Less complicated that way. If we do public voting, we have to control shenanigans, such as authors privately PMing posters to ask for their votes, or someone needing to manually sift through the votes to eliminate ineligible votes.
IDK, I like the public voting system, but the main reason I instituted it this time was to have a fair work distribution for the judges. Initially we thought there would be twenty or more entries. It would be one thing to ask the judges to filter out which stories deserved the top five spots AND THEN rank them, but since all they'd be doing is ranking them I have no qualms about putting all of the work on the judges.
Plus, we've talked in the past about using private judging instead of public voting. This is our chance to see how that boat sails.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the American Idol method, but with so few entries I think we might get a lot of mileage out of public discussion/private voting.
I can still put up a poll for public voting, but I think everyone might get mad if the story with the most votes didn't win
I thought about asking for feedback and making the decision democratic, but I looked through the previous short story contest threads and see we have already hashed this issue to death in multiple contests.