AND without the authorisation or blessing of the decision maker.
I don't particularly see
what's wrong with not having theymos' consent with this. The vote is essentially the same as me making a thread titled 'Who do you think the best moderator is?', only with an actual reason behind it and made by some people of a higher rank than me.
If theymos doesn't approve, he could simply not acknowledge the vote whatsoever and pick (or not pick) based on his own accord. It would be a let down, of course, but the vote will just be used to perhaps help in the decision
You may choose to disagree, of course, but from the thread title it is not clear altogether. On the contrary, it looks exactly like theymos blessed the election of the new team of global moderators. In fact, there are even two such threads which even further strengthens this feeling of official consent and blessing...
There seems to be a lot of intrigue and strife going on behind the scenes in the pursuit of power

...the whole process of publicly electing new global moderators doesn't make much sense, and to me, looks more like farce and mockery
Read the fine print:
Disclaimer
This is not an official election. The winner is not guaranteed to be promoted to Global Moderator, however he/she will be suggested to theymos to be promoted. This is only to determine who the community wants as a Global Moderator. Theymos may choose to promote the winner of this election, he also may not. He may choose to promote no one, he may choose to promote someone else.
The fine print, yeah. We all know what that typically means, don't we?