Kiel I kinda disagree with your assessment.
Although it is hard to affect a single item having large counts of votes, Feros and Leblanc alone account for near 1 out of 20 (or may actually be 1/20 votes, because it states almost a quarter of a million, no qualifier for almost, and we don't know how many they cast past 5,000 each) or more of the TOTAL votes. It can greatly affect the outcome their opinion has over the entire contest.
This also does not account for the work shopping or pit crewing that goes on. 2 people who were in chat work shopped 4 items that made the list, one of those two made it as well. That knowledge of who made the item and the fact that you worked on it providing some input also slants voting for certain items, because lets be honest you want your creative input to succeed. Not questioning ethics but numbers wise having multiple people with some seeded investment into your item makes them more likely to vote for you, specially if they are your friend. So if you add a champion voter, with multiple marathon voters that all put forth items those collective votes adds up to a significant amount in the overall contest favoring a handful of items.
Keep in mind with these rules for advancement it is a popularity contest put out to the public. The people voting may have a wealth of design knowledge and experience, or practically none. Their design philosophy could be anywhere on the spectrum. My father, whom I love dearly, has no experience with item design or Pathfinder voted around 100-200 times because I told him that I entered. Per vote, his votes have as much weight as experienced tested cover designers.
With that said, for all those that did not make the top 32+4 do not be discouraged that your item is inferior to those who did...it just might not have been to the taste of the voters. Any player of PFS knows that in order to make a game balanced designers make choices that are not always the popular ones (Crane Wing, or Aasimar favored class bonuses?) so keep your head held high.
Before anyone states that I am biased or jealous because I did not make it. I had a blast hanging out and talking to everyone in the google chat and enjoyed my experience here. My item was thrown together and probably didn't deserve to make it into the top 32. I await to see if I made top 100. I will be posting my item the to CMI thread, along with my own critique of it.
edit - Removed names, because I thought it would be better that way.
Also you forget that it is a beat path, voting by comparison each vote has an impact on all items rated.
