Because those people who don't pay attention or vote now will just click the first three names they see (if you're talking about mandatory voting) or skip it to get into game (if not).

It solves nothing.

As a 2003 player, I sit here and wonder what exactly my CSM is doing. Why are you focusing on the election rather than the game itself? Your job is to represent the playerbase's interest for the game. This discussion is not in the player's interest. I won't say what I think it is but it has nothing to do with spaceships.

I will go as far as to say this: this year's CSM has been the most ineffective by far and if it were possible to issue a vote of no-confidence then you and your team would surely have it.

Go fix spaceships. Do your damn job.

Its disappointing, but not surprising, to see the CSM members have been so effectively played by a handful of alts shrieking incessantly about 'lack of representation' at every opportunity because they're incapable of rallying support or enthusiasm for their terrible candidates, and creating enough noise to give the impression that they represent anything more than that.

This is irrelevant navel-gazing of CSM1-era proportions.

Alt alliances, been there; done that.

What?

How is "One vote per account" a system that needs changing? Unless, of course, you only seek to remain in power and are looking for a way to manipulate votes to that end.

If hi-sec dwellers feel they aren't being represented, then they have the same opportunity as the rest of us to select a candidate that best represents their interests and rally behind them.

If they are disinterested, disorganized, or just too stupid to do that...tough. Why should the rest of us be marginalized because of inept publourdes?

Waiting for a point here.

The issue I have with STV is that making voting *harder* isn't going to increase voter turnout numbers. Certainly the system Trebor proposed has some downsides, but one thing it does get right is that the voters wouldn't have to expend much more effort.

As someone who was elected from a smallish community, my worry is that in the future there might be 4 or 5 wormhole dudes running, and I don't want to see that mean that nobody from w-space gets elected. Avoiding that sort of scenario is my #1 requirement for a new voting system. My other desired features:

2) Encourage a broad representation on the CSM. Having a FW guy, or a wormhole guy, or a highsec guy on the CSM is really useful when we need a POV on issues that pertain to those communities.
3) Make voting easier, or at least as easy as it is currently.

How about this for an alternate proposal:

Run the election like true STV, but people pick a candidate and that candiate's list becomes their STV vote. It would also be nice to support people picking their own STV vote list, but that would take more dev time on CCP's part.

He means the VOTERS should choose alternates, not have candidates themselves do it.

For example if a bunch of candidates choose one another.. but they're all too small all the votes go poof.

So you have to force the voters into things, that's what the voters want?

Nice.

You can't make the CSM elections more public than last time without forcing everybody to vote.

It's been publicized on the login screen, on the character select, on the homepage, on the forums. Several candidates have sent out evemail spam. If you willingly ignore all of that, there's nothing left to do save for forcing you to vote.

Did you even start the game client? How could you miss the big "vote" banner without being wilfully ignorant of the entire CSM process?

It's reasonable to assume that someone who's managed to avoid all exposure to the CSM process, yet who is forced to vote, will pick candidates at random. This means that it'll artificially inflate the perceived number of people who voted for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidate, while having no effect on the winner or their absolute margin of victory.

Most people know the earth is round, but this old guy I know says the earth is flat. how you explain that ?

So because you aren't spoon-fed something, you think the people that actually pay attention should have their votes marginalized? If you are too lazy to make ISK, should the rest of us pay for you?

Your entire argument seems to me that you can't be arsed to pay attention, and you are upset that your voice isnt heard. I have news for you: The system is working as it should.

There IS a lot of tinfoil BS in this thread with regard to why this thread exists and I make no apologies for being annoyed by it.

My attitude with regard to the actual discussion of this subject has been anything but dismissive. Just because I'm not doing a point by point on all of the critiques made does not mean I have not read them.

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, each with a 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.)

Why do you think my vote should only count for 60% of your vote?

Obviously you want my vote to count for less than yours, otherwise we can just keep the current system where we both have one vote, regardless of whom you or I wish to vote for.

You said you're giving 2 seats to nullsec, 2 to low, 2 to high and 2 to WH. If you pigeonhole 20000 votes from the nullsec blocs into two seats, while 3000 votes from WH also get two seats, how do the 20000 votes not count for less than the 3000?

