EVE election results in
UK wins at virtual politics.
EVE Online developer CCP has announced the results of its recent elections for player representatives on the Council of Stellar Management, the first ever democratically elected body in a virtual world.
Although the nine player delegates are of equal rank, we know that winning is important, so we can report that Jade Constantine - a.k.a. the UK's Andrew Cruse - was the most popular, bagging 2436 votes.
Constantine stood on a ticket for supporting the interests of less hardcore players and smaller guilds - proving that in the virtual world, as in the real world, the middle-class silent majority holds the keys to the kingdom.
A close second was Hardin, whose real name is Niall Dologhan, also a Brit. He came a close second with 2393 votes after his campaign focused on player-versus-player battles. War wins elections, after all, as Margaret Thatcher understood all too well.
Both Hardin and Constantine were interviewed in our recent feature on the elections. Vox Pop, a player who promised to poll all other players on every decision, was not elected.
The remainder of the councillors are drawn from the US, Netherlands and Denmark as well as Britain. Two women will sit on the council, an achivement when you consider that only 3 per cent of the game's player base is female. The full results are as follows:
- Andrew Cruse - Jade Constantine - United Kingdom - 2436
- Niall Dologhan - Hardin - United Kingdom - 2393
- Eva Jobse - Ankhesentapemkah - Netherlands - 1551
- Alexander Kravitz - Bane Glorious - United States - 1536
- Sean Conover - Darius JOHNSON - United States - 1268
- Valentijn Geirnaert - Dierdra Vaal - Netherlands - 1059
- Shayne Smart - Serenity Steele - Netherlands - 965
- Charlie Eriksen - LaVista Vista- Denmark - 764
- Alison Wheeler - Inanna Zuni - United Kingdom - 706
Considering EVE has a population of around a quarter of a million players, it's clear that voter apathy was something of a problem. The turn-out was just over 11 per cent - 24,651 votes cast out of a pool of 222,422 eligible voters. Nonetheless, hat's higher than expected, and not bad for an early experiment in virtual democracy. Unsurprisingly, most voters were veteran players of over a year's standing.
The Council will meet in-game on Saturday, with minutes published afterwards on the game's forums, and then convene in real-life on the weekend on 19th June at CCP's headquarters in Iceland.