

The security of Sending is another one of the strongest absolutes in the arsenal of magical espionage. If you Send someone, it goes to them, and the response which comes back is from them. Magic items are similarly secure, as even if you find an obscure spell that can confuse them (I know some 3rd party books have them), all it takes is a single watcher to notice the new aura. Not enough security? Give the rock a Magic Aura effect that counters any Magic Aura cast upon it, making it impossible to hide whatever obscure tampering spell may have been found unless they also have a unique effect for doing that.

And when all else fails, if something seems off, Commune Commune Commune.

Edit: Oh, and the Sending Rock of Voting can be crafted by any 7th level Cleric with Craft Wondrous Item, as long as it isn't deemed to require intelligence. I actually got the price wrong 'cause I was assuming 5th level sending form sor/wiz, when it's actually 4th on the cleric list. The Cleric version would be 86,000gp, and could still manage an easily readable physical output via Amanuensis.

Double Edit: Argh, I always forget that stupid 10 minute casting time. Well increase the time factor by 100 then.
Wow, that is pretty reliable. I do agree with Avatar of Venda that Wishing for a successful election result does seem suspect. Maybe rapid spell metamagic the sending, cuts it down to a time factor of 10 for the price of an arcane sending?

[Segev]

You can modify the wish to account for any of these objections, from having it actually count votes actually made by legitimate voters (in which case it wouldn't matter if they turned them in or just made the Sacred Voting Sign aligned towards their proper choice in the privacy of their own homes), to not even using the terminology of democracy and instead focusing it on the ruler who will make as many citizens as possible happy. Word it right, and what you're doing is effectively vote-counting, but wishing in appearance for "the best" ruler. By having the wish poll for preferences of the legitimate voting population (call them "citizens," and define that however you want in the law so the term has the specific meaning you want it to for this exercise) and select the politician who not only has the majority support, but would have it if the citizenry were able to play the voting-game to see what results are if they vote for somebody other than their favorite.

(Voting is a fascinating exercise in theoretical modeling. It really is. There are even cool - and imminently frustrating - paradoxes in voting systems that pit getting the candidate that most really would be happiest with vs. accidentally screwing over your first choice by voting for him. In some systems, yes, that can happen.)

If this is How It's Done in this nation, people won't be angry and disenfranchised; they'll view the magical leadership selection ceremony with the same baited breath that a sword in the stone pulling contest would be viewed. Except, instead of knowing it's divine providence choosing the rightful king, they know it's powerful magic choosing the "best" ruler (insofar as the bulk of the citizenry have a wise selection in aggregate). Moreover, because it's polling on their preferences, the majority really will feel satisfied with the result.

[Malphegor]

wish



This is mildly terrifying from the perspective of a magicless person though.

Put in a modern context, this is like having a supercomputer evaluate the desires of the populace and then printing out the name of the winning candidate after simulating the election. Even if the supercomputer is infallible, it takes so much of the agency of the people that they're always going to be suspect of the result, even if it is a perfect representation of their requirements.

[gkathellar]

This is mildly terrifying from the perspective of a magicless person though.

Put in a modern context, this is like having a supercomputer evaluate the desires of the populace and then printing out the name of the winning candidate after simulating the election. Even if the supercomputer is infallible, it takes so much of the agency of the people that they're always going to be suspect of the result, even if it is a perfect representation of their requirements.

Pretty much this. Having it all hinge on one spell just feels like it'd be asking for trouble, whether or not it actually would. And that feeling isn't unimportant, because it might well have effects on outcomes down the line.

This all depends on cultural norms, of course, but I think it's clear how it could make people uncomfortable.

[Fizban]

At some point we have to stop claiming "people" and start admitting to personal viewpoints. I wouldn't claim that everyone today (at least, not in the major democratic nations) would be cool with this, yeah that's almost certainly untrue. But it doesn't make any less sense for people that haven't grown up in that system, and it's not incomprehensible to someone from today either, because clearly some of us are just fine with it.

For example, me. I am aware of how screwed up voting is in many places such that no, a lot of people don't have agency in wider matters. In a world where people still drive drunk, killing ridiculous numbers of innocents, I would much rather put my faith in mandatory self-driving cars (if they're not good enough now, they will be long before any chance of universal use). I've read sci-fi stories where computers are effectively in charge of everything without the "zomg kill all humans/cyberdystopia" tropes, and you know what, that sounds pretty dang good. Give me an infallible computer system over the illusion of agency in a heartbeat. And the usual first response to that will be "oh you can't have a perfect computer system because people are imperfect lol fail."

