Introducing Your CSM19 Representatives

CCP Swift got on the CCP Twitch stream yesterday during a break between rounds of Alliance Tournament XX to go through the voting results for the CSM19 election.

The results had the following ten candidates come out on top, with two additional members being picked from those landed in 11th through 20th place.

Here is the list, in order of when the won during the count, plus the two picks, with incumbents marked with an asterisk and returning former CSM members marked with two.

Following the usual voting plan for CSM, the single transferable voting goes through sufficient rounds, eliminating one candidate each round, until the final slate of winners is established.  With each round, the votes on the ballots for the person eliminated are then transferred to the next individual down the list or, if there are no further candidates selected, that ballot is exhausted and removed.

For this election there were 47 people running for ten seats, so there were 37 rounds of elimination to reach that total.  There were 35,701 ballots cast, about 10K fewer than last year, and this is how the initial votes were applied.

With that three people met quota and were elected, Kazanir, Luke, and Zintage.

Then we went through 32 rounds of elimination before the next two people hit quota and were elected.

Round 36 saw two more people hit quota.

And then with the final round, round 37, the last votes were distributed and the ten winners were declared.

CCP then announced their two picks from the 11th through 20th position finishers and that was the election.

For those interested, this is the order of elimination by round.

1 – “AtheistOfFail” with 15.560817 votes
2 – “Redus Taw” with 25.000000 votes
3 – “Aerodinamica Attiva” with 34.000000 votes
4 – “Colby Bosh’tet” with 47.000000 votes
5 – “commander Shepard Brotherhood” with 52.726261 votes
6 – “Styxx” with 53.851566 votes
7 – “Mcopiate” with 63.000000 votes
8 – “Frippyy” with 75.102690 votes
9 – “Grima The Mad” with 92.610748 votes
10 – “Aqustin Agustus” with 99.357072 votes
11 – “NeoShocker” with 106.075882 votes
12 – “MILINT ARC Trooper” with 109.326459 votes
13 – “Hexator Gaming” with 137.568273 votes
14 – “Bexey Songweaver” with 153.253403 votes
15 – “SKALE Organa” with 157.637742 votes
16 – “Prospektor Schipplock” with 175.648109 votes
17 – “Frozen Fallout” with 178.525700 votes
18 – “Viciate” with 186.624351 votes
19 – “Switch 4” with 208.510593 votes
20 – “Aurous Victoirespere” with 209.887881 votes
21 – “Komo Sunder” with 234.153007 votes
22 – “steven mardis” with 249.214794 votes
23 – “SeriesPro” with 257.948458 votes
24 – “Creatnos” with 322.000000 votes
25 – “Gideon Zendikar” with 338.397338 votes
26 – “Ankh Lai” with 361.767627 votes
27 – “DutchGunner” with 415.420345 votes
28 – “Drake Iddon” with 530.187141 votes
29 – “Gustav Mannfred” with 615.549615 votes
30 – Rots Mijnwerker” with 661.233382 votes
31 – “Machagon” with 748.118691 votes
32 – “Kshal Aideron” with 813.402096 votes
33 – “youngpuke2” with 841.769079 votes
34 – “Phantomite” with 951.401862 votes
35 – “Mike Azariah” with 1695.886520 votes
36 – “Dalros” with 1784.397815 votes
37 – “Itaer” with 2285.417164 votes

Somebody put together a Google sheet with all the ballots collated into a readable format and there were over 3,000 ballots submitted with only one candidate who did not make the final 10.  Those ballots were exhausted.  If those people had put anybody else in the 11 through 20 finishers on their ballot as an alternate, we could have had different results.

On the flip side, the Imperium and other null sec groups voted pretty consistently.  6,260 ballots were cast with the GSF suggested ballot, which was as follows:

1. Kazanir
2. Zintage Enaka
3. Dujek Oneye
4. Luke Anninan
5. Seddow
6. youngpuke2
7. Ariel Rin
8. The Oz
9. Ankh Lai
10. Kshal Aideron

Seven of those individuals were elected, and one was CCP’s pick, so we did pretty well.

Likewise, there were 3,805 ballots were submitted with what looks like the PanFam slate.  Given the combined size of PanFam, that seems a bit low.  But they also had a candidate banned from the election which seems to have disrupted things.  The Initiative ballot got 1,383 votes, making it the third most popular slate.

The fourth most common ballot was just Itaer from “bar code” (as we call them, because pronouncing “IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII” isn’t a thing) who got 1,257 votes, and fifth was a ballot with just Dalros from Absolute Will, with 925 votes, neither of whom decided to work with anybody else on a ballot plan.  Them including each other as a second entry would have elected Itaer.

Meanwhile, voting was down compared to last year, but out of recent history elections the turn out was well within the range expected.

