The day has arrived and the polls have opened, you may now go forth and vote for your favorite candidates for CSM14. If you’re in a rush, I believe the official candidates page is also the voting site as well, once you log in. Voting closes on the 17th, so don’t let the time slip by.
A new CSM gets a New Logo
My long held opinion on electing player representatives, that it is a bit silly and more for show than anything else, remains unchanged. However, if this is the system we have it isn’t going to get any better by not participating. I vigorously oppose anything like a “none of the above” option on the ballot. Voter turnout, such that it is, and who gets elected, ought to be enough to send the message.
There are 44 candidates on the ballot and Nosy Gamer has done a good job of listing them out in a post on his blog because, if nothing else, it doesn’t change order every time you go look at it. I understand why CCP does that on their ballot page, but that doesn’t make reading the list any easier.
Anyway, go look through that post for candidate summaries as well as links to their pages on the CSM Wire site, which in turn links to their various campaign posts and interviews.
As with last year, there are seven incumbents from CSM13 running to be on the CSM again. Suitonia, Jin’taan, and Brisc Rubal all declined to run for another term, so the returning candidates are:
- Aryth – Goonswarm Federation
- Innominate – Goonswarm Federation
- Killah Bee – Northern Coalition
- Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation
- Sort Dragon – Darkness
- Steve Ronuken – Fuzzwork Enterprises
- The Judge – Goonswarm Federation
Most of them seem well placed to return. The Judge might be an outlier for null sec, unless he appears on multiple bloc ballots or is able to buy votes from the injector farmers again.
Steve Ronuken could also be at risk if other non-null bloc candidates erode his long time base. There are some other well known players running for that position.
As of my writing this I have not seen the Imperium ballot yet, nor have I seen any leaks from other null sec coalitions, but I expect that null sec bloc candidates will take at least six and possibly as many as eight seats on the council. This is due, in large part, to their ability to organize and get out the vote. (I’ll append the ballots to the end of this post when they get leaked.)
If they succeed in getting the vote out in a big way and take eight seats, I expect it will be the top two from the Imperium ballot, the top two from the Legacy Coalition ballot, two from NCDot/PanFam, and possibly one each from Dead Coalition and Fraternity.
That leaves between two and four seats open to non-bloc candidates, and those who have built up an independent constituency, or who have ingratiated themselves with the null sec groups, seem most likely to get in. My guesses on who might fill those seats include:
- Steve Ronuken – Incumbent, represents industry and 3rd party interfaces
- Mike Azariah – Runs the Magic School Bus to help new players
- Manic Velocity – Popular EVE Online streamer
- Matterall – Talking in Stations show
- Olmeca Gold – Popular anti-null sec conspiracy theorist
I might not have included Olmeca Gold, except that it is rumored that he might get on some null sec ballots, which could give him enough trickle down to win. Likewise, Matterall has been out horse trading endorsements to get on null sec ballots, which may make you then question his Independence. If you fly in null sec and are on null sec bloc ballots, can you then be independent of that? We shall see how that works out.
There has been a conspiracy theory about, alleged to have started with Doomchinchilla on Twitter, that the Imperium attack on Tribute was planned so that the Imperium would have the maximum number of subscribed accounts… because people come back to play when there is a war… when the election hit.
The Mittani, responding to this on the weekly coalition fireside, said that was a great idea and he wished he had thought of it. So now I suspect there will be a late spring war every year to coincide with the election.
There is also another side conspiracy theory that CCP is trying to get more people to vote by literally giving away Omega time. There is currently a Twitch Prime offer that does just that.
Free stuff, or stuff you’ve already paid for so might as well claim
If you have Amazon Prime, you link that to your Twitch account to get Twitch Prime (Amazon owns Twitch), then you claim the offer and link it to an EVE Online Alpha Clone account and, boom, you have 15 days of Omega Clone time and get to vote. I know I get one more vote this year because of this.
There were 29,417 votes cast for CSM13, and 31,274 cast for CSM12. There have never been fewer than 20K votes cast (early CSM votes were low, and CSM11 has just 22K votes cast) and the peak amount of votes cast was for CSM7, when nearly 60K accounts voted.
Number of Votes Cast – CSM 1 through CSM 12
We will see if either of those things end up in a rise in voter participation in this election. Noizy has a poll up on Twitter if you want to take a guess at voter turn out. I suspect it will be up this year, but that will translate into more null sec votes.
Anyway, the vote is on. If you need to read up on the candidates, I will point you once again at the CSM Wire. When you are ready to vote, the official candidate page can be found here.
Addendum – Ballots I have seen so far. If you see any others let me know:
Imperium Ballot
- Aryth
- Merkelchen
- Innominate
- The Judge
- Vily
- Dunk Dinkle
- Sortdragon
- Killah Bee
- Steve Ronuken
- Xenuria
TEST Ballot
- Vily
- Cornak Firefist
- Dunk Dinkle
- Innominate
- Killah Bee
- Matterall
- Gobbins
- Steve Ronuken
Pandemic Horde Ballot
- Gobbins
- Killah Bee
- Arrowspeeed Bounty
- Dunk Dinkle
- Olmeca Gold
- Matterall
- Vily
The Ancient Gaming Noob 