Setting aside the problem of account fraud and the corresponding impact that it has on election fraud (and that real world election processes don’t try to solve this inside the system but rather with laws and punishment)…
The system for electing a parliament is currently done with a single non-transferable vote (wikipedia).
Because voters cast vote directly for candidates, an individual candidate may be so popular that they draw votes away from other allied candidates, SNTV may encourage legislators to join factions that consist of patron-client relationships in which a powerful legislator/candidate can try to apportion votes to allied candidates by instructing different voters to vote in certain ways.
This is part of what has caused problems on Promitor … and likewise,
In addition, parties may do if their supporters evenly distribute their votes among the party’s candidates. Historically, in Taiwan, the Kuomintang did this by sending members a letter telling them which candidate to vote for. With the Democratic Progressive Party, vote sharing is done informally, as members of a family or small group will coordinate their votes. The New Party had a surprisingly effective system by asking party supporters to vote for the candidate whose identification number corresponded to their birthdate. This led to all parties adopting a method of vote allocation for the 2004 ROC legislative elections.
is now what is being seen in chats. This is also not necessarily ideal.
The problem that is growing is that the single non-transferable vote results in issues with the concordant loser (wiki). That is, someone who would lose head to head elections against the other candidates if there was only one position could still win.
If you had an election with 20 people voting and 12 of them preferred (A > B > C) or (B > A > C) wand 8 of them preferred (C > A > B) or (C > B > A) then you would have 8 votes for C, and 6 votes for A and 6 votes for B.
The Single Transferable Vote approach is likely the best one to use… but its confusing and requires a ranked choice setup for the vote screen.
I would suggest approval voting (wiki) and the relevant bit for multi-winner (wiki).
Approval voting is a system that is more resilient to the various problems of multiple equivalent good candidates losing to candidates because of splitting the vote - especially with the realtively low voter participation (which is in part caused by “I voted for the best candidate and they won by 20 votes… but that still let candidates that I actively disapprove of take two spots”). It also has the least impact on the in game vote interface.
Another approach would be (and this gets interesting for setting up) have corporations set up party lists for each planet and its the corporation that is voted for. For the upcoming Verdant elections (for example), I could instead of having to make a choice of one candidate I would instead vote for Lunar Mining And Operations (LMAO) and trust that they would be putting up qualified candidates. Compare this with the German system (wiki)
Germans elect their members of parliament with two votes. The first vote is for a direct candidate, who is required to receive a plurality vote in their electoral district. The second vote is used to elect a party list in each state as established by its respective party caucus. The Bundestag comprises, then, the seats representing each electoral district on the first vote and the seats allocated to maintain proportionality based on the second vote.
Some change to the vote system should be done to avoid a system where a coordinated group of players with better organization than the planet’s general voting populace is able to use strategic voting knowing each other’s vote to steal an election even when they would lose if it was a one position vote system.
Again, this doesn’t address account (voting) fraud where one person effectively casts multiple votes any more than the electoral system is able to handle that (which it isn’t).