Voting for the 21st Council of Stellar Management opened on 22 October, and r/Eve filled up with endorsements within hours. Last week we covered the candidate list and the Brawl for CSM in Amamake. Now the ballot is live.
The announcement
A thread titled "CSM 21 voting has begun" went up on the morning of 22 October, pointing players to the official announcement and the candidate threads (r/Eve thread). It was among the most visible posts on the subreddit that day. A second post shared a direct link to the official voting page, which accepts a pre-filled list of names (r/Eve thread).
The practical rules, as laid out by players in those threads: you vote with Omega accounts, every eligible account has its own ballot, so alts count, and ranking order matters because the count uses a single transferable vote. One candidate-slate author gives the deadline as 11:00 UTC on 3 November and says accounts need 60+ days of Omega. Check the official page before relying on that: it is a player's summary, not the announcement itself.
The slates
The most discussed endorsement is "Lucky's CSM 21 Dream Team" (r/Eve thread). Its author, a former Militant Consortium executive now flying with WinterCo, argues for a council that does not belong to a single bloc, and says small and mid-sized alliances should be able to hold space without depending on the Imperium. The list mixes Imperium, The Initiative, WinterCo and independent names: among them Drake Iddon (Pochven and economy), Sopleb (ESI and alliance tools), Itaer and Poiuyt20 Fliba for wormholes, Switch 4 for lowsec and Faction Warfare, Mike Azariah and Kshal Aideron for high-sec and new players, and nullsec picks Seraph Essael, xXNemXx, Arrowspeeed Bounty and Dujek Oneye.
It is an opinion piece with a clear point of view, and its claims about past CSM achievements are the author's own.
A much shorter list came from HuntBuzz, who is himself a candidate: HuntBuzz, Orion Sa-Solo, Dujek Oneye, Pandoralica, xXNemXx and Drake Iddon (r/Eve thread). Orion Sa-Solo is the organiser of the Brawl for CSM; Dujek Oneye, a former CSM 19 member, also posted his own platform covering new-player experience, ISK faucets and PvP balance (r/Eve thread). Other candidates ran their own threads: Adhamhnon's AMA focused on quality-of-life requests such as a stack-all hotkey and player hangars with access lists (r/Eve thread).
A video endorsement for Itaer (r/Eve thread, video) and a tongue-in-cheek "Propaganda" post for Ceema (r/Eve thread) rounded out the day.
A disputed accusation
Not everything was campaign copy. One r/Eve post presents a screenshot as proof that ex-CSM member and current candidate Kenneth Feld admitted, in a semi-public Discord, to using macro keys for industry actions, and argues this breaks the EULA (r/Eve thread, screenshot). We could not verify the context of the screenshot, whether the statement describes a real violation, or any response from the candidate, and the thread had not yet collected comment data when we read it. Treat it as an allegation by one player, not an established fact.
What the voters are really arguing about
The tone of the threads tells you what matters this cycle. Lucky's post cites the Ansiblex projection changes, the war declaration cost increase and the Jita clone bay as things CSM 20 delivered, and pushes for a council with room for small groups. Several candidates in the posts above talk about the same subjects: force projection, wormhole and lowsec content, economy sinks, and the state of new-player retention. In other threads, players are also complaining about client performance and multiboxing, which came up in the replies under Adhamhnon's AMA.
One reminder: the CSM is an advisory body that gives feedback to Fenris Creations. It does not set balance by itself. That is also the point several commenters made when they pressed candidates on what makes them qualified to give nuanced feedback.