I think if they do ask fans what we want again, it should be in a poll. That way, we know what is actually being looked at. Like pre-approved choices.
For more accurate results, it should be attached to a Nintendo ID or some other type of account.
Yeah, the big problem with the ballot I feel was that it feels like there was too much smoke and mirrors here.
The ballot was very opaque, and the vague statement of "among realizable candidates" just puts the whole thing into a way that we can only say that Bayo was the chosen character, and it helped Cloud get in.
The ballot ran on for far too long, making people suspect multiple characters would be chosen.
It's possible several characters were brought up, but wasn't chosen because they were considered too hard to develop within a reasonable time limit. Making models and skeletons is very time consuming, so they probably tried to avoid making anyone who couldn't be mapped to a character who was already in.
Given how much work went into Bayo, I have a sneaking suspension that at some point the dev team had several semi-finished characters that they either came in pre-ballot or had hand-picked during, and then let the votes run on. Any character that didn't already have a base was off the table.
To be honest, I can't completely blame them. If they waited until after the ballot to start work, then Smash Bros. would most likely already be old news at that point. If they wanted to keep people interested, they most likely had to have some work already done on possible candidates.
I wish the next time would be a poll, so we at least know who the developers were thinking about. Though, that might turn into a spoiler for the next game.