Excluding, users doesn't. Although, there should probably be a limit, since we don't want to encourage abuse, 50 is a way too much in my opinion. Something like 10-20 would probably suffice.
You must have 50 earned merits to vote
This feels too restrictive to me. I would have opted for a lower number, say 20 earned merits, but that's just me.Let's see how it goes this year and if changes will be required, we'll readjust for next year, as we already did now 
We will always learn from the experience. When will we go live?