After running a beta community moderator election on math.stackexchange, and launching 2011 community moderator elections on the trilogy sites, we are now rolling out community moderator elections to all the public Stack Exchange 2.0 sites.
When we selected Moderators Pro Tempore on the public beta sites, we tried to be quite clear that the eventual goal was always to have the community elect its own moderators.
That’s why I am in the process of identifying and organizing a team of provisional moderators from within each community (about three per site, starting about seven days into the public beta). This is a temporary, short-term appointment. Pro tem moderators focus and expedite the essential needs of each new site. By the end of beta, the community will be better suited to hold their own elections.
There are a lot of public Stack Exchange 2.0 sites that are due for moderator elections -- but we're starting slowly:
gamedev.stackexchange.com/election
cstheory.stackexchange.com/election
programmers.stackexchange.com/election
We're still refining the election process; after these three complete, we'll proceed rolling elections on even more public sites. I've outlined the election rules before, and those rules are also on the individual election pages -- so please refer there first.
We have a deep respect for all the work that the pro tem moderators do to help govern their communities, particularly in the tumultuous early beta days of a site when we're still figuring out the 7 essential questions. However, in the spirit of fairness and representative democracy, pro tem moderators must run for election if they wish to continue on as community moderators. They are encouraged to, of course!
If you're looking for a ton of detail and statistics on all the nominees, you just gotta check out this amazing election page community member Yi Jiang put together using the Stack Exchange API:
The page runs entirely in your browser. Click the icon of the site you want to see election details for ... and prepare to be blown away.
Our election pages pale in comparison, but we do present the essential information about each candidate, including their introduction, user card and a brief summary of their meta participation.
Democracy is a highly imperfect process, but it is a participatory imperfect process. Please participate in your community elections -- by nominating yourself as a community moderator, if you're so inclined, and always, always by voting. Your vote is your voice, so use it!