As I understand it, each person can vote for as many places as they want, but only on one occasion; that is, you can't log back in and vote for your favourite ten million times. Each vote has equal value with anyone else's vote and there is no ranking of votes. So there's no counting of second or third choices, each of the votes is treated as being a first preference.
Come On You Hatters!
I make you right there and any other system would become far too complicated. It would be nice to see this resolved in time for advance tickets and cheap advance bookings at budget hotels if required. Advance rail tickets still seem to be all over the place as I can't book anything for January.
Though not infallible, I think the Wikipedia definition of what constitutes the Midlands is about as accurate as anyone's going to get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Midlands