this happens often there is something to vote, but if you think about it, a "lavos spawn" (random person you are referring to i guess?) to become "well known" had to show that he is best than the other, so i cant say its not justified that people vote for him.
Something to avoid random votes would be to give proper justification of a certain vote, but still i dont think you can say anything more than "its original", "it wins" or stuff like that. I also have the feeling that sometimes people voted for me (in other topics) just because i have a badge (like it matters that much..) so please dont vote for me if you dont think that my team its not worth the vote.
Yeah, we get this problem every time any kind of vote happens. I'm not saying Lavos, Dice, kd and co's teams aren't deserving of a lot of votes, but this clearly is just bandwagoning in a lot of cases. And btw, well-known battlers getting the win just on the basis of their name is completely against the aim of this competition, which is trying to emphasize diversity and creativity.
I don't want to force people to provide justifications, because that will just result in us getting fewer votes; or get people to submit by PM, because even though I could then post the teams myself so they'd be essentially anonymous, it takes a lot of the fun and purpose out of the project. Basically, I don't have a great solution, although I think if I keep the entry period slightly shorter for next time, the fewer entries will encourage people to actually look through every team.
Another possibility is PM voting, which stops bandwagoning at least. Thoughts?