The Council Of Stellar Management Expands To 12 Seats

Yesterday CCP announced the next election and rules changes for the 18th Council of Stellar Management. The key dates for the election season are:

• 1-15 August – Candidate submissions open
• 2-18 August – Application processing
• 23 August – Live candidate announcement
• 23 August – 3 September – Campaign period
• 4 September – 11 September – Voting period
• 21 September – CSM 18 Announcement, live at Fanfest

The campaign takes on a bit more importance due to a change in the structure of the CSM.

With the return of expansions to EVE Online we can now plan even farther ahead for EVE's development, and this means we can better predict what kind of expertise would be useful to have on the CSM.

To take advantage of this, for CSM 18 we will expand the size of the CSM from 10 to 12 seats. 10 members will be directly elected as usual using the same campaign and voting process that the CSM has operated on for years.

Then, from the candidates who finished in the 11th to 20th positions, CCP will select two to join the 10 elected members, forming the new 12-member CSM 18.

Our selection will be based primarily on what areas of knowledge we perceive to be most valuable in the coming term based on our plans for EVE development. Operationally, there will be no distinction made between the 10 elected and 2 appointed members of the CSM.

I am assuming the 11th through 20th positions are the last 10 candidates removed by the single transferrable vote algorithm. I won't say for certain as CCP has two additional options. The first option is to rerun the algorithm for 20 winners instead of 10 and then select two candidates who didn't win. The other option is to remove the winners and rerun the algorithm to get a second set of 10 candidates to chose from. But if CCP makes an election show as they have the past few years, choosing from the last 10 candidates eliminated makes the most sense.

Those last two "subject expert" seats are interesting. One could look at who CCP choses as an indication of the direction EVE Online development will take for the next year or two. Moving away from the possibility of a second "Chaos Era" is probably a good thing. Of course, CCP can simply ignore the CSM and treat everyone as mushrooms.

One point I am curious about is the reaction of those who finish in places 11 to 20 who are not picked to join CSM 18. I rate the odds of at least one of those candidates stating they are a better pick for a seat for X, Y, and Z reasons as rather high. If that happens, those picked by CCP better behave in an exemplary or the experiment with CCP picking members based on development needs will not extend to CSM 19.