Thanks everyone for your hard work in bringing the new voting style to January’s Monthly Challenge!
@sooz : Now that we have January’s voting results, how was this month’s voting process on your end?
I didn’t see how many votes my “Auntie Artica’s Polar Plunge” received, as it’s not listed at all in the results. Does this mean it got no votes?
Even though the way the results are displayed is different from what we were shown above in this topic, I agree with keeping the voting anonymous.
Some thoughts, ‘cause I care:
Seeing how the votes were spread out, I’m worried about this new voting process. Even though I can’t see the individual votes, it feels like folks are using their three votes on their own submissions first and doing so up to three times. And of course, there are no rules against that (yet). In hindsight, this makes sense. Nash’s Game Theory would suggest people are voting in their own self-interest and it predicts that this will happen eventually.
However, I don’t think this format of voting is what’s best for the contest in the long term. To me, this just dosen’t feel right for our little contest. If posters choose to use multiple votes on themselves, it means other deserving posts are not receiving those votes. If Elixiah voted for herself (and she should have, it’s the best image of the month) that means the winning post only received votes from 4 other people.
Here’s what I can see from my point of view…
I cast my three votes for @Elixiah , then @edgarej(MARS with text) , and then my SF poster. But let’s suppose I chose to vote exclusively for my 3 images instead, as Nash would suggest I’ll do because it is in my best interest to do so. (And honestly, I’m proud of my work on all three of them.) Then the very nice image by @MossGreenEddie would have tied for first place with Elixiah (4 votes) and Mars Express would have moved down to be tied with a bunch of other submissions further down the list (2 votes).
And… it was actually Elixiah’s own vote that granted her the win. Again, TITAN was my top choice so I feel the win is well deserved.
An Alternative Solution:
As a possible way to make the voting more equitable and less self-motivated, I’d like to reiterate my suggestion of grouping the submissions by artist and keep the 3 ranking votes. Then only one of those votes could go to your own posting(s) if you feel they are worthy, and the other two votes would be spread across other artists.
Or, limit the number of votes that can be cast for your own works. I have no idea if the software can do that though…
And maybe the mods can brighten my day. If they can see the voting details and let me know that I’m being too cynical because the votes were mostly cast for other people, that’d be a relief. 
On a different note
I’d like to mention a bit about how the results are displayed. Is it possible to make the results clearer? I mean, it’s difficult to read how many votes each piece received. For example, did my Cinnamon Bay painting receive 1 vote, or no votes? Even more so, from the way it displays on my screen, it is difficult to see how many votes an image in the middle of a vote count received, like @dgarej’s “no MARS text” post. I almost need to scroll to the bottom to see where the point break line is.
The winner at the bottom of the listing is a fun little reveal! 
. Understanding the results was confusing to me as well.