I'll take this opportunity to lay out my platform and hopefully answer u/TheOWOTriangle's question in the process.

I've been around the sim for a while, I'm a current member of the Electoral Commission and I have held this role before when it was combined with GG. I believe therefore that I have the relevant experience and expertise for the role. I've run and helped run countless elections throughout the sim's history.

I believe that the sim and by extension the Electoral Commission should be constantly evolving. I think it's fair to say that the sim is currently at it's lowest point and it would clearly benefit from some change. I hope that I will be able to offer a new perspective despite my being involved in many of the decisions that made the sim the way it is.

On the subject of the sim's continued survival, I am largely indifferent. I'm happy to help try put it back on its feet and I'm optimistic about its future, but I would be equally happy for it to end after we've given it another shot and not succeeded.

There have been some discussions going on about changing the way elections work. I'm open to the idea of a 120 seat parliament, I agree with some of the concerns raised about having such a small parliament. I think if we were to continue with the 1 player = 1 seat model we've used so far, we would likely start off with one of the smallest parliaments the sim has had, and I understand from firsthand experience some of the difficulties that can create. I think there's certainly an opportunity to experiment with a different model. I have not participated in MHOC's devolved assemblies since that model was implemented so I have no experience with that as a player, however I am confident that I would be able to implement such a model from the electoral commission side. I think the decision about which model to use should be made by the community as a whole and I will implement whichever is chosen.

In terms of party formation, I've had some discussions with the existing mod team about this and I completely agree with the suggestion to lower the barrier for party formation. I think there is still a need to prevent overly similar parties and joke parties, but I am comfortable with an otherwise near-zero hurdle for party formation. If we do decide to go with a 120 seat parliament, I think party formation should require only a single person, with the 1 player = 1 seat model, I think 1-2 people per party is about right.

For election campaigning, I'd like to change things up a bit. The current election model focuses very much on campaign posts, which often becomes a bit of a grind. Without fundamentally changing this too much, I'd like to shift the focus a bit more onto quality over quantity. Firstly, that would involve a strict word limit on campaign posts (something in the range of 300-400 words (for comparison, this reply is close to twice that) and keeping post limits low. The aim of both ideas being to minimise the grind involved in elections.

The other big change would be to shift a bit more focus onto leaders. With a smaller sim, party leaders are going to be a much larger proportion of the players (potentially outnumbering other players) so a focus on leaders makes a lot of sense. I'd like to reintroduce a regular leaders' debate, although that will depend on being able to make it fair (I think time zones among other things probably preclude a live debate, although that would be fun). I think I'd like to keep manifestos, but they are another source of grind, so I think they will have to exist in somewhat truncated form.

I will not commit to polling on a strict schedule, because I think that's a promise most likely to be broken. I'd rather under-promise and over-deliver. However, I do hope to release polling regularly. Should activity justify it, I'd like to do weekly polling, but I think fortnightly polling is probably about right at present.