There are a few misconceptions in your question and the responses here that I'd like to address because I see them around the network.
Part of this is poor phrasing choices on the Network's part for how elections work and what moderators do and part of it is that this Network is somewhat different than how others are.
When do we hold elections?
This site hasn't had elections since 2012, which is when both of the previous elections were held. When deciding whether a site needs to have an election, we look at a few things:
- How are the moderators doing in the diamond moderation tasks?
- Are flags being handled quickly?
- Are concerns about moderation being addressed on Meta?
- Are the moderators present and active on the site?
- Do any of the moderators feel like the site needs help from additional moderators?
- Are the moderators happy to continue in their position?
If moderators are absent or looking to step down or they feel like they really need help, that's when we generally consider having an election. If none of these are the case, we leave things as they are.
Moderators don't serve "terms". They're allowed to stay in the position as long as they want it (there are a few extreme cases but they don't apply here), so holding an election "just because" just adds more people to an already saturated system.
That said, if one of the moderators is interested in stepping down for any reason, they can always reach out to us and let us know, but it's their choice and they can always ask to come back later. As they say "Diamonds Are Forever".
What are moderators responsible for?
We consider every user on the network to be a "moderator" of sorts. The reputation you earn gives you access to various moderation tools. This includes everything from voting and unrestricted editing, to closing and deleting posts. This is discussed in a blog post from way back.
So, what are the primary tasks for the diamond moderators? From that blog post:
If you see anything in the system that is evil, weird, or in any way exceptional and deserving of moderator attention for any reason… flag it! That’s the primary job of a moderator: to look at every flagged post, and take action if necessary.
Considering that, this site is... pretty low-key. I've moderated a high-flag site pretty handily with only four active mods and this is much lower-flag volume than that. From what I can see, the mods here are doing well as they are. Flag handling time is impressively short (average of 12 minutes over the last month) and the moderators are generally active and engaged in other site activities.
On closing
Yes, moderators can close questions that are off topic but they can only do it unilaterally, not as a single vote. Most moderators I've talked to prefer to save their close votes for cases that are extreme or obvious, leaving the close voting to the community in most cases. On sites with relatively inactive close queues, moderators may be more active but still generally prefer to be a fourth or fifth vote rather than first. In fact, on most sites, moderators who too frequently use their unilateral close voting ability are accused of abusing it.
For users with sufficient rep to close vote, we hope they will show their engagement in the community by actually using it that vote. In fact, completing 250 reviews in each review queue (earning the "Reviewer" badge) is one of the things that raises a user's candidate score were an election held here.
If getting sufficient votes to close a question seems to be a problem, start doing more reviews or voting to close posts from the question page... or, if you have 10k reputation, consider taking advantage of the close votes tools page. There you can see questions with several votes to close and vote on them directly rather than scanning through the review queue.
But, remember, if you're looking to the moderators to do more than handle flags and address users who aren't abiding by the code of conduct or other network policies, there are bigger problems in the community than the diamond moderators... there's a lack of community coming together to make a great site.
Giving others a chance
Because we give moderators the chance to hold their position on their own terms, we're not going to ask them to step down - let alone force them to. Unlike elected office holders, moderators aren't creating policy, they're enforcing it. Many of the tools moderators have can be accessed by a user with >20 or 25k reputation on the site.
Moderators aren't really change-makers here on Stack Exchange. They don't make decisions about the scope of specific sites or whether specific types of questions should be allowed or not - the users do. All of that work of "leading the community" can happen at any reputation and without a diamond next to your name. Some of the most influential users on the network aren't moderators. They're people who see things they feel need to change and talk about them in well-written meta posts, either questions or answers.
If you think that something about the site is failing, bring it up, talk about it, encourage users to see things the way you do and make that happen. Be a force for positive action on the sites you use. If something needs to change in a broader way, take it to the network meta, Meta Stack Exchange.
In the meantime, if you really want to moderate the site, be active on meta, use the review queue, the 10k tools, and start working on your candidate score if you're not already. The closer you can get to 40, the better. If you want to know where you stand, here's a SEDE query that will tell you, just put your user ID number in the "UserIds" box.
