Why separating Staff and Politics does not work

One of DemocracyCraft's rules is that matters of Staff and Politics should be kept separate. I have always disagreed with this, although I have done my best to adhere to that rule.

But why doesn't it work? Staff members get a badge next to their name. A shiny sign of authority and respect and influence. Whether intentional or not, it gives them the slightest advantage over their competitors, especially for new players who don't know who to vote for.

Whenever someone brings up this slight advantage, the same argument is always brought up: "Staff are volunteers who are not paid for their time and are here to enjoy the server too". Maybe that's the case! Besides, it's only a slight advantage, right?

What if it goes further than that?

If a staff member, say someone high up in the staff hierarchy, used the permissions to use "@everyone" to bring attention to their campaign such as, to come up with something random off the top of my head, hosting a Kahoot, then that advantage would become much greater.

If a staff member used their permissions to silence critics, whether they thought they were fair or not, through the use of deportations or discord timeouts, that advantage only grows.

These are, of course, just hypotheticals to some readers. Perhaps those with a keen eye might recognise these as the very recent actions of a certain presidential candidate who I shall not name. I do not think we can separate Staff and Politics here. We could hope that this individual can change for the better or we can allow this behaviour to be swept under the rug and let it continue.

I do not want the latter. I hope you don't either.