Okay, so before I explain what I think will work, let me explain how the "request editorship" button works, or, at least did work.
When an editorship request or a suggest change page is submitted, the information is emailed to (I belive) all the users that worked on the entry. Users can then choose to listen to the request and make a decision based on that. Obviously, if all the users that worked on the entry are inactive/ deactivated you won't get a response.
However, things change for mods. When I became an image mod (I did not have entry powers at this time) I received huge floods of emails about ALL editorship requests and change suggestions on the entire site. On entries I never worked on, and would not be able to address unless I was granted editorship myself. And at first you may think, "Wow there are a lot of people that want to help" Well guess what? 99.9% of these were complete trash. Editorship requests would be " I think this meme is funny" or a smiley face or a whole slew of other things that I would I would be more likely to ban for wasting my time than grant editorship to.
And if you thought that wasn't good enough, there's the suggest changes button, which does not require an account to use. I don't know how, but we would get random conversations on the thing, like somehow the thing was picking up random text messages from people or something. Then a whole bunch of other things that, again, I'd rather ban a user over for wasting my time than listening to.
So, like most of the other mods, I tried to listen, but after a certain point, a few hundred emails that were total crap, I just marked them all and any future such emails for deletion. That's been about two years now. I've never turned this filter off since then.
If you really want editorship for an article you didn't start yourself, PM a mod with entry powers. On most of my short entries I write so I can move images, because the admins seem to refuse to move images, I'm pretty much willing almost anyone to work on it. If you seem at least 30% competent, I'd probably let you have editorship to most entries that I still feel need work. If I actually know you and you seem like you can help the entry I'll grant you editorship to pretty much any entry.
Bottom line, PM an entry mod and don't use the request editorship button if you actually want editorship.