Out of curiosity, what was the basis for excluding the votes? People who do not participate in that thread were excluded or was something else used?
Empowering has 4 more participant votes, including 2 more high-rank participant votes.
It was closer for third place: Compared to lightfoot, you have 1 more high-rank participant vote but the same number of total participant votes. At this stage, I considered it a tie which I broke by looking at non-participants.