1. Lauda should be removed from the options because he is clearly not qualified to be a global moderator, as he lacks the ability to maintain even the appearance of neutrality by leaving multiple negative trust ratings against people who his disagrees with, as well as his severe lack of maturity.

2. The criteria for choosing a global mod should not be who wins a vote (which are virtually meaningless due to the potential for alts), it should be based on who is qualified.....in other words who has the experience in moderating the forum (or other forums). Some of the main reasons why someone will become a non-local board moderator are that someone makes a lot of accurate reports, has a good understanding of the rules, and mostly maintain neutrality in disputes -- the criteria for who becomes a local moderator appears to be much more lenient. After someone has proven themselves to be a competent patroller, they should take responsibility for a few sections, then eventually have responsibility for major sections (including the marketplace and related subs, bitcoin discussion and the altcoin sections) -- until someone has successfully moderated one or more major sections for a "decent" amount of time, they probably should not be considered for a global moderator position for the most part.

Based on the above criteria, I would say that the only person on the ballot that is qualified to be a global mod is mprep. Although I really do not frequent the altcoin sections very often, it is my impression that mprep's moderation of the altcoin sections have been mostly successful. It is my understanding that immidiately prior to mprep taking over the altcoin sections, the entire altcoin sub was a hot mess, when he first took over, it looks like he made some changes, and started enforcing some rules that caused a little bit of drama/complaints. The number of meta threads about mprep seem to have dropped down and/or entirely stopped.

The Russian local section, has, by far the most number of posts in all of the local subs, so depending on his performance, it may be wise to consider xandry as a global mod. It is also my understanding that he has been a moderator for a fairly long time without any major issues.

Hostfat also moderates one of the more major local subs for what I understand to be many years, without issues, so he may be qualified to be a global mod. Although he does live in a similar time zone as one of the most active global moderators, so there may be little additional advantage to promoting him.

Other things that may be considered when deciding who to promote, would include how many reports are 'ignored' how accurately are reports handled, among potentially other things. Many moderators in general are not very active with their "moderator" account in posting in order to avoid moderator harassment -- I do not think how 'active' someone is in posting should be a considered in deciding who should become a global mod, although I would not say that being very active should disqualify someone.

3. I am not sure the problem is that we do not have enough global moderators, the problem may be a policy issue. Some policies have been somewhat recently implemented, that should, over time reduce the quantity of low quality posts, for example this one banning threads whose only response can be a low quality post in 'off-topic', this one banning low value threads in 'bitcoin discussion', and this policy of blacklisting certain signatures whose campaign operators allow too high a level of low quality of posts.