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The voting reform discussion

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Yeep
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#321 - 2012-09-19 12:16:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Yeep
Frying Doom wrote:

Your previous statement which are now to numerous to easily list refute this point.


Let me tell you a story about a guy we'll call Dying Froom.

One day Dying Froom goes to his doctor and is tragically diagnosed with cancer. Dying Froom believes strongly in homeopathy so he asks his doctor for a homeopathic cure. His doctor patiently explains that homeopathy has been scientifically proven not to work and points him to a number of studies to that effect. Dying Froom however is adament that homeopathy will cure his cancer and eventually the doctor has to give up because there is no effective treatment he can ethically reccommend that Dying Froom will accept.

Dying Froom leaves his doctor furious, what do doctors know about medicine anyway. If doctors don't believe in homeopathy they must all be stupid, and the scientists too. They must all be brainwashed into saying that homeopathy is fake, or paid off in some massive conspiracy. So Dying Froom goes on the internet and loudly denounces doctors and scientists because what do they know? He builds a massive pile of assumptions and falsehoods so that he can continue to believe that homeopathy actually works. At no point does he consider he possibility he might just be wrong. Eventually he dies of cancer.

Can you spot the parallels here?
Artctura
SUNDERING
Goonswarm Federation
#322 - 2012-09-19 12:17:18 UTC
Frying Doom wrote:

ok I will make the answer easy
1, given burn Jita showed few read the forums, check emails and the splash screens were a joke and the CSM has been mostly null for years, so how do people learn what it is and why they should care to vote.

2. the 3 buttons require more work to randomly vote than to just abstain and when I said the whole game voted I was meaning if they were to chose candidates that represent what they want not a big list of names click one.


1. Voter education can only go so far. People have to WANT to learn. This is a game. This is a game that a lot of people have boiled down to log in, run mission, log off. That's their entertainment. No matter how much "education" you try and put in front of them, they are never going to care. It just doesn't matter to them. They will never read forums, they will never read about candidates and they will never change until something hits home. Considering a majority of the changes (Both good and bad) have been targeted at null sec, and the fact that the CSM itself originated out of a null sec incident, it makes sense that these players are interested and paying attention. You can't make them care, no matter how hard you try.

2. If I put an uneducated voter in a booth that they are forced to be in, they will pick names ahead of not voting. They want to be on some bandwagon, even if they don't have a clue which one they were actually on. Don't believe me? Wait for the U.S. Presidential election in a few weeks. Pick any random county. Without a doubt people will be FAR more educated on the presidential election then any other race, but you'll find things like "Local Agricultural Commissioner" have almost nearly the same number of votes as the presidential race. The number who abstain, even though it is an option, is incredibly small relative to the number who cast random votes. A random system does not make things better.

Artctura for CSM 2013
Lord Zim
Gallente Federation
#323 - 2012-09-19 13:04:03 UTC
Frying Doom wrote:
Yes I will admit having something specific to rage about does make the average peasant care and with Hi-sec nerfs inbound they probably will care more.

Enough to get them off their boring incursion and mission runs or their movies while they mine, no idea. It will help if they are given relevant info so they will know what to do other than coming to the forums bitching how this is unfair and rage quitting.

If they start to care, they'll start to actually read the plethora of information which is already there. If they don't care, they'll continue to ignore the plethora of information which is already there.

If you start forcing them to vote before they care, they'll just abstain (which is exactly what they're doing now, implicitly), stop logging in or just select a random guy just to get it over with. If you implement the abstain/vote now/later mechanism in the client after they've started caring, you'll have much more of an effect, but I would suggest that it isn't a prerequisite for actually getting in the client. Personally I find the client updating annoying enough (especially when I have to get in quickly to save a super or something), if I don't have to click specific buttons to vote as well.

Cyno's lit, bridge is up, but one pilot won't be jumping home.

RIP Vile Rat
Sirane Elrek
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#324 - 2012-09-19 13:16:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Sirane Elrek
Frying Doom wrote:
How do governments the world over do it? Education.

Governments the world over tell their supporters "go and vote for us or the other guy (who by the way is literally Hitle‌r incarnate) gets in".
Frying Doom
#325 - 2012-09-19 14:25:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Frying Doom
Sirane Elrek wrote:
Frying Doom wrote:
How do governments the world over do it? Education.

Governments the world over tell their supporters "go and vote for us or the other guy (who by the way is literally Hitle‌r incarnate) gets in".

