(edit thought: or maybe nominations should be free, but you don't actually second/third/(fourth?) things until nominations close at the end of the year. otherwise people might be afraid to nominate early in the year.)
that being said, it's easy enough to look at the moderator nominations and a couple that I can't believe are only on the single nomination stage:
second sensfan for best role: mason-neighbor
Because asymmetry is always really interesting. From skimming around the thread it seems it wasn't quite explicit enough for some of the player's tastes, but it's such a cool concept that the small details don't really matter. This idea of one-direction confirmed needs to show up more, I think.
second yossarian2 for best mechanic: lynch all lurkers
At first I thought it was like, lurkers are modkilled, and I thought 'that would be a nice change of pace.' But when I actually took the time to read how exactly the mechanic worked, I was blown away. This takes the classic dilemma of 'it's anti-town, but is it scummy?' and turns it up several dials to 'it's harmless if they're town, but very very bad if they are scum.' It turns it into a game of 'how many lives are you willing to bank your town read on?' Yos, you need to open-source this - I want to see LAL games as far as the eye can see.