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Over on WebApps there are 3 Moderator Positions available. The nominations closed this evening and 3 users have nominated - One of them being myself

The process has skipped the primary phase and gone straight to election.

Surely it doesn't really matter who gets voted 1st, 2nd or 3rd as there are only 3 nominees for 3 available positions.

I would have thought that if it skipped the primary phase then it would skip the election phase or not skip any phase at all.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Is there any specific reason for the election phase or is this just a scenario that the system cannot handle?

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  • I think it's not so much that the system cannot handle it so much as the system didn't expect to handle it. The primary phase was designed to be possible to skip, but possibly election was not equally designed for that. – Grace Note♦ Feb 7 '11 at 20:32
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    You must be ranked, so everyone knows which of you is more worthy of our respect! – Pops Feb 7 '11 at 20:38
  • Is it possible under Meek STV to fail to reach the election threshold, even if there are only three candidates? – Robert Harvey Feb 7 '11 at 20:57
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    @Robert: no. EDIT: Actually, yes, if placeholder "I don't like any of these candidates and actively vote for no one" dummy candidates are used, which is done in some systems. But on Stack Exchange, the answer is no. – Pops Feb 7 '11 at 21:04
  • @Popular: Thanks for the link. +1 – Robert Harvey Feb 7 '11 at 21:08
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As Grace Note mentioned, the election system was not set up to handle a case of low participation like this. We have gone ahead and ended the election early on WebApps - congrats to the winners there.

As rare as we hope it is, this scenario is likely something we'll review to better handle in the future.

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  • How very odd. 37 visited the election, but only 8 voted. And there were 524 eligible voters. That is very odd. – Earlz Feb 7 '11 at 23:17
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    @Earlz, The other 29 must have realized there wasn't much point in voting. – Rebecca Chernoff Feb 7 '11 at 23:19
  • I hope that in the future, there's at least some voting to make sure that poor candidates don't becomes mods just because no one else ran. Luckily, all three candidates in this case were qualified, but the possibility does exist. – waiwai933 Feb 7 '11 at 23:22
  • I was actually eligible for voting in a few elections of different SE sites and I chose not to(maybe webapps included?). The reason I chose not to though was because I don't know the sites all that well outside of gaming.se and SO, and I don't think I'd make a good chooser of moderators. – Earlz Feb 7 '11 at 23:25

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