Despite the hilarity of the Goons instantly invading the thread assuming that this is all somehow directed at them, that doesn't change the fact that players have been, for many elections now, frustrated with the electoral process and expressed desire to iterate upon it.

. . . some candidates have increasingly overwhelming information and organizational advantages, threatens to effectively disenfranchise a significant portion of the electorate.

. . . for example, one voting bloc did extremely sophisticated exit-polling; if they had chosen to use this information to efficiently split their votes, they could have won 3 of the top 7 positions on the CSM.

Assuming for a moment that any large entity was capable of and succeeded in achieving 3/14 seats on CSM. This is over 20% of council representation. I think most players can understand that there might be something unfair about any group that holds less than 20% of the player population covering 20% of the council. Does anyone see any reason for that discrepancy to exist, or have an explanation as to how that discrepancy benefits the players?

Currently, if I vote for Eminiently Qualified Candidate, and you vote for Random Shirtlord Running A Vanity Campaign, but my Eminiently Qualified Candidate already has a quota, you throw out my vote. However, your Random Shirtlord Running a Vanity Campaign vote is preserved (and moved to Random Shirtlord #2). That's what's going on here that's unacceptable.

I haven't found anything unacceptable. Trebor wrote the proposal, I'm just here to discuss its merits and drawbacks just like the rest of you. The whole point is to allow the community to shape a set of recommendations that we can take to CCP. It may be that the recommendation we get from the community is that we change nothing at all.

I'm pretty open-minded in general. If you don't like something Trebor said, convince me that its bad. I'm listening. There's no need to argue in the meantime as if this was something every one of the CSM members is personally trying to mandate.

I asked why they felt it targeted the CFC in particular and not "whichever group in the game has the most organized power". In other words, if your worst nightmare came true and Kelduum metagamed EVE University into the largest, most organized player entity in the game, how would Trebor's proposal treat EVE Uni any different than the CFC?

I'm glad this has sparked a lively discussion, and I hope it continues to evolve. To clarify one point, election reform is something the CSM has been discussing for years, and I have taken the point role in pushing the discussion forward (as was discussed at the May 2012 summit).

PS: If the candidates in the previous election would care to let me know what their preferred alternate representatives were, I would be happy to update the simulator to reflect these. For the record, mine would have been: Seleene, Hans, Two Step, Meissa, Alek, leboe and corebloodbrothers.

Relax, Poe. I stand by the things I've said, and those alone. I don't really care if people yell at me for things Trebor said, doesn't bother me one bit. Thanks for the white knight though.

from http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2012/09/csm7-voting-reform.html

The tl;dr for todays post is that the problem with CSM voting is not the people who vote, but the number of people who can't be bothered to vote. Read the last three paragraphs if you're an exceptionally busy person.

Today the CSM posted a voting reform thread. Basically it's just a single idea they all pulled from their collective asses. They didn't present a voting system from existing sources, the sort of voting system already successfully implemented somewhere in the world, a system that's known to work. They didn't present a new voting system that's been debated on by scholars for years, that has a lot of statistical analysis and theory behind it. No, the CSM decided, in their great wisdom, that they could create a new, never-seen-before voting system. You know, because these guys all have doctorate degrees in Sociology, Statistics and Political Science.

That's their first win of the day.

Two reasons that the CSM gives for this reform are enlightening:

• Reduce (but not eliminate) the advantages held by highly organized voting blocs. In the previous election, for example, one voting bloc did extremely sophisticated exit-polling; if they had chosen to use this information to efficiently split their votes, they could have won 3 of the top 7 positions on the CSM.


• . . . that some candidates have increasingly overwhelming information and organizational advantages, threatens to effectively disenfranchise a significant portion of the electorate.
They're not responding to any actual problem from the CFC/HBC (the two groups they're targeting as problematic), they're responding to tinfoil-hattery, problems they think could/might happen, but have not actually happened.

(Spreadsheet: CSM6/CSM7 Representation)

In each of CSM6 and CSM7, the CFC/HBC bloc voted two candidates to positions on the CSM. I fail to see how this is a problem. Are they to be punished because a) they're motivated voters, and b) they are highly organized? Pandemic Legion (who generally pride themselves on being independent) voted two candidates into CSM seats for CSM7. Are their votes any worse (or better) than the CFC?

Heaven forbid that the CSM actually elect individuals who have strong aptitudes for organizing and motivating large groups of people. What the CSM needs more of are the Meissa Anunthiels, Issler Dainzes, Darius IIIs and Kelduum Revaans, invisible people who are more interested in the vanity of a CSM position than actually doing anything useful for the playerbase.

