Marelli
Indeed. I don't think we can blame any candidates for not working harder to get votes when they had every reason to believe they didn't need those votes. I'm wouldn't go around bugging my friends to turn in daggers if it wasn't even needed.
I've always found the Akenak elections a bit overkill myself. A new Akenak is elected every 2 RL months... as someone who's been a Noble for over a year and closely watched the Taliari and Awakened, it is my experience that to get anything done on a player government often requires longer than that just planning it.
Taliari, Awakened, Nobles... once you're on it you pretty much stay on it unless you step out. If you want to stay on the Akenak, you've got to pass around daggers every two months, even if there's not even anyone else who wants your position? Seems a waste of time for both the Akenak and the Event Team honestly.
I tried to have it changed during my time as Akenak. It was met with less than enthusiastic support from the events team. I had the real impression that if I put the work into a proposal for changing it wouldn't be implemented anyway. Any real change to the game will have to come from the devs or the events team. They may call it a player government but the players have no real power.