Popularity is determined through a voting mechanism.
The optical scan is considered one of the most accurate voting mechanisms and the least likely to produce significantly different results in a recount.
From 1999 through 2007 winners were chosen by popular vote through an online voting mechanism.
The Debian project has addressed this issue in its voting mechanisms with the idea of per-option quorum.
Inconsistency: Conflicts in belief are resolved using fuzzy voting mechanism.
I suggest many people would be happy with simply changing the voting mechanism, but otherwise staying the same.
While it is an interesting bit of technology, I don't see how this makes these voting machines any more suspect than any other voting mechanism.
This immediately takes us to the question of the dual voting mechanisms. Policy in general is decided unanimously, its implementation by a majority decision.
As a result parts of the direct community voting mechanisms were replaced by a jury, which is being elected by the community.
Under single-peaked preferences, the majority rule is in some respects the most natural voting mechanism.