The funny thing is, this playerbase somehow manages to defy the odds. We all know about how these kinds of mechanics often go in other quests, and yet over the course of The Practice War and The Secrets' Crusade we've seen a lot of amazingly good discussion and quite a number of votes that have swung a lot later in discussion than you might have otherwise expected. (One time back in PW, I swung a result by casting a vote right as Snowfire was closing it. The result of that vote was relevant just recently, since that's when Amanda created the Mender's Eye.) We've even had success with write-in votes at a scale that I understand to be unusual for most quests. And this largely comes down to how respectful and reasonable the vast majority of our players are.
I don't think it's necessarily a problem that only a few players want to do it. That's actually a desirable property, as long as there are enough of those players are sufficiently active. Likewise, there only being two or three meaningfully competing options is a desirable property. What this means is that you have two synergistic groups of players -- the planmakers and the rest of the voting populace, who find enjoyment in different parts of the process. The planmakers are the ones who enjoy really getting into the mechanics, and they produce a smaller number of options that enable everyone else to participate in the quest.
Sure, it CAN certainly go wrong. I find it a little bit telling that you refer to the players competing. But I don't feel like that's the way this playerbase treats it.
That said, the current format is a lot more manageable than how things were back when we were still President. We kinda went for all the acceleration synergies early on and got ourselves a stupid amount of AP to juggle. ^^()
