Chadley: Liking notes being clarified. Notes are a punishment and anyone who thinks otherwise is huffing some massive copium (and/or they're an observer admin and thus never have to deal notes being used against themselves). I will keep bringing up that EmpressMaia ban, because it's a torpedo against the "notes, aren't a punishment" ship. Note policy is also a clusterfuck that needs to be simplified and standardized. Claiming to be pushing anti-admin pro-player stuff is vague, but it comes across as cringy. It comes across like those political candidates saying, "Unlike these guys, I'm not a career politician!" when they've been a politician longer than their opponents. I'll go more into my thoughts on "LRP VS. MRP" further down, but I don't think MRP needs a special headmin seat just for MRP people. I could be wrong, but I've seen admins/players from MRP win a majority of headmin seats during the previous elections. (again, could be wrong) I have no feelings about purging the inactive admins.
Sightld2: I like his headmin/ban appeals ideas. Moths should be allowed to have silly names. I agree with pretty much all of their thoughts on silicons, despite us being on polar opposites of the player spectrum (AI main vs. a person who hates silicons with a passion)
Cheshify: I'm glad to see someone bringing up polls. The "we rule for you because we know better than you" feeling happens often. I love the idea of an event calendar. I don't think every event needs to be announced beforehand, but it sucks to almost always miss the cool events and only see the "haha, I made everyone progtot xd" level of events. I've liked their contributions to the server as a whole, and they seem like a pretty reasonable person
SS14 Stuff:
Kinnebian: Again, liking the faster headmin response push. Admin rulings definitely needs a cleanup. It's a mess of years-old rulings, which are often overturned by later rulings, leading to a byzantine system. Rule announcement is also a nice thing. I talk about the silicon thing more below. They also rotate their admining across multiple servers, which is a plus. Admin swapping could either be cool or a complete mess. I've seen Sinful complain about MRP admins being too strict on LRP a few times, but I have no idea if that's a popular sentiment or not among LRP players.
Fikou: I'm admittedly biased in favor of canidates that have years of playtime and experience. I like the idea of headmins responding faster to bans if they're uncontroversial. If an admin makes a fucky wucky and are clearly wrong with a ban, headmins shouldn't have to um and er about it for five+ days. I've seen headmins undo a ban days after it expired, when the said ban was for a week. Populating Campbell seems pointless. Manuel doesn't have enough pop to force the Euros to play on the EU MRP server. I'm reminded of when MSO forced Manuel players to play on Campbell, who all then returned to Manuel when it reopened. Lots of rounds played but not a lot of playing as a crew member as of late, which I see as critical for admins, headmins, and contributors (coders and spriters) to be doing.
JohnFulpWillard: I'm admittedly biased against him because he came across as unprofessional during mining PR. In addition, they have extremely low playtime and observe time consistency. I like headmins that play the game. I like that he doesn't want to split LRP and MRP more. I think both being together is a symbiotic relationship. Mentors are also a good idea, but they'd need to be done well. I am against assistants having maint access removed. I'll admit that I *REALLY* don't like assistants (but like them more than paramedics), but I feel like removing maint access would just make the HOP line more of a clusterfuck than it already is at the start of most rounds. I feel like all it would do is lead to more maint doors being hacked open, and that's it. (kind of like during the early stages of his mining PR where miners would just run past the cargo techs, grab their crates, then launch the shuttle with all the doors open) Paramedic already has a problem of people playing it to have (effective) all access, and this change would make it worse.
Iain0: Extremely consistent player, but a rather high amount of it is spent observing versus living. They don't have a lot of campaign ideas, but I've been somewhat content with the status quo (at least on the administration side). They are not the most interesting candidate, but they have lots of experience and are clearly a dedicated admin.
WineAllWine: pretty active (though not much living playtime). I like the idea of more events, but I'm kinda mixed on them (more on that below). I'm all for admins being a bit more creative and/or encouraging creativity. I don't have much to say because I talk about it more below.
Pepper/ANIMETIDDIES: They have a lot of recent living (i.e., not observing) playtime, which is a bonus. I don't know if they were an admin before this, but I'm against voting people with no experience in the bureaucracy to the top of the chain. I rarely see it go well (in terms of online or in real life). I like the idea of using the event hall more, for event rounds. It sucks when you log onto your server of choice just to realize that the admins are in the mood to press all the buttons all the time for multiple rounds on end. I'm kinda eh about the escalation regulations for heads of staff, but that's probably because MRP already has a rule like that. More often, I see people picking headroles to have an easier time as an antagonist instead of hunting antags. Self-deleting player club threads after 90 days is mega lame. I will talk more about the LRP VS. MRP thing below.
