What do the 3 phases of the election mean?

Question

The 2014 Moderator Election page states:

Every election has three phases:

1. Nomination
2. Primary
3. Election

However, there is no (complete) explanation of the phases; currently -- I presume until the first phase is over -- the primary and election tabs provide no information.

I believe I've also seen a timeline for the three phases somewhere, but it is not on that page. Does anyone know where that is, and/or have a link explaining the Stack Exchange election process?

Answer 1

There's a blue box on the right side of the election page that explains the phase you're currently looking at; it also explains how long that phase lasts. A quick summary:

• Nomination is 7 days of anyone with 300 rep entering their name as a candidate, including a short introduction. Anyone can comment on the nominations
• Primary is 4 days of up/down voting on each nomination, to cut the number down to 10 for the final election. Since it looks like we won't have more than 10 nominations, we'll skip this part
• Election is 7 days of anyone with 150 rep voting on the final candidates, using meek STV

We're about to finish the nomination phase and go into the election, so it'll be over in a week