Bukkit

Here is how a standard vote is happening:

Player Voter wants to ban Player [color=red]Target[/red], so he types:

/banvote Target he's annoying!

The server announces the starting of a ban vote:

Voter started a ban vote against Target.
Ban reason: he's annoying!
Say /banvote yes for banning, /banvote no to vote against ban.
Muting Target for 60 seconds to discuss the ban vote.

Now online players may discuss without being distracted by Target, or just vote.

After 60 seconds, the server mutes Voter so Target can explain the situation. If the situation was not public, people will not have voted and now might be convinced that Voter is wrong.

After anoterh 60 seconds, the server calculates the votes. Assuming 6 online people of which 1 is afk, and one voted for and one against the ban, the following calculation is logged:

Voters for ban: *player name*
Voters for no ban: *player name*
1 ban votes = 1.0 ::
1 afk votes = -0.25 ::
1 anti votes = -4.0 ::
3 non votes = 0.0 ::

Final vote tally = -3.25//

This example would result in Voter being banned, because a NO vote weighs 4 YES votes. With the default setting of 8 minutes, that would be 32 minutes of temporary ban for Voter.

If you experience things being unfair on your server, you can adjust the weights and settings as you like. Feel free to comment or create a ticket if you think this is a general issue.