CSM elections: how exactly do they work?

Communications Center General Discussion
1

Hi there friends of space democracy.

Can anyone tell me which of the many STV systems is used for the CSM elections?

Do I need to vote in a certain order, i.e. putting candidates that have a higher chance of getting enough votes further up my list, so their possible surplus votes have a chance of being transfered to the others?

If there is a candidate I don’t want to vote for, can I simply not put that name on the list

or would it be better to list that candidate as No. 10 so that I don’t accidentally share surplus excess votes from my candidates with someone I don’t want? Or do my excess votes only get transferred to other candidates on my list?

Also, say I have 5 candidates that I whole-heartedly support and 5 others that sound interesting, can I vote all 10 or do I have to consider the chance that my votes compete with each other, i.e. the optional 5 putting pressure on my fav 5?

Edit: wouldn’t it be better for the number of votes per person to be lower than the seats on the CSM, in order to avoid a majority block being able to push out larger minority candidates by voting for their competitors? 5 votes per player should be enough, when there are 10 seats to be filled.

Thanks

2

In previous years it’s been a drag and drop system.

There is a full list of the candidates and their portrait and you just drag the portrait up into the voting position you want to give them. If you don’t want to vote for a candidate, you don’t drag their portrait up into one of your votes.

Also, you don’t have to vote for all of your voting places. If you only like a couple of candidates, you can just vote for them and no one else, or you can exercise your full 10 votes if you chose.

Works well, so I assume CCP will use the same system this year.

3

In my country you have normally one vote per election and there’s the simple rule of: “if you don’t vote, you vote for the ones you want the least”.

Is the same true for Single Transferable Vote in regards to all 10 votes that I have? I’m not familiar with STV and reading up on it brought me here to ask, because there are so many different STV-systems which all use different algorithms.

PS: I know how to give my votes, but I would like to understand the system, because there seems to be the possibility and thus the need to vote in a tactical way.

4

This may clear it for you: CSM 13 Election: Explaining The Single Transferable Vote

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STV [single transferable vote] is a system designed for political scientists and mathematicians, not voters.

The short version of criticism of STV is that it is complicated, confusing, prone to errors and delay, and not truly proportional

There is this STV for you.

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It’s definetely confusing, but taken that it will be the system we vote under, I want to understand it anyways.

Thanks for the link.

"On every exclusion of a candidate from the count the counting of
the ballot is reset and all valid votes are redistributed to candidates
remaining in the count initially at full value.

Does that, in the context of CSM elections, mean that if one of my votes becomes uneffective, due to my candidate being already elected or being the lowest of the counting round, these votes will go to other candidates on my list or do they get transferred to the next higher/lower candidate? (In the given example of the article, redistribution is easy, because all voters are assumed to from blocks and vote exactly the same lists).

Let’s say the quota is 1000 votes and Candidate A gets 1500. Of the 1500 people that voted for A, who will be the 500 lucky ones that get their vote transferred to their 2nd favorite? Or is it that 1/3rd of each vote gets transferred in this case?

Even if so, doesn’t this give a lot of advantage to a group of players who vote the exact same list in the exact same order?

7

Simplest I can explain:

You vote for A in the first place, but…
A gets the lowest number of votes
so they take your second vote - B
Because B gathered a lot of votes from everybody else, being voted in the first place.

Something like this, but with more candidates than one getting into CSM:

image
hires-PNG-cant-waste-vote-03.png2480×3507 127 KB

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8

The entire idea of “votes not being wasted” sounds good at the first look, but is it really more than just a catchphrase?

For the top-to-bottom distribution, my specific question is:

Example:
In some made-up STV vote a candidate needs to reach 3 votes in order to get elected.
Four voters voted for Candidate A as their top choice:
Voter 1: A, B, C, D, E
Voter 2: A, C, D, E, B
Voter 3: A, D, E, B, C
Voter 4: A, E, B, C, D

This means that Candidate A is elected and 1 vote is in excess and thus will get transferred.
Question: who gets that vote, Candidate B, C, D or E?

It seems that the problem lies in the pre-fixed number of seats. One could instead have a quota of voters (5% or so) with a minimum number of seats.

The other problem seems to be how majorly important the order of any voters list is. I don’t think it is clearly advertised, that once your first on the list vote counts because the candidate is neither too high nor too low, your other votes won’t. While if your first choice drops out of the race due to winning a seat or being the lowest, you have a 2nd vote. That’s weird.

Voters whose first choice is a candidate that would compete for 10th and final place could effectively not be represented because the rest of their lists would never be looked at.

In other words, isn’t it possible to massively influence the outcome of the elections, if you were a large block and knew about several other blocks voting lists? This would allow to develop mathematical models which could help you to seize opportunities in influencing the dogfight for the last CSM seats.

For instance, you could ask some part of your block-members to strategically vote #1 for people you don’t support and who will surely drop out of the race. This would stop them from dropping out early and thus other people who vote them first, won’t have their 2nd choices counted before their 1st choice drops out of the race. At which point it could be that their 2nd choice already dropped out of the race, despite their accumulated #1 and #2 choice voters would have been enough to keep them in longer.

Given that you had enough reliable data about opponents voters behaviour, you could make educated guesses on how to manipulate the outcome of the final seat fillings, by playing the algorithm. Such knowledge would not be realistic in the real world, but it seems it could be in EVE.

TL;R you cannot exclude people who immediately hit the quota, but you can try to time when 2nd and 3rd choices are counted in order to get the upper hand for those last vacant seats

9

Anyway, dont vote traitors.

10

What do you mean? :smiley:

11

I mean The Judge.

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I only know his name from the CO2/Goon drama, but I assume it will be like with all people who rat out their friends: their new friends will hype them for a while and then drop them because no one trusts a traitor. It’s just a useful idiot in the end.

Who should I vote for btw? Any suggestions? I would like to support someone with the brains to make good decisions and the charisma to convince others of them.

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Yes, this is not at all a troll/propaganda thread.

14

OK, I’ll bite. What is the basis for your comment?

15

The best way to look at this:

  • You have a single vote.
  • You rank up to 10 candidates in the order you’d like to see them elected in.
  • Each candidate needs just over 9% of the vote to get elected ( votes/seats+1 +1)
  • If someone has more than that, you look at how much more they have, and then roll some of the voting power down each individual ballot, to the next person.
  • If you don’t have enough people elected, eliminate the person with the fewest votes (just remove them from all ballots. any empty ballots are then removed) and run it again. Eventually you either have 10 people with enough votes, or there are only 10 people left. and they get elected.

So if someone had double the votes they needed to get elected, each and every ballot which gave them that gets half a vote applied to the next person on that ballot.

If you have a candidate who just squeaks in, pretty much no excess will roll down.

If everyone you voted for is eliminated, your vote is ‘wasted’.

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17

Just vote as your supreme alliance leader tells you so that nothing changes. If you aren’t a part of the blue donut alliances then your vote(s) will not matter anyhow. half a dozen people dictate who will become the CSM in order to keep the status quo.

This is how things have been since at least 2009, when I started. Nothing has changed. Your voice is null and void.

Have the warm and fuzzies yet?

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18

Ahh, the cry of the person who doesn’t want you to vote, because it makes their vote more meaningful.

You know I’ve generally not been on any Nullsec ballot (at least not in a position where I gained any real number of votes) right?

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19

GRUNTWARD WAS ROBBED!

Heinous travesty!

#plomisnotmycsm

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20

#wakkunforemperor

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