stop rigging your votes as a group and I'll lift the ban on public tallies
So I have no idea about the backstory on all of this. However: If their voting is banworthy, then ban them. If it's not, then don't. And I'm pretty sure it's not banworthy, else you'd have banned them already.
Either way, tallies have nothing to do with it. It'd be like, in a save contest, some people are accused of rallying and the host's response is "okay, nobody can post updates any more." It's a complete non sequitur.
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another place and time, without a great divide, and we could be flying deadly high