Some jurisdictions do limit the participation of people who have been convicted of offenses. Because these laws are often used to suppress the vote of minorities, they trigger frequent litigation. It is conceivable, however, capsuleers who prompt those jarring “shoot on sight” alerts upon jumping through star gates qualify as “convicted,” and could find their ballots placed in the “review before counting” box.
Overall, the capsuleer population is vanishingly small in comparison to that of the Federation, of course. As an (anti-democratic) means of size compensation, there is the “special” capsuleer ballot, and it does seem like the question of building a gate will be decided by the ISK value of what gets blown up - our cluster’s most cherished metric.
Although the ultimate result was most typical for our cluster, we got the least interesting outcome in the most interesting way.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and intelligence offices no longer have to do as much digging to find counterparts in the Collective. If there is someone to talk to, and the person says anything (even “no”), that makes the formerly impossible objective of finding common ground no longer impossible.
I agree. An effort has been made to ensure our turrets are not tracking in the same direction.
I find that oddly heartening.
Yet I am having difficulty understanding why ARC pressed ahead with the operation when diplomatic access was closed, locked and encrypted. Trouble sought and found.
I did not believe the effort to change the status quo would get nearly as far as it did. It took an extraordinary last minute intervention by the hand of fate to maintain the cluster’s “furrier bites man” narrative. However, the ball did move forward. The parties deserve credit for that even now.