I like how the only thing CSM7 has done and will do is try to poorly devise a way to keep mittens off the CSM

because under the kind of system im proposeing is to give everyone a fair say noone can any longer control large amounts of the council but tbh isnt you vote going to a candidate from null you want there already ?

or is it your all flooding the forums scared that you may lose influance in the grand sceam of things ?

Except England, Scotland and Northern Ireland don't all send the same number of representatives into the Commons. For the record, I'm totally fine with giving the so-called "Highsec representatives" more seats because I have chars that have never set foot outside of Jita. So I should be able to vote for the highsec seat, right?

How do you categorize people into the three voting "boroughs"? As I said above, there's no nullsec pilot who doesn't also have at least one highsec character, for market shenanigans or whatever reason. Do I get to vote on lowsec issues on my faction warfare alt? Can I vote for the highsec candidate with my L4 mission runner? Maybe I want to stand for the Highsec spot on the platform that L4s don't pay out enough and need to be buffed. Will I be allowed to, or am I "tainted" for having a nullsec character?

So we'll get one representative for each of the EVE regions?

As a Canadian I'm well aware of disproportionate regional representation.
Putting aside the fact that huge swaths of the playerbase can't be pigeonholed to a single region, the idea that a 'wormholer vote' is worth ten times a nullsec player's vote and twenty times a highsec player's vote in terms of CSM representation is insulting.

Mining
Ganking
Incursions
Jita
CONCORD
Can-flipping
Ninja Salvaging

Oh then I guess you can't be a "real" "highsec candidate".

You have as many votes as you have accounts, not sure what the issue here is? Do you have one candidate now that is really addressing all you 0.0, FW, lvl4 mission running issues?

The CSM isn't a cabinet, a government or some sort of parish council it's a customer advocacy group: using terms like election turnout doesn't change that.

If they are concerned that all areas of the game aren't getting represented well I'm simply saying instead of this rather convoluted process where they try and juggle the votes to make it be as representatives as they feel it should be, they just split up seats into gaming styles and let people vote for say guys who do want to buff lvl4 missions standing for the high sec seat.

I don't pretend it's perfect but it is pretty simple, which is what is needed here IMHO.

Oh, you've already started thinking ahead about the possible effects of changes.

It's not too common in certain places...

^ This

Nothing needs to be changed except people's perceptions that votes for candidates who didn't make CSM were "wasted". A single vote, first-past-the-gate voting system makes it very easy to candidates to see (a) how popular they are, (b) how much harder they have to try next time, and (c) how everyone else gamed the system.

Complex voting solutions outside the realm of "1-N preferential voting system" are not going solve any problems, but they will introduce new problems due to bugs in vote counting software, people not understanding the voting system, and candidates outright gaming the system.

The simple solutions are not effective, and the effective solutions are not simple. Even worse, the effective solutions are not going to be that much better than single-vote first-past-the-post.

The current system is broken, but at least we can all see and understand the brokenness. We just have to change the perception that votes for a candidate who didn't make CSM are somehow "wasted" any more than surplus votes for someone who made chairman. Those votes that went to candidates who didn't get into CSM mean that those voters didn't want the people that got into CSM. It's really as simple as that. Those are not "wasted votes".

Please, let's have a clear definition of the "problem" before you start trying to solve it.

I'll butt out now, but that's my contribution to this topic.

ALSO AS AN ASIDE: Having people pidegon holed into particular activities or areas of residence works in the real world but does not translate into a virtual environment like EVE. Characters can move all over and nothing stops a player who PVPs all weekend from doing mining and manufacturing during the weekdays. BUT thinning down the number of people running is a good idea. Instead of doing this by forum likes (which are overly easy to get), what about a round of 1 account/1 vote pre-vote/primary vote? Any other ideas?

[quote=Alekseyev Karrde]ALSO AS AN ASIDE: Having people pidegon holed into particular activities or areas of residence works in the real world but does not translate into a virtual environment like EVE. Characters can move all over and nothing stops a player who PVPs all weekend from doing mining and manufacturing during the weekdays. BUT thinning down the number of people running is a good idea. Instead of doing this by forum likes (which are overly easy to get), what about a round of 1 account/1 vote pre-vote/primary vote? Any other ideas?