I thought he had already been on the CSMSmile

Any spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors are because frankly, I don't care!!
CCP Xhagen
C C P
C C P Alliance
#326 - 2012-09-19 14:26:22 UTC
Snow Axe wrote:
Voting systems? Seriously?

Nothing like trying to come up with a solution when you can't even clearly identify what the problem is.

Bluntly put, but I believe it is accurate.

Having mulled on this for a few days (I must apologize, but I'm a slow thinker), I want to respond in general to what the problem is and throw in a new idea (supplied to me by mister CCP Veritas (whom is exceptionally brilliant)).

- Problem one: voter turnout. I think we've established how we can address educating the voters. The actual act of voting is something that I want to keep out of the client, but I'll push for a solution to the problem where opening eve pages (forums, eve gate, etc.) in the ingame browser does not have you logged in there that give us a better idea of how the voters (not all EVE players, voters) want the CSM to be.

- Problem two: representation on the CSM. CCP Veritas pointed out the error in my thinking, what I want is not actually fair representation of ALL EVE players, but of THOSE WHO VOTE (it follows from there that the more people that vote, the better representation we get). The current voting system is sufficient, but there are many vastly better systems out there.

So, I want to bring your attention to this one (thanks CCP Veritas!), the 'Schulze method'. Basically a preference ranking method of individual choices. It would also mean that people could put between one and fourteen people in a ranked order. It does not transfer any votes, it simply ranks the candidates based on how many people choose them and in what order.

- Problem three: bloc voting. Not a problem in my eyes. If large numbers of people organize themselves, they will get better results than those who do not.

- Problem four: designating chairs for specific things on the CSM. I still maintain my opinion of this not being a good approach to the CSM. Again I state that I want things to come from the players. If CCP starts to dictate who runs, for what, who says what and things like that, the CSM stops serving its purpose. If there are 5 null sec people are elected, that is a message in itself.

Anything I'm forgetting?

CCP Xhagen | Associate Producer | @strangelocation
Frying Doom
#327 - 2012-09-19 14:40:10 UTC
Yeep wrote:
Frying Doom wrote:

Your previous statement which are now to numerous to easily list refute this point.


Let me tell you a story about a guy we'll call Dying Froom.

One day Dying Froom goes to his doctor and is tragically diagnosed with cancer. Dying Froom believes strongly in homeopathy so he asks his doctor for a homeopathic cure. His doctor patiently explains that homeopathy has been scientifically proven not to work and points him to a number of studies to that effect. Dying Froom however is adament that homeopathy will cure his cancer and eventually the doctor has to give up because there is no effective treatment he can ethically reccommend that Dying Froom will accept.

Dying Froom leaves his doctor furious, what do doctors know about medicine anyway. If doctors don't believe in homeopathy they must all be stupid, and the scientists too. They must all be brainwashed into saying that homeopathy is fake, or paid off in some massive conspiracy. So Dying Froom goes on the internet and loudly denounces doctors and scientists because what do they know? He builds a massive pile of assumptions and falsehoods so that he can continue to believe that homeopathy actually works. At no point does he consider he possibility he might just be wrong. Eventually he dies of cancer.

Can you spot the parallels here?

And we are back to your original point"Have you considered the possibility that "the rest of the Goons" are actually smart people and independently came to a conclusion, and its different to the one that you came to because you are not so smart?"

And the answer in your case is "even posts score higher on the IQ tests."

Any spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors are because frankly, I don't care!!
Tairon Usaro
G-Fleet Alpha
#328 - 2012-09-19 14:45:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Tairon Usaro
CSM dominated by power blocks ?
Simple solution: Belgium approach, pop-up for casting a vote after login on the char screen and lock the damn thing until the vote is casted.

the problem are not the 15% who voted, the problem are 85% who did not.

Beside that, more transparency on who performed how in the current and past CSMs. It should be evident for us voters, who filled his election promises and who did not. So maybe a performance summary given by CCP should be available before the next election period detailing the contributions and votings of individual CSM members
Artctura
SUNDERING
Goonswarm Federation
#329 - 2012-09-19 14:48:24 UTC
CCP Xhagen wrote:
Snow Axe wrote:
Voting systems? Seriously?

Nothing like trying to come up with a solution when you can't even clearly identify what the problem is.

Bluntly put, but I believe it is accurate.

