Dierdra Vaal
Perkone
Caldari State
186
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Posted - 2012.09.12 16:24:00 -
[1] - Quote
I think the voting procedure isn't the biggest problem. In the CSM7 elections, 74.9% of the votes cast were cast on someone who ended up being on the CSM (including the 7 alternates, since they have full access and input on the CSM process). The remaining 25.1% was spread over the remaining 20-odd candidates, most of whom could not get more than a few hundred votes. As such I do not feel that this format results in a lot of 'wasted votes'.
The main point of criticism I see is that people feel certain playstyles are over represented (0.0), while other playstyles are underrepresented (high sec?). However, it would be wrong to attribute this to the voting mechanism. It's just that certain playstyles lend itself more to voter mobilisation than others. While the big 0.0 alliances can easily motivate their players to vote for 'their' candidate, playstyles without such grand organisations struggle more with this (for example, high sec mining corps). There are more 0.0 candidates on the CSM because more 0.0 players vote for 'their' candidates, and not enough people from other playstyles vote to get 'their' candidates in.
The fact is that too many players remain unaware of what the CSM is, and how or why they should vote for it. And even of those players that are aware, too many simply don't know any of the candidates and therefore abstain from voting.
As such I think the real solution is here to encourage and facilitate voting more. Some of this can be done by the candidates themselves (campaigning, etc), but CCP can do a lot to facilitate and promote voting. One of the main things that can help here is a service like my Vote Match. While it's not a perfect system, a system like Vote Match allows players to quickly cut down a daunting list of 40+ candidates to a much more manageable handful of candidates who match their opinions on Eve. Similar systems are used in many countries prior to real world elections. While my website only draws a few thousand users every election, a similar service provided and promoted by CCP would be able to easily reach all players in Eve, and encourage many of them to inform themselves and vote.
On top of this, CCP should obviously continue with the login screen ads, emails, devblogs, etc.
Veto #205
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Director Emeritus at EVE University
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CSM1 delegate, CSM3 chairman and CSM5 vice-chairman |