My question is, let's say a hypothetical user with 10 earned merits has two users on their trust list, and both these users are one vote away from becoming DT1. How does the system decide who gets it?
simply put, the user with the 10 earned merit will decide to whom his vote goes to, regardless of how many users are on his trust list and how close/far they are from becoming DT1.
this could be done by giving the vote to whoever is at the top of your list ,indeed after the current sort-by criteria is changed to allow full control of ordering.
the hard part with be " assuming this is accurate"
I assume both can be used in full, i.e. using the 250-votes doesn't reduce the number of available 10-votes (or maybe I should call them "ballots" to not confuse with the person getting the votes).
what if i want to give my 10 merit vote to someone while giving my 250 vote to someone else?