I propose to introduce negative votes to give a more complete picture of user feelings.
What are 4 positive votes for a new feature if there are 20 votes against it?
The number and content of the messages sometimes show ‘hot topics’, but why use a proxy if users can express directly what they want, or - in this case - don’t want?
PS: Positive votes have been a nice improvement already - I hope other users will vote more and more so as to improve Citystrides further.
I do like the idea of negative votes as well. You could have a highly contentious topic (removing manual completion for example) where you have a bunch of votes on both sides that might be worth considering.