Having mulled on this for a few days (I must apologize, but I'm a slow thinker), I want to respond in general to what the problem is and throw in a new idea (supplied to me by mister CCP Veritas (whom is exceptionally brilliant)).

- Problem one: voter turnout. I think we've established how we can address educating the voters. The actual act of voting is something that I want to keep out of the client, but I'll push for a solution to the problem where opening eve pages (forums, eve gate, etc.) in the ingame browser does not have you logged in there that give us a better idea of how the voters (not all EVE players, voters) want the CSM to be.


Provided that we don't force uneducated voters to vote, I agree. More information and more dispersion of the CSM, what it does and doesn't do, and where people can go to find out more about the candidates is never, EVER a bad thing.

Quote:

- Problem two: representation on the CSM. CCP Veritas pointed out the error in my thinking, what I want is not actually fair representation of ALL EVE players, but of THOSE WHO VOTE (it follows from there that the more people that vote, the better representation we get). The current voting system is sufficient, but there are many vastly better systems out there.

So, I want to bring your attention to this one (thanks CCP Veritas!), the 'Schulze method'. Basically a preference ranking method of individual choices. It would also mean that people could put between one and fourteen people in a ranked order. It does not transfer any votes, it simply ranks the candidates based on how many people choose them and in what order.


It is a definite improvement over the existing method, but it also requires even more education when you put it in front of someone. Since we're already dealing with a large voter group that is already disinterested, I'm not sure it would work. It is however far fairer then what we currently have and far fairer then the Candidate Transferable Vote system the CSM was touting at the beginning of all of this. I would not oppose this, provided that voters didn't just get a list of candidates with no clue as to what preference represented.

Quote:

- Problem three: bloc voting. Not a problem in my eyes. If large numbers of people organize themselves, they will get better results than those who do not.


Good to hear. If anything, the large blocs tend to under represent themselves in the existing system. See my post a few pages back for an explanation, but suffice to say taking aim at these blocs is not the solution to the problem.

Quote:

- Problem four: designating chairs for specific things on the CSM. I still maintain my opinion of this not being a good approach to the CSM. Again I state that I want things to come from the players. If CCP starts to dictate who runs, for what, who says what and things like that, the CSM stops serving its purpose. If there are 5 null sec people are elected, that is a message in itself.

Anything I'm forgetting?


And this is why the workings of the CSM need to be more exposed. It's where people on the CSM need to recuse themselves. If I was ever on the CSM, I couldn't talk to high sec mission running. I don't do it. I've never done it. I shouldn't even THINK of forming an opinion on it. The developers don't know my history, so I would need to be responsible for that. This is where the CSM itself needs to take initiative. Right now, I don't know if the jump bridge nerf was approved by a bunch of CSM members who have never seen a jump bridge. I don't know if a bunch of null sec CSM members agreed to it and pushed it. It's things like this that make people feel their underrepresented. I was a high sec miner for a long time. I can speak to that. Even though I live in null sec now, I have that history. And that's what needs to be explained. Just because people live in null, doesn't mean they are out of touch with things in low or high. But I think all of this goes back to your point on voter education and awareness.

Artctura for CSM 2013
Frying Doom
#330 - 2012-09-19 14:48:39 UTC  |  Edited by: Frying Doom
CCP Xhagen wrote:
Snow Axe wrote:
Voting systems? Seriously?

Nothing like trying to come up with a solution when you can't even clearly identify what the problem is.

Bluntly put, but I believe it is accurate.

Having mulled on this for a few days (I must apologize, but I'm a slow thinker), I want to respond in general to what the problem is and throw in a new idea (supplied to me by mister CCP Veritas (whom is exceptionally brilliant)).

- Problem one: voter turnout. I think we've established how we can address educating the voters. The actual act of voting is something that I want to keep out of the client, but I'll push for a solution to the problem where opening eve pages (forums, eve gate, etc.) in the ingame browser does not have you logged in there that give us a better idea of how the voters (not all EVE players, voters) want the CSM to be.

- Problem two: representation on the CSM. CCP Veritas pointed out the error in my thinking, what I want is not actually fair representation of ALL EVE players, but of THOSE WHO VOTE (it follows from there that the more people that vote, the better representation we get). The current voting system is sufficient, but there are many vastly better systems out there.