To put it more bluntly, do you really think you can come up with a gamed system that the folks in GSF and TEST can't game right back? We're organized and have better information resources!

Did anyone in the CSM ask CCP if they could implement real Single Transferable Voting? Or did Trebor & co look at it and say, "It's too fair, they'll still be able to use their 10k votes to out-elect my 1k votes. We need something like STV but from bizarro-world and dreamed up by Tammany Hall." Because real STV would be the best real voting system to make the votes of unaligned voters count.

I mean, basically this discussion isn't about what you want to discuss because we can't agree on what to discuss. Trebor wants to discuss a "fair" system, and by that he means one that disenfranchises the "right" number of 0.0 votes. I, on the other hand, would like to discuss a fair system, meaning one that results in the CSM best reflecting the preferences of the voters.

As long as the discussion is about the former rather than the latter, there is nothing to discuss except reject the premise and continue to emphasize it is illegitimate to have the goal of a voting system be to properly disenfranchise a specific group.

So far, most people have expressed a disinterest in being represented on the CSM (by not voting).

1. Overview standings bug: when titan bridging many people at once, often- many pilots will appear to have no standings towards their fleet members and be generically 'neutral'. This gets people shot and killed.

2. Frequent (20-30) disconnects and crashes when moving through gates or titan bridges in groups ranging from 10-256.

3. Module delay: somewhere on these forums someone else brought this up and frapsed it- I can lock a target, be in range, activate my warp scrambler, and he still warps away because my activation cycle delays, and even expresses the delay by starting off at 3/4 cycle rather than 99%.

4. Industry in null sec. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to do any industry in null sec compared to high sec. Ever. Everything is imported except basic frigate hulls. Unless things change.

5. Ghosts on overview. I will have entities linger on my overview for a good 5-7 seconds after they have left the system, jumped a gate, bridged out, warped away, etc.

6. Sometimes the overview gets really bugged and the 'ghosts' stay forever! I've had bombs linger on my overview and appear to be moving for 3,000+km.

I'll write up more as they come to me

ive experienced some of those problems and you know what i think ccp know about them as most of them are bugs and guess what a restart of me comp and router generaly fixes them for me

Here's another. Fourteen isk pyerite.

GO!

So there is nothing broken about farming alts raking in 10-15b isk a day in Loyalty points until 'Winter'.

Awesome.

I can totally see your point for changing the voting scheme now, no- wait. I can't.

CCP is already working hard to make sure highsec-obtainable minerals are cheap by making it easy (afk) and worry-free (less ganking). Thanks for all your hard work ~~

Who says we aren't?

Thats like saying we shouldn't have been talking about tech causing an imbalance because it was a big thing and legal.

Well this thread is just another super whine maybe it needs moving to GD to go with the rest.

But any way here is what I propose for future elections

1. 1 Vote per account
2. Candidates may select 1 candidate to receive their votes if they are knocked out using the lowest number of votes as a starting point and working up
3. Only the votes received by a candidate may be passed on if elimination occurs.
4. A fee of 2 Billion is is required for registration as a candidate
5. Voting buttons as Per Poetic Stanziel suggested "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, each with a short candidate-written summary of their platform."
6. Advertising in splash banners should start ASAP telling people what the CSM is and what it does.
7. Update the "What is the CSM" page.
8. In the case of disqualification, those people who voted for the candidate are subject to there votes disappearing down a black hole.
9. Dev blogs like the winter expansion should have by lines acknowledging the work of the CSM.
10. The CSM should continue it's wonderful transparency and communication with the playerbase.

These changes will effective make the number of votes required for lowest seats higher.
They will also lessen the chance of joke candidates, as these people are supposed to be knowledgeable in the game and if they can not come up with a measly 2 Billion isk then they probably do not know how to play the game well enough.
It will increase voter participation lessening the effect of minorities
It will increase the CSMs profile within the player community.

These are my suggestions but at the end of the day it is the CSMs job to decide for them selves what system they want to put into place. This is one of the tings they were voted in to do.

Good luck and thank you for your hard work.