'who' or 'whom'?

Question

I'm learning relative pronoun and I'm using Cliffs Toefl as a reference book. As this book says, relative pronoun who should be followed by a verb and whom should be followed by a noun. According to this rule the sentence should be:

Please vote for the member whom you believe has done the most for our village.

I'm still learning English and I'm not sure what exactly I'm missing, but despite what the rule says, the sentence with who sounds correct to me.

Please vote for the member who you believe has done the most for our village.

I believe the clause you believe immediately after the relative pronoun who/whom is making it hard for me to understand the sentence because I'm kind of new to this kind of sentence pattern.

I would be obliged if someone would help me to understand and to learn what's actually happening in this sentence.

Answer 1

Please vote for the member [who you believe [ ___ has done the most for our village]].

The element in outer brackets is the relative clause modifying "member".

Within the relative clause is the embedded "has done ..." clause, in inner brackets, in which the relative pronoun functions as subject, marked by the '___' notation, called gap. Subjective "who" is thus correct.

Note that in general most people use "who" irrespective of its function (except when it's object of a fronted preposition).