The Resource Magazine For Apple, Atari, and Commodore ...

42 COMPUTEI September/Octooer, 1980. Issue 6
Let Your Pet Play Politics
HAT IN THE RING
with
A Presidential Election Game
Thorwald Esbensen
Here is a timely social studies game that readers of
COMPUTE have permission to copy for their own
personal use. The program will run on any 8K PET,
old or new.
HAT IN THE RING is a two-player exercise
designed to acquaint students with some of the
political considerations involved in running a
presidential campaign. Each player assumes the role
of a presidential candidate - one for the Republicans,
the other for the Democrats. Throughout the exer
cise, each candidate makes decisions intended to
result in a successful campaign.
At the outset, each candidate has 9 units of
priority resources that can be assigned as needed in
order to bolster the campaign in any of the states.
The overall campaign ends after each candidate has
made, in alternating turns, 10 decisions.
Within each state, the outcome of the campaign
hinges upon four factors:
- Media Exposure
- Personal Campaigning
- Domestic Issues
- International Issues
Although the weight of these four factors is randomly
determined by the computer, the probabilities are
that Media Exposure and Domestic Issues will prove
to be substantially more powerful in their impact
than will the factors of Personal Campaigning and
International Issues. The political situation in each
state keeps changing as the game progresses.
As the campaign begins, the computer randomly
chooses the candidate who will have the first turn.
The computer may be commanded to do one of six
things:
1. Raise funds (increase resources).
2. List the states in which the Republican can
didate leads.
3. List the states in which the Democratic candi
date leads.
4. List the current probable electoral count for
each candidate.
5. List each candidate's remaining resources.
6. Get ready to display the political situaiton in
state.
The 9 resource units that each candidate has at the
beginning of the game are the maximum allowed. So
there is no point in asking the computer to raise
more funds (resources) until some of these units have
been used up. However, when the computer does try
to raise funds, it will yield a result of from 0 to 3 ad
ditional resource units.
Let us say that the candidate chooses Command
Number 6. The computer now asks the candidate for
the name of a state, and then displays the political
situation in that state. The number immediately
following the name of a state represents the number
of electoral votes that the state can cast for a
presidential candidate. The candidate with the
highest total of political points in a state (the combin
ed points for Media Exposure, Personal Campaign
ing, Domestic Issues, and International Issues) will
win all of that state's electoral votes at the end of the
game.
The candidate can affect the political situation in
any state by committing some resource units to that
state. When resources are committed, they have a
multiplier effect on the category to which they are
committed. For example, if the strength o( Media
Exposure is a given state is 15, and if 3 resource
units are then committed to that category in this
state, the new Media Exposure strength in the state
becomes 15 x 3, or 45. If a candidate commits more
resources than the candidate has, this blunder
automatically results in the election of the opponent.
The fifty states, plus the District of Columbia
(abbreviated D.C.), have 538 electoral votes in all.
At the end of the game, the candidate with a majori
ty of these electoral votes (270 or more) wins the
game.
Readers who do not wish to spend their time co
pying the following program listing may spend $9.95
for a copy of the program tape itself from MICRO-
Ed, Inc., P.O.Box 24156, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
55424.
9 POKE59468,12
10 1980":
, INC. "
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13 PRINT"^»»»»»»MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
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