Many of the finalist maps have either not undergone significant changes and many of them I believe to have fundamental design issues.
So given the selection of finalist maps, I only needed to play a few maps to see what had changed. And even then there weren't many noticeable changes.
As such, it wasn't hard to vote. There was a clear winner for each category. If the voting process asked for the finalist maps to be ranked in their categories, or not separated by 'visual' category it would've been a whole other story.
They weren't changed because we received 2.5 actual feedback phases. (original submission, week 4, and then final) and the final phase would be the .5 cause most of the feedback was so last second unless you were a god you wouldn't be able to integrate and test the changes in the time left before submissions.)
the steam collection wasn't updated for over a month due to relic, and they skipped an entire phase on top of that.
These maps all could've been much better, but who is going to invest time in these if Relic wont even run the contest properly?