From the beginning of the character spotlight, staff have found characters themselves that have been really well developed, and over the past two or so years of the spotlight we've consistently highlighted such a variety of people as we noticed excellence in a character's biography, regardless of everything (including their status on the board). We also try to ensure that we don't spotlight the same roleplayer's characters over and over.
I think one of the best parts about the spotlight is the surprise. When you get the personal message with the questionnaire on it and you really have to react. Having nominations and voting would take that away.
Nominations and voting would also put more work on the staff (having to set up those topics frequently).
Finally, nominations and voting would ultimately be quite unfair. I'm not sure what you meant by "one vote per account" - but that's not fair because then one person with 25 characters could fix the results. If you meant "one vote per roleplayer" - that's fair in an ideal world, but once again, somebody could cheat and with ZetaBoard's polling system we wouldn't find out very easily. (Of course, it might be obvious if one option has 200 votes and all the others only have like 5.)
With all that in mind, I don't think they change you've recommend would be a positive one.
However, feel free to pipe in and disagree.