That's the CSM's second win of the day.

If there are 400K active accounts in EVE Online, and only 60K accounts took the time to cast a vote for CSM7, then the problem seems clear to me. The CSM should not be focusing on trying to invalidate votes from certain segments of the EVE Online population, rather they should be working harder, trying to come up with ways to increase voter turnout. The CSM should be encouraging the sort of motivated voter we see in nullsec, trying to figure out how to motivate voters across the board. The goal should not be to limit a segment of the nullsec vote.

It seems to me, the 60K accounts that took the time to vote, they are being properly represented. Of the other 340K accounts? Tough ****. They don't vote, they don't get represented. It's as simple as that. Their complaints are moot.

One avenue for the CSM: maybe trying to convince CCP to make voting an in-client component. Perhaps at login, an account is immediately presented with a modal window that describes the CSM and the voting process, and presents three buttons: "I wish to vote now", "I wish to abstain", "I will vote later." Until the account has voted or abstained, they are presented with this window every time they login to the client. If they wish to vote, they are presented with a list of the candidates and short candidate-written summary of their platform. Simple as that. I bet that sort of in-client interface would increase voter turnout at least three-fold. (I'm not saying this is the solution, but it is the sort of thing that should be the focus of the CSM with regards voting, making it easier and more convenient for people to vote.)

On a personal level, I want the CSM to be a more effective working body. I believe that by reforming the voting system, we can improve the overall quality of the candidates -- and the resulting council.

... the advantage of providing more diverse representation in the lower slots of the CSM.

How exactly does voting reform that screws over big blocs help you improve the quality of the candidates by allowing even more useless fluff like yourself onto the CSM?

. . .it is possible to have a CSM that represents the whole population.

Strange though that in no point during the summer minutes did the voting for CSM come up, and yet it's been a constant concern.

So how many members on CSM 6 were from Null?

So let's get this straight, the CSM wants to lessen the power of the largest group of voters in the CSM election, who just happened to not for any of them, and they're flabbergasted when they wind up being accused of attempting to rig the vote to favor themselves.

In the most recent election, for example, almost 25% of the votes were cast for candidates who did not win election to the CSM

Players legit worry about giving their vote to a small candidate not because he or she doesn't match their views but because they feel their vote would be wasted.

AS AN ASIDE: Someone threw out the idea of each voter getting a "vote against" vote in addition to picking their preferred candidate. What do you guys think of that? Sounds very EVE-like.

To be honest, I'm VERY surprised at the number of Goonswarm posting that things should be kept exactly the same. You want to talk disenfranchisement, the over 10,000 votes for TheMitanni got thrown out because of his banning after he got elected. Are you guys sure you think NOTHING needs to be changed?

We put all of two candidates on the council in CSM 6.

Perhaps that "substantial" portion of the game (more likely a bunch of sockpuppets but whatever) should focus their time on getting more people to vote rather than trying to diminish the influence of a motivated 0.0 voting bloc.

Poetic Stanziel: Happy CCP threw out 10,000 votes.

I don't think all the trolling in the thread by the CSM is helping their case.

bye seleene....

Name em?

Despite not being on the CSM, Hans Jagerblitzen was a main player in providing feedback for FW reforms going into Inferno. Since he's been elected he's worked tirelessly in public and in private to improve the experience of FW players by being in near constant contact with that community shuttling between them and CCP. Despite having to do it by chat, Hans was very vocal during the FW meeting at the CSM summit. There's pages and pages of feedback on the CCP/CSM forums since then about upcoming iterations on FW coming in the Winter patch with Hans, Elise, and many others engaging successfully.

What exactly is the problem?
If i had to put it in one phrase, the single vote system applied to a 14-available-spot virtual election is not complex enough to accurately reflect voter preference or robust enough to protect that preference if their candidate of choice is disqualified.

1. As Poetic noted, CSM6 was notoriously homogeneous. While I'd hope CSM diversity was a trend, CSM7 would be the start of it. Without trying to speak for everyone, i think most of CSM7 feels we "lucked out" in terms of having such a diverse council to work and talk with.

And this is by far the best way to improve things, in my opinion. How to increase voter turnout, and how to reform the election process itself, are slightly separate monsters. But I believe, as Seleene does, that if you succeed in the former, the latter is unnecessary.

So the only person on the CSM who still wants the fuckgoons clause is Trebor, everyone else is now recanting it. Progress!