Jita Park Speakers Corner

During the CSM 7 elections, I published my Independent Voter's Guide to the CSM 7 Elections. Given the changes in the election system this time around, I thought it might be a good idea to post an updated guide to help voters make a more informed choice.

Fortunately, the new Wright-STV voting system addresses many of the problems with the old system that required voters to make cruel choices and vote tactically in order to secure representation. Now you can vote for all the candidates you like; your only challenge is ranking them in order of preference.

How to make the most of your vote

Wright-STV tries to use as much of your voting power as possible. If, for example, your preferred candidate gets more votes than he needs to get elected, a fractional part of your vote transfers to your second preference. Similarly, if your favorite candidate gets eliminated from consideration, all of your vote transfers to your second preference. This process continues until all of your vote is used or there are no viable candidates left on your ballot to receive a transfer.

For this reason, the more candidates you add to your ballot, the better. Most of the candidates will be publishing their recommendations ("me first, then these guys") which you may wish to use as a guide.

With respect to how you rank the candidates on your ballot, Wright-STV is resistant to tactical voting games, so simply rank them in the order of your actual preference.

How to evaluate the candidates

This section is of course my subjective opinion. I've served on the last 3 CSMs, but what do I know...

Good CSM candidates tend to exhibit the following qualities:

* They communicate well.

* They argue their positions clearly and fairly, and avoid cheap debating tricks and trolling.

* They demonstrate the ability to work hard in a group context.

* They have significant professional experience (not necessarily in the computer and/or games business).

* They can take the heat, because being a CSM can be a thankless job. A good proxy for this is how they handle the inevitable trolling in their campaign threads.

* They have a reasonable campaign platform -- but pay more attention to how they present and defend it, as opposed to what their positions are. You have 14 slots on your ballot, and some of them should go to candidates whose opinions you may disagree with, but can clearly do a good job of advocacy. The truth is that CSM spends most of its time working on things that most people can agree upon, and a diversity of viewpoints helps make those arguments stronger.

Red Flags:

* They say they're going to get CCP to implement particular changes to the game. If so, they're either lying or clueless.

* Their campaign platforms are obviously implausible.

* They are not getting trolled. If even the trolls don't think they're worth the effort, then they probably not going to do well on the CSM. Of course, now that I've said this...

Preliminary Election Strategy

This year there is a preliminary election. To qualify for the final ballot, a candidate must receive 200 votes in the prelims, and you can only vote for one candidate.

I personally think these are a waste of time, but whatever...

However, the prelims last for a week, and candidates will be notified when they have passed the 200 vote mark.

So if you want to maximize your voting power, your strategy should be something like this:

* If you have only one favorite candidate, just vote for him with all your accounts on the first day of the prelims (March 22nd).

* If you have more than one favorite candidate, you want to space out your voting so that hopefully some of your favorites will have already passed the threshold, allowing you to focus your votes on a smaller number of candidates.

A simple strategy: If you have N accounts, cast N/(days_left_in_election) votes each day (round down) for your favorite candidate who has not yet qualified.

This strategy means you'll be voting as late as possible. While this maximizes your information, it also induces a huge amount of anxiety in the poor candidates as they wait to find out if they made the cut. Some may consider this a bonus, but for those of you who are of a mind to be kind, just round up instead of down (so you'll be casting at least one vote every day until you run out).

One other subtlety: vote early on your first day of voting, but late (after 18:00 EVE) on subsequent days if you can. This maximizes the chance you'll learn that a candidate has passed the threshold before you cast your next vote.

PS: if my dear friends in Goonswarm could do us all a favor and just put 200 votes on every candidate, it'd save the rest of us a lot of trouble, and you'll get to see CCP Xhagen chase me around Fanfest with a battleaxe.

(reserved)

Candidates do not have to notify the playerbase when they hit the quota. It is in the candidates best interests to keep this a secret, so that they can continue to bleed potential primary votes from their opposition.

I don't ever actively campaign apart from pictures and surveys, so I may end out proving that the 200 minimum vote mechanic is meaningful. :3

Will be interested to see how you class candidates this year.

<3 Apricot Baby

#notrebornothemepark

Except that pre-election result numbers WILL be published, and (fair or not) voters will be looking at these numbers when preparing for the final election.

That's the magic of an STV system. You can list a bunch of schmucks first ... and if they don't reach the minimum votes, your vote keeps moving on to the next schmuck, until it finally reaches a non-schmuck.

I'll likely list Roc Wieler first. If he doesn't make it, my vote will filter to the next person on my list, maybe that will be Ripard, followed by Psychotic Monk, followed by Malcanis, followed by Unforgiven Storm. At some point, my vote will count.

You're missing the point though. If you can jam as many "schmucks" in as possible you raise the odds of the existence of entirely schmuck-filled ballots. It's small, but from a bloc perspective, in an election system in which seats are awarded proportionally based on the number of votes "your" candidates receive collectively, every opportunity you can take to create ballots that will be "wasted" increases your voting power.

That's very true.

Twenty people could list Xenuria first on their ballot, and if 5000 people list Xenuria tenth on their ballot, it doesn't matter, because Xenuria will have been eliminated well before that point.

One can assume that the non-organized voters will be placing their candidates all over the place in their rankings, and the more people for them to choose from, the more random and haphazard that becomes.

The strength of the STV system really only occurs in the first four or five rankings. If some dude is ranked in mostly equal distribution from first to fourteenth, they'll likely be eliminated fairly soon in the process. before any later ballots can make a difference for them.

Me too, and its what accounted for about half my votes last election.

I'd be interested to hear if Poe actually realises this or not...