well, the past is the past, doesn't mean much to me.
I think Mecha was definitely being unfair, there seemed to be a lot of people accusing booths of being rigged for votes because they had a lot of voters and while it's possible I doubt that was the case with any of the booths. The rating system wasn't considered much at all by the staff in regards to anything, and it's our fault for not informing people that it didn't matter.
Best of Show has been decided by the staff since the beginning, and if you're new to the even then I apologize for not informing you, but I didn't even know how it was decided until the end of last year's event! But yeah, basically the staff decide, and that's really all there is to it. I'd like to change it, I think there's a lot more fun ways to decide it and ways that involve the community more, but I can't make any guarantees right now.
If you don't want to show up next year, that's fine, I can understand. There's going to be some internal changes within the staff for next year though, so the event will probably run a bit differently so you might not want to give up just yet.
Also I take feedback very seriously, I want to make the event as good as it can possibly be, so I appreciate hearing the concerns you have. If you have any other issues, feel free to post them here or on the NCFC forums.