This seems very much on the order of trying to shut the stable door after the horse bolted. But Wulfric did express a wish to hear more clarification on the Lincoln Fed situation.
either of our Lincoln GC candidates in terms of actual 1st preferences - the votes of yours that went to RC or myself were largely originally with a Fed write in that apparently dropped out at the last second but who was pretty clearly intended to restrict DA to one seat. And then once you realized he withdrew you tried to put forth another candidate, a ploy which only failed because you guys didn't have enough votes that weren't already cast.
As the Regional Chair and having been in charge of Federalist GOTV there, this is categorically false.
My initial GOTV did not include either of the Feds who ended up being written in because neither of them were part of any plan. The Feds who voted for RC directly – look 'em up – are pretty much typical voters whose votes happened to matter most when the election ended. The SN thing was communicated to me later on (more precisely, that a Fed wanted to run and that that Fed was SN) and justified by his recent interest in running again. He then ended up backing out of it, apparently early on in the weekend, not that that stopped other people from writing him in afterwards.
I wrote Jonathan in, as I always do, but a DA candidate (RC) was clearly preferenced ahead of him in reflection of this reality.
Is it partially my fault that Jonathan later wrote himself in, as he also often does, and several other voters then bandwagoned that write-in into a candidacy that would never have been accepted by the write-in in question? Maybe. But both of our write-ins were longstanding habits of ours that were not picked up on by anyone else in any election prior to this one. Jonathan made no indication either before or during the election that his write-in was any different from what he usually does. Calling either of our write-ins a "ploy" is ridiculous. I was not online during the weekend to carry out any such ploys, even if I wanted to (spoiler: I don't), and also clearly communicated this ahead of time at the beginning of the election.
End result: the candidates on the ballot were backed because neither Fed accepted. The blame for all that probably lies with me, as the person who did the GOTV, but I fail to see how your argument follows from that because it doesn't match up with what happened at all.
From a legal perspective, Jonathan's vote for himself is in fact an acceptance. Had Kaiser not preffed me, or if I had gotten slightly less prefs from Tack/Crane, I would have stayed behind Jonathan throughout and the seat would have gone to Jonathan. Had he conceded his victory (in Lincoln this is done by never swearing in), the seat would go to special election.
My argument is that instead of backing either of the DA candidates who actually wanted the job, most of you guys instead backed SN first and foremost and did so for nearly the entire election, despite him in the end not wanting the job, and then when you realized he did not want it, you then shifted your remaining votes to another Fed in hopes you still had enough votes left to control the outcome. If your argument is instead that SN's withdrawal wasn't communicated out for some time and that votes would have been different if communication was better, and that the write-ins for Jonathan were just a meme, it doesn't really make you look much better - in this case, several voters vaulted a meme candidacy (BJ) instead of backing any real candidacy, and said meme candidacy came within a preference (in one scenario) or a couple of preferences (in another) of winning, under which the region would have to deal with a special election for not just one but two seats (the ensuing vacancy in Tack's seat plus BJ's seat).
TL;DR: I appreciate the additional perspective but it doesn't shift my view on the best path forward for the DA.
