Copy/paste from Discord what I wrote/discussed:
That was exactly my concern from the start with the 1 vote system, where creators would likely just vote for their own level because, why wouldn't you? There's no reason to vote for anyone else's level this way. That's why under this change my hope was that creators/participants would use the honor system and not vote for their own level or just not vote at all, but this is asking a lot of the contest entrants, and unless there's a setting only admins can set for that, I don't think it can be prevented.
To be honest, I don't think I've even voted in any of the rounds since the contest voting system overhaul and shift to the 1 vote system, especially if my level is in the running. I personally don't believe in putting a vote for my own level to win, but at the same time I haven't been helping any level or anyone to win this way by not putting in a vote at all.
Another possibility to consider might be to not show poll results at all until the poll expires, which the poll creator can select when making the poll. This would mean a change to a longstanding thing with contests of switching from results being visible after one has voted to not being able to see results at all until the poll has ran its course, but again just a thought. In this way, it will now be the same for everyone by not allowing results to be seen until the poll expires. Before, with the results being visible after one has voted option, this would allow only those who have voted to be able to see them, but those who haven't voted will either have to vote to see the results, or just wait for the poll to expire. Of course, people are still free to discuss the levels via PM or offsite, but at least now in this way e.g, it won't be possible to know if levels are tied at any given moment until after the voting ends for the round.
Honestly, thinking about this, I really should had spoken up a lot sooner about my concerns with the first point
Instead, I decided to give the 1 vote system a chance to play out, hoping that contest participants would have some kind of honor system in place when it came to the voting and not vote for their own level just for the heck of it.
In any case, what we're currently doing now with the reduced number of votes and rounds is still a huge improvement in general over what we were doing before!
However, as can be seen, we can potentially still do better!
That was exactly my concern from the start with the 1 vote system, where creators would likely just vote for their own level because, why wouldn't you? There's no reason to vote for anyone else's level this way. That's why under this change my hope was that creators/participants would use the honor system and not vote for their own level or just not vote at all, but this is asking a lot of the contest entrants, and unless there's a setting only admins can set for that, I don't think it can be prevented.
To be honest, I don't think I've even voted in any of the rounds since the contest voting system overhaul and shift to the 1 vote system, especially if my level is in the running. I personally don't believe in putting a vote for my own level to win, but at the same time I haven't been helping any level or anyone to win this way by not putting in a vote at all.
Another possibility to consider might be to not show poll results at all until the poll expires, which the poll creator can select when making the poll. This would mean a change to a longstanding thing with contests of switching from results being visible after one has voted to not being able to see results at all until the poll has ran its course, but again just a thought. In this way, it will now be the same for everyone by not allowing results to be seen until the poll expires. Before, with the results being visible after one has voted option, this would allow only those who have voted to be able to see them, but those who haven't voted will either have to vote to see the results, or just wait for the poll to expire. Of course, people are still free to discuss the levels via PM or offsite, but at least now in this way e.g, it won't be possible to know if levels are tied at any given moment until after the voting ends for the round.
Honestly, thinking about this, I really should had spoken up a lot sooner about my concerns with the first point

In any case, what we're currently doing now with the reduced number of votes and rounds is still a huge improvement in general over what we were doing before!

