There needs to be a one-and-done CSM clause, meaning no player, or the corp they represent, would be eligible the following year or two years.
Itās pretty blatantly obvious that the winners are dictated by the half-dozen dictators as CTA votes.
Itās been nothing but a joke since I began in 2009. Nothing has changed. When the status quo is dictating the future, guess what, YOU GET THE STATUS QUO! ā¦ and player/developer corruption.
I agree the current system of providing a paragraph of text is inadequate to decide between candidates but also somewhat archaic, so how about the option to also include a short audio election pitch?
E.g. Up to 5mins long, which explains why theyāre running, what they hope to achieve, whom they represent and why they think they deserve our vote.
Itās āGSMā, not āCSMā ā¦
It is Council of Stellar Management.
This is probably not the thread you are looking for. GSM Association is that way:
Or maybe you mean Goonās Stellar Management? 
So, the results are out and number of voters went down, nullsec representation went up and CSM 13 is up to do whatever a CSM does.
āŖ C.S.M. ! C.S.M.! Does whatever a C.S.M does! Can it swing from a web? No it canāt. Itās a CSM. Lookout! Itās the C.S.M.!! ā«
Totally expected outcome.
Well, letās be honest, that is what it is. And CCP is fine with it.
Once upon a time CSM was a stakeholder toolbox. Then it wasnāt. Fun bit of history there. Now itās an excercise in limited marketing and community discord management. With the added bonus of some people being less equal than others, and a bit of CCP not having to have as much inspiration for low hanging fruit 
There were 47 candidates on the ballot. Yes, many of those elected are Imperium backed, but the bigger reality is that 7 out of the 10 were incumbents.
Now take a look at all of the meaningful changes to the game over the last year - the various balance passes, the jump fatigue changes, the faction foritzar changes, the addition of Abyssal Deadspace, the warp stab changes to FW, and a whole host of other things. CSM 12 deserves credit for helping make all of that happen, and most of it benefits all players, not merely null sec guys or PvPers, even. The most meaningful change to PvE (and the most fun) since the game started happened this year, with multiple Goon CSM members.
These incumbents won because people are happy with the way the game is trending right now. Fixes people have been asking for have been happening, and when CCP messes up and does dumb things (chat bubbles, window blur) it gets reversed extremely quickly. Thatās a function of the CSM doing itās job.
Perhaps folks need to stop letting their in-game prejudices seep over into this aspect of the community.
5 of them. out of 10. source: INN
quite possibly. yet where is your evidence? you were not there. are you already privy to non-public documents? otherwise, how do you know? specifically, which beneficial changes you quoted are as a direct result of CSM intervention (as a group or individually)?
you can just as easily say that these incumbents won because they were able to access their same block vote - a group of corp mates who would vote en-bloc for whomever their leadership dictated. you might well be correct, yet I suspect there is more evidence (albeit empirical) for my statement than yours.
that will work both ways - for you - in not recognizing that there could be real prejudice, on both sides. by ignoring that via motherhood statement risks you just getting labelled as a politician. politicians get voted-in to govern but largely end up just playing politics. which one are you?
Actually, 7 out of the 10 were on the Imperium ballot, despite some not being members of an Imperium alliance.
My evidence is directly from the developers mouths - you can read Guardās AMA on r/eve. Every CCP dev that talks about the CSM makes it clear how important the work they do is and how impactful the body has been on their decisions. You can read the minutes of the meetings, as well, and see how the player input being presented ends up coloring the choices and paths that the final released versions take.
It would be easy to say that āthese guys just had their blocs winā but that ignores in-game happenings over the last year. TheJudge lost his primary constituency, Sort has had his group blown up, Jinātaan has been in three alliances over the last year, I wasnāt on anybodyās radar last year. We have seen incumbents lose in the past, so while I freely accept that incumbency is valuable, itās not an automatic check mark for getting reelected. Ask Xenuria or Sullen.
As for āvoting en-bloc for whomever their leadership dictated,ā thatās not exactly uncommon in real life, either, is it?
I am a politician - literally and in-game now - and I disagree with your contention that they get voted in to govern and just end up playing politics. Governing is politics. You canāt have one without the other.
My point about prejudice is simple - people donāt like the Goons, and thatās fine. Thatās part of the game. But to bemoan this election because of the in-game affiliation of the folks is just identity politics at its worse. Itās the equivalent of saying āthis guy canāt do a good job because heās a Republican, or heās a Social Democrat, or heās a Conservativeā - itās the kind of casual prejudice that makes RL politics so toxic. We should strive for something better in our made up fantasy world, shouldnāt we?
lol
I regret voting for you ā¦ as the only 1 / 10 that I did.
