You bring up another good point GA: part of the problem as I see it is that there are far more views than votes. I hate to bring up my own examples but they're all I have data for: based on the click-throughs to my blog from feeds on Planet Maemo I see over 200 views for one article but only a handful of votes. It's hard to gage anything with a ratio like that-- almost zero statistical significance.

So, until Maemo gets a better system, I'll echo your advice: vote people! One way or another.