legomymalfoy wins!
The results are interesting, and tell me something about fandom in general, on LJ in particular, and also something about dirty politics. First, you have to understand how the election worked: to win, a candidate needed more than 50% of the vote. If no one got a majority, the lowest count candidate was eliminated, and the second choice for his/her supporters was counted, instead. This process continues until a candidate has more than 50% of the vote. This is called an instant run-off system; it's the system of voting used in some countries. Since you get only three choices, if those three choices aren't very popular, well, your candidates might not make it far, in which case you don't have a say in further run-offs ... but you still got three chances to have a say, which is more than you get in the type of election Americans are used to, in which case if you don't vote for the candidate the majority of people in your area vote for, your vote doesn't matter. There is no perfect system of voting. Every one has both drawbacks and advantages.
In this election, it was clear that the three main candidates endorsed by fandom were top contenders, from the beginning; by the time round 19 of eliminations came around, everyone had been eliminated except
legomymalfoy,
rm, and
vicy (the three main fandom candidates) and
jameth, a candidate who got a
large fraction of his vote for attacking fandom in general and
legomymalfoy in particular.* It took 21 eliminations to get to a point where any one candidate had a clear majority. By that point, the only two candidates remaining were
jameth and
legomymalfoy. From round 1 to round 21,
jameth picked up 1,330 votes as a second or third choice candidate for people whose first or second choice were eliminated.
legomymalfoy picked up 3187. What this means is that there were some people who liked somebody else more than
jameth, but still liked him enough to put him in their top three.
legomymalfoy had
three times that many people who liked her as their second or third candidate. Basically, while Jameth's tactics attracted people who were willing to make him their top candidate, they weren't very successful attracting people who might put him second or third. Either you liked him or you hated him, which is not a good strategy for a run-off type election, which may very well swing (as in this case) on people's second or third choices. It is, however, pretty predictable when you run a negative campaign.
*(An example of
jameth's tactics:
legomymalfoy received a death threat over the election process. LJ notified all the candidates; one chose to back out. This was publically announced, but not
who had received the death threat; it was assumed that the guy who dropped out was the one, and he encouraged that idea.
jameth hung around in the LJ of the guy who dropped out, talking trash about fandom and saying how it was probably a fan who wanted to ensure
legomymalfoy won. When
legomymalfoy was the one who received the threat! Gah.)
Also, let's take a look at the reactions to the election results: a lot of people are saying things like "Shenanigans!" and "OMG! Lots of people's votes didn't count!" (when the election happened
exactly the way LJ said it would in all their explanations). This is the way a run-off election works, people! I don't particularly like LJ's current management, and they have a bad habit of trying to ignore their users and obfuscate to keep us in the dark ... but that's not what happened this time. Many of the people who are complaining are also posting obscene pictures (so mature, there, folks) and things like "we have been snape-raped!" And this is the other predictable result of a negative campaign: when it's over, everyone is polarized and mistrustful and hate-filled. Which, if your goals are long-term enough to include what happens after the election, is a bad thing. (I realize that I contributed to the negativity with my post about
jameth--but that's another thing about negative campaigns: once one side starts, the other feels pressured to respond in kind and things start a downward spiral.)
Observations about fandom: we seemed to be by far the largest voting bloc, judging both by the initial tally and by watching the run-off process work. This is surprising in some ways, not so much in others. It's surprising because "fandom" is really a large, amorphous group composed of thousands of smaller groups within, which may or may not talk to each other on a regular basis. In fact, some of which are actively quite hostile to each other. Many fandoms, particularly the larger ones, will have large groups within them that hate each other's guts, or at least try to act like it when they're forced into proximity to one another. So coming together to come up with a slate of three candidates almost everyone could agree on? Yeah. That's not something you see every day.
Why fandom coming together as a bloc for voting purposes is not surprising: we're used to being ignore and belittled by non-fans. I'm lucky, myself; my family thinks my participation in fandom is an interesting hobby, for the most part, instead of as some weird thing that proves I'm nuts and that I can't handle the real world. Unless you come from a fanish family or marry a fellow fan, the latter reaction is a lot more common. It doesn't matter what segment of fandom you're in; that's the common reaction to fannishness. When it's not like we put any more time and effort into being fannish than a diehard fan of a sports team puts into being a fan of that sports team. But even if you're lucky like me, and your family is supportive, fandom as a
whole still gets belittled and discriminated against all the time. Good examples being everything from LJ's recent history to Shatner's famous "Get a life!" This inspires a kind of bunker mentality; we may have some really nasty infighting under normal circumstances, but we'll come together if there's a hint of a threat. (Whether we'll overcome our inner divisions to be able to actually accomplish something can be another matter, but at least we'll try.) So for this election process, everyone in fandom on LJ (in all its myriad forms) knew what the issues were, which candidates were likely to be supportive and which were likely to be hostile to us, and which were active fans themselves. And after some debate among ourselves, a slate of candidates were selected as THE candidates that fandom was going to throw its weight behind.
And that's the story on how
legomymalfoy won the election.