Hoi, I have mixed feelings with this new effort to give a new lease of life to the bugzilla votes. Previously the votes on bugs were dismissed with a "we do what we want because we are volunteers". It is encouraging that the votes are looked at again, but has something really changed, the developers are still volunteers and they can as easily dismiss the votes as they have done in the past. It makes no difference who does the asking, there are bugs where Jimbo, Anthere and Angela all asked for a particular bug to be fixed.. to no avail.. And indeed why would such a request be honoured; the developers are volunteers ..
In the past you had many votes to give away but they were a finite resource. When a bug was given a massive amount of votes by one person it meant that the request was really important. Now a person can give only one vote for one bug. The developer can still say "I am a volunteer and I will do bug X in stead".
To conclude, it makes little difference how the votes are looked at because there is only one vote that is essential. It is the developer saying: "Yes, that is something I can do, let's give it a go". Thanks, GerardM