Magic.

Magic is what makes the difference.

Consider the number of devices today that are for all intents and purposes literally magic- sure everyone has some vague idea of how a computer works, but the engineers that build them rely on programs, the programmers have specialties and rely on pre-existing programs and code libraries to be able to program at all, and most people just accept that they work. Having no real idea of whether or not their device is doing what they want it to, with a preposterous number of points in the "chain of verification" that could be compromised. In fact, if they know anything, they probably know it is doing some things they don't want it to, and they may be powerless to stop it. But they still trust that it works mostly as intended, and the devices do work mostly as desired, and most people keep using them.

Now get rid of all that crap and go straight to magic. The principle behind Wish is simple, it does the thing. No programming beyond precise use of the normally spoken language to state what you want, the same language you use every day. No piles of middleware and spyware and malicious service providers. I don't actually trust a lot of computer crap these days, precisely because I can look up so easily all the malintent that has been found in x, y, or z. But with Wish (assuming it requires a statement that can't be silenced, as most people present it, and you could just use a custom version that requires it anyway), there's none of that. Sure you need to rely on experts to confirm that's how it works, that it wasn't faked. But I already trust experts in real life, and there are trivially few ways it can actually be faked. There are no game mechanics for tiny differences or problems or malicious intent in a spell, it is either Wish, or it's not, and a 9th level spell's 18 pages is a far cry from millions of lines of code. It's so easy to prove or disprove that a dissenting observer is lying that there's hardly anything to "look up." Either nearly all of them will say the Wish was good, or nearly all of them will say it was faked. Either nearly all of them are compromised, in which case it doesn't matter and your agency was gone to begin with, or they weren't and you can be sure that things are as purely, magically correct as they're supposed to be.

If Wish is capable of simply choosing the perfect leader, then it is the perfect "election." A tautology. It might not seem perfect to some people, but when you can make things happen literally by definition, then that is by definition the best way. Wish for the person based on x y z qualities, get the person with x y z qualities. Either it's perfect, or there was no chance it would ever be perfect. Time will tell which is which, and I'd waste far less time worrying about whether we've all been fooled than I do now knowing about real life election mechanics.


Really the thing I think people opposed to Wish voting should be arguing against, is the idea that it could ever be a guaranteed function, or that the particular voiced aloud ruling is the default (though you can just research a version that does have that requirement, the use of which can be verified). The idea that Wish voting has been used as a perfect method, when it turns out that in their hubris no one actually checked to make sure it was capable of that, and they've actually been getting who knows what from partially fulfilled or "twisted" Wishes? Now that's an argument, that's a fear, that's a story. Or that people have been promised this method and it turns out it can't be done and now what are you going to do, or "delays" in making sure it is possible being a cover for something nefarious?

Or the fact that once you start trying to model a world with the assumption of proactive use of dozens of powerful spellcasters with unlimited resources rather than taking the given setting, custom spells should be flying all over the place, and the simple mechanical absolute is lost when the "lol counter your counter for my counter" can potentially be advancing step by step every few months. But for one shining moment before the DM decides everything starts breaking down, before they decide that someone has researched a bunch of spells that break the current rules and turn the gods against you for whatever reason, you can force things to be right. That's kinda the whole point of high level characters, of the PCs, of any powerful NPCs that shaped the setting, of Wish itself.

Wish is the most powerful option, the "nuclear" option as they like to call it. Aside from that fact that it doesn't really threaten anyone and trying to mess with the pet election of a Wish-casting wizard seems like a terrible plan for an enemy nation, well the blatant use of powerful magic is the kind of thing that draws attention and may beget an arms race. If for some reason this previously faux-medieval world now has massively powerful factions that want to arms-race election espionage.

Of course, I'd be fine just relying on Commune. Wish is less sustainable and doesn't even have a hard source of possible casters, even if it is the kind of advanced solution I'd totally be up for. It's perfect for the backstory of the high powered magical nation, or as a one-time "screw this, Wish it" solution, but it's best used to get the leader you need to build a government that can carry on without Wishes, however they do so.


Maybe rapid spell metamagic the sending, cuts it down to a time factor of 10 for the price of an arcane sending?
Yes, that was the next step, just wanted to be done for the night. Since Rapid Spell is +1 level, that just bumps the Cleric version back to the original 5th level price of 120,000gp, and can still churn through 432,000 votes in a month.