So, I want to bring your attention to this one (thanks CCP Veritas!), the 'Schulze method'. Basically a preference ranking method of individual choices. It would also mean that people could put between one and fourteen people in a ranked order. It does not transfer any votes, it simply ranks the candidates based on how many people choose them and in what order.

- Problem three: bloc voting. Not a problem in my eyes. If large numbers of people organize themselves, they will get better results than those who do not.

- Problem four: designating chairs for specific things on the CSM. I still maintain my opinion of this not being a good approach to the CSM. Again I state that I want things to come from the players. If CCP starts to dictate who runs, for what, who says what and things like that, the CSM stops serving its purpose. If there are 5 null sec people are elected, that is a message in itself.

Anything I'm forgetting?

Could you go into specifics on education this has been a rather long thread as well as better detail on the ingame browser, sorry its almost 1am here and the sentence lost me.

I personally would prefer the current voting method to the Schulze method, mainly due to the increased learning curve required to teach the apathetic, vote for this guy is easier.

The main thing I would like to say is on "If there are 5 null sec people are elected, that is a message in itself. "
As yes it would mean Null sec is better organized as is the nature of Null sec and that is really all it would tell you oh and that they are about 1/5 the votersBig smile

Any spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors are because frankly, I don't care!!
Bloodpetal
Tir Capital Management Group
#331 - 2012-09-19 14:49:55 UTC  |  Edited by: Bloodpetal
Reading over Schulze method.

It seems a well thought out system with less gamable options.

I.e. if everyone puts preference #1 for all people, then they've just nullified their vote. etc.

Major issues :

It's a relatively complicated voting system and might confuse some people.
It will take more time and thought so might deter some people. (I know, I hate humanity on these things)


How do you present the candidates in a "fair" way without setting a biased order to them?

I.e. I go down the list of 40 candidates, and I mark Candidate 5 as my #1, but I go down and then at the bottom i find my sincere most preferred dude, but now I have already put my main preference. So, I have to go back to the first one and change that preference, etc. And that's an inherent bias.


I don't think we need "Chairs" either. I think you need platforms for people to focus their attention on while voting but, you don't seem interested in this.

Where I am.
Artctura
SUNDERING
Goonswarm Federation
#332 - 2012-09-19 14:51:16 UTC
Tairon Usaro wrote:
CSM dominated by power blocks ?
Simple solution: Belgium approach, pop-up for casting a vote after login on the char screen and lock the damn thing until the vote is casted.

the problem are not the 15% who voted, the problem are 85% who did not.

Beside that, more transparency on who performed how in the current and past CSMs. It should be evident for us voters, who filled his election promises and who did not. So maybe a performance summary given by CCP should be available before the next election period.




And I want my candy bar, so I'm going to randomly click and get right to the candy bar. This will just generate a complete random result. At that point we might as well pick CSM members out of a hat.

Artctura for CSM 2013
CCP Xhagen
C C P
C C P Alliance
#333 - 2012-09-19 14:54:49 UTC
Frying Doom wrote:
CCP Xhagen wrote:
Snow Axe wrote:
Voting systems? Seriously?

Nothing like trying to come up with a solution when you can't even clearly identify what the problem is.

Bluntly put, but I believe it is accurate.

Having mulled on this for a few days (I must apologize, but I'm a slow thinker), I want to respond in general to what the problem is and throw in a new idea (supplied to me by mister CCP Veritas (whom is exceptionally brilliant)).

- Problem one: voter turnout. I think we've established how we can address educating the voters. The actual act of voting is something that I want to keep out of the client, but I'll push for a solution to the problem where opening eve pages (forums, eve gate, etc.) in the ingame browser does not have you logged in there that give us a better idea of how the voters (not all EVE players, voters) want the CSM to be.

Could you go into specifics on education this has been a rather long thread as well as better detail on the ingame browser, sorry its almost 1am here and the sentence lost me.

I personally would prefer the current voting method to the Schulze method.

The main thing I would like to say is on "If there are 5 null sec people are elected, that is a message in itself. "
As yes it would mean Null sec is better organized as is the nature of Null sec and that is really all it would tell you oh and that they are about 1/5 the votersBig smile

Educating the voters with more information available to them, advertising the existence of the CSM, more easily digested method of delivering the information (e.g. video blogs at the end of summits summarizing the outcome) etc.
Regarding the ingame browser. It is easier to direct people to the ingame browser rather than having an ingame utility built specifically for the CSM. Currently it is a problem that you are not signed into forums.eveonline.com when you open that page in the ingame browser. If that can be resolved, posting a link to someone in chat saying 'hey go vote!' and he or she just clicks that link and voilah! they can vote is powerful.

