I think the idea of making the moderator appointment more of a "public" affair is an interesting one, but I certainly also feel that this whole process is a bit unfocused to say the least. You've got people who is nominating "everyone" (I guess for the sake of not stepping on toes? Or a lack of interest maybe), you've got people who have no interest in being a moderator getting nominated and like Raz said, it feels more like a popularity contest than anything.
I don't quite understand what the purpose of the whole "Moderator application" thing was, when it amounted to this in the end. I also fail to understand why the current administration team are disallowed their own nominees. I can only draw experience from the previous forum I used to admin, but back there, it was mainly the administrators who were consulted when it came to appointing new mods. The reason being that the administrators had a way better overview of the entire situation. I don't know what kind of permissions Binary and Rammite have here on Spufpowered, but I am going to go ahead and assume that they have full access to both modCP and adminCP and probably also the Report Center. Going on this assumption, wouldn't they be the most "qualified" to help in appointing new mods?
Hush hush.
There are more things I could say, but I think I'm going to stop here. As for the people I would like to see as mod(s):
Guy923, Huff, Rynjin, Raz
EDIT: After re-reading Raz' post on page two, I couldn't help myself. Sorry