Thanks, Gaby!
The elections that have awards of value should have cheat-proof voting or there shouldn't be elections, anyone who can manipulate the ballot is likely to manipulate all the ballots in all elections here, many of the elections use the same ballot. Prestige of winning is value in itself, whether there's a monetary award or advertising award, or not.
There are other issues of course, I think it would take a year-long study to truly determine a Person of the Year, based on many things besides popularity or cronyism, but since the voting is done by human beings, we all vote on our personal opinions. The Person of the Week is always a popularity vote, and therefore all 52 POTWs were chosen on their popularity within the week they won POTW, so it would be difficult to put different criteria on the POTY, even though some people gain or lose some popularity between winning POTW and the time of the POTY election.
Last year, I was told that the election is supposed to be just for fun, not to be taken so seriously...if that's true then either no one should vote or everyone should find out how to cheat.
You asked
<< The question is How do we clean it up, without being punished for it? maybe we should just say if it's chaos they want, chaos they will have, but then what are the new members to think of everyone? >>
Exactly! Well, lots of new members don't really know about the elections, and maybe they don't care. I think lots of people join Adlandpro for a place to advertise, that's why I did. All the forum discussions and elections lead to gains in marketing for people who are marketing, but I don't know what the personal gain is for people who are not marketing. Just personal importance? If that's all it is then maybe there should be 2 elections, one for people who are serious and one for those who just like to win, no matter what the reason or reward, or lack of it.
Why should any members be punished for suggesting changes? But I know there could be a lot of backlash. Why would anyone want to keep things the way they have been as far as the POTY is concerned? I know this time lots of people were unhappy about the nominating rules, maybe first there should be a preliminary vote about nominating rules before everything gets started. There's a year until the next one! The next 12 months should be enough time for changes, but no matter how many people want change, the final decision is only up to 1 or 2 people.
We'll be told to start our own elections, in that case, I would say Georgios could have won or tied Luella last year, or there should have been an entirely new election because of cheating from another nominee. For this year, voting out of 52 POTW's from 2007, that would have discluded many of the people who are actually on this year's ballot because they were POTW's from previous years.