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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2629434" data-attributes="member: 7240">That's an argument in favour of judges voluntarily relinquishing their positions. This happens all the time in real elections and happens here on ENWorld -- thus, the gradual turnover in the judging panel. In a sense you are going after a problem we do not have; the judging panel does turn over and different people are elected every year, in part because some judges take time off.Different judges' popularity is based on different things. Just as in real-world elections where a candidate's record in public life as a business person, community leader, etc. before entering electoral politics has a preponderant effect on her popularity, so too with ENNies judging positions. Candidates who enter general elections with no pre-existing public profile don't do as well as those who have one, in part because people like to elect candidates who have a track record of service, especially volunteer service to the community. I assume, for instance, that Crothian does well in these elections in part because people read his reviews and trust them. I would hope that our voters look at people's reviews and posting records on the boards as well as what little info is posted on the nominations thread. I would also suggest that this carries off this site. If Gary Gygax retired from publishing or took a sabbatical, I don't think there is any doubt that he would top the polls by a mile in the ENNies judge election. And so it should be. None, as far as I know. Which seems to me to indicate the system is working.Doesn't that suggest that the solution is to build your profile? If you really want to get elected, you know what you have to do: campaign. You seem to be arguing that it is unfair for people who don't campaign to not have much of a chance. That's a problem with elections. If you don't campaign in the pre-writ period, you won't win. It's true everywhere they have elections.Well, clearly the voters don't agree with you there. Otherwise, they would, as is their right every election, limit the number of consecutive terms served by one or more of the candidates.Perhaps Dextra could help us out here. How many votes were cast in these elections? Does this statistically correlate to this "drama" factor. Besides, if you want drama in the election, make as many witty posts as TB, write as many reviews as Crothian; create drama, in other words, by presenting yourself as a candidate of equal attractiveness to the incumbents. I don't think we are going to have an election that is somehow more dramatic or attractive if we remove candidates that each year's results clearly indicate, people want to vote for.Convincing people that their franchise will be compromised does not strike me as a good tactic for improving turnout. "Hey guys! You should really vote in this election! The field is populated by unknowns you'll have to do extra work to learn about. You won't be allowed to vote for the people you think will do the best job. And you are less likely to be able to trust that casting your vote will result in the election of competent judges." I've heard this argument before; it doesn't make sense to argue that increasing the opportunity cost of voting will increase the number of people who vote.Umbran, I always vote for you, knowing you will lose. How do I know you will lose? Not because you are not an incumbent. Virtually? every year, somebody gets onto the panel who is not an incumbent, after all. I know you are going to lose because you act like me on this forum. Your posts often come off like mine: overly intellectual, argumentative and dismissive of people's points of view. Having met a number of the incumbents, I can attest that they could post the way you and I do. But they don't, except on really bad days. They put up a public front on these forums where they hold back on lording their superior knowledge and intelligence over others; they find funny, entertaining things to post that brighten everybody's day reading them or they cultivate an image of themselves as fair arbiters in conflicts. Your chances of winning are directly related to your ability to come off as diligent, credible, fair and charismatic on these forums. You and I don't do that. That's why we aren't going to get to be judges unless we care enough about getting the job to act more like PirateCat, Crothian, Teflon Billy, etc. People win due to positive associations with their screen handle. They correlates to incumbency but incumbency does not build these associations; pithy entertaining posts and trustworthy reviews build those associations.We don't need an institutional mechanism to favour incumbents because the voters do that. What you are really saying is that you don't trust the voters to choose the best candidates. We don't need to demonstrate that incumbents do a better job; you need to demonstrate why the voters are untrustworthy, given the track record even you credit to them thatThis suggests to me that the voters have a proven track record of selecting good judges, incumbent and non-incumbent. It also reminds us that non-incumbents get elected every cycle.But the system does not privilege incumbents. The voters re-elect incumbents but voter choice is absolutely unfettered. By your reasoning, the system gives preference to men over women, white people over people of colour, etc. I grew up in a city that also uses the multi-member plurality system for municipal elections. In the 1970s and 1980s, incumbency appeared to be a powerful force and some argued that the system privileged incumbents. Since 1993, this supposed systemic advantage for incumbents has been refuted by election result after election result (sadly I think this November's elections will continue the trend). How much advantage incumbency confers is 100% in the hands of the individual voters. If you can make the case to them, as happened in my home town, that the incumbents need to be turfed or that there are superior candidates to replace them, the incumbents will lose.Let's get some solid turnout stats from previous years before we continue there; otherwise I'm going to continue to suspect that the current system is producing steadily increasing turnout.</blockquote>

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