How to remove elections

The starred motives indicate, as you've said, what that particular person cares about more heavily than other motives.

Starred motives directly influence a person's satisfaction/happiness with you and your island, and will determine whether they leave (assuming you allow them to), or turn Rebel. This is not to say that if you satisfy all of their starred needs but completely ignore every other one that they will be happy.

This information can be particularly useful when you start to see peaceful protests or when faction leaders are unhappy.

According to the posts in this thread: yes, the same thing can happen.

Some exceprts:

Strange, every single one of my citizens had a HS education, most even college, and they still worked the farms, albeit for a higher wage, but it's not like I couldn't afford that or anything

I had a game where very early on when educated Tropicans are in short supply, a college educated female named 'Ana' refused to take a $10 teaching job over her $5 farm job.

The chance of a tropican getting into a job depends on the job statisfaction and prior experience. They won't leave a 9$ farm for a 12$ sweat shop factory. Basically it means that you're not paying HS educated enough.

I'm looking around for a more reliable source, which will give a more detailed explanation on why this happens but have not yet found one yet. Either way though, four people in that thread reported this happening so obviously it does happen.