CCP Xhagen | Associate Producer | @strangelocation
CCP Xhagen
C C P
C C P Alliance
#334 - 2012-09-19 14:58:29 UTC
Bloodpetal wrote:
Reading over Schulze method.

It seems a well thought out system with less gamable options.

I.e. if everyone puts preference #1 for all people, then they've just nullified their vote. etc.

Major issues :

It's a relatively complicated voting system and might confuse some people.
It will take more time and thought so might deter some people. (I know, I hate humanity on these things)

How do you present the candidates in a "fair" way without setting a biased order to them?

I.e. I go down the list of 40 candidates, and I mark Candidate 5 as my #1, but I go down and then at the bottom i find my sincere most preferred dude, but now I have already put my main preference. So, I have to go back to the first one and change that preference, etc. And that's an inherent bias.

I'd call that more a problem of choice. You could choose to just select one, or just select three (because you know them) or the full fourteen member council.

That way you could also say "I voted for a council that I want to see with the proper distribution of talents/experts"

CCP Xhagen | Associate Producer | @strangelocation
Frying Doom
#335 - 2012-09-19 15:00:03 UTC
CCP Xhagen wrote:
Frying Doom wrote:
CCP Xhagen wrote:
Snow Axe wrote:
Voting systems? Seriously?

Nothing like trying to come up with a solution when you can't even clearly identify what the problem is.

Bluntly put, but I believe it is accurate.

Having mulled on this for a few days (I must apologize, but I'm a slow thinker), I want to respond in general to what the problem is and throw in a new idea (supplied to me by mister CCP Veritas (whom is exceptionally brilliant)).

- Problem one: voter turnout. I think we've established how we can address educating the voters. The actual act of voting is something that I want to keep out of the client, but I'll push for a solution to the problem where opening eve pages (forums, eve gate, etc.) in the ingame browser does not have you logged in there that give us a better idea of how the voters (not all EVE players, voters) want the CSM to be.

Could you go into specifics on education this has been a rather long thread as well as better detail on the ingame browser, sorry its almost 1am here and the sentence lost me.

I personally would prefer the current voting method to the Schulze method.

The main thing I would like to say is on "If there are 5 null sec people are elected, that is a message in itself. "
As yes it would mean Null sec is better organized as is the nature of Null sec and that is really all it would tell you oh and that they are about 1/5 the votersBig smile

Educating the voters with more information available to them, advertising the existence of the CSM, more easily digested method of delivering the information (e.g. video blogs at the end of summits summarizing the outcome) etc.
Regarding the ingame browser. It is easier to direct people to the ingame browser rather than having an ingame utility built specifically for the CSM. Currently it is a problem that you are not signed into forums.eveonline.com when you open that page in the ingame browser. If that can be resolved, posting a link to someone in chat saying 'hey go vote!' and he or she just clicks that link and voilah! they can vote is powerful.

Thanks for the speedy response and yeah if the in-game browser had that ability that would be awesome.

As to the first point, I agree advertise the existence and purpose of the CSM to the masses Smile

Any spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors are because frankly, I don't care!!
Poetic Stanziel
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#336 - 2012-09-19 15:01:23 UTC
Lord Zim wrote:
From my perspective, the problem isn't education per se, it's the fact people don't give a ****.
People don't give a ****, because they don't know why they should give a ****.
Artctura
SUNDERING
Goonswarm Federation
#337 - 2012-09-19 15:04:44 UTC
Frying Doom wrote:

Thanks for the speedy response and yeah if the in-game browser had that ability that would be awesome.

As to the first point, I agree advertise the existence and purpose of the CSM to the masses Smile


There would need to be improvements to the IGB for this to be viable, particularly on the identification and verification realm. The issues with this right now are not topical to this discussion, so I'll refrain from expressing them here, but suffice to say, it would not work as things are written right now.

Artctura for CSM 2013
Prince Kobol
#338 - 2012-09-19 15:07:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Prince Kobol
I do not see any issue with the current voting system.

The major issue is that approx 85% of Eve players do not vote / do not care about the CSM.

This is what should be discussed and investigated as to why after all these years Eve players still do not bother to vote.

