A week before a moderator election starts, the election is announced on meta, with a post asking for questions for the candidates. These questions are collected, and candidates are strongly encouraged to answer the questionnaire (normally consisting of the 10 most upvoted questions posted as answers in the original thread). A link to the candidates' answer appears on the election page. For example: question collection, election page (with a link “The candidates answer your questions”); the candidates' answers.
When the election proper starts, i.e. when candidate nominations open, a notification is sent to all users who have enough reputation on the site to nominate (300 rep, more on SO). Then, when the voting phase starts, a notification is sent to all users who have enough reputation to vote (150 rep). These notifications are sent even to users who don't visit the site often.
Thus even occasional users of the site get to know about the election, in time to nominate if they can, in time to vote if they can. But occasional users who don't check the meta site don't get to know about the question collection phase until it's over. When I'm an occasional user of a site, I have a few posts there but I don't check it often, I have no interest in running in the election, so I'm not terribly interested in the nomination phase. I do think that it's good that everybody who can run is informed, but for most people that's just pro forma. On the other hand, even if I don't participate much on a site, I am interested in knowing more about candidates than what little is visible on the election page. I would like to be able to ask a question or two, and to influence what questions are selected for the questionnaire by voting.
Things have been done this way since early 2016. Before that, the questionnaire was compiled during the nomination phase. This meant that the candidates' answers weren't available until some way into the voting phase, which was bad, hence the change. But an unfortunate consequence of this change is that there is no longer a notification in time for people to participate in the question nomination phase.
Please send a notification of the question collection to all users who will be eligible to vote in the election, so that they can weigh in on the questions that will be put to the candidates, even if they don't check the site very often.
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at the same time to increase the chances that everyone would see it via the sidebar.