The CSM15 Election Begins Today

The CSM15 election kicks off today.  You can go straight here to vote.  That is probably the most important part of this post, as the rest of it will be me rambling.  The voting period runs until 12:00 UTC on June 8.

Time to pick the next CSM

I wrote about the 40 candidates on the ballot when they were announced.  That post links to all of them to their official candidate forum posts and sorts them into null and non-null candidates.  CCP also has a post up with pictures and sound-bit summaries for all the candidates, which also links to their forum posts.

In an attempt to get out the vote, CCP is having another daily login event that will run concurrently with the election.

Login for more rewards

There are five daily gifts for both Omega and Alpha clones.  Alpha clones cannot vote, but at least they get a cookie.

Rewards of Democracy… and that other forever campaign

And, of course, you don’t log into the game to vote, you do that on the web site, (see the how to vote video if you need to) but if CCP gives people a prize every day with a big sign encouraging them to vote, maybe that will have some impact.  We shall see.

As for who is going to win, the shape of the promoted null sec ballots will likely dictate 6-8 seats on CSM15.  In elections, both in real life and in New Eden, large groups that can organize tend to do better than smaller groups or groups that do not organize, and null sec requires big groups and organization.  That is just the way it goes.

This makes people angry, both in the real world and in New Eden.  There are a lot of “all CCP needs to do…” ideas to work around this, most of which would be comically easy to game (Dunk Dinkle has some examples), with the very same organized groups most likely to benefit.  You want a high sec, mission running candidate for the next CSM?  Have them start organizing and campaigning now.

Writing this on Sunday afternoon and having not seen a single null sec ballot yet, I am going to double down on my predictions from about two weeks back.  Basically, nothing dramatic has come up in the campaigning cycle to change my mind, though I will admit that my level attention hasn’t gone beyond scanning headlines on /r/eve.  So my predictions remain as follows.

Hard to see how they won’t be elected:

• Gobbins – Pandemic Horde
• Innominate – Goonswarm Federation
• Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation
• Vily – TEST Alliance Please Ignore

Very likely if they get a good ballot position:

• Alexis Finch – Brave Collective
• BlazingBunny – Northern Coalition
• UAxDEATH – Legion of xXDEATHXx

Wild cards that might make the cut if they have a big enough support base:

• Brisc Rubal – The Initiative (Has to fight the “he’s guilty!” crowd)
• ExookiZ – Initiative Mercenaries (WH support still?)
• Insidious Sainthood – RvB – BLUE Republic (RvB is pretty big)
• Maria Taylor – Fraternity (If Chinese players vote)
• Torvald Uruz – Abyssal Lurkers (Streamer/content creator people have heard of)
• Mike Azariah – The Scope (Persistence paid off in the past)

Again, that is 13 names, but the top seven seem pretty secure, so I’d declare myself successful in predicting if the remained was filled from my wild card list.

I will amend my predictions in a post script if something crazy comes up in the ballots, and I will add on any null sec ballots that get posted in the comments just to give people an idea as to who is topping which list.

Other coverage of CSM15:

• A Missioneer in Eve – Mike has a ballot list of his own to offer up
• Fuzzworks – 6 time CSM member Steve Ronuken opines
• Dunk Dinkle – On what we should look for in a CSM candidate
• Shipwreck Jones – A candidate cheat sheet
• Declaractions of War – Alek’s CSM15 Ballot