I am damn sure that if at least 50% of the players in Eve voted then the issue of Bloc voting would become much less of an issue simply because the bloc votes would have only a small share where as now they have a considerable share of the vote.

I have yet to see any CSM or CCP for that tackle this issue head on.

Of course some people (myself included) would say that the current members (and maybe some previous members) of the CSM do not want more people to vote as it would make it much more difficult for themselves and others in their power to win seats on the CSM.

As for CCP's apparent lack off effort to find out and understand why the vast majority of Eve players couldn't care less about the CSM, one can only surmise that the CSM is of little important to spend the time and effort required to investigate this issue.

I for one much prefer prefer both CCP and CSM to stop talking about fixing something which isn't broken and actually deal with issue of players not caring enough to vote in the first place.
Yeep
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#339 - 2012-09-19 15:16:01 UTC
Frying Doom wrote:

And we are back to your original point"Have you considered the possibility that "the rest of the Goons" are actually smart people and independently came to a conclusion, and its different to the one that you came to because you are not so smart?"

And the answer in your case is "even posts score higher on the IQ tests."


So everybody who disagrees with you is stupid because they disagree with you because you're smart because you're you and you know you're smart so you can't be wrong.

Right? Or is my IQ too low and I'm missing something?
Scooter McCabe
Thunderwaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#340 - 2012-09-19 15:24:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Scooter McCabe
If you have no problem with having large power blocs vote and win because they are better organized, then you shouldn't have a problem with the current voting system. The current voting system reflects that. It also have the virtues of being transparent and can be trusted. If CCP tinkers with it and voting results now have to be explained using an algebraic formula that transparency and trust is going to be lost, whether or not vote rigging and manipulation occurs dishonestly. It will be because the new system will inherently have that. In order to destroy any governing body all that is needed is the death of trust. No one is going to trust a CSM based on this "new and better" system. Nor would trust survive long if suddenly the CSM made this matter a closed door event shutting out the EVE community:

Quote:
Alekseyev Karrde:
"All this threadnought has accomplished has derailed any hope of public discussion and provided encouragement for CSM/CCP to figure things out ourselves. This despite several attempts from several different CSM, yes including me a bunch, to get the "OP says **** Goons" crowd to accept when they've made a good point successfully and let things move on so a better proposal than the initial one can be developed.“


Likewise candidates or CSM members pettifogging their desire to disenfranchise one group or groups of voters in the name of greater representation, begs the question as to their fitness to lead and if their healthcare provider covers mental health checks. There should be no reality where 75% of the votes get outweighed by 25%, there should not be a "Participation Award" atmosphere surrounding the CSM.

Quote:
Trebor Daehdoow:
“Over the past few CSM elections, it has become increasingly clear that the simple "vote for one candidate" election system should be revisited in the hopes of finding a system that produces a CSM that better represents the electorate (ie: those members of the community who care enough to vote).

In the most recent election, for example, almost 25% of the votes were cast for candidates who did not win election to the CSM. These lost "undervotes", coupled with the fact that some candidates have increasingly overwhelming information and organizational advantages, threatens to effectively disenfranchise a significant portion of the electorate.

Since it is in everyone's long-term interest for the CSM to broadly represent the electorate, a strong case can be made that the election system should be reformed. CSM elections should not only be fair, but should be seen to be fair."


When you start tinkering and decide one vote is worth more than the other get ready to disenfranchise a lot of people. I remember one great example of a voting system that decided a person's vote only counted as Three Fifths of a vote. Certainly that would get your other 25% the clout they need and render any notion of a democratically elected CSM a punchline at FanFests yet to come.

Here is what I propose for the voting system:

1. Have CCP and the CSM create a voter education campaign.

2. Have CCP make login banners to advertise the upcoming election.

3. Get the DEVs to do candidate spolights and interviews.

4. CCP can make a voting screen players have to complete before they can log in.

5. Stay with the current voting system and enjoy increased voter turnout, everyone is represented and the problem is solved.

Now as for the politicking, deal making and actual campaigning leave that to the players. Anything else and its going to take away from the sandbox we love to claim is unique to EVE. Going a step further I will share some advice having volunteered in Real Life political campaigns: be prepared to make deals to gain votes, be prepared to compromise on your platform, be prepared to step aside so a more electable candidate has a shot. Also if your that worried that your position is in jeopardy on the CSM as yourself would it be if you actually did your job representing the EVE community.