Jita Park Speakers Corner

tl;dr - If you're a highsec candidate, get your platform up and ready before looking to gather votes.

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Counting Sheep

Vote gathering, if you're a nullsec candidate, is different than vote gathering if you're a highsec candidate.

The issues for the nullsec candidate are pretty cut-and-dried. Basically they boil down to supercapital balancing, sovereignty issues, and ISK flow. From what I've seen, every nullsec candidate is on the same page with every other nullsec candidate. So blindly voting for the nullsec candidate you're directed to vote for, there's little in the way of needing to know what that particular nullsec candidate represents. You don't need to see a complete rundown of the issues they're campaigning on. It is pretty self-evident what they'll be representing, what changes they'll be pushing for, etcetera.

Things are not quite so determined with the highsec candidates. There are so many flavours of highsec representation. Is the candidate a super-carebear? Do they desire conflict? Do they wish to see less conflict? Are they proponents of risk vs. reward? Do they desire more theme park MMO attributes in EVE Online? Relationship to lowsec? Nullsec?

Which is why Kelduum Revaan's exploration into vote gathering must have taken him a bit by surprise. Rather than page upon page of the student body proclaiming that "Yes, you have my vote, Kelduum", there were mostly questions. What issues are you campaigning on? What is your manifesto? Sorry, can't give you my vote until I know what it is you want to accomplish on the CSM.

What happened? Kelduum tosses up a poll asking his students and alumni if they'll vote for him. And that's it. No indication at all concerning why he wants to run, what he brings to the table.

The poll went up over 36 hours ago. At least twenty people ask him what is his agenda. Not a peep from Kelduum. Which is why I figure he must have been taken a bit unawares at the responses. Perhaps he doesn't even really know what issues he wants to campaign on yet? That would strike me as odd. He stated his intent to run three weeks ago. He must have drafted something? He must have an idea what he wants to push forward with CCP.

When Trebor did his CSM crowdsourcing vote, the unistas came out 550 strong to vote along the Kelduum line (back when membership was 2000 strong.) Based on that alone, and since Crucible saw none of those top crowdsourced vote-getters with any attention, we can maybe assume that things like the corporate UI interface are still high on his agenda, as well as the medal interface. But it would be suicide to run on UI issues alone (especially corporate UI interface issues, which impact an exceptionally small minority of players.)

Hopefully he'll put something together soon. Where does he stand on wardecs? (Is he going to push for his capture the flag idea as a replacement for the currently broken wardec system?) High-sec incursions? (Too much of an ISK faucet? Not enough?) CONCORD? Less PvP in highsec? Does he favour PvP flagging for corporations in highsec? What about EVE University? Is he going to push for the University to become a training corporation, with special rules for all corporations that get to wear that designation?

Nullsec, there's basically just one side to the coin. Highsec a polyhedron. So many sides a candidate can come out on.

If his plan was to just coast into a CSM seat based on his 1500 EVE University members, then he's going to be a tad embarrassed come the end of April.

So, if you're a highsec candidate, don't start rallying the votes until you know what are the issues you'll be campaigning.

Like a lot of respondents in that poll say:

What exactly is/are his explicit stance/s on...well, pretty much anything, really?

Substance needed, if he actually hopes to get elected.

Drones suggests our leader just targets an enemy and presses F. This is more of a pods going to a carrier and emerging with Rifters and Thrashers than simply deploying a bunch of Ogre IIs.

Or a hotdrop! Light cyno, provide warpins, obtain delicious supercap killmail!

We knowingly vote for him because he's awesome and brings us lots of tears, explosions, socialism, isk, ~good fights~.

Get involved in your own platform.