What I find funny is that you and other users from your local board are constantly trying to minimize what we are discussing here, it's quite interesting, don't you think? We're just talking about the process at the end, you guys look somehow uncomfortable using phrases like "I'm trying so hard not to laugh", like we're all crazy 
Guys, seriously, I understand you're all from the same local board and you're trying to help each other but don't think we're all stupid: nobody ever thought to pay 745.000 users, please, the votes come all from the same local board and we're talking about 40-50 users, that is enough to get some money and share it.
This is incredibly funny even though I'm trying so hard not to laugh so I don't appear weird where I am now. Wait you mean someone can decide to pay people to vote for a contest open for the entire globe and in which winning is not even guaranteed? Such investment decision is worse than these terrible historic investment decisions.
You can simply promise a share of the cake in case you win, of course you don't have to pay in advance. And even the link for the worst investment decisions in history? Seriously?I keep wondering where some of these hypothesis are coming from and why so much hypothesis for just a pizza contest.
In the first 8 places there are 4 pizzas from the same local board, pizzas that are not very good looking (and actually one is more an omelette than a pizza), and at least 40+ users from the same local board voted for those 4 not-so-nice pizzas. Do you understand now why there are concerns? Don't you think the situation is kind of suspicious?There is no perfect system of voting in the world and no matter how hard we try in this, there will always be room for improvement. Nevertheless, there will always be dissatisfied people no matter how fair a voting system is... those who feel they deserve to win but are unable to will always conjure something to discredit the voting system.
And those who abuse the system always try to find excuses. That's how it works, both ways.Let us just allow Icopress to take his decisions since he is the only one with the power to shift the goal post.
Absolutely, I'm sure icopress knows what to do, in the meantime there is nothing wrong showing some concerns, at the end this is a forum, we're just talking.Another hypothesis.. they are paid votes : The message they get in some private messaging looks like: vote for pizzas < #x #y #z #T #NT > to get the reward! So there is copy-pasting
Judging from a statistical point of view of the total number of active users been said to be over 745,000 (i.e according to bpip.org), then I actually think it will be insane for any participants of this noble Pizza contest to have thought of paying for a vote, when he/she bearly knew the probability of winning in a forum of over 745,000 active users. Hence, I think the only logical reason that might have resulted to the similar voting pattern as claimed above is exactly what Odohu stated above, regarding people voting simply because they saw a certain user they respect on the forum voting too. While secondly, maybe they saw those pizza to be worth voting for and decided to vote to. Which is literally not against the rules of the contest.