I still favor the simplest system when it comes to voting. One province = one vote. Kill someone and you get all the provinces they had when you declared war. We don't have to give people a reason to distribute land to their vassals, let's keep the game heavy at the top and new avatars will have something to do... steal from the old generation.

Ranks and provinces never really meant much in LotR. We almost immediately had more land than active players. It'll mean more in the next version if a successful field general can hoard some of it and build himself into a threatening powerhouse. No matter how powerful someone gets in the end they can only control one stack of troops, can only attack in one direction at a time. If you want more than that you've got to trust someone, and if you don't want more than that then you will quickly find that younger players are just as happy to siege your cities with just their bodyguards as they are the AI's cities.

It's a simple scenario, right? One big player with 5-6 provinces, well established, powerful, and 3-4 new players with just what they can scrape together. If they want to advance they need land, and the big guy can't protect it all. Let's give each other motive and opportunity to be distrustful and aggressive.

We still have one other thing to fix, however, which is what we vote on! Voting sessions in LotR tended to be rather dull. The edicts were rarely impactful on gameplay. This has to be solved in the game by the players that start off with powerful avatars IMHO.