Jita Park Speakers Corner

from http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2013/04/dont-be-ashamed-to-strategic-vote.html

Don't be ashamed to strategic vote.

Unlike last year, the nullsec blocs are trying to get as many candidates onto the CSM as possible. There are certainly some strong nullsec candidates, and they'll certainly be voted onto the council. Kesper North. Sort Dragon. Mynnna. Banlish. Korvin. These people deserve to be on the CSM. They'll very likely serve the CSM well.

But there are also some terrible and weak nullsec candidates. The only way to avoid these people being on the council is for non-bloc candidates to vote strategically. Give those players without blocs behind them the best chance of adding their voice the council.

The best way to counteract the voting strategy of the nullsec blocs is to not vote nullsec bloc candidates. Plain and simple.

My voting ballot will be as follows:

Psychotic Monk
Ripard Teg
corebloodbrothers
Unforgiven Storm
Mangala Solaris
Ali Aras
Malcanis
Riverini
Steve Ronuken
Roc Wieler
Mike Azariah
Nathan Jameson

That's twelve people. I may toss on another two at the bottom, I'm not sure. The overall list of non-bloc candidates is kind of slim this year. Feel free to take this list, arrange it in whatever order you want, and if you do want a full-slate of fourteen candidates, toss in another three candidates of your choice.

I may wait a couple days before voting, wait for the bloc ballots to leak. See where their candidates are ranked. If Korvin, for instance, is ranked low on their lists, then I'll probably add him to my ballot.

I'm not anti-nullsec. far from it. I certainly want to see five or six nullsec candidates on the CSM, representing all their varying viewpoints. I just don't want to see a nullsec-bloc dominated CSM.

A strong CSM will have voices and opinions from the entire playerbase. The best opportunity for that to happen is to counteract the nullsec voting strategy, their desire to dominate CSM8. Vote non-nullsec this election.

How about if you vote you get a special NEX "I voted in CSM8" T-Shirt?
Better yet: A FREE PONY

How about a free pony that is sporting a Quafe T-shirt?

Also the pony has a tattoo on its butt of the candidate you voted for.

A lot of people will not vote because they don't know any (or most) of the candidates, and as such feel that they can't make a worthwhile choice. Eespecially since trying to read up on 31 candidates is just too much work.

It is especially for these people that I run Vote Match. Vote Match makes it a lot easier for people to make a more informed choice and find candidates that would suit them well. This does require people to know about Vote Match, so spread the word!

It's also a lack of suitable candidates. I live in low-sec and it seems there's nobody left on the final ballot who even pretends to represent me so really there's no reason for me to vote this time.

There is an easy way to get a large percentage of EvE to vote.

Send an ingame mail with the link of the voting page

With a list of the candidates on it and a description of them.

have a paragraph about how important the CSM is

And then tell them that failure to vote makes you a traitor, and subsequently you will have a billion isk bounty placed on your head if you fail to vote.

Easy fixed.

While that is of course true I think a lot of people just don't care enough about the CSM to do a detailed analysis of all the candidates in order to find out who they dislike least, especially seeing that even when there were low-sec people on the CSM they couldn't / didn't prevent things like the removal of static 2/10 plexes or FW farming. That said, some changes to low-sec were certainly nice (the removal of GCC comes to mind) but at least to me it's not clear whether the CSM had anything to do with that.

Anyway, I'm not here to complain, just saying that there are reasons for ignoring the elections other than not knowing about them.

I think perhaps in order to generate more awareness/interest of the CSM for the next cycle, the profile of the CSM should be a little higher.

Yes, I know the minutes are available, and yes, the members get funky little tags on their forum pictures, but, we know that it is only a small number of players who frequent the forums, and with regard to the minutes, how many people read their local council minutes IRL, or watch the political party conferences? (Apart from for the comedic moments in some countries of course!)

The profile of the CSM, and awareness of WTF it is they actually do, is very low for the majority of players. This leads to the (possibly incorrect) assumption that the CSM is useless, if they are aware that it exists at all.

Raising the profile is something that is mostly in CCPs court, although OOG eve-related sites can do their part (as many have during this election cycle).

As IRL, people usually need to feel like the candidates represent them, and for many it seems like a popularity contest, where the big names get in, and the individual vote matters little.

My ideal would be an "anonymous" platform, where the candidates names are not shown, and their platform is presented in a similar way to the "Candidate comparison" we had this time round. This would remove the problem of "I am not voting for X because I don't like their alliance", and would perhaps prevent some candidates with weak platforms getting elected based purely on their affiliation.

I know this suggestion is open to the problem of someone writing their platform so that it is obvious who they are, but, there are ways around that.

Since the STV is an australian thing, I suggest that we adopt australian tactics to drive turnout.

Fine each account that doesn't vote 10% of NAV

Bonus: huge ISK sink!

Instant support.

@darmwand: so you're sure the CSM is at fault for things you dont like but you doubt they had anything to do with the things you do like. Ooook....

@Doom: That white paper langage was added in this years rewrite. Take guesses as to why.