“Bad officials are elected by good people who do not vote.”

– George Jean Nathan

So today CCP Leeloo posted the actual CSM 9 voting results. I’m going to apologize now for what I expect will get a little ranty.

Let me start by congratulating Mittens, Sion & Mynnna for an election approach excellently planned and expertly executed. You’ll see why in a moment.

Here is a table of the results, looked at three ways. The first (STV-14) is the order in which they were elected in the CSM selection. It is a good approximation of the actual order in which seats were won. The second (STV-2) is the method that selected the permanent attendees, and is a decent measure of who had the broadest support. The final (FPTP) is a count of #1 votes only – which while not a literal match to what first past the post would have been (with different rules the null blocs likely would have taken a different voting strategy), is a reasonable approximation of who else had a chance if it had been FPTP and really highlights who benefited from STV rolldown.

STV-14: Order of Election STV-14 1974 Quota Round STV-2: Breadth of Support STV-2 Count FPTP (Approx): If it had been the old way #1 Votes Sion Kumitomo 4495 Ali Aras 7784 Sion Kumitomo 4314 Coreblood 3122 Sion Kumitomo 6055 Coreblood 2944 Sugar Kyle 2315 Steve Ronuken 5685 Sugar Kyle 1915 Ali Aras 2230 Sugar Kyle 3930 Steve Ronuken 1692 Steve Ronuken 2142 Coreblood 3721 Progod 1655 Progod 2042 Progod 3141 Ali Aras 1521 Mynnna 1974 Corbexx 2897 Matias Otero 1453 Xander Phoena 1974 Matias Otero 2606 Mike Azariah 1418 Matias Otero 1974 Mike Azariah 2177 Corbexx 1171 Corbexx 1974 DJ FunkyBacon 2008 Major Jsilva 970 Mike Azariah 1974 Mangala Solaris 1420 DJ FunkyBacon 959 DJ FunkyBacon 1974 Major Jsilva 1384 Mangala Solaris 857 Mangala Solaris 1549 Asayanami Dei 1302 Psychotic Monk 853 Major Jsilva 1475 Mynnna 1237 Asayanami Dei 828 ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== Asayanami Dei 1395 Psychotic Monk 1087 Mynnna 786 Psychotic Monk 1146 Xander Phoena 893 Xander Phoena 775

So what can we learn from this? Well, disclaimer first – I’m betting that Foo will weigh in on my conclusions, and he’ll have some good insights, so check out the comments below (he understands STV better than I do). But here’s what I see in these results besides the obvious items I hit in my general analysis post.

The CFC vote was solid, organized and disciplined. Because CFC had their shit together and as The Mittani predicted, “Given how poor a job CCP did with getting the CSM8 minutes out the door, my personal take on this election is that turnout will be at an all-time low. If I’m right, that’s hilarious news for the CFC, because there’s nothing this coalition does quite like marching and voting in lockstep. In a low turnout situation, the impact of organization, unity and force is magnified. Even if you don’t care about the CSM, vote the way we tell you to, simply because it’ll make a gaggle of shitlords who hate us very, very angry should we succeed.” The CFC landed three in the top nine, practically unaided, without breaking a sweat. If you didn’t vote, for god’s sake you better shut up with the Grr Goons, because your non-participation achieved it. The #1 votes for Sion alone were more than enough to elect two people. For the record (as I told Mynnna) I have nothing against Goons, I find them fun gank targets and their leaders are smart people. I endorsed Mynnna in the top tier and Xander in the second tier. But people bitching about them and then having them land three seats tells me how serious their detractors are. If the CFC had been less organized and disciplined, or if turnout had been larger, it is entirely likely that Xander Phoena would not have been elected. I expected Xander to have very broad support, but instead it looks like he was elected purely by the CFC and Tweetfleet – and most of it CFC. Xander, make sure to write Mittens (rather than Ripard) a thank-you. Mynnna’s seat was also a rolldown victory, and while he had broader cross-ticket support than Xander, it wasn’t by much. Corebloodbrothers’ coalition is larger, stronger and more motivated than I think anyone anticipated. I really want to understand why. All I’ve seen from Core so far is complaints on Twitter about getting blobbed by the bigger sov null guys. I find it really ironic because we generally avoid Provi these days because individual ships and tiny gangs get blobbed so bad by Provi-bloc! Ali had the broadest support by far, even though she wasn’t as high on the #1 lists as I expected her to be. Sugar Kyle and Steve Ronuken had far better support than I expected. Kudos to both for beating expectations handily. Those in the top 6 slots were solidly top 6 in all three views of the rolldown. Mangala Solaris’ support has really dropped off from last year. Last year he had large, broad support – this year not so much. Psychotic Monk just can’t quite get there. I actually think that if the griefer crowd was ever going to get someone in it would have been this year, due to the flap over Erotica1. But it just isn’t enough – I hypothesize that the griefer crowd just isn’t big enough to get the job done. If you’re a wormhole voter and didn’t vote a full wormhole ticket, you have only yourself to blame that we have only one representative. As is plain to see above, Asayanami Dei just barely missed out. What if every wormhole voter had listed the top as the wormhole 5? Here are the #1 votes for wormholers: 1171 (Corbexx) + 828 (Asayanami) + 653 (James) + 518 (Proclus) + 141 (Karen) = 3311 votes. If we use STV-14 numbers instead it’s 1991+1395+888+561+151 = 4986. Final quota was 1974, so that means that we could have elected 1.7 to 2.5 candidates. Asay should have made it without a problem but the wormhole community couldn’t get it together. There was even an outside chance for James if we had been able to muster the turnout. Son, I am disappoint.

So that quote at the top? Not at all meant to insinuate that this CSM has bad apples – in fact right now I am very optimistic that most will be very active and will represent their constituencies well. The problem is the unbalanced nature of what’s there:

Null: 7 (Sion, Core, Ali, PGL, Mynnna, Xander, Matias, JSilva)

Highsec: 3 (Steve, Mike, Mangala)

Lowsec: 2 (Funky, Sugar)

Wormholes: 1 (Corbexx)

Sure, you can argue semantics about Core and Ali and Xander and Matias, but they’re all null players – that is their experience and their focus.

Now let’s get to the real dismal number: Turnout. Of hundreds of thousands of characters, only 30,000ish accounts (even less actual people!) voted. That’s a 1/3 drop from last year. Terrible, terrible participation. CCP, you need to step up your promotional game next year. In a player base as large as EVE, this small a voting population is a travesty.

Who voted? The organized (sov null and to a lesser extent wormholes) and the disenfranchised, fearful and angry (lowsec, highsec & Provi). Just ask lowsec players how well they feel like CSM 8 did for their space – you may hear they did well in general, or for communication, but I guarantee you won’t hear how great they were for lowsec space.

The bottom line is that we, the voters, got exactly what our participation dictated. We have the CSM we earned, the CSM we deserve through our action or inaction. If you want to change this and get heard, you need to take the null strategy on – not the one of back room bargains, etc. (Sugar Kyle and Steve Ronuken prove that isn’t required) but you do need to vote for your playstyle, unless you truly believe those of your playstyle are so bad that you’d rather have those of a different style represent you.

If you didn’t vote your playstyle, I hope the person you did pick can represent you – they may be a good person, but they likely won’t get some of the critical specifics of your kind of space. Me? I wish we had another wormholer on there.

Oh, and if you didn’t vote at all? Then you should STFU with any complaints you have, and vote next year. You failed in one of the most basic tenets of democratic responsibility.