As has been said many times before, and in other threads by myself. Voter participation is the issue. CCP needs to take major steps to better communicate the CSM elections, as well as make it easier to research than "read persons thread".

Organized player groups can tip the election because they are organized. So the only way you are going to see the system work properly is to lower the bar substantially for the average EVE player to participate.

I'm not going to bother digging out Issler's candidacy post (I have the feeling you're having one of those convenient blank spots, considering you were practically stumping for her), but she was going to be the champion for high sec bears - "hear the bears roar", and all of that. Mining and Missions were two prominently mentioned categories.

Again, the problem is not one of actual representation, it's of poor representation. You can't make the system compensate for poor representation. If there's an elected candidate who should be backing whatever issue you think they should be, get on them about it. Don't just sit idly by and whine about invisible conspiracies and coming up with new catchphrases (first it was "nullsec lobby group", then calling moon mining a "welfare program"), do something about it, and your efforts don't bear fruit, share it with your fellow players that Candidate Whoever is not actually on their side.

Some countries reserve a certain number of seats in their legislature for those who would otherwise never gain a voice. Could something similar be rigged up for the CSM? A dedicated WH seat and a dedicated Highsec seat?

This comes up all the time, and the answer is that the seats would be gamed far too easily with alts as how could you truly tell if someone is actually from a WH, or FW, or what have you. It also doesn't touch where someone who truly does live in several areas should go.

One person one vote. Open registration 8 weeks before election.
Proof of I.D. and address or some other verification process.

Then we should really get an idea of the realistic numbers who actually vote.

This last election had just over 59,000 votes across over 20 nations. How would they even determine what an acceptable piece of ID is, let alone identify whether or not it's authentic?

Do you have any specific suggestions? Automatic EVE mail to all players? A better voting page with more descriptive text per candidate?

Do you have any specific suggestions? Automatic EVE mail to all players? A better voting page with more descriptive text per candidate?

I do. Increase the visibility and accessibility in a place where active players are guaranteed not to miss it.

The Eve homepage is not the place that accomplishes this. Nor is the launcher, the login screen, nor the character selection screen. My natural tendency is to skip the later three as fast as possible and I believe I'm not alone on this.

Making it mandatory on the login screen have a few problems as well, so my suggestion is to include an icon in the neocom that blinks every time the client is started (like completing skills do). It redirects to the voting page and is removed from the neocom once that account casts the vote.

If CCP is willing to devote some development effort changing the election process, then we might as well make the most of it and spend it where the biggest problem is. Then we observe how it goes and re-evaluate if anything else is needed.

links

In-game popup with working hyperlinks would be a good start. Something that doesn't grab focus though. Perhaps code that autoaunches ingame browser and goes to the voting form.

Rewards for voting, something tiny but just enough incentive to get them to vote. Quafe like.

There was some discussion of randomly handing out a PLEX for every 5K votes or something to a random voter. I liked that idea, not sure why it didn't happen. Perhaps it is time for the CCP art department to make an "Iteron IV 'I voted' edition" or something similar...

There was some discussion of randomly handing out a PLEX for every 5K votes or something to a random voter. I liked that idea, not sure why it didn't happen. Perhaps it is time for the CCP art department to make an "Iteron IV 'I voted' edition" or something similar...

My gut feeling on this is that the players who don't vote are the same players who don't really pay attention to dev blogs or forums or any of the information sources they'd need to choose a candidate from, who don't really have any opinion on anything the CSM might do.

Same here.

Which rather begs the question of why this topic is even taking up precious Summit time.

Which rather begs the question of why this topic is even taking up precious Summit time.

Of course, nothing breeds interest like massive success / failure or a good scandal, so maybe we can arrange for that as well.

I. I'm not sure that adding a landslide of 'I just clicked this link for my free ship, what's a CSM anyway?' votes for whichever candidate happens to pop up first on their list is really going to help that cause.

How many people are motivated to vote is completely orthogonal to the actual issue, which is how the ballot works and how the votes are counted.

Let's keep on topic guise.

See, that's the problem with this topic. Nobody can even agree what the actual issue IS, i.e. why does the system need to be changed, what are the failings of it, and how would any new system address them. That's the important part of any voting discussion, and starting the discussion at "what new system will we use" skips that step entirely. It's why pretty much every topic on the subject turns to **** so quickly - I'm honestly extremely disappointed that this is even a Summit topic, especially given the CSM's initial attempt at this topic started with a system that set out to deliberately disenfranchise a single large voting bloc.

Like it or not more people need to be educated to vote as well as possibly rewarded.

So the CSM does not just stay a minority lobby group but becomes a representative body of the whole of EvE.

Like it or not more people need to be educated to vote as well as possibly rewarded.

So the CSM does not just stay a minority lobby group but becomes a representative body of the whole of EvE.