CSM9 Election Results Announced

CCP announced the names of the fourteen CSM9 winners at Fanfest. Yesterday, they released the full results. Many readers will want to know only one thing: Did Psychotic Monk win this time? Sadly the answer is no. Just like last time, Monk came very, very close to winning a seat but didn't quite make it.

MinerBumping's other endorsement went to DJ FunkyBacon, who did win a seat. Because of the STV system, if you voted for Monk and another candidate(s), your votes for Monk weren't wasted; they got passed down to the next candidate on your list. Here's what FunkyBacon had to say in his blog post about winning a CSM9 seat:

"I'm also quite sure that a lot of people outside low sec threw in their support for us. I know I won't forget that moving forward, and I doubt Sugar will either. I'm especially conscious of the community over at minerbumping.com and the endorsement from James315 at a time when I was getting hammered by a good section of the Eve Media community over my stance on the Erotica 1 situation. I really wanted to see Psychotic Monk on the CSM as well, and I suspect that I may owe part of my seat to votes that passed to me when he got eliminated in the process. Aside from my obvious support of all things low sec, I feel I also owe it to those guys to have their backs if there is a push in the coming year against high sec villainy. For those who choose to do it, being a bad guy in Eve is an important aspect of the game's content, it adds a lot of color to our world... it also keeps me on my toes when dealing with people I don't know, and makes life more interesting."

Congratulations to DJ FunkyBacon on his win. Kudos are also in order for Psychotic Monk. The field was much more competitive this year. Only one incumbent candidate (Trebor Daehdoow) was elected to CSM8. This time, five incumbents kept their seats occupied, leaving fewer for the new candidates to fight over. One incumbent, James Arget, even failed to win reelection.

The full list of winners, in order of STV rank:

Sion Kumitomo (CFC ballot #1)
Corebloodbrothers (Provibloc)
Sugar Kyle (misc lowsec, blogger)
Ali Aras (incumbent, CFC ballot #3)
Steve Ronuken (CREST developer, misc highsec)
Progodlegend (incumbent, N3)
Mynnna (incumbent, CFC ballot #2)
Xander Phoena (CFC ballot #4, podcaster)
Matias Otero (Brave Newbies)
Corbexx (wormholes)
Mike Azariah (incumbent, misc highsec)
DJ FunkyBacon (lowsec, EVE Radio, MinerBumping endorsed)
Mangala Solaris (incumbent, Red vs Blue)
Major JSilva (Pandemic Legion)

From the list of winners, we can see that nullsec did extremely well. As you might expect, so did incumbents. We also see that most winners were members of some large in-game alliance or coalition. Much has been made of the fact that 10 of the 14 winners were on the official CFC ballot. However, the #5 and #6 positions on their ballot did not win a seat. Xander Phoena, who was fourth on the list, would have absorbed the last of the voting power from those ballots.

Some words about the voter turnout. Last time, voter turnout took a nosedive, falling by 16% and reversing the trend of increased turnout. This time? Total disaster. Turnout fell by a jaw-dropping 37% from CSM8. In the CSM7 election, 59,109 votes were cast. For CSM9, only 31,294. In two years, turnout was cut almost in half.

In announcing the results, CCP Leeloo (who is replacing CCP Dolan) explained:

"We feel that this is due to a lack of awareness about the CSM’s form and function within the community, and we will be working actively with CSM9 to reach a broader audience over the coming term."

Yes and no. It's true that a lot of EVE players don't know what the CSM does, or what it's good for. In the past year, each time there was a controversy, we heard over and over that not only was the CSM not consulted about the decision, it wasn't even aware the decision was being made. Making matters worse, the CSM minutes for the Winter and Summer Summits were delayed to an inexcusable degree. The meeting minutes for the summits are the primary avenue by which EVE players get non-vague, non-NDA, non-self-serving information about what kind of input the CSM provides. CCP Dolan admitted that he was to blame for the delays, and hopefully his replacement will learn from his mistakes.

On the other hand, "lack of awareness of the CSM's form and function" can't fully explain the decrease in the voter turnout. Half the people who voted two years ago didn't show up to vote for CSM9. Those are people who knew about the CSM and, at one time, bothered to vote. They were plenty aware then, but now they don't care. Will CCP and CSM9 give more EVE players a reason to care? Time will tell.