• CSM18 – 47,155 total votes
• CSM17 – 30,814 total votes
• CSM16 – 38,086 total votes
• CSM15 – 36,120 total votes
• CSM14 – 32,994 total votes

In many ways, kind of a normal CSM election.

Thoughts on Results

As we say, “Good guys win again!”

Certainly that is the GSF point of view on the results.

But you could clearly see in the ATXX chat some people were angry about the results.  Those ranged from the usual “Goons run CCP” conspiracy theories (which are completely at odds with the view within GSF, where it is an article of faith that if we want CCP to nerf something we merely have to start doing it and it will happen), to people failing to understand how voting and elections work (a big problem here in the US), people thinking that the CSM makes game design decisions or has some magic veto power, and the oh so tiresome wail of people bemoaning the death of the game, the death of small gang, or the general fear of stagnation because null sec isn’t doing anything right now.

Null sec wins most of the seats because null sec is organized.  I would suggest that perhaps the aptly named AtheistOfFail shouldn’t have signed up to run if they could only get 15 freaking votes.  Somebody like that is just noise in the election cycle.  But how do you fairly filter candidates like that without having a pre-election?  So you let them come in and be noise.

Null sec is organized because to play in that sphere of the game you organize and grow or you go home.

And null sec is serious about CSM elections because back in the early self-obsessed, dilettante, clown show era of the CSM, when it was a popularity contest that attracted little attention and fewer voters, a number of winners made it their business to “fix” null sec without having an experience with it.

I recall Tredbor Daehdoow declaring that shooting structures was boring and should be removed from the game.  I suspect he had never shot a structure, didn’t understand conflict drivers, and clearly had given little thought to what mechanism might replace that.  Entosis is what we got.  Entosis, the magic sov wand, is so much worse that simply shooting structures… at least a whole fleet gets to join in when you’re shooting… that it highlights the reason that null sec takes this seriously.

(And yes, I know who he is.  That doesn’t mean he was qualified or correct in making that statement.)

But mostly it was the “small gang” mentality applied to null sec that got null sec invested in the CSM.  We saw that in the CSM19 campaign, as we have seen it in almost every campaign.

The “small gang” mindset is somebody who feels that they, in a fleet of 10-20 people, should be able to go anywhere in null sec and face only even odds fights.  They hate when null sec residents respond in force, when they can’t find a quiet corner to camp and steal ESS bonds or rob Skyhooks on their own schedule and not an arbitrary time window, and basically resent when they can’t do as they please in our space.

So it is always a “nerf null sec” argument because they want all of New Eden to accommodate their specific play style.  When I write about other MMOs I occasionally make mention of the PvP die hards, the very vocal forum warriors who want open world, full loot, no holds barred PvP in every game.

In EVE Online, a PvP game, the small gang mob occupy a similar sort of niche in our ecosystem.  The game would be great if only everybody was forced to play on their terms and CCP is betraying the game and all that is holy if they aren’t catering to their every whim.

But they don’t represent a popular point of view or any region or play style really, besides their own dream/vision, they’re just loud like those PvPers in the PvE game forums… which is why they generally don’t win.

Now that the election is over the “small gang” proponents are stewing again because null sec won, never once considering that their voices ought to be balanced against ours.  The reality is that, while electing representatives is, at best, an imperfect way to create an advisory council, the results do end up reflecting the views of those who voted.  If you didn’t get out the vote… blame null sec?

Finally, winning majorities on the CSM hasn’t save null sec from nerfs in the long term in any case.  CCP will do what it wants and one of the jobs of CSM reps is to complain about how CCP blindsided them with some new change that was never once put before the CSM.  One of the main arguments of small gang, that null sec is stagnant is true largely due to CCP breaking the economy and making everything more expensive.

As I have noted elsewhere, the first rule of New Eden is don’t undock with anything you cannot afford to lose.  When CCP made capitals and supers too expensive to lose, blaming null sec for not undocking in them shows a profound disregard for reality.

I personally would like to get back to wars and big, consequential fights and all the things that get headlines in the gaming press and beyond, things that draw attention to the game, things that make the stories that bring the game alive and get people who’ve never heard about EVE Online to think about checking it out.  (But didn’t we just conquor a few regions and blow up a bunch of structures including two Keepstars? Is it our fault that PanFam and Fraternity opted not to fight?)

Anyway, others have opined on this point more clearly and succinctly than I.  In the end, this is the result a CSM election is always going to generate.  Null sec is going to win 6-8 seats due to size an organization.  I have suggested a couple of things in the past that CCP could do to improve representation… and it even adopted one, expanding the size of the CSM, though not because I brought it up… my words into the void are rarely if ever marked by anybody at CCP… but unless other areas of the game can coalesce behind candidates they are always going to come up short.

So it goes.  Good guys win again.

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