OK, here are some points to mull over.
1) The legal requirements for a competition have changed drastically in the last 12 months (and the changes are being policed, too; thank you Richard & Judy... cheers for that one Blue Peter). In this case, this has a lot to do with competition adjudication. To stay on the right side of the current Gambling Act, we have to provide (and demonstrate) independent adjudication in competitions that have a skill-based element.
That means I cannot decide the winner, nor can the company sponsoring the prize or any member of the Magicalia team. Members of the public and independent experts are allowed to pick a winner, though. Unfortunately, the 'independent' bit hasn't filtered down to the experts, who often want paying in exchange for us putting their name to the prize draw... and the payment then ceases to make them 'independent'. So it goes round and round.
2) The photographs chosen were done so purely on their artistic merit, within the confines of the original terms and conditions. This meant we had to reject portfolios with too many images in them and we had to disregard some exceeedingly good images that were posted from international ThinkCamera members. You may - or may not - agree with the final 20 selected images, but those were the 20 that we in the ThinkCamera office were sufficiently good to go to the public vote. That's the "editor's decision is final" part. Given the post-match analysis that has gone on already, some editorial imprint was clearly a requirement.
3) We could not - in any way - predict how voting trends in this competition would pan out prior to the vote. There are many ThinkCamera members with ".ac.uk" domain names in their email addresses; not simply those at Warwick. If we eliminated every one for potential 'electioneering' techniques, that would also exclude those who would never think of such things. Also, if we exclude members at university, we should do the same for anyone working for a company large enough to have a corporate intranet. So, no... this was not a deliberate and arch technique at raising ThinkCamera's profile and membership.
4) Yes, the fact that a competition brings in more members and more traffic is useful to ThinkCamera. It means the site has a higher profile and that means we might get more cameras to review sooner. That is one of the reasons why we give stuff away and hold POTY competitions. But to cater for the traffic at the expense of the regulars is highly damaging for a site like ThinkCamera, which is why we publish features and tutorials, especially those written by ThinkCamera members, alongside traffic-driving giveaways reviews of cameras.
Ultimately, I also don't like that a competition that should be based on artistic merit comes down to how many friends you can get to vote. My problem is that I want to the competitions to be as fair and as egalitarian as possible, both in terms of who can enter and how we choose a winner. Doing anything else moves away from the spirit of ThinkCamera (which has a curious blended aroma of Gordon's Gin, Night Nurse and Deep Heat... perhaps that's why I flunked the Cocktail Academy).
So, in the words of Michael Caine... "Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea! Err..."
LOL
We could put a few electic eels in some of the fishing lakes. (Only joking Woody) execute/electrocute well almost the same 