GeneralThrax: A pretty good living-to-observing ratio, and very active. I'm indifferent towards training, but that's because I am ignorant about it, to be honest. I'm a big fan of space law being revamped and possibly implemented. Right now, spacelaw is in this weird place where you can use it to justify your actions during ahelps sometimes (or so I've heard), but at the same time, it's almost a noob trap for newer security players to get boinked over EOTC-ing an antagonist that stole an item out of a head of staff's office. I also like the idea of giving pirates and lings a bit more leeway. They're one of the candidates I'm most excited about. Also, they've been a really cool player whenever I see them in-game, so I'm a bit biased.
Jonathan Gupta/BallastMonsterGnarGnar: The only positive I have about them is that they play a lot. That's it. Seems like a shitpost campaign thread.
General talking points/trends that I see:
Remove/disable felinids: I'm not a fan of felinid removal, not because felinids are some sacred creature, but because I think removing an entire species at this point is stupid. Plus, felinids serve as a pretty good "diet non-human," where you have a few non-human quirks but nothing serious. The cringe felinids won't disappear if felinids get removed (or made into legacy content where no new felinid characters can be made, but old ones stay), they'll just because neon haired humans instead (and cargo orders for cat ears will probably skyrocket)
Split LRP and MRP: I see this as a bad idea. I feel like the current status quo is fine. I think simple rulesets are enough to split LRP and MRP. Although MRP has probably shifted from the original TG in terms of culture, LRP has probably shifted from the divergence point of MRP as well. Some players play LRP and MRP, some play LRP only, some play MRP only, and it's fine. I admittedly don't read the LRP general chat on the TG discord, so I don't know if the "THE MRP ADMINS ARE FORCING US TO BE MRP!" sentiment is a popular feeling or just one Ekat and Sinful bring up.
More events: More events is nice, but at least on MRP, most events are just "haha I turn everyone heretic" tier of lameness. April Fools was a fucking shitshow because the admins wouldn't lay off the admin buttons for two seconds, and I'm still salty I never even got to experience most of the meme PRS (which were the whole point of April Fools) because the admins thought that blowing up the whole crew five minutes in = funny (especially repeatedly)
Extremely low energy/meme candidates: We have a lot of these this election cycle, which on the bright side, means that we won't have to deal with over choice. Low-effort candidate threads (and blatantly meme ones) should be deleted, and the person who made the thread should be unable to create a new one, so there are fewer threads to see.
Faster responses to headmin appeals: Very much needed. I've seen a few too many bad week-long bans get overruled on day four or five from the initial headmin appeal. I get that simply saying, "The bureaucracy should just run faster!" is an oversimplification, but perhaps build upon what Sightld2 suggested with lone headmins having the ability to quickly glance at a ban to see if it's legit without having to have all the headmins discuss it.
Silicon rework: Very much needed. Silicon policy is a byzantine clusterfuck of rules, expectations, precedents, headmin rulings, policy threads, etc. It desperately needs a revamp and simplification. I've heard some admins saying that silicon ahelps are almost always a clusterfuck, and I don't blame them for feeling that way. It's easily the most "messy" part of TGstation policy right now, to the point that there is typically less salt the fewer silicons there are in a round. Heaven forbid there's an antagonist AI using a robotic factory. I have never seen it not result in a clusterfuck. Nearly every time, it results in a 10+ minute delayed end round. Theoretically, the AI/Silicon vs. crew interaction should be really interesting. In reality, both sides are just screaming at each other and when an admin gets involved, they are digging through dozens of pages, rules, policy threads, admin rulings, etc., to out-lawyer each other. Case in point with nukies on manuel. Almost every round of nukies on Manuel involves the AI fighting like hell to keep upload bolted.
Some parties argue that AI can do this because it can predict that the captain/RD wanting to change its laws after a war declaration could only mean that it's going to non-human the nukies (or something along those lines). Others argue that the AI can't do this because it can only prevent current human harm (or something along those lines). Either way, all it takes is some smooth brain assistant to yell, "dehuman da nukies!!!11!" for the AI to bolt the upload. It also leads to borgs b-lining nukies to "bring them to medbay"
(Read: get emagged)
In my opinion, silicons (AIs and borgs in particular) should be held to an even higher standard than security is. It feels like admins tend to put their heads in the sand regarding possible issues with borgs/AI because they don't want to have to deal with the byzantine clusterfuck of the current silicon policy. Screw removing felinids. I'd rather have silicons removed. (but PAI's, maint drones, sentient mop bots, etc. can stay) ((do not actually remove silicons))
If I were to pick, I'd say my choices are probably Cheshify, GeneralThrax, and I'm undecided about the third slot. Possibly Kinnebian or Sightld2.
TL:DR:
some good candidates, a lot of eh candidates, a lot of low energy candidates, a lot of meme candidates, removing felinids is dumb, splitting MRP and LRP more is dumb, silicons need a rework, rulings need to be touched up, people shouldn't have to wait a week to get a headmin response to bans, silicons continue to be a mess, a bit torn on events because they tend to be really hit or miss.