EVE General Discussion

hahaha. Oh, you're serious?

So you're saying that 3 candidates from New York, 1 from Washington, 1 from Texas and 1 from Hawaii, none representing any specific party or policy - voted for by the people who "could be bothered" - using a moronic clickfest - governing the entire US (and to some extents the entire world stage) - could be considered a democracy? All other states and POV's are not even in the mix. (eg: Why would someone in Alaska vote for some dude they don't know in Hawaii?)

I think some people ought to learn what a democracy is first. The VOTING bit is the no-brainer. The process on WHO get's to be voted for is what constitutes a proper democracy.

The current selection system is epic-fail.

Those who chose not to cast a valid vote have made the decision to cede their electoral power to those who choose to cast valid votes. Therefor, if 14% of the populace cast valid votes, the other 86% voted to abide by the votes of those 14%. There was no evidence of intimidation, voter fraud, harassment at the polls or any other reason for not voting other than "I don't want to vote."

If you're not invested in the game enough to click ~3 buttons, that's fine. Don't come crying to the forums when your interests aren't represented.

If you did vote and your candidate lost, don't come crying to the forums that you lost. That's how democracy works.

In Real Life, candidates and parties run massive voter registration drives, get out the vote rallies, they have volunteers carrying umbrellas if it rains. Part of campaigning is making your candidate attractive enough to get people to get out of bed.
That's true in the CSM elections as well. The Power Blocs ran get out the vote rallies and bugged the hell out of their membership to go vote. There is no way to find out who voted for what (or even who voted), so it's not like they could threaten or promise anything tangible.

The "unaffiliated" candidates stuck a blog post or a campaign website up and then... nothing. They made no effort to campaign. So they lost.

Oh joyous. Proved my point yet again. It's not the VOTING that's faulty (3 clicks IS a no-brainer). It's the candidate SELECTION.

Democracies (and I quote Australia and the US as examples) have candidates that are selected within the party and the PARTY puts up the candidate and we vote for the PARTY and it's subsequent policies. In Aus, each electorate has approximately the same amount of people within it so it can never be a numbers game.

In the US, each state votes for their preferred PARTY representative and the best PARTY candidate stands for the top job.

Put simply, you CANNOT have the same PARTY standing and winning more than one candidate in the SAME electorate/seat as you can with the current CSM system. ie: Technically, the Goons (or any other such large alliance) could field ALL candidates and win ALL seats.

It's why the metagaming IS so easily abused and obviously so misunderstood.

We could have, as an example, a HS party, A LS party and a 0.0 party. Each "party" may field many candidates (usual scrum applies) but it guarantees that each sector WILL be represented at least once regardless of who wins.

Then there would just be the Goons party, TEST Party, PL Party, etc.

Parties came about because they brought an advantage, not because they were 'fairer.'

You don't seem to understand how American democracy works. There is no voting for X Party. You vote for X Person on the ballot, and he, in his application paperwork, indicated that he wanted X Party listed next to his name.

Parties are not enshrined anywhere in electoral law. The Primaries are internal party elections, run (and funded IIRC) by private organizations (political parties).

Independant and 3rd Party candidates appear on the ballot all the time for all sorts of positions. There is also nothing wrong with a party putting forth 2 competing candidates for the same position (it's stupid, but whatever). The fact that we have 7 slots to fill with one vote makes the tactics of putting up more than one candidate for the position a little more interesting, but similar things happen in countries with panel votes like the one for the CSM.

So, in fact, we do have parties for the CSM election, and just like in RL they decide for themselves who will represent them, and individuals decide who to affiliate with.


This is only true in those RL elections in which you are voting to put someone in a specific seat. There are some elections (mostly for city councils and such) where there are X seats and the top X candidates fill those seats. Parties can and do put whole banks of candidates up for those elections.

I get tired of arguing this, but in no way are the numbers of characters in highsec reflective of its actual population.

There is a reason CCP is running around catering to the faction warfare and nullsec crowd as of late and isn't because they are an insignificant minority of the playerbase. Given that most nullsec and wormhole players have upwards of two accounts of course the number of players in highsec is quite large; everyone needs jita alts, hauler alts, industry alts etc. It's a meaningless statistic.

