Greetings Citizens, Happy New Year! Applications for Term 2 have now closed; the result being 46 potential councilors on our Ballot and now it's over to you, the community, to decide who you want on the next council. For those of you who may not be aware of the council and its purpose, the council is a community-elected group of players who represent the ideas and opinions of the community and serve as a useful bridge between us developers and the community as a whole. They sift through suggestions, debate and bring forward to the devs suggestions they have determined to have the most merit, or need, or that show an entirely new idea that no one may have thought of before. We bounce off ideas with them that we might not be able to share with the community as a whole just yet, assisting us in refining the ideas. They run polls and discussions, both on SMD and throughout communities they're involved in. They also help in acknowledging citizens who have displayed exceptional skill and dedication in a particular area, through nominating citizens for badges. The roles of the council is very organic, adapting to what we, the developers, need at that point in the development timeline. Term 1 did an excellent job at solidifying what roles the council can take on board. But now it's time for Term 2, a new council, elected by the community. To assist you in evaluating and choosing your votes, you can read all applications on the ballot at SMD here. When you're finally ready to vote then head over to council.star-made.org, you'll need to login to the Citizen's Registry before being able to participate in voting (login is at the top of the page). Again the voting system will be using STV (Single Transferable Vote); however, a change from Term 1's voting system is that this time you will not have a restriction on how many preferences you can add. You can vote for just one applicant by placing a 1 next to their name, or you can vote for all 46 numbering them in order of preference with the most preferred candidate being 1, and the 46th most preferred candidate being 46. To learn more about STV, CGP ​Grey has two excellent videos explaining how the system works. Check the first one out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI Voting for Term 2 will close at 23:59:59 UTC on January 20th, 2016, giving two weeks for you to place your votes. After that, the new councilors will be announced, and we'll be in Term 2 of the council. Happy Voting! - Schine Team