Okay. Hyra, I have a solution for you. I have the perfect solution -- at least, I think I do.
Next time, what you should do is do this in the exact same fashion, ranking your favorite to least favorite, and have these "votes" sent to your via private message. No tallies, no visible votes, no nothing. Just a bunch of people honestly letting you know what they want. Maybe have one or two highly trusted individuals "check" you to make sure that you aren't secretly manipulating their votes, for insurance purposes, of course. Then, reveal the top three. Then, between these three, have some sort of Hurt / Heal contest, where you can give a point to one and take away a point from another, while leaving one untouched. The one with the most points -- essentially, the largest scale of heals to hurts -- wins. This way, the top poll is public and is *largely* based on counter-voting, an all-out root for your favorite of the three, while the preliminary rounds can be held in secret.
There are many ways you could twist this around, but I think the number one thing is just to make the votes secret, in any way possible. Even a poll where the options are not visible could suffice.
Just brainstorming.