The cost is prohibitive, however. While it can be crafted by a 9th level Cleric (who must now have both Craft Wondrous and Rapid Spell), the cost is higher than the gp limit on a metropolis. This removes the excuse of "oh it's under the gp limit so clearly it must have existed all along," which is always a poor excuse. But once you switch from schrodenger's magic shop to all items custom ordered from reasonable crafters within the city, the gp limit remains as a suggestion of where people draw the line. Crafting the 120,000gp Voting Rock goes from a "hey let's use this item from a book list of possible items in our city," to a more personalized "someone had to negotiate creating this item beyond normal purchase limits."

And the actual cost? Well it's in between the cost of a DMG mansion and a DMG keep. That's assuming the DM is pricing it with the suggested conservative x4 multiplier for casting the spell every round. But it can't cast it every round, it's only every minute, so at a x2 multiplier that cost drops to 60,000, hey hey. And if the DM is the sort that really takes spell level*caster level*2,000 as "cast the spell every round for eternity," then the price could be as low as 30,000. Personally I'd go with 60,000 at this point. That's a good strong spot compared to all sorts of other industrial tier magic where you might only want one, or one each for several places.

[Segev]

If you want to bring the magical solution challenge down to "what is the lowest level we can do this at?" then the go-to spell, I think, becomes zone of truth.

It will take hundreds of castings, probably, for an election of any size, and you'll need to use it repeatedly on the same people to ensure no pesky will saves get in the way (unless your version tells you when somebody has made their save against the spell).

Use detect magic to confirm that no spells lie on the subject before they enter the zone of truth, and do whatever you must (repeated castings, magically know if they make their save, whatever) to ensure there is low probability that they resisted the spell. Do this on every election official, and maybe even on every voter (though repeat castings and askings are a lot less useful and less likely to be practical with every voter).

Questions for voters: "Are you legally eligible to vote? Are you really so-and-so, that you claim to be? Have you voted yet in this election?"

Questions for election officials: "Are your ballots, to the best of your knowledge, all legitimately cast and counted? Did you engage in any activities designed to make it easier for voting fraud to occur? Have you done everything you could to be certain you know that the votes were cast and counted legally? Did you in any way seek to have plausible deniability regarding any potential shenanigans?"

It isn't perfect, but it minimizes the ability of corrupt officials to deliberately falsify things.

And any presincts where there is question can be investigated with more scrutiny, with MORE zone of truth spells used on the officers to ensure they aren't lying when they claim everything was above-board (or, alternatively, when they claim there were shenanigans).


I can't think of anything lower-level that would help more than it raised questions about the sanctity of the election, at least not that is in any way related to the fantasy setting nature of it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If you want to bring the magical solution challenge down to "what is the lowest level we can do this at?" then the go-to spell, I think, becomes zone of truth.

It will take hundreds of castings, probably, for an election of any size, and you'll need to use it repeatedly on the same people to ensure no pesky will saves get in the way (unless your version tells you when somebody has made their save against the spell).

Use detect magic to confirm that no spells lie on the subject before they enter the zone of truth, and do whatever you must (repeated castings, magically know if they make their save, whatever) to ensure there is low probability that they resisted the spell. Do this on every election official, and maybe even on every voter (though repeat castings and askings are a lot less useful and less likely to be practical with every voter).

Questions for voters: "Are you legally eligible to vote? Are you really so-and-so, that you claim to be? Have you voted yet in this election?"

Questions for election officials: "Are your ballots, to the best of your knowledge, all legitimately cast and counted? Did you engage in any activities designed to make it easier for voting fraud to occur? Have you done everything you could to be certain you know that the votes were cast and counted legally? Did you in any way seek to have plausible deniability regarding any potential shenanigans?"

It isn't perfect, but it minimizes the ability of corrupt officials to deliberately falsify things.

And any presincts where there is question can be investigated with more scrutiny, with MORE zone of truth spells used on the officers to ensure they aren't lying when they claim everything was above-board (or, alternatively, when they claim there were shenanigans).


I can't think of anything lower-level that would help more than it raised questions about the sanctity of the election, at least not that is in any way related to the fantasy setting nature of it.

You can accomplish this with a brazier of aura revealing (magic) in a hall of truth, both in SBG, if you don't want to put actual casters to such a menial task. It'll cost 4k per polling location.

[Yahzi]

Let us also say that magicaly influencing the vote is a problem, and we need to avoid that.
In Jack Vance's Rialto the Marvelous (remember that Vance created the D&D magic system, hence the term Vancian casting), a group of wizards have an election by putting their names in a hat. Several wizards try to cheat; the winner is the one who cast Time Stop last and changed all of the names in the hat to his own.

So you should probably cover that one, too.