Voting for CSM 12 Opens Today

The day is here, the annual stuffing of the ballot box has begun, the CSM elections are live.  They run from today, March 6, through until March 27, with the results to be announced at Fanfest on April 6.

Look at that CONCORD police Captain trying to suppress the vote!

CCP has even created a video where CCP Logibro spends almost five minutes telling you about the election and how to use the voting interface.

As for who to vote for, you have an array of 64 candidates to choose from.  How to pick… well, that is up to you.   The Nosy Gamer has put together a page that brings together campaign statements and interviews from the candidates.  It is a good place to start if you are just trying to figure out for whom to vote.

Of course, if you’re just starting to figure that out now, you’re part of the reason why I think electing a player advisory council is silly, as I noted in last week’s blog banter post.  In a game where one segment of the population needs to be highly organized in order to survive, guess who is best at getting their people to vote?  The null sec blocs get out the vote while the rest of the game mostly doesn’t even bother to open up a ballot.  And so CSM 11 was 13 null sec players and Steve Ronuken.

With CSM 12 being reduced from 14 members to 10, all of whom will be flown to Iceland for summits, past results indicate that null sec will likely end up with 8 or 9 of those.  I think Neville Smit’s idea for a high sec coalition is coming a bit late, but we shall see.  With only 10 seats, every vote counts even more so as there is much less room for trickle down.

Anyway, the null sec blocs no doubt all have their voting lists published already.  The Imperium had theirs up early yesterday and have a “get out the vote” campaign in motion.

For those interested, this is the Imperium slate:

1. Aryth – GSF
2. Innominate – GSF
3. Sullen Decimus – Bastion
4. Jin’taan – Provibloc
5. The Judge – CO2
6. Suitonia – GSF

[INN has the Provi Bloc and CO2/TEST ballots here]

For those who haven’t watched the video or read up on the process, the ordering dictates the priority list for your votes.  If Aryth has enough votes, surplus votes will then fall to Innominate.  When he has sufficient votes, any extras will go to Sullen Decimus.  And so it goes down the list.

If you are paying close attention, there are likely three items of interest with this list.

First, there are only six candidates listed, when there could have been ten.  Last year the list was a full 14 long and included outsiders such as Commander Aze and Tora Bushido to round it out.  This year the list is truncated and includes only core null candidates.  I gather that this is to emphasize the key candidates so they don’t get lost or shuffled as people go to their ballot.  We are left to add four more candidates if we wish, though it seems unlikely that many votes will transfer down that far.

Second, The Judge is on our list.  Yes, he is down in fifth place, but after the great (and in the end futile) betrayal by CO2 and M-OEE8 last year, his alliance remains our space foes.  But the smooth operation of the CSM appears to transcend the in-game situation.  He did a good job last time around so made our list.  He likely won’t get many trickle down votes from us, but he has TEST/CO2 voters behind him to make up the difference.

And third, Xenuria is not on our ballot.  He is running, he is in GSF, he is on CSM 11, and by all accounts he did a good job, but he isn’t one of our picks.

Last year picking Xenuria to be on the ballot was a controversial choice.  He got the third spot on the Imperium ballot for the CSM11 election.  As an example of Goons not marching in lock step or doing whatever Mittens tells them, this was a good example.  There was an outcry about choosing him and declarations from many in the thread that they would never vote for him.

Still, Xenuria had enough people vote the ballot, plus the support he had garnered through past runs for the CSM, to get himself elected.  This year though, he is on his own.  Fortunately, for him, he has been ahead of the game and has been out campaigning, including having a station billboard ad for a while now.

A vote for Xenuria is a vote for Xenuria

If Xenuria’s focus, which includes focus on cosmetic in-game items, is something you want represented on the CSM, you’re going to have to vote for him yourself, as the Imperium isn’t going to get him elected.

So that is it, the election is off and running.  We will know the results in a month.