Enjoy your expenses paid trip(s) to Iceland. Donāt forget to inform the IRS.
This conversation is over. And wonāt be repeated. Out.
Iāve done a lot of business travel over the years, and I donāt expect this trip to Iceland to be for sight seeing. I can do that on my own dime.
Iām sorry youāre upset.
I will give them that. But these were not the most urgent things, especially in BALANCE and WEALTH dept. Well, then what are these things that are important? That also depends who you ask, if you ask NULL CSM members, they will give you different answer than those who desnt care about NULL. Just notice that caring about NULL can be interpreted in many ways. Like maybe caring about wallet in a pocket.
Something better would be a CSM that wasnāt literally a panel of goons with the ears of the devs year after year.
People Have good reason to hate goons and even more reason to hate them being on the csm they canāt be trusted not to break the rules IE. The mittani drunk at fanfest on a stream actively encouraging people to harass someone, Or the goons exploiting the faction warfare loyalty store thing where they made all that Isk that ccp ended up stripping from them, how many more instances of goons breaking rules need shall I provide In order to prove there lack of judgement and ability to make good choices for the rest of us that play eve.
I would have thought ccp had learned there lesson after the mittani incident.
The point of the csm is to represent all the players of eve yet it fails at that completely they need to bring in a quota system so there is at minimum 1 player who represents hi-sec / low sec / 0.0 / Worn Hole.
or as others have suggested Once a persons been on the CSM they are excluded from serving on the next 2 atleast.
This would fix nothing about bloc voting (exercise for the reader, why?) whatsoever and would only hurt independent candidates with good name recognition ( thinking of Steve here, who definitely deserves his recurring place)
Unless you can point to me an example of where the Goon members of the CSM used their positions to influence game development to benefit the Goons and only the Goons, none of these complaints matter to the overall issue of representation on the CSM.
There is nothing wrong with the existing system - players need to vote. Folks in different areas need to run, and they need to be visible. Do that, and you can win. Thatās what I did. Simply complaining that the group thatās most motivated continues to win victories ignores both how the system works and how it was designed to work.
It really is apparent in this thread how much being a professional politician involves elaborate rhetorical exercises to shift actual, earnest criticism of a system into individual blame instead of taking oneās own so-called constituents seriously. While I personally do not look at the inevitable limitations of democracy through rose-tinted glasses, if one is talking about how systems are designed to work, then one must also remember that representative democracies were originally designed not to elevate the opinions of the elected few but to use them as conduits who will humbly convey the will of the people even if it is contrary to their own beliefs.
Especially as a member of the CSM, which has no actual power and exists entirely as an advisory body designed to appease players when the developers fall out of favor, a Council Member should be particularly careful to do the listening rather than the talking, at least when it comes to talking with constituents, so that they can save their energy to most efficiently serve as a humble and broadly-informed spokesperson for everyone else. Or has the term ācivil servantā lost all meaning?
Will you be distributing the amount of money you spent on Facebook advertisements for your campaign to all CSM candidates in the future? Or will you concede that there is more to winning than simply being āmotivatedā?
One of the biggest criticisms of the CSM that I see consistently is that members arenāt visible enough and arenāt communicating enough. Communication is a two way street - I listen, but I am also going to respond. Especially when I see criticisms that I think are misguided or invalid.
The complaints people have about the number of Goons candidates who were elected are, in my opinion, unfounded. Iāve seen no evidence and have read nothing over the last few years about how the Goons are manipulating the CSM to do their bidding. The one complaint Iāve seen regarding changes to the game that benefitted a single group were made about PL, not Goons. Iāve asked for evidence of bias, and so far Iāve heard nothing. So unless someone can provide me with some credible evidence that the Goons are using the CSM to benefit themselves and only themselves, I am going to chalk up these complaints merely to in-game rivalries rather than something substantive.
That gets me back to my main point: the CSM reflects those who choose to vote. We donāt have political parties in EVE, but the Alliance system is probably the closest thing to it. You never hear in real life āwe need to change the composition of the U.S. Senate because too many Democrats are getting electedā or āWe need to rethink how Parliament works because the Conservatives keep winning too many seats.ā The election results reflect the electorate - voters chose these candidates. This is what they wanted. You may not like the outcome, but the remedy for that is next election, not changes to the body itself.
The fact that I was motivated is why I chose to spend some money on this race that I could have spent on something else.