@MartinSleziak So if I understand correctly, 636 people have voted in this election that didn't vote in the last election? From the vote counts on our candidate questionnaires I had assumed the voting population was around 100-200, so this is remarkable to me.

@AlecRhea No, 636 people altogether have voted in this election (so far). Note that the Constituent badge is awarded once per election, and can be awarded multiple times.

@gmvh Ah, thank you for clarifying; still a nice turnout!

@ToddTrimble Welcome to the election room, it is good to see that some of the current mods visit this room, too.

I wanted to ask whether there is something new about Mariano Suárez-Álvarez. (Although it seems unlikely.)

Is the situation still the same as explained in Scott Morrison's answer - he can become a mod again if he chooses to do so? This was said in the answer here: Were there some recent changes to the moderators' team?

I looked at the results of the previous election - that's what reminded me of him: 2013 Election Results.

Of course, if there are some privacy issues why this cannot be answer publicly, feel free to deleted the messages I posted here. (To me, this seemed like a reasonable question at during the election time, so I posted it here.)

Holy cow! Anton!

@Anton How much do you follow MO these last couple of years? Do you ever miss it?

I compiled a list of the PhD dates for the various candidates, in case anyone is interested:

@AsafKaragila @AsafKaragila I haven't followed MO closely for several years, but I do reflect on it regularly (particularly around annual board meetings and in the lead-up to this election). Yes, I miss a lot about it. Ironically, I have a very high psychological activation energy for participating in any kind of online community, but maybe I'll get over that one of these days.

@AntonGeraschenko Did you ever expect MO to get this big?

@AsafKaragila Not before starting it, but it was clear within a few months of launch that it scratched an important itch.

@MartinSleziak If I understand your question correctly, the situation is the same. More generally, SE has a streamlined (non-election) process for reinstating previous moderators provided that they're in good standing and the current moderation team wants to bring them back aboard.

I asked Catija about this in the lead up to this election. She pointed me to this post which has extensive details, but the process is light-weight if there are no red flags.

@AntonGeraschenko Sure is. Thanks for doing that!