In the last election, over 24% of the electorate disenfrancised themselves by voting for a losing candidate.

In the worst case, you can expect that the cost is related to C(c,s) where C is the choose function: c!/(s! (c-s)!). c is the number of candidates, and s is the number of seats.

c(40,14), the case for the last election, means you have to compare 23,206,929,840 different possible quorums!

After reading Xhagen's posts, I quite understand where he stands.

CCP must accurately listen to those who put an effort and vote, that's right.

Oh jeez, I don't look at GD over the weekend and look what happens. For those of you who don't know I'm one of the three people behind the changes to this year's voting system (in addition to CCP Xhagen and CCP Veritas).

I'd like to clarify some comments about the new Single Transferable Vote (STV) system we are using, and why we chose to go with it. Many of the assumptions in this thread (including those of the OP) are relatively misguided. Rather than quoting from the thread I will just list the answers to a few common questions.


GÇóAfter looking at the results of previous elections, we found that the number of disenfranchised (wasted) votes was staggeringly high. In fact, the majority of votes cast had no effect on the results of the election, either because the candidate had too many over-votes or the candidate didn't make top 14. We found this level of disenfranchisement unacceptable, and recognized it was largely a flaw in our voting system (First Past the Post).
GÇóWe also saw a potential issue in the fact that highly organized groups were able to use coordinated information gathering to ensure that their votes were more effectively placed than any unorganized voter ever could. This gave them a far lesser chance of being disenfranchised, on consequently more "effective power" per vote than an unorganized vote.
GÇóSTV systems will drastically reduce the level of disenfranchisement by ensuring that voters have at least 14 options for their vote to be effectively placed. It also greatly reduces the "effective power" difference between organized and unorganized votes by having vote allocation built in as a fundamental part of the system for all voters.
GÇóWe feel that STV will give us a very accurate representation of overall voter preference (keep in mind that we have no way of representing the views of those who do not vote).
GÇóWe will be taking steps this year to ensure that the CSM Election is as visible as possible to all active players, in the hopes of increasing voter turnout.

4. If you would like to propose a different system that would allow us to properly represent our playerbase without them voting I would like to hear it.

No voting system can prevent people from disenfranchising themselves.

We've looked into this and it isn't doable for the CSM8 elections.

(I personally would really like to do it for CSM9)

Compulsory suffrage shouldn't mean that I have to vote for some one. Voters should be allowed to vote for no one. Then if CCP wanted, for further analysis, they could break up the non-votes into sub categories.

- I vote for no one because I don't care.

- I vote for no one because I am uninformed about the candidates.

- I vote for no one because I don't approve of any of the candidates.

etc.

I would prefer something flashing in the NeoCom, but at least this is better than your original idea, which was to give everyone a permanent suspect flag until they voted.

The old system, flawed as FPTP is, was moving towards a trend of blocs only putting forth a single official candidiate. This was in large part due to the fact that more than one candidate was completely unnecessary - there were no votes or anything of the sort, everything that needed to be decided (chair, who goes to Iceland) was decided before anyone took office, so "stacking the deck" was a pointless gesture. What this new system has done is introduce the CSM voting on things AND given a voting system that lends itself towards multiple candidates (or at the very least allowing nullsec to dictate who the majority of the council are), which undoes all of that. That's not really a good thing, especially when you're still trying to convince non-bloc-aligned people to actually care enough to participate.

- 12th GÇô 20th of March: candidacy application period
- 22nd GÇô 29th of March: Pre-Election

The old system, flawed as FPTP is, was moving towards a trend of blocs only putting forth a single official candidiate. This was in large part due to the fact that more than one candidate was completely unnecessary - there were no votes or anything of the sort, everything that needed to be decided (chair, who goes to Iceland) was decided before anyone took office, so "stacking the deck" was a pointless gesture. What this new system has done is introduce the CSM voting on things AND given a voting system that lends itself towards multiple candidates (or at the very least allowing nullsec to dictate who the majority of the council are), which undoes all of that. That's not really a good thing, especially when you're still trying to convince non-bloc-aligned people to actually care enough to participate.

What's really funny is that the "minority" you refer to (obv. you mean nullsec) was pretty firmly AGAINST any kind of change to the voting system (you can check Xhagen's voting reform thread in Jita Park if you don't believe me). If CCP was swayed by anyone (and that's a big IF), it was by people like yourself and Frying Doom crying and screaming about NULL SEC LOBBY GROUPS and other such nonsense that would lead CCP to believe that the current population was not being fairly represented.

So hey, congrats, I guess?

I think I know why they changed the voting system to some crap STV designed for a compulsory voting area.
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Dev Blog is going out soon. All information for applying will be found there.