Jita Park Speakers Corner

You have it all wrong. By putting forward this proposal they are motivating thousands to make sure they vote in the next CSM exection. Though I am afraid it may not be for what or whom they expected.

But the idea was to make sure people were voting for them.

Sounds like someone forgot to specify to the electoral systems genie what they wanted ~

The reality mindedd will observe that it's a failure on both accounts. All the goons are here (and not enough of the ***goons), and now all of us are aware of this.

You can be anti-goon and be against idiotic proposals. They're not mutually exclusive.

Glad to see you coming around to the CORRECT way of thinking.

Let's show how increased voter turnout affected CSM7 compared to CSM6.

(This is part of a post I'm writing, but it seemed worthwhile to post it as a separate bit here on the forums.)

One major complaint of the CSM election process are the voting blocs. This was an especially loud complaint during CSM6, where nullsec candidates took ten of the fourteen available CSM seats.

I don’t personally see voting blocs as a problem. If you're a group that is motivated and well-organized, you're going to dominate any election. Motivation and organization are two traits that should be encouraged. We want to see people passionate about the political process. We should want to see the number of voters increase, year-by-year. For those concerned with organized voting blocs, the only legitimate way to dilute their voting power is by adding more voters to the process.

Let's do some CSM6 and CSM7 comparisons. CSM7 did see a substantial increase in voting numbers, so we should expect to see the voting bloc influence somewhat diluted.

For CSM6, 49096 votes were cast out of 344533 eligible accounts. 26366 votes were cast for nullsec candidates, or 53.7% of the total vote.

CSM7 saw an increase of 10000 voters, up to 59109 out of 355436 eligible accounts. 24695 votes were cast for nullsec candidates, or 41.8% of the total vote.

The larger voting blocs were still able to push their candidates into CSM seats, but we saw a marked dilution of their vote, as candidates with smaller bases won seats. The increase in voter turnout tended to favour non-nullsec candidates. In the end, nullsec did not dominate the final results, only garnering six of the fourteen available spots (a loss of four seats from CSM6.) Of areas of the game that saw new and renewed representation, industry got their candidate in Issler Dainze, faction warfare got their candidate in Hans Jagerblitzen, mercenaries and pirates got Alekseyev Karrde, highsec got Kelduum Revaan, wormholes got Two Step, and the everyman got Trebor.

As you can see, dilution of voting blocs can only continue as long as voter participation continues to increase. That should be where the CSM focuses its efforts. Not on artificial ways to disenfranchise voters (i.e. voting reform), but through increasing actual democracy. The more voters, the more varied the representation will be.

I don't see a problem with CFC maintaining a presence on the CSM. They are, without a doubt, one of the more significant and representative group of null sec players. And, under any proposed voting system, a CFC member is always likely to win a seat.

However, I do not believe that it should be necessary or advisable for CFC to hold 3 seats, just to establish their presence and present their game issues. One seat should be sufficient.

After all, CSM is not intended to be a voting body, in of itself, and the CSM should not be allowed to internally prioritize issues presented to CCP, according to the private agendas of specific CSM members. The lobbyist and political party system doesn't work all that well in the US, with regards to optimally and efficiently prioritizing government resources, according to the benefit of the US population as a whole - I don't see why we, or CCP, would want to copy such a failure here.

So, let's hypothesize a situation where all of the CSM seats were held by CFC members, who (not TheMittani) happened to be dumb enough to try to push a CFC-specific agenda down CCP's throat. And, let's assume that CCP was actually dumb enough to think that the CFC-specific agenda represented the wishes of the entire playerbase and made sweeping changes to the game based on this agenda.

The net result? You'd end up with about 5,000 happy players, and about 10,000 vocally pissed off unsubs, plus another 100,000+ WTF unsubs. Note, too, that I said only 5,000 happy players, because I suspect that a good chunk of the CFC would actually be among the WTF unsubs, after they realize how unbalanced - and boring - the game has become because CCP was dumb enough to overly bias the game in their favor.

In order to keep the game fun and challenging, there has to be a balance, not a bias. The game needs to constantly change to attract new and different players to *all* aspects of the game, not just null sec PVP (or any other single game style). After all, if no one bothered to mine, run missions, or haul stuff around, there would be no targets of opportunity for ganking... and we'd lose a colorful and entertaining part of what makes Eve our game of choice.

If I were a ruling member of the CFC, I'd actually be pushing to get a carebear representative on the CSM, rather than 3 CFC members. I'd want the carebear issues to be heard and properly addressed by CCP, so that they keep on playing and provide me and mine with more targets to shoot and tears to harvest, whenever we want to run amok through high sec. After all, if the only decent players remaining in the game are all in the CFC, who would there be around worthy enough to be properly spanked?

The CFC has never held 3 seats, nor could we. As Trebor well knows, a significant chunk of Mittani's votes came from outside the CFC which could not be allocated "perfectly". Much of what Trebor has said is deliberate half-truths designed to obscure what's going on.

In addition, we do not elect "a CFC representative". If we have qualified people we want to put up for election, we have as much right to have them compete for votes on a level playing field with everyone else.

Its almost as if Goonswarm is an alliance of smart people who all vote for other smart people because they have good ideas.

Perhaps instead of regional constituencies we should do IQ constituencies. I mean there are really really stupid people who play Eve and we can't have them underrepresented on the CSM.

No man, 48% of American voters were disenfranchised in the 2008 election because their guy didn't win.

Thread still useless, CSM still useless.