thanks. is the nomination and voting a built in reddit feature? if so, this sounds like a good time to use it.

No, it just happens in the sub as a normal thread - the mods make a post saying they're looking for more mods, people respond. Some subs do the voting offsite, sometimes the mods just pick someone to add.

oh wow. that seems like the sort of critical feature reddit should have built in.

That would require Reddit to write code that meaningfully improves the site, rather than custom emojis and NFT nonsense.