Stop using democracy as the term to describe this CSM. It's not.

In ANY democratic system a candidate HAS to appeal to ALL sectors to win the absolute majority. You cannot vote for the selection of ANY candidate in an electorate you are not a resident of.

EG: A Jita marketer is an Deklein alt and he can vote for his preferred 0.0 candidate. His vote, and that of the metagaming community sitting in Jita, can prevent a majority vote for an alternate candidate who may actually have Jita's interests at heart.

Worse, the current system says that a different marketer in Jita might have to chose between only 7 null candidates because no other candidate was able to come forward due to being blobbed by the 0.0 blob metagaming. His choice is to choose someone he either does not know or care about or simply to not vote at all.

It's then called apathy when in fact the "I didn't vote" is due to dissaffection.

We already know the vote will always be split between mulitple candidates in highsec so no candidate can field a "numbers" majority to beat a 0.0 candidate with all his mates. Highsec AND lowsec should be guaranteed seats on the CSM and the candidates voted on by the residents.

Even more important, if you don't live in "Amarr regions" you should not be able to vote for anyone OUTSIDE of your electorate.

While the sentiment of your complaint is admirable, no one likes being left out in the cold or thinking they have been, you've ignored or failed to see that Null Sec is simply designed to take advantage of any democratic voting system. Players in null are conditioned to work as a group or fail. High sec has no variables in it's environment to form this type of cohesion; High sec supports fragmentation. It makes sense that Null Sec alliances would dominate the vote once their leaders made an effort to do so. The possibility of massive high sec alliances exist but no one has taken advantage of the environment. They have been given ample examples to follow. If such a group was to form they could take advantage of the same voting system as the null bears do. This is not a permanent reality simply the reality of the moment.

Do you have proof of corruption or are you emotionally responding to the typical hyperbole that successful (and the not so successful) null leaders spout conversationally?

Do not put too much into Crucible. It was a great PATCH. A timely PATCH. The addition of ships was great but we saw no real expansion of the Eve Universe. Sov problems remain problems. WH space unchanged. Hi-sec mechanics problems still remain. Incursions are still an isk spouting joke. Hell, much of WH space is an ISK faucet of epic proportions but most of us don't interact with it. Time Dilation arrived late. I will say the reduction in timers was appreciated. Eve is in a fix the problems phase right now and that would have come CSM 6 or not. It simply could no longer support half baked expansions and unimaginative fixes. CCP came home with flowers and a hug instead of ignoring us and putting their feet up on the coffee table. Let's see what comes.

Oh, want a change to CSM, get your friends and vote. Stir up the masses. Promise miners that you'll put a Bot in every home and 90% resists in every hulk. Lie. Scam. Play the game.

That was not an unanimous idea or decision nor was it implemented and I doubt ever will be as it is moronic. And why should null-sec bears try to represent high-sec? That is not their job. Though I will admit some are laughably near sighted. High sec needs to get high sec leadership if it wants that voice. You also again contribute too much agency to the CSM. In fact (I wish I had the quote) the CCP Chairman stated that he was concerned about game play being too focused on one type of player not long after the Mittani began uncharacteristically boasting of his "influence" on CCP actions after Incarna. You seem very energetic about this, go out and form a high sec power bloc.

Totally agree and THAT's the problem. The individuals in the CSM are acting within their realm AND within the CSM system. But the system is wrong.


I refuse to subscribe to a system that even IF I could win, my voice would be but ONE vote. CCP states it's a quorum so when push came to shove, the highsec view might be put forward but would be negated by the majority of 0.0 anyway.

I'm calling for a system where more than one highsec candidate seat exists BEFORE the selection process even begins and NO sector has more influence than any other sector once you get off the plane in Iceland.

Sectors and/or regions MUST be represented and enshrined within the CSM structure.

Ultimately, the interest of ALL players will need to be voted on - by it's merits - before it goes to CCP for consideration.