I'm not on the ballot...

[FNBrown]

So, I tried holding an election for planetary governor, and I'm not on the ballot... why is that?

(stupid noob question... I know...)

[Mr. President]

I think it might have something to do with your total population. The leaders of the factions with the highest populations are eligible, or some such. (I used to know for certain, but I've forgotten as I hadn't played Alpha Centauri for a while before yesterday. )

[Method]

the players with the 2 highest number of votes are eligible. it doesn't necessarily go by population, because votes are modified by the EG, Clinical Immortality, and being the peacekeepers.

[Mr. President]

Ah, that's right.

[MariOne]

The above is correct.

And it can be furtherly detailed:

A) More that two candidates are possible, in case of a tie in the runner-ups votes#
Example:
1 PK 50 votes
2-4 tied Gaia 40 votes
2-4 tied Hive 40 votes
2-4 tied Univ 40 votes
you would have 4 candidates in this election



B) The votes are fixed on the moment the election is called, but the candidacies ARE NOT.

This is of course only relevant in case of pbem, where the election is resolved by *sequential* turn taking from part of the human players, and not simultaneously in one go by the single player with the ever-on-line AIs.
This means that, IF in-between the election calling and your turn your population is halved by the attack of an intervening player, you would *retain* the # of votes TO CAST you had at the beginning, but you would eventually LOSE your candidate status.
Example, considering the original 7 factions in normal order, for clarity.
Imagine Gaia calls the elections.
Votes:
35 Gaia
30 Hive
40 Univ
25 Morgan
20 Sparta
25 Beleivers
50 PK
Candidates: PK, Univ

Hive, during its turn, conquers some Univ base, so that the votes change to 38 Hive, 30 Univ.
When Univ opens its turn, they will STILL have the 40 votes to cast they had when Gaia called it, but the candidacy will instead take into account the *current* votes, that is 50 PK, and 38 Hive will be the new candidates.

This means,
Gaia had to choose between PK / Univ
Hive had to choose between PK / Univ, UNLESS they'd save the pbem halfway after their conquest and resumed from the midturn savefile, in which case the candidates would have been reassessed.
Univ (and subsequent electors, barring further candidates changes) will have to choose between PK and Hive.

Mind, the votes eventually received by Univ before falling off candidate status, would REMAIN VALID, although NOT DISPLAYED (IIRC), and they could even win the election and become governor...

This had been discussed at ACOL in the FW6 thread, IIRC the question regardeed indeed a shifting candidacy between DD of the Poly Team and myself for the ACOL team (which didn't cause a problem, because the two teams were and are temporarily allied to fend off the CGN unfortunate dominance, so enough votes had already converged on DD to grant him the first term).
And it had probably been rehashed in a thread at CGN too.



C) don't forget this common pitfall:
ANYONE can call a Planetary Governor election, even if he's not ("currently") a candidate, whereas only a candidate can call a Supreme Leader election, strictly for *himself*. The SL agenda indeed states: "Unite behind ME, as SL".
That is, you can call an election to make *someone else* Planetary Governor, but NOT Supreme Leader.