First off, if you haven’t voted for CSM 8, go now. Here’s a guide to good voting. Time is almost up!
Marc Scaurus beat me to the punch this week, and wrote a very good post on TheMittani.com about both his ideal CSM and his predictions. I’ll be posting my predictions after polls close but before CCP announces the winners.
Today I want to talk instead about an ideal CSM, from two viewpoints. First, if I could hand-pick the CSM using today’s rules. And second, what I would love to see as a future system, and how I would picture it working with this year’s candidates.
The CSM We Should Elect
First, the CSM I’d wish to see this year. You can read about why here and here. In order of top two (who I’d like to see as full-year Iceland members), then alphabetical:
- Mynnna (Iceland)
- Ripard Teg (Iceland)
- Ali Aras
- Artctura
- Ayeson
- James Arget
- Kesper North
- Malcanis
- Mangala Solaris
- Mike Azariah
- Nathan Jameson
- Psychotic Monk
- Trebor Daedhoow
- Unforgiven Storm
CSM Voting: An Alternate Vision
But what if we could do it entirely differently? We are told often by detractors that there is no possible way to have people run as one type of space candidate or another, but I invite you to look at the field this year. There is no doubt which space most, if not all, come from. There is no debate, no “false candidate” pretending to be from one space rather than another. I have long believed that a wiser representation would be one where individual playstyles and space types were represented.
So here is an alternate structure for the CSM, for your and CCP’s consideration.
The basic rule of 14 members, the top two vote getters go to Iceland remains intact, as does the choice of 5 by CCP. Let’s also give CCP the power to recategorize obvious gamers of the system (much as they disqualified candidates this year).
But instead of our current 14-vote mess that many will not fully complete (other than the bloc voters) each voting account may vote for only four candidates, in an STV fashion. Your vote goes to your “regional/playstyle” candidate (as declared by the candidate, with some oversight by CCP).
So in this future model, let’s pretend that of the 14 positions:
- Two are considered “At Large” positions and are the top two vote-getters.
- One is reserved for the CSM Alumnus who gets the highest votes, regardless of category.
- One is a special “New Player Representative” category regardless of space or playstyle.
- The remaining ten are dedicated by category.
As far as the STV, your vote would only transfer if it was an overvote for one of the At-Large seat or CSM Alumnus winners. Others would fill in first past the post in their category. STV votes would go directly to second choices (or third or fourth choice if you happened to list both of the winners and the CSM alum as your first two choices). Any categories with no candidates would revert to a special “Unaffiliated” slot, which would be a free-for-all category anyone could run in.
So let’s assume intelligent voting for good people. What might this ideal CSM look like, assuming a few things about which category people would chose to run from?
- At Large
- #1 Vote Getter: Mynnna
- #2 Vote Getter: Sort Dragon
- Special Categories
- New Players: Ali Aras
- CSM Alumnus: Trebor Daedhoow
- Unaffiliated (Slot created only due to lack of pirate candidate, see below): Malcanis
- Nullsec
- Sovereign (May not be same coalition as other Sovereign): Kesper North
- Sovereign (May not be same coalition as other Sovereign): Banlish
- Industry: Unforgiven Storm
- NPC: Ripard Teg
- Lowsec
- Pirate: NONE. Reverts to Unaffiliated (see above)
- Faction War: Roc Weiler
- Highsec
- PVE/Industry: Mike Azariah
- PVP: Psychotic Monk or Mangala Solaris
- Wormholes
- Upper: James Arget
- Lower: Nathan Jameson (while strictly speaking Talocan United is all classes, I think Nathan would have run under the low-end banner for a less crowded field)
Sadly we don’t live in an ideal world, so neither of these scenarios is likely to happen. Actual prediction post coming soon.
Interstellar Privateer 