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Oh, I see what you mean. "Internal voting" is a panel of judges for Open Mic and only pertains to this contest. If we judged Open Mic solely on upvotes than people with more followers would have an unfair advantage to win the rewards.
Upvotes are taken into consideration but are not the only criteria. Performance, originality and entertainment value are also taken into consideration by the selection panel.

Right on! Right on! I thought I was missing a critical component of Steemit.com. Thx for the explanation. 👍🏽