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. For those concerned with organized voting blocs, the only legitimate way to dilute their voting power is by adding more voters to the process. We should want to see the number of voters increase, year-by-year.
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.
Votes were way up for CSM7 because CSM6 was all over the media, the forums, twitter & other places where Eve players could see them.
ReplyDeleteCSM7 hasn't done shit. The people who scream that the CSM is useless will crawl out of the woodwork and hold up CSM7 as a shining example of what CCP is "wasting their money on." Trebor and other CSM candidates appear to be a bit worried that they will not get reelected for CSM8 if the nullsec voting blocks mobilize again, due to lack of participation from the majority of eve players that no longer give a shit.
In the end it appears as if certain CSM members are just trying to change the rules so they can hold on to power a bit longer without having to do any actual work.
But do they really have 'power'? No. They have perqs. They do not want to lose those perqs.
DeleteThe thing that staggers me about this is the twisted reality that otherwise sane, sensible men on the CSM seem to be viewing. They view the thread as a massive Goon dogpiling and repeatedly ignore the one thing the 'Goon dogpile' is asking for - what in the world is up with the overvote penalty? STV, this is not.
I for one have been saying for quite awhile that, short of a complete revamp of the format of the CSM, the 'Past the Post' method of voting is fine. It is hard for organized blocs to get more than one candidate in (not to mention relatively futile, as there are no action items, no votes, no 'Council' really in the CSM). Not impossible - of course the Goons did it once already. But difficult.
There is nothing that needs fixing here that a voting reform can accomplish. What needs to be fixed is the voter turnout, which can only be fixed with more involvement of the CSM in CCP's development of Eve.
Fuck me, I'll just make a blogpost.
Doesn't matter the reason why voter turnout increased, but I have shown that an increase in voter turnout decreased the power of the voting blocs while increasing the areas of representation that made it onto the council.
DeleteWhich only makes sense if you stop and think about it. But, in theory, this voter reform is aimed at curbing the "over-representation" of the big blocs. As evidence proves, improving voter turnout accomplishes this. Viola, fixed.
DeleteMarc: So what you're saying is that the CSM isn't important enough to even warrant a voting reform in the first place? That we should only reform voting if we first perform the impossible task of enshrining the CSM as de facto CCP developers elected by the player base?
DeleteI guess that's one way of looking at it, but it isn't especially realistic or constructive.
Given what we've got right now, however ineffectual you believe it to be, it still makes sense to institute the best voting system we can. I actually think a revamped voting method could possibly attract a lot of new voters, especially if it's perceived as being in the service of de-emphasizing the machine-style politics that I'm sure leave a lot of players otherwise feeling like it's just a waste of time to vote at all.
Current CSM politics may be precisely as useless as you point out. In fact, I wrote a post yesterday basically agreeing with that proposition (and dreaming up a response to it). But I'm not sure that means we shouldn't work with what we've got and try to make it as good as we can.
Trebor said somewhere (one of those infernal podcasts) that he's not running for CSM again. That may be why he stuck his neck out on the voting issue. As for the others, some of them haven't done much, but overall I'm OK with what they've done. None of it is as dramatic as CSM5's December letter, or CSM6's breakneck about-face on Incarna and NeX, but it hasn't had to be. The conversation on CSM becoming a stakeholder, as dry as it may be, is critical to the long-term success of the board.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is this: Sure, if you look at changing the voting method (to an STV-like system) only as a response to voting blocs, then perhaps it misses the point, or doesn't address it anywhere near as nicely as a push to increase the vote count likely would. And yet, I think changing the voting method doesn't necessarily have to be just about that. I honestly believe that STV is ultimately a system that gets us closer to a representative ideal. One doesn't have to fear voting for an outside shot on principle, which in turn makes it more likely that we'll see an actual representation of how many people are behind that outside shot (possibly revealing that he/she isn't really an outside shot in the first place). A zero-sum voting system upholds the tyranny of popularity and momentum (or "Joe-mentum" as an infamous American senator once put it), and reinforces via fear the adherence to candidates who stick out primarily because they just happen to have the most resources or the most built-in followers, not necessarily the best ideas.
ReplyDeleteI definitely disagree with the CD-STV method that was put forward by the CSM, because I think it's best to put the choice of alternates in the hands of the voters themselves. But I still do think that voting reform is an important issue and should be advanced.
Except any system to diversify representation will need to be more complex than first-past-the-post. And any voting system more complex than what we currently have will have the effect of reducing voter turnout.
DeleteI'm not sure I buy that last part of your argument. I have a hard time believing that EVE Online, of all MMO communities in existence, is full of players who are averse to choice and customization, which is essentially what an STV system is all about in the end. Anyway, I don't imagine that anybody would be *required* to select alternates if they wished not to. They could just as easily place a single vote for a single candidate and leave it at that.
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