Jita Park Speakers Corner

Uh... okay. Your complaint seems to be based on a gross misunderstanding of how the system works, so let's clarify that first. You do not have to put 14 candidates on the ballot, you only have to put up to 14. If there are only one or two that you like, that's fine - you can do that, and your ballot is just as legitimate as someone's with a full roster.

However, here's a bit of extra voting strategy to consider. The purpose of the STV system (at a very high concept level) is to ensure that votes are not wasted, and this is achieved by splitting extra votes that a candidate receives above and beyond what's needed to get elected amongst those listed below them on any ballot in which they appear. For example, say in a round of voting I appear as the first choice on a thousand ballots but the requirement to get a seat is only 500 votes. In that case, Alice, Bob and Charlie, who appear 250, 250 and 500 times (respectively) as a second preference on those ballots that had me first would each get some extra votes - a quarter per ballot for Alice and Bob (so 250 each), and a half for Charlie (or 500 each).

What this means is that if you have only a few candidates listed on your ballot, some or all of your vote may wind up wasting itself. That's especially true if one or both of your supported candidates gets eliminated early on. Not so different from the older voting system (pick one guy, top 14 vote counts win) in that regard, but STV does let you do something more about it - read on.

It's rare for any one person to accomplish something singlehandedly on the CSM. More often they have to present the issue to their peers in an appeal for support, to explain what the problem is & how and why it should be fixed. This is true and necessary even if their peers did not previously have an opinion on or experience with the matter - remember "no experience or opinion with" is by no means automatically equivalent to "opposed to".

So with that in mind, some best-practices advice: Look at the candidates in the running beyond the two you support. Decide if they seem the open minded type who are willing to look beyond their own past experience, look into what they're saying, and hell, just ask them about your concerns - you may find yourself surprised. Once you've done that, list at least two or three of them on your ballot as well. Your primary two are the folks you're counting on to represent your issues to CCP, while the rest are the ones you count on to lend support to your primary reps... or if all else fails and your primary reps aren't elected, they're the ones you count on to be open minded enough to consider issues from the community, even if they've got no experience or opinion.

And regardless of how you choose to vote or who you choose to vote for, remember that none of us can read your mind. You might have a unique outlook on a particular matter you want addressed, and unless you drop in and tell your representative(s) about it, it's entirely possible that they'll never know about it no matter how well you think they represent your interests.

One game, one sandbox, one true leader