The UPMW is led by a high council composed of five members, which has the benefit that no one person in the structure has more power than any other member. To maintain fairness, there can only be one high councilman from any given planet. Since it’s by far the most populous planet in the civilization, there is always a councilman from Nova Satus, making it a very coveted position. The other four are from various planets, with no other planet having a “guaranteed” spot. Elections take place every three years.
Almost all elections in the UPMW follow the structure of ranking each potential member from who you’d like from most to least, starting at 1 and going to however many candidates are on the ballot. An average score is then computed and the person or persons with the lowest score will gain the position. In the case of the high council, the top five scores are granted a place on it, dropping subsequent scores from the same planet. The high council has a term limit of three terms.
The next highest governmental body is the senate. Each planet is given a rank based on its population, from 1 to 5. Rank 1 planets have less than 10 million inhabitants, and rank 5 planets have more than 20 billion. Whatever rank a planet is denotes how many senators it has, so a rank 1 planet has 1 senator, etc. Nova Satus is the only rank 5 planet. The resulting senate has thousands of members.
There are two other interplanetary authorities. The first is the Interplanetary Police Coalition (IPC). The IPC acts with the authority of the federal government, investigating and making arrests for serious crimes.
The other is the military, which we will discuss in the next chapter.
On the planetary level, government will vary wildly, but in general there is a planetary president. They may delegate moons, different sections of the planet, or other planets in the same system with a lower level of habitation to governors. A notable exception to this is Revenite, the moon of Nova Satus: Since the entire moon is just one city, a mayor-